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• Thursday, December 4, 2008 07:49 AM

  @Groenhagen

  Groenhagen: "Of course, the WMD debate concerning Iraq began long before Bush became president. The Clinton administration left office claiming that Saddam still had WMD and, thus, was a clear and present danger at all times."

  Again, what is your point in continually bringing up Clinton? How does Clinton's stance in 2000 have any bearing on what actions Bush decided to take in 2003? Or on the judgment of Bush's success in the undertaking?

  There was some reason to think that Saddam had WMD during the Clinton era: We knew he had them before, and we had no evidence he'd gotten rid of them. There's a reason for this: Hussein didn't want to publically declare that he didn't have such weapons, as it would only serve to make his military seem less powerful. Hussein's entire game was to make himself look as formidable as possible within the confines of his hemmed-in, isolated dictatorship.

  But we also knew that the kinds of chemical agents he had were procured in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and these materials were known to deteriorate to the point of uselessness after just a few years.

  We further knew that, unless he had established channels previously unknown, Hussein had not procured any new WMD. It's not like we didn't have spies and bugs and wiretaps throughout his palaces. The uranium yellow-cake story was never taken very seriously by real intelligence experts, and if it did show anything (which it didn't) it was merely that of Hussein putting out feelers to get materials (which, again, he didn't actually do) rather than obtaining them.

  The history of the WMD story is pretty clear, and it involves Dick Cheney making personal trips to CIA headquarters and Pentagon to pressure officials to find evidence for WMD, as well as a strong will to downplay evidence showing otherwise. Pick up some of Bob Woodward's books -- that's just a start, of course.

  There's also the "new evidence" displayed by Colin Powell. We had weather-balloon trailers that were supposed to be bio-terror labs (but weren't), metal tubes that were supposed to be for building chemical-agent-delivering rockets (but weren't), and assorted factory rooftops where stuff was supposed to be hidden (but wasn't, and our guys in the field knew damn well it wasn't). Powell himself famously exclaimed "This is bullshit!" at some of the stuff he was given to present. He still cites that as the worst day of his life.

  Look also at the ugly back-stories of how we used dillweeds like Chalabi or "Curveball" as the sole basis for our conclusions, even though they were known to be unreliable sources with vested interests in telling us what we wanted to hear, or what we pressured them to make up. Anybody remember Cheney claiming that there was an Iraq/9-11 link, based on some Iraqi defense guy who traveled to Europe once? Anybody remember Bush saying, "We found the WMD" when he was talking to the Polish media?

  Groenhagen: "

  http://www.sinsofthehusband.com/Albright-1-8-2001.pdf

  http://www.sinsofthehusband.com/Holbrooke-1-11-2001.pdf

  "

  I see you're getting your information from a web site called "Sins of the Husband." Real convincing! Be sure to link to some National Journal articles while you're at it. Or maybe the New York Post.

  —Xrandadu Hutman Read Xrandadu Hutman's other letters
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