Those Pesky WMD's

[EasyEd]

About 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs were found in Iraq. And covered up.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?_r=0

And, of course, the New York Times plays this down because it does not support an active WMD program. And it places blame on the military, not politicians of either party.

So much for the "Bush lied, men died" thingy.

[quickplay]

"And, of course, the New York Times plays this down because it does not support an active WMD program."

Which was, you know, the claim that led us to war. I hope you're not seriously feeling vindicated by this...

[DanMcQ]

...this should be fun...

[TC]

Oct 15, 2014 9:32:42 GMT -5 EasyEd said:

About 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs were found in Iraq. And covered up.

You're forgetting the most embarrasing part - they were ours :

In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.

But it's good to know that we went into a country to destroy WMDs and were utterly unprepared for not only the political consequences of what happens afterwards but even were unprepared for the whole "destroy WMD"s part.

[SSHoya]

The WMDs in the NYT article are from the U.S. or at least created because the US-manufactured items were expoted pursuant to licenses issued by the US Department of Commerce to further Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and missile systems to fight Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war. It has been known that such weapons existed since the Riegle Report which examined Gulf War syndrome and whether US servicemembers had been exposed to chemical weapons. Reagan signed National Security Study Directive (NSSD 4-82) and initiated this strategic overture to Saddam Hussein. Iraq was removed as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1982 in order to allow for the transfer of "dual use" technology to Iraq. About two of every seven licenses for the export of "dual use" technology items approved between 1985 and 1990 by the U.S. Department of Commerce went either directly to the Iraqi armed forces, to Iraqi end-users engaged in weapons production, or to Iraqi enterprises suspected of diverting technology to weapons of mass destruction, according to an investigation by House Banking Committee Chairman Henry B. Gonzalez. Confidential Commerce Department files also reveal that the Reagan and Bush administrations approved at least 80 direct exports to the Iraqi military. These included computers, communications equipment, aircraft navigation and radar equipment.

So I'm not sure what Ed's point is. There is still no evidence of an active WMD program in Iraq throughout the 1990s. The coverup isn't about the existence of such pre-Gulf War (Desert Storm) WMDs but the DOD's coverup of the potential health effects upon US soldiers.

By chance, I had dinner with David Kay last week (head of the Iraq Survey Group until he resigned in 2004). ISG was tasked with finding WMDs post 9/11 in Iraq and Kay testified before Congress, at best, there were some WMD-related activities, but no active programs. Charles Duelfer replaced Kay and attached is a summary of key findings, including no credible indications that Iraq resumed production of chemical weapons post-1991.

www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf

moneydick.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/the_riegle_report.pdf

[EasyEd]

Great to see the reason for going to war in Iraq can be changed at will from ridding Saddam of WMD's to ridding Saddam of an active WMD program.

If it were announced during the Iraq War to the American people that we had found 5,000 chemical warheads, shells and aviation bombs the general conclusion would be "that's why we went to war". Instead, the headlines were that Saddam had no WMD's.

[Elvado]

The only piece of this I find troubling is the undercurrent that because the intelligence was faulty, it must have been a deliberate deception.

With 20/20 hindsight it is of course clear that at best Iraq had the remnants of a WMD program and likely not even that.

However, super geniuses like Colon Powell, Hillary Clinton, etc were all supportive of the war and the intelligence. Were they also complicit in the grand lie or just well-intentioned dupes tricked by the great and powerful Neocon Oz from Wyoming.

Mistaken intelligence and outright deception are not fungible commodities.

For example when the President recently said there was no chance of an Ebola outbreak in the United States, he was customarily misinformed and wrong, but I do not believe he lied.

Get it.

[SSHoya]

Oct 15, 2014 18:42:03 GMT -5 Elvado said:

The only piece of this I find troubling is the undercurrent that because the intelligence was faulty, it must have been a deliberate deception.

With 20/20 hindsight it is of course clear that at best Iraq had the remnants of a WMD program and likely not even that.

However, super geniuses like Colon Powell, Hillary Clinton, etc were all supportive of the war and the intelligence. Were they also complicit in the grand lie or just well-intentioned dupes tricked by the great and powerful Neocon Oz from Wyoming.

Mistaken intelligence and outright deception are not fungible commodities.

For example when the President recently said there was no chance of an Ebola outbreak in the United States, he was customarily misinformed and wrong, but I do not believe he lied.

Get it.

[SSHoya]

Oct 15, 2014 19:02:33 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

Oct 15, 2014 18:42:03 GMT -5 Elvado said:

The only piece of this I find troubling is the undercurrent that because the intelligence was faulty, it must have been a deliberate deception.

With 20/20 hindsight it is of course clear that at best Iraq had the remnants of a WMD program and likely not even that.

However, super geniuses like Colon Powell, Hillary Clinton, etc were all supportive of the war and the intelligence. Were they also complicit in the grand lie or just well-intentioned dupes tricked by the great and powerful Neocon Oz from Wyoming.

Mistaken intelligence and outright deception are not fungible commodities.

For example when the President recently said there was no chance of an Ebola outbreak in the United States, he was customarily misinformed and wrong, but I do not believe he lied.

Get it.

Elvado, I never believed there was a deliberate deception - a major intel failure to be sure. David Kay never believed so either.

Ed, there is a true difference between degraded WMD going on 20 years old and faulty intel indicating current WMD production. If you can't grasp the nuance between the two, I can't explain it to you to your satisfaction. And I never bought into deliberate deception.

[Elvado]

SS: none of what I posted was directed to what I believed to be a very even handed approach in your post.

It was much more aimed at the generally accepted canard that the whole thing was a fabricated deception masterminded by an evil genius.

[SSHoya]

Oct 15, 2014 18:18:12 GMT -5 EasyEd said:

Great to see the reason for going to war in Iraq can be changed at will from ridding Saddam of WMD's to ridding Saddam of an active WMD program.

If it were announced during the Iraq War to the American people that we had found 5,000 chemical warheads, shells and aviation bombs the general conclusion would be "that's why we went to war". Instead, the headlines were that Saddam had no WMD's.

Ed, for your perusal.

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/10/15/iraq-wmd-does-the-new-york-times-probe-reflect-what-administration-officials-claimed/

[SSHoya]

Oct 15, 2014 19:14:58 GMT -5 Elvado said:

SS: none of what I posted was directed to what I believed to be a very even handed approach in your post.

It was much more aimed at the generally accepted canard that the whole thing was a fabricated deception masterminded by an evil genius.

No worries.

[TC]

Oct 15, 2014 18:18:12 GMT -5 EasyEd said:

Great to see the reason for going to war in Iraq can be changed at will from ridding Saddam of WMD's to ridding Saddam of an active WMD program.

No, you can try to absolve Bush as much as you want, but the reason we went into Iraq was supposedly an active WMD program. We did not overthrow a country based on a bunch because of a bunch of rotting non-functional chemical weapons. We did it because of a bunch of lies about WMDs and oil.

I wholeheartedly believe that bad intelligence was purposefully pushed because it fit a narrative that people wanted to push to accomplish ulterior goals.

[RusskyHoya]

Oct 15, 2014 20:05:29 GMT -5 TC said:

Oct 15, 2014 18:18:12 GMT -5 EasyEd said:

Great to see the reason for going to war in Iraq can be changed at will from ridding Saddam of WMD's to ridding Saddam of an active WMD program.

No, you can try to absolve Bush as much as you want, but the reason we went into Iraq was supposedly an active WMD program. We did not overthrow a country based on a bunch because of a bunch of rotting non-functional chemical weapons. We did it because of a bunch of lies about WMDs and oil.

I wholeheartedly believe that bad intelligence was purposefully pushed because it fit a narrative that people wanted to push to accomplish ulterior goals.

More to the point: the "bad intelligence" was itself a product of intensive political pressure from above to come up with some evidence, any evidence, no matter how thin and speculative, of an active Iraqi WMD program, of a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, etc. For those interested in an insider's take into that gory story, look no further than former CIA analyst/former Georgetown professor/former colleague of mine Paul Pillar's book "Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy," specifically Chapters 2-4.

[pertinax]

"... the 'bad intelligence' was itself a product of intensive political pressure from above to come up with some evidence, any evidence, no matter how thin and speculative, of an active Iraqi WMD program."

Really? And so how does that explain the fact that the intel agencies of every one of our western allies agreed with our assessment that Iraq had an ongoing WMD program in place? "Does not compute."
And did you ever notice the photographs of a massive convoy of Iraqi trucks crossing into Syria just days before the outbreak of the war? Proof? No. But at the least extremely interesting.

[quickplay]

The Bush administration wanted war with Iraq. The fact that we went to war does not prove that it was the right thing to do. Where is this 'everyone agreed they had an ongoing WMD program' coming from? Or is it another blatantly misleading effort to rewrite history like this thread itself?

Proof? No. Interesting? No.

This is one of those issues that people are already trying to rewrite history on. The lead up to the war was a disgrace, it was wrong, and the Bush administration was intentionally creating misleading and manipulative propaganda in the lead up to the war (e.g. 'leaking' information to the NYTimes anonymously and then citing those NYTimes reports).

Do I think that the entire Bush administration was intentionally lying? No. Do I think some of them were? Yes.

But this idea that Iraq was an honest mistake and just the 'best with information we had' is a joke.

[EasyEd]

Each person is entitled to his/her own opinion but Pertinax stated facts.

[quickplay]

Fact: The Iraq war was sold with hidden, manipulative propaganda, fearmongering, lies, and misinformation.

Fact: The right-wing is already attempting to rewrite history.

[RusskyHoya]

Oct 16, 2014 10:49:56 GMT -5 pertinax said:

"... the 'bad intelligence' was itself a product of intensive political pressure from above to come up with some evidence, any evidence, no matter how thin and speculative, of an active Iraqi WMD program."

Really? And so how does that explain the fact that the intel agencies of every one of our western allies agreed with our assessment that Iraq had an ongoing WMD program in place? "Does not compute."
And did you ever notice the photographs of a massive convoy of Iraqi trucks crossing into Syria just days before the outbreak of the war? Proof? No. But at the least extremely interesting.

We'll set aside the "Iraqi trucks crossing into Syria," which ended with Charlie Duelfer stating there was no proof of transfer of WMD materials to Syria, and any significant transfer was unlikely (see "No Basis For WMD Smuggling Claims" CBS News and the relevant sections of the Duelfer Report itself).

The question of why intelligence agencies failed to understand Saddam's situation has been studied thoroughly by those agencies themselves. You can, for instance, read the Australian inquiry here, the UK's Butler Review here, or various American assessments, such as the CIA's de-classified Retrospective. These reviews do a nice job of sussing out the various analytical missteps that did take place, particularly the failure to understanding things from Saddam's perspective - that is, that he was bluffing about having WMD in order to retain a position of prominence and prestige within the Arab world.

What those reviews don't go into, however, is the political influence that was brought to bear on intelligence agencies by the three pro-war administrations of Bush, Blair, and Howard. The Butler Review, for instance, explicitly excluded the actions of political officials from its scope. As a result, and given the highly politicized nature of the topic, we're left to turn to insider accounts, like Pillar's, for insight. Although the Hutton Inquiry did note that the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee may have been "subconsciously influenced" by the government - a pretty bold admission for a government report.

I should also note that "every one of our western allies" did not agree with the entirety of the U.S. assessment as presented - there was much contention about many of the claims made by Powell and others. Those claims were also vigorously debated within the U.S. Intelligence Community, as we know from INR's dissent or, say, the reporting of CIA Paris station chief Bill Murray:

The following day, Murray met the intermediary for a debriefing in a hotel room in New York. He was given the substance of the intelligence: ‘Saddam had intentions to have WMD, chemical, biological and nuclear, but the report was very clear about what he actually had at that point in time and he had virtually nothing.’

It was not what the White House wanted to hear. ‘I was told they were not happy.’

Long story short, it is absolutely not the case that there was one view that all of Western intelligence had and it just turned out to be wrong. Much the opposite.

For what it's worth, one of my grad school assignments was to look at only the available pre-war intelligence and complete my own assessment of the question "Does Saddam have WMD?" My conclusion, which I think was a perfectly fair one, was along the lines of "on balance, he probably does, because he's the kind of guy who would, and he's had it before. There's not a lot of hard evidence as to the status, though." My sense is that this take roughly matched the Western intelligence consensus at the time, to the extent there was one. It's certainly not the kind of assessment that would argue for an immediate invasion, though.

Last point: a key reason for the high assumption-to-evidence ratio in pre-war intelligence has to do with the limited capabilities that agencies had with respect to Iraq. They were relying on informers of dubious credibility (e.g., Curveball) and using a lot of highly questionable secondary reporting, as the 'Dodgy Dossier' debacle exemplified. Moreover, simply due to resource and capability disparity, the originating source of much of the intelligence was the U.S. So, a rather tenuous piece of evidence, circulated widely among the Five Eyes and NATO, starts to take on the appearance of credible reporting, while contrary evidence is buried due to political pressure.