The 500 Weapons In Iraq
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On Terrorism, WarMy opinion? Old news repackaged as new…uh…news.
I’d give you all of my thoughts, but The Glittering Eye has already written a good post asking the appropriate question…“Who cares?”
UPDATE: Alan Colmes makes a good point:
…the Duelfer Report-says Iraq did not have the weapons our intelligence believed were there. And Jim Angle who reported this for Fox News-quotes a defense official who says these were pre-1991 weapons that could not have been fired as designed because they already been degraded.And the official went on to say that they are-these are not the WMD’s this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had-and not the WMD’s for which this country went to war. So the chest beating that the Republicans are doing tonight thinking this is a justification is not confirmed by the defense department.
Again…who cares?
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 and is filed under The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:04 pm
From the Glittering Eye:
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:50 pm
I don’t believe it’s precisely water under the bridge. If solid evidence were found of a WMD program that had been underway in early 2003, it would no doubt be taken as vindication of the war in Iraq to many war-supporters and, more importantly, many fence-sitters.
Of course, personally, it wouldn’t change my view of the war, as I wasn’t nearly as concerned over Saddam’s actualy WMD capacity as I was about Saddam’s flagrant promotion of international terrorism as a foreign policy tool.
If the hypothetical evidence mentioned above caused the nation to suddenly approve of the Iraq war, part of me would be annoyed at the inconsistent metric. If people disapproved of the war because they felt it was based on faulty intelligence, then they should approve of it only if they decide the intelligence was being misrepresented as faulty, and not just because there was faulty intelligence that just happened to be right. (Hope that makes sense.) I suspect many war-opposers would make this point, and it would be a good one.
As far as this goes, the only Republican chest-beating I’ve heard about so far is Rick Santorum. That lowers my impression of him a few notches. He sounds like he’s using this to misrepresent the validity of his war position. He shouldn’t need to. His position’s validity should be independent of this particular news.
June 22nd, 2006 at 4:15 pm
“There were no weapons of mass destruction”
“There were no links to Al-Queda”
Both of these ant-war talking points have now been completely de-bunked, and can never be used to villify the decision to go to war ever again. I believe that is significant.
June 22nd, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Of course Dems and libs say “Who cares?” It is their sour grapes for exactly the same reasons Jimmy stated.
However, I still hold firm to my position that getting rid of Saddam was something that had to be done. The naysayers who cling to the asinine position of “Saddam only killed his own people. It’s none of our business” have now had to come face to face with their own immoral positions for all thier Bush hating and slandering.
Paul, you and share the same attitude toward the whole ordeal as I mentioned on my blog how Rebs should act with this new information no matter how it gets spinned.
June 22nd, 2006 at 6:24 pm
There’s a good deal of distance between “this is being misrepresented, miscast and overhyped” and “who cares.”
One can still be glad that these weapons found their way into our hands, rather than AQ’s or insurgents’, and still point out that Sen. Santorum is trying to blur the line between prior stocks and the covert labs and programs that we did not find. One could still point out that maybe, just maybe, if it took this much effort to find what we have, maybe there’s some “there” there that we haven’t found yet.
Or, one could go completely f-ing bonkers and convince themselves that, well, Saddam didn’t even KNOW he had these. He just lost them, you know, with all the humanitarian services he was providing, who has time to keep up with all this stuff?
And I’m sure that f-ing bonkers type would be more than happy to ask for this stuff under some sort of FOIA act, and go clean their kitchen with it, right? Cuz’ it’s inert now, ya’ know. No more powerful than stuff you find under your kitchen sink, ya’ know.
I wonder if one of those “who knows” types could tell me if the road to Kos Diarist is bumpy and painful?
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Hey everyone, go to Trickish Knave’s blog and check out HIS HUGE SQUIRREL BALLS. Now those are WMDs. Nice….
June 23rd, 2006 at 3:17 am
Most likely. However, I think that this news is most likely very thin. A cumulative survey of the WMD problem in Iraq has certainly core much fruit, especially the kind that can put us, as a nation, in danger. I understand the Cheney 1% doctrine, but we can’t allow that to govern our foreign policy decisions, no matter how scary a world we’re presented.
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:31 am
Jimmy said,
“’There were no weapons of mass destruction’ ‘There were no links to Al-Queda’ Both of these ant-war talking points have now been completely de-bunked, and can never be used to villify the decision to go to war ever again. I believe that is significant.”
Oh please. Completely de-bunked? These were NOT the weapons they were looking for, is what the official said. They were old, pre-1991, and unusable, probably left over from the stuff we already knew he was up to. This “debate” is so tiresome.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:05 pm
This “debate� is so tiresome. Typical liberal response when their moral reasons for not ousting Saddam are debunked.
Knave, I mistakenly deleted your comment as I was culling spam. I believe this was it. My apologies if I didn’t get it all.
June 25th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
I am far more fascinated by the timing of the “declassification” of the document and its subsequent release.
June 19, WaPo publishes Khaliljad’s memo to the boss.
June 22 the report is released.
Damage control? Youbetcha!!
June 27th, 2006 at 6:19 am
If we had known that this was all there was, and that the war would go on this long, I wouldn’t have supported going in. In my mind, that’s the key takeaway. There are a couple minor points in that it shows that Saddam didn’t get rid of everything (although it could have been just an inventory issue – we don’t know that he knew these existed), and that the UN wasn’t necessarially going to find everything (as we know they missed these). But in the end, this story is a footnote more than anything.
The fact that this was classified also suggests that the gov’t isn’t holding back on anything bigger.
June 27th, 2006 at 10:05 am
I suppose if Saddam had secretly manufactured nuclear warheads in 1998, and we found them in 2004, then it still would be irrelevant because those wouldn’t be the weapons we were looking for either, since nobody thought his nuclear program was completed.
Mustard gas has a very long half life, unexploded ordinance from WWI still kills people from time to time throughout the old battlefields of Europe. Saddam was supposed to have delivered ALL his WMD to the UN inspectors, this proves he didn’t. I don’t care if weapons were made in 1989 or 1992; pre-Gulf war or post. WMD in the hands of terrorists is unacceptable. Period.
Saddam had WMDs, and he supported terrorists. The jury is in.
June 27th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
If we found nuclear warheads that we weren’t looking for, then yes, to an extent it would be irrelevent to the problem of our intelligence capacity. Hell yes, it would justify war, but meanwhile, we would have been looking at an intelligence service that predicts a cherry instead of an orange. That’s gonna bite us in future conflicts. I don’t expect intel to get it right every time, but I do expect it to get a little closer than it did.
“Saddam had WMDs, and he supported terrorists. The jury is in.”
My counterpoint: we knew Saddam was likely to have WMDs in 2003, and he supported terrorists. The jury is in.
June 27th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
I’ll go with that.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Iraq near civil war – Is it avoidable?
I have been hearing a lot on the news about Iraq nearing a civil war, and that it's only a few days away. Do you think there is still time to stop the inevitable? Or is it too late already?