Kagan on WMD ‘Lies’
Robert Kagan has a column in the Washington Post that makes fun of the notion that Bush lied about Iraqi WMDs: A plot to deceive? It’s clever, and entertaining, but I think it’s basically an example of the straw man fallacy. Those claiming Bush lied are not arguing that Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction. They’re saying that Bush misrepresented ambiguous evidence as being much more certain than it actually was, in order to build support for an immediate invasion, as opposed to the slower approach represented by things like sanctions and continued UN weapons inspections. Which, as far as I can see, is a legitimate criticism. True, it’s not as bad as if Bush had invented the idea of an imminent Iraqi WMD threat out of thin air, but it’s still dishonest, and needs to be looked at carefully by anyone being asked to believe what Bush says in the future.
October 27th, 2003 at 5:35 am
The thing is, Saddam hasn’t had any weapons or weapons programs since 1991. Nothing, even in the “bend-over-backward-to-speculate” David Kay report says otherwise.
Not one weapon since 1991.
The Kurds had their own government in the North, made their own laws, elected?had their own Parliament.
You’d think if it really had to be now, Bush and his flunkies wouldn’t have had to repeat their speculative assertions over and over and over again. Rumsfeld even admitted that there had been no new intelligence since 1998.
G. Walker Bush, in the most obviously provable lie…
“Before being barred from Iraq in 1998, the International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled extensive nuclear weapons-related facilities”
Go the IAEA’s website and you will find out they were monitoring the stockpiles of radioactive waste, et cetera, in Iraq, in 2002, 2001, 2000, and 1999. Does that sound to you like they were BARRED? The big question is, did Bush even care to check on what all these people told him to say?
October 27th, 2003 at 5:56 am
Here the IAEA talks about their Jan 2002, Jan 2001 and Jan 2000 visits to Iraq.
Does that SOUND LIKE THEY WERE FUCKING BANNED?
http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/News/31012002_news01.shtml