Ari, Gilliard, Wilson, Wilkinson, Me: Time to Fess Up on WMD
A quick base-touching on the whole Bush-lied-about-weapons-of-mass-destruction thing. First up: I have to acknowledge the truth. I’ve been wrong, wrong, wrong about WMD this whole time. I hang my head in shame. After carefully reviewing the evidence, and analyzing my statements over and over again, I’ve come to the following inevitable conclusion:
I should never have pluralized the acronym as “WMDs”.
Since WMD expands to “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” it’s plenty plural already, as lots of more-grammatically-astute people have been maintaining all along. But I was casually tossing around unfounded s-appended pluralizations left and right, unwilling to acknowledge the glaring evidence of my own error.
Anyway. Henceforth I shall refer to them only as “WMD”. I apologize sincerely for having resisted so long the admission of what was so painfully obvious.
In the same vein, it was interesting to see the way the White House dealt with the Wilson revelations (the op-ed piece in the New York Times, and the Meet the Press appearance on Sunday), with Ari initially saying, “What? There’s no issue there,” and then, when Fearless Leader was safely on his plane for Africa, issuing written clarifications along the lines of, “well, of course we were wrong; everyone knows that, and has known it for a long time. Except we didn’t know it before the State of the Union Address.” (Except that they clearly did.)
I’m not going to bother linking to all the press coverage of this over the last few days; it’s not hard to find. A few decent starting points would be this piece from the Washington Post: White House backs off claim on Iraqi buy, and this one from The Independent, sent along by Glen & Pilar: Diplomat who blew the whistle on falsified evidence.
The most interesting part of the whole thing has always been this: Given how obvious it was that the version of the Iraqi WMD threat being promoted by Bush before the war was bogus, why would he do it? Why would a politician leave himself so exposed, basing an invasion of another country on a lie that was certain to be revealed as such?
Steve Gilliard at Daily Kos points to one account that sheds some light, possibly: Time to admit the obvious: there are no WMD. The account he points to, and discusses, is this one at Capitol Hill Blue: White House admits Bush wrong about Iraqi nukes. This is the key passage from the CHB story:
An intelligence consultant who was present at two White House briefings where the uranium report was discussed confirmed that the President was told the intelligence was questionable and that his national security advisors urged him not to include the claim in his State of the Union address.
“The report had already been discredited,” said Terrance J. Wilkinson, a CIA advisor present at two White House briefings. “This point was clearly made when the President was in the room during at least two of the briefings.”
Bush’s response was anger, Wilkinson said.
“He said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn’t prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could,” Wilkinson said. “He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country.”
The discussion in the comments at Daily Kos about whether or not Capitol Hill Blue is a credible source is interesting; time will tell on that, I guess. If this Wilkinson guy is real, and is really on the record, it should just be a matter of time before the story is in some mainstream news outlet.
If true, it certainly dovetails nicely with the picture that many people, myself very much included, have been building in our heads of Bush. He simply knew better than the so-called experts. His gut told him the WMD were there, God told him the WMD were there; he was on a mission to eradicate Evil, and pointy-headed analysts from the CIA or wherever were not going to get in his way. And since the neocon cabal among his advisors had a longstanding interest in seeing the Iraqi government overthrown by a US invasion in order to further their own ideological agenda, the Commander-in-Chief had plenty of enablers willing to help him set reason and evidence aside and proceed on the basis of his Higher Truth.
Yeah, the real truth was going to come out sooner or later. But at that point the deed would be done. Even if Bush ended up paying a high price personally, that wouldn’t necessarily bother the PNAC folks, as long as their vision of mideast transformation by the US military had been successfully launched. And Bush, bless his tiny little capacity for personal insight, believed he was right, dammit. Reality would rearrange itself to protect him.
Well, maybe it will. There are plenty of people with a compelling emotional need to see Bush vindicated on this. The collective suspension of disbelief only has to carry him through November of next year, at which point he’ll have succeeded as much as it’s possible to succeed in US politics, with enforced retirement thereafter courtesy of the 22nd Amendment. It would be a fitting end for his career, the crowning achievement of a life characterized by repeated personal failure, followed by rescue at the hands of powerful interests unwilling to let that failure reflect badly on themselves.
George W. Bush: our collective underachieving problem child.
Update: “Wilkinson” story acknowledged by CHB to be bogus. Bigtime thanks to Craig for pointing it out in the comments.
July 9th, 2003 at 12:01 pm
As a Canadian, I wonder why some of you get your shirts in such knots over wherher the president lied about WMD.
Didn’t Roosevelt fail to stop the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941 to galvanize American public opinion into going to war?
I don’t know which is worse but history has proven Roosevelt to be correct. The allies could not have won WWII without the wholehearted material and manpower support of the USA.
Maybe history will prove Bush right, too…
July 9th, 2003 at 12:54 pm
Sorry, can’t let this one lie Yuri.
Comparing pearl Harbor to Iraq isn’t like comparing apples and oranges, it’s like comparing oranges to Orangotans (sic?).
In pearl harbor we were the agressed (if such a word exists). In Iraq we were the agressor.
Pearl Harbor presented a direct threat to our National Interests and safety. Iraq, obviously, presented neither.
Yes, yes, the world is better off without the odious and possibly odorous Saddam Hussein, but that’s not the reason the administration gave for war. It was WMD…or WMDs just to poke fun at John.
So now buckaroo draft dodger “Bring ’em on” Bush is trying to justify pre-emptive war for a lot of reasons other than the one he gave for attacking.
So I and other Americans want to know what the hell he knew and when he knew it…and why the hell we’re in Iraq.
In other words we want accountability before macho man attacks another country and our troops have to pay the price.
American and British troops and suffering heat and daily attacks, are being killed and wounded based on apparently cherry-picked, manipulated or outright false data.
Taking this country to war should only be done under exceptional circumstances. Pearl Harbor was, Iraq wasn’t (unless evidence comes to light that it was a clear and present danger).
Anyway, you get my mood.
-Mark
July 9th, 2003 at 1:56 pm
If this guy Wilkinson is for real, as you say, that is an interesting report.
Yuri states that Roosevelt failed to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor on purpose as if that’s some sort of established fact, but whatever, it’s nonsense.
As for Bush, yeah, it bothers me if he lied about something he knew to be false. The thing is, intelligence is NEVER a sure thing, you always have to go with your best guess and your gut feeling. There was plenty of intelligence to support our WMD fears about Iraq, so I’m not sure why Bush would rely on something he knew to be false. To tell the truth, I haven’t read enough about the specifics of this instance (if they’re even available) to have an opinion on it.
I guess I’m still in a wait-and-see mode. I am concerned that we haven’t found a stockpile of WMD, but I also understand that there may be WMD scattered all over and no single bonanza cache to discover.
It’s important to remember: the battle of Iraq was just one phase of a larger war against Islamic fundamentalism and terror. Bush always made this clear. WMD was part of the reason we were going in, but it was just one aspect of the larger campaign. You’re getting caught up on details.
July 9th, 2003 at 3:02 pm
Of course we’re getting caught up in the details. We’ve been in Iraq about 110 days (roughly), that’s over 3-months of controlling the country and we have found nothing.
As for WMD I have a hard time believing there are many small stockpiles around. Considering the money the U.S. is offering someone out of 25 million or so people would come forward. So far, nothing. Weapons scientists that have been captured…nothing. Spies, satellite photos, inspections by U.N. (post 1998 and prior to war)nothing.
Intelligence by it’s very nature is faulty and unsure, but it’s becoming clear that there was a severe disconnect between reality and the decisions that were made.
I’d personally like someone to come clean and take responsibility. That’s usually the highest ranking person and the one with the ultimate decision…but I don’t expect bush to take responsibility for anything.
Now my question…if Iraq was a battle what do you consider a WAR? We invaded a sovreign nation (Iraq), we killed/destroyed their army, we are now occupying Iraq and have installed our own leadership. Our troops are in charge of law enforcement. Our troops patrol the streets, our troops…we invaded, have occupied and now control the country of Iraq. How is that a battle?
In my opinion calling Iraq a battle is an attempt by the White House (read into that: Karl Rove) to shift the focus from the failures in Iraq (the lack of planning to fill the leadership vacuum in Iraq is appalling by any stretch of the imagination) to the ‘war on terror’. It’s a cop-out and, at least to me, obviously transparent.
Now the caveat, I voted for Bush the first itime he ran for governr of Texas, then I voted for him in 2000…but I’ll never vote for him again. Enough is enough.
Iraq is a WAR, not a battle, and WMD was the excuse used by the administration to invade and it was based on lies or gross incompetence.
Iraq-Al’qaida link (NONE).
WMD (NONE)
Humanitarian (ad hoc post war excuse) – if this was the real reason when do we invade Africa?
July 9th, 2003 at 7:52 pm
My BS sniffer made me wonder if this story was too dramatic to be believed. Guess I was right this time. http://capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_2529.shtml
By the way Michael, even though I am of a Conservative bent, I feel, personally, that it would be intellectually dishonest to water down the importance of finding at least a dormant weapons program, if not an active one. It may not have been the only reason for confronting Saddam, but, have no doubt, it was the main one that was emphasized for needing to act so urgently.
July 9th, 2003 at 9:08 pm
Sweet. Thanks for the pointer to the debunking, Craig.
Note to self: When the smoking gun seems too good to be true, and comes by way of an outlet with a questionable track record for credibility, don’t get your hopes up.
Yeah, I wanted it to be true, because it matched my preconceptions. At least I wasn’t completely taken in. Anyway, onward and upward.
July 9th, 2003 at 9:26 pm
Uh, they’ve found lots of info about dormant weapons programs. They found stuff buried in scientists’ back yards. They’ve found unloaded chemical warheads.
Etc etc.
July 10th, 2003 at 6:48 am
That’s fine. Yes, they have found some initial pieces of evidence that point to a dormant, ready-to-activate weapons program. The type of documents that were found have so far only been vaguely referred to as relating to WMD. Perhaps a more descriptive summary of the information will happen later, once the military analysts have fully studied them. And the centrifuge was an item, albeit an important one, that was found in ONE scientist’s backyard, not multiple sites. I believe more evidence will be forthcoming, which will be critical for both Bush’s and the Country’s future credibility.
My main point, however, is that I feel that it is disingenuous on my part to portray the WMD issue as just another piece of the mosaic of reasons for invading Iraq, when it was quite clear that Bush was selling that issue as the primary one for needing to act much quicker than the UN preferred.
You, however, may be quite comfortable with this change in emphasis. That is your choice.