A Question of Focus
If the Democratic Leadership and the members of the liberal press and blogosphere ever got together to play in a dart tournament, it would never have an ending. They would be too obsessed with chasing all the numbers to ever pay attention to the bullseye.
This “Yellowcake” fiasco is just another smoking gun mirage that has Bush’s opposition more distracted than a dog in a mailman convention. Try as they might, their outrage regarding this “lie” is generally being met with a collective yawn by the moderate and Republican voting public, as well as the mainstream world press. This kind of “gotcha” game involving the mysterious world of intelligence-gathering is just too shadowy for most people to feel they are on solid ground in contradicting an Administration’s information. It won’t take much counter-evidence to firmly sway public opinion back into the “give him the benefit of the doubt” camp. The danger in this scandal-chase regarding the “was this one example in his speech truthful” angle, is that the voting public may smell a greater whiff of desperation than of outrage from Bush’s opponents.
So what’s the right answer? I and numerous other Conservatives have said several times that the issue which will resonate loudest with us (and, I would suggest, the bulk of public opinion) will still be the establishment of proof of a significant WMD program, either available for immediate use, or in a dormant, ready-to-activate form. That is the “bullseye” that the Liberals should be keeping a steady drumbeat on.
Why? Well, some spinmeisters have been basing their arguments against this Yellowcake Affair by stating that it was only part of many reasons Bush gave for attacking Iraq. True enough. But what is NOT being said is that the MAIN reason given for confronting Saddam IMMEDIATELY rather than on a UN-preferred elongated time frame was the imminent threat to both US and world security that Iraq’s cache of chemical and biological weapons posed. This is the basic “was there or wasn’t there” outcome that the public will remember and respond to.
But hey, don’t mind me. After all, a Conservative might just be trying to throw all the truth-seekers off the trail of that slam-dunk Uranium bombshell which will break the back of the evil Bush regime once and for all!
July 17th, 2003 at 7:05 am
This interview with David Kay, the man tasked with leading the WMD search, reveals the progress toward what may become a definitive answer to the key question that I posed above. http://www.msnbc.com/news/939347.asp
July 17th, 2003 at 7:21 am
Dave Hill of Dave Does the Blog also linked to and quoted this interview with Kay. As far as I’m concerned, it’s more administration obfuscation. What exactly does he say, concretely, in that whole long exchange? That they may have some documents in six months? Woo hoo! Real definitive.
My favorite quote is at the end: “I am certain that we will reach the conclusion of understanding that program, whatever it was.” Hey Mr. Kay, your bosses said they knew what the “program” was, and where it was. And it wasn’t a plan outlined in documents in someone’s house safe. It was literally tons of biological and chemical weapons that could be deployed in 45 minutes. Show us that, then we can talk.
July 17th, 2003 at 8:23 am
I’m curious, Craig. Are you saying that you believe that the president’s pre-war statements about the nature of Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons stockpiles, as distinct from the statements on the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program and the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, were essentially accurate? And that subsequent events will prove that?
I just don’t see how you can say that. You could maybe make the case that Bush could have credibly _believed_ his pre-war assertions about Iraqi WMD; Bush is, by all accounts, a pretty gullible guy when he’s got some pre-existing reason to want to believe something. But to claim that those assertions will actually end up having been accurate, given the absence of corroborating evidence that’s turned up so far in the WMD hunt, kind of boggles my mind.
July 17th, 2003 at 10:32 am
David Kay’s remarks were not particularly revealing in terms of specifics, but it does give a glimpse into the investigative processes and the type of weapons program that seemed to be in place. The “meat” of the current search will likely be disclosed before the end of the year.
Do I still believe that Iraq has large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons waiting to be discovered? Possible, but not likely, due to the apparent limited “shelf life” of many of these types of material. But there could be storage and disposal facilities that may indicate activity in the recent past that would point to an ongoing project of development, processing, and destruction. These things all await answers.
The state of a nuclear program and the al Qaeda connection was thought to be fairly circumstancial by most experts, even during the time leading up to the war. Which is why the operational-readiness of Saddam’s chemical and biological WMD was given the prominent status of being the main issue of urgency.
As I’ve said before, if the evidence shows a lack of any significant amount of usable WMD, either now or back in the months immediately preceding the war, Bush will have some very real problems in explaining why it was a national priority to circumvent the UN-approved inspection process in such an urgent and forceful way. This, along with a still-struggling economy will foreshadow a one-term presidency and a likely loss of Republican control of Congress.
But, as I have also mentioned, if it can be proven that instead of a discarded WMD program, Saddam instead had in place all the elements and materials for a dormant program that could resume a covert weapons manufacturing process almost immediately upon sucessfully deflecting world scrutiny, it will be a relatively easy argument to sell to the nation, if not the world.
The line of logic would be, “Here was a regime that sought to purposefully fool the world on its innocence and compliance, while planning to resume its development of terror weapons at the earliest opportunity.”
Will Bush and his Administration take some hits for not knowing (or revealing) that story ahead of time? Probably. But if the “dormant but deadly” theory ends up as provable reality, most people (including myself) will accept that as a level of threat and deception that needed to be addressed promptly.
July 17th, 2003 at 12:42 pm
So the original, clearest case of a moral war is that when the other guy attacks you, it’s justifiable that you fight back.
This was then extended to the idea that if the other guy is massing troops on your border, and going to invade next week, it’s moral for you to go ahead and attack him this week.
Bush made the huge and baffling extension that if the other guy has any viable means, and could someday possibly think about attacking you (contrary to any past action or statement), that’s justification enough to morally attack him.
The lack of weapons tech has now forced the white house to stretch this further still. Apparently now even if the other guy has no weapons or means whatsoever, has never attacked you, said anything implying he ever would attack you, but you think that there’s some possibility that he might someday develop the means, the desire, and the intent… Charge on in! You’re all clear in the moral department.
The detractors’ current focus on specific weapons tech is an attempt to force the Bush administration to extend this one more step. If the white house knew that Iraq hadn’t even the possibility of developing serious weapons, they’ll have to try and stretch the morality of their choices even further.
The hope is that as Bush’s position gets more and more ridiculous, it will eventually cross the threshold of acceptability for a much larger portion of the electorate. With luck, this will happen some time before Bush gets as far as asserting that it’s moral to wage war as long as the other guy is kind of swarthy looking.
July 17th, 2003 at 1:18 pm
I think your point, Craig, is that the most important thing in determining if the past (and seemingly continuing) Iraq war was justified is whether or not we actually find weapons. This certainly is a big deal, as this was stated reason for going to war, although I’ll still disagree that this is a _good_ reason as onan explained.
But just as important is the fact that this entire notion of pre-emptive war is predicated trusting the people making the decision to use it. The argument is that we’re faced with an immediately dangerous foe, but who is hiding his offensive capability such that the threat is non-obvious and the evidence for the threat cannot completely be made public for fear we’ll lose the element of surprise against him.
So we’re left with having to take the President at his word that we’re in grave danger. That’s a whole lot of trust and I doubt that the public at large would have given it had not Bush repeatedly painted pictures of falling buildings and mushroom clouds in our minds.
What’s happening here is that we’ve found a pretty concrete example of what appears to be complete fabrication of evidence for the sake of that mental picture. If we can’t trust the President at his word with respect to going to war during the *State of the Union Address*, the entire idea of pre-emptive war loses its justification — as it should.
July 19th, 2003 at 11:08 pm
I don’t know what to say to anyone who feels the rules of making war and the level of trust we have to put in our leaders are changing in an unacceptable manner, other than “Yes, the world we live in is a more dangerous place”. Mankind, as a whole, hasn’t been developing any greater instincts toward tolerance and the sanctity of life in recent generations. And the destructiveness, dispersal and availability of our weapons of war has grown much greater.
The days of the duel, in which you wait for the proverbial slap across the face from someone’s glove, to which you respond clearly, “Sir, you have wronged me. I will have my satisfaction”, prior to facing off with each other, has clearly been over. In fact, over the last century or so it has not been all that often that a direct attack on the US has initiated armed conflict. So that “black and white” standard has long been blurred.
In today’s age, the greatest threats we, and the world, face are typically not from a country wishing to wage formal war against another. It’s often fringe, shadowy political/religious movements or causes which take extremist stances and have the money, influence or backing of larger organizations or countries to put a horrific agenda into play.
So no, rules of “justified force” no longer depend on clear, obvious and direct harm to oneself (if it ever really did). Does that put an even greater burden upon our Country, and the worlds’ leadership to recognise these dangers and play the high-stakes gamble of balancing appropriatness of action with sober restraint and responsibility? Obviously, yes.
I dare say that if we really knew even a third of the amount of potential threats and risks that various intel reports brought to light on a daily basis across the world, we would be curled in the fetal position in a dark room somewhere trying to find “our safe place!” Just the frightful lack of control and accountability of the WMD and its component materials still stored in the States of the former Soviet Union ought to keep us awake at night! So we need leadership (throughout the world) that can sort through the clutter and noise of this volume of information and assess and act appropriately on it.
We can only hope and pray that the leaders we have in place are up to that challenge. I still trust our current Administration to do that job, but it isn’t a blind unquestioned faith (counter to what some may think). As I have mentioned before, there are still answers regarding our leadership for which I am still waiting a final resolution (though some people have been blessed with that clear unquestionable certainty of truth well ahead of me). We have different thresholds of “truth” on some matters (and regarding the difference between evidence and conclusions). On that we will likely have to agree to disagree.
January 2nd, 2005 at 5:40 am
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