Bill Keller, in a few paragraphs, ends the ‘Bush lied” debate once and for all (if it were only that simple- there will be months of partisan bickering ahead of us):
The threat was a dictator with a proven, insatiable desire for dreadful weapons that would eventually have made him, or perhaps one of his sadistic sons, a god in the region. The fact that he gave aid and at least occasional sanctuary to practitioners of terror added to his menace. And at the end his brazen defiance made us seem weak and vulnerable, an impression we can ill afford. The opportunity was a moment of awareness and political will created by Sept. 11, combined with the legal sanction reaffirmed by U.N. Resolution 1441. The important thing to me was never that Saddam Hussein’s threat was “imminent”
barney gumble
“In a year or two, we would be distracted and Iraq would be back in the nuke-building business.”
” Only a fool would have assumed he DID NOT.”
All of this is historical fact:
1. We destroyed a bunch in GW1.
2. We destroyed even more than during GW1 during the inspections, 1991-1998.
3. 1998-2003 we bombed from once a week to several times a week under Desert Fox, Northern Watch and Southern.
4. Now all we can find is the pathetic remenants of a program (two trailers, if genuine, and some hazmat suits.)
5. Face it, the Clinton Policy worked.
linkage on request.
Andrew Lazarus
In addition to the previous comment, aren’t you somewhat concerned that we claimed to have very specific evidence of WMD that hasn’t panned out? (Indeed, that in the case of the Niger uranium at the least, our evidence was a patent forgery?) I can understand general statements that Saddam had WMD, on the bases Keller recapitulates, but the Bush Administration promised much more, and has not (& probably never will) deliver.
Of course, GWB also said we could have a large tax cut and keep the budget surplus, and that wasn’t true either.
But (all together now), this type of error verging on lie is OK, because it’s not about something important, like a blow job.
Dean
There are, in general, two types of errors:
Type I errors (iirc) are those where you believe X to be true, when X is, in fact, not true; and
Type II errors are those where you believe X to be NOT true, when X is, in fact, true.
The question is whether false positives are preferable to false negatives.
For those who think that intel failed on 9-11, what we had were false negatives. We didn’t think that terrorists would attack the US in this manner, but they did.
Now, we have false positives at work. In all likelihood, you probably saw a reaction, wherein EVERY possible sign of terrorism/WMD was accepted as “real,” until proven false, in reaction.
The idea that somehow, in either case, “Bush lied” simply flies in the face of how we know intelligence organizations work, and how intelligence failures happen.
Because, in intel-land, you really ARE damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
JKC
John: no-one would blame you (or any other thoughtful conservative commentator) if no WMD’s were to show up, or for thinking that WMD’s might well be there.
The Bush League, on the other hand, claimed to have intelligence showing large stockpiles of weapons in specific locations, none of which have panned out.
In other words, conservatives (outside the administration) supported the war in good faith. The Bush League, on the other hand, has got some explaining to do.
platosearwax
I think JKC got it right.
John Cole
To be perectly honest, I will be happy if they overestimated and got it wrong and there were no masses of WMD. That is far better than whether there were and they really screwed up and the WMD are now in the hands of numerous rogues.
Also, Barney- when are you guys going to get over Clinton. Have you noticed that almost everytime you post here, it is a defensee of or comparison to the Biullaries. Just drop them, please.
Andrew Lazarus
Dean, the Bush Admin is perpetrating a type III error: a false hood.
The two trucks turn out to be just hype. British experts now agree that they’re for hydrogen, just like Iraq said. They follow the Niger forgery, the Iraqi “scientist” gesturing to mark Judith Miller, the rusty canisters, Rumsfeld’s claim that we know where the weapons are, and I don’t remember how many other false alarms. JKC has it right: we may have been duped, but the Administration are lying.
Dina Casucci
Anyone who says Clintons policies especially foreign worked is full of bologna as usual.The facts are this:For 8 yrs Clinton sat on his hands,and while he got nooky our country was being attacked several times.During those 8 horriffic yrs the terrorists cluding Saddam and terrorist nations got stronger and stronger because they saw Clinton for what he was a coward who would let them do whatever they please.Now that we have President Bush these very same countries are scared out of their wits something they weren’t when the Slick one was in office.