From: Stephen Grammont (islander@midmaine.com)
Date: Thu Jun 30 2005 - 21:16:48 PDT
Hi Joe,
> Depends on your definition of WOMD!
There is no room for multiple definitions. This is a term that has no
ambiguity.
> They DID find them, they found the portable chemical
> weapon labs, several of them. They just didn't get
> much media coverage.
From what I recall, the Pentagon backed down from the claims that they
were indeed weapons labs. Same happened with a bunch of early reports
of various other things. Plenty of media attention at the time, but
once there was doubt and the Pentagon and White House backed down,
obviously so did the media.
> They DID find that some of the equipment was moved to
> Syria with the help of the Russians. It just didn't
> get much media coverage.
That has been largely discredited. And yes, it got a lot of media
coverage.
> They DID find huge bunkers of poison chemicals on
> military bases. The media didn't report it as such,
> they said it was insecticide. I guess it just depends
> on your definition of the word "infestation".
Again, these were early reports that turned out to be inaccurate. The
media covered this as well.
> When "some group of people" destroyed the contents of
> that museum that contained artifacts dating back to
> the beginning of civilization the media blamed it on
> the Americans' lack of security in the area just taken
> from Sadam's control. But everyone else knew it was
> Sadam's last kick in the shorts of the Americans, a
> cheap attempt to embarrass them on the international
> stage.
And they did a fantastic job. While our troops were guarding the Oil
Ministry the museum was being looted. Kinda hard for the press to
ignore that. Pretty much everybody agrees that we didn't have enough
troops on the ground, nor a plan for the looting aftermath. I've
talked with senior officers that were there on the ground and they will
tell you that set us back quite a bit in our reconstruction effort.
Hindsight is of course 20/20. Not acknowledging our mistakes means we
will likely make them again the next time we have to do something like
this, so I'd not be so quick to blame real failings in military and
political policies on a few people with cameras and microphones. All
that does is put our service men and women of the future, not to
mention our country's reputation, needlessly at risk.
> Are you beginning to see a pattern here, or shall I go
> on?
Nobody, not even people in the Bush Administration, say that we found
WMD in Iraq. So if you think we did find them, you are disagreeing
with every expert and even the White House (though VERY grudgingly, for
obvious reasons). The Deufler Report is considered the definitive
accounting of the Iraqi WMD question. Deufler was chosen by President
Bush to get to the bottom of the issues, and that is what he did. Here
is a Washington Post report about his testimony before Congress that
pretty much ended the debate about WMDs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12115-2004Oct6.html
The report itself can be found at:
http://www.wmd.gov/report/wmd_report.pdf
A CIA report can be found at:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/
Before the war I thought Iraq likely had some WMD of some sort, even if
ineffective (i.e. shelflife had expired, not deployable, etc.), but the
evidence accumulated since going in shows the contrary. Saddam was
bluffing and we called his bluff big time. He should have come clean
with the inspectors instead of playing games, but he thought he knew
what he was doing (er... just like when he "knew what he was doing"
when he attacked Iran and then Kuwait). I wonder if he thinks about
this while sitting in his cell.
Steve
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