What? When?
Pursuant to Andrew Sullivan's continuing investigations into the pre-war consensus regarding Iraq's WMD programs, it's important to ask "what are we talking about?" and "when are we talking about?" The most relevant time frame is the period actually preceeding the war, at which point inspectors were back on the ground. The most relevant WMD products are those actually capable of causing mass destruction, i.e. nuclear weapons. The list of prominent people arguing publicly that Iraq had no nuclear program was, indeed, relatively short but included a disproportionate number of the sort of people worth listening to. Andrew notes the important case of Robin Cook. Even more important, however, was IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei who was the man in charge of knowing such things. In his January 27 statement to the UN Security Council he stated that when inspections ended in 1998 "our conclusion at that time was that we had neutralized Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme and that there were no indications that Iraq retained any physical capability to produce weapon usable nuclear material." After 60 days of revived inspections in late 2002 and early 2003, he said "we have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons programme since the elimination of the programme in the 1990s."
On March 7, 2003, ElBaradei offered another statement on the subject after over a month of further investigations and re-iterated that "we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq." On March 17, 2003, George W. Bush gave a speech arguing that [t]The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now" even though the IAEA had stated just ten days early that Iraq had, in fact, disarmed in terms of nuclear weapons years ago while Hans Blix reported that disarmament in terms of missiles was already underway and Iraqi compliance with chemical and biological disarmament verification (as we now know, disarmament on these fronts was already complete at that time, but Blix hadn't been able to fully verify Iraq's statements on this score) was increasing and that finishing the process "would not take years, nor weeks, but months."
I think Sullivan has largely conceded your point that the nuclear case was weak, as he actually said in the post you linked to that "The nuclear case was always very weak." He hangs his hat on the premise that nearly everyone before the war accepted that Saddam had other WMDs. Sullivan is trying to refocuse the debate from the nuclear issue, where it belongs, to the other WMDs. This post largely confirms Sullivan's point that you are talking past each other about which WMDs are important in revisiting the pre-war debate.
There are good points to be made as to why Sullivan's focus on "minor" WMDs is bogus, or at least a distraction from more important issues (e.g., 1) we could be fairly sure before the war that those other WMDs were not a serious threat to us (which you partially made), 2) we didn't know the other WMDs didn't exist because the administration was pushing for specific info to support certain policies from intelligence agencies and ignoring data that contradicted preferred findings, 3) WMDs of any kind have nothing to do with democracy promotion, etc.).
But we need to make the case more strongly for why it is largely irrelevant that most people thought minor WMDs existed before the war, or show that people did not in fact think so.
In particular, this sentence of Sullivan's is begging to be unpacked: "Their [WMDs] existence was a premise of the anti-war case, and their non-existence dramatically reduced the risk of war."
March 13, 2006 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
<i>And so, while we're playing the hindsight game,</i>
This is not a game I am eager to play with Andrew Sullivan. He has experience with hindsight that I will never have.
What his column is really all about is saying that Markos was wrong too.
March 13, 2006 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
given sullivan's recent attempt to rewrite what he actually said about "fifth column" adherents in the coastal enclaves (in response to krugman), who cares about his attempts to investigate anything.
as for non-nuclear weapons, i, among many, figured that saddam had some degree of chemical and biological materials, perhaps in weaponized form. i didn't for a second regard them as a legitimate basis for an invasion, and neither did any other sentient being.
sullivan, at the time, was not a sentient being. he now is showing signs of attempting to demonstrate sentience, but it's too little, much, much, much too late. the hell with him.
March 13, 2006 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hate the term "WMDs." It elides important distinctions between chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. That was part of the fuzziness in the initial debate leading up to the Iraq War.
March 13, 2006 9:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
First off there is no such thing as WMDs. That would translate as weapons of mass destructions, ridiculous. Andrew needs to go back to grammar school, it is already plural and you cannot make it any more plural by adding an “s” or at least I would think you could not. Maybe I need to go to grammar school ‘cause Andrew gets paid to write and I don’t, not that I blame anyone in particular for this.
Aside from that I think that it is interesting that there were these credible sources of information all saying there were no WMD and on the other side we have President Bush’s assertion that we needed to invade. So it seems to me a good question might be why didn’t congress listen to people who actually had knowledge of Iraq’s WMD status before they gave Bush a blank check?
Are we to believe that congress lives in some Pollyanna world where they see it is a nice day in the neighborhood and it would be a good time to visit Mr. Greenjeans? This is just a bit hard to swallow, one would expect that at least a majority of congress knew what a liar Bush was yet they went along for the ride cheering and waving the flag without so much as a raised eyebrow. That still really bugs me to this day.
March 14, 2006 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Robin Cook's brav ean dprincipled stand is only an outlier if you see the world from Wahington. European public opinion, including British, wasn't split but overwhelmingly against the war; and this must surely have relected a consensus in the political classes, in turn reflecting the inevitable result of any unprejudiced look at the evidence. The Downing Street memos suggest that the British government didn't believe the case either but went along out of slavish devotion to the"special relationship".
I would have joined the demonstrations against the war but in France there weren't any, simply because there was nobody on the other side. Check out the contemporary editorials of European newspapers.
March 14, 2006 7:35 AM | Reply | Permalink