The deception, as I see it, isn't that they invented WMDs out of full cloth, but rather that they chose to present deceptive evidence for a proposition that they believed was true. The aluminum tubes story is a particularly egregious example of this.

Bob woodward's book lucidily described the process of '[fixing information around the war]' in his Plan of Attack. Why is it just now an issue?

What makes you think it's an issue now?

My gut feeling is that if they had known the actual state of Saddam's WMD programs, they would have either emphasized other issues while trying to make the case for action, or (if the Bush administration is as duplicitious as many on the left seem to think) they would have arranged for WMDs to be 'found'.

That this was not done does not speak well of their competence, but it does indicate that they were acting in good faith.

I can live with that.

As I said back in late 2002, the fact that other countries were more active on the nuclear proliferation front does not mean that the use of force in Iraq was misplaced -- Drezner

Your explanation works for North Korea, but the memo says that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." So why wasn't Iran looked at first? The war in Iraq makes Iran's nuclear ambitions much more feasible.

Ricketts Letter:

US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing. To get public and Parliamentary support for military operations, we have to be convincing that:

the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for;

...it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran).

So the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda was unconvincing, and his nuclear program was behind Iran -- what's the case for war again?

The British Cabinet memo explains:

Time will be required to prepare public opinion in the UK that it is necessary to take military action against Saddam Hussein. There would also need to be a substantial effort to secure the support of Parliament. An information campaign will be needed which has to be closely related to an overseas information campaign designed to influence Saddam Hussein, the Islamic World and the wider international community. This will need to give full coverage to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, including his WMD, and the legal justification for action."

This is why Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee in September 2002:

No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Only the most megalomaniacal despot could go into war with 100% confidence that it's the right thing to do for the (his) country. For most other world leaders there'll be some smattering of doubt even as war is declared.

The big assumption here is that a purported world leader will want to avoid war where at all possible.

If this is so, given what we now know was known about Iraq and Saddam at the time (that there was much conflicting evidence re Saddam's state of war readiness and capabilities), do you really think Bush was justified in having anything approaching (say) 80% confidence that war was the thing to do?

The big begged question is was he looking for rationale or was the decision forced upon him by circumstances?

This took place in mid-2002, six months before anyone thought military action would take place. Some serious discussions should have been started around then, but blasting the administration for not having completely thought out the matter six months in advance seems a bit much. -- Drezner

The neocons had been arguing for overthrowing Saddam for 4 1/2 years by that point. The fact that they had given no thought to what a post-war Iraq would look like is pretty damning. The memos make clear that the British think the next Iraqi gov't will pursue WMD's as well.

BTW, the Manning memo talks about the "Sunni majority." These people didn't know the first thing about the country.

.

1) First, a defense of Blair: there's been a lot of chatter about how the memo demonstrates the minimal influence the Brits had on Bush. Actually, I'd argue that they did have significant influence on the thing Blair cared about the most: going to the UN. The memo says "NSC had no patience with the UN route," and yet Bush wound up going to the UN twice at the behest of Blair (tag-teamed with Colin Powell).

What the Downing Street Minute and Memos make abundantly clear, however, is that the decision to go to the UN was not driven by any desire to "disarm Iraq peacefully", but to create the legal cover for an invasion of Iraq that was unquestionably illegal absent UN authorization. One of the memos goes so far as to state specifically that if the US invaded without UN authorization, it would be illegal for Britain to even allow US forces to use British air bases in transit to the Gulf.

In other words, the influence of Colin Powell in getting the US to go the UN route appears to be a "useful fiction" --- one must assume that Blair communicated to Bush that Britain could not, under any circumstances, help in an invasion of Iraq with a "UN figleaf", and once it became known that the reason for the lack of British support was the illegality of the invasion, few other nations would have been willing to participate in any fashion, and the invasion would have been a logistical impossibility. Bush went to the UN because he was forced to do so by military necessity, not because he had any interest in a peaceful resolution.

While this has been a subject of serious venting on this blog, I'm not sure that this sentence is as devastating as people think. This took place in mid-2002, six months before anyone thought military action would take place. Some serious discussions should have been started around then, but blasting the administration for not having completely thought out the matter six months in advance seems a bit much.

What the Minute and Memos reveal, however, is not merely that it wasn't "completely thought out", but that there was almost no interest on the part of the Bush regime in "thinking out" the aftermath of the war. Again, one must assume that these concerns expressed by the members of Blair's "war cabinet" were communicated to the Bush regime, but that these warnings and cautions were completely ignored by Bush and his subordinates.

The administration was clearly wrong about the WMD threat -- but I think they thought they were right.

Dan, at this late date, don't you think its rather pathetic to see thoughful conservatives like yourself hiding behing the "good intentions" and "fake but accurate" defense for the campaign of lies, distortions, and exaggerations promulgated by the Bush regime to get us into this war?

Remember when you wrote:

This dynamic is reflected in RatherGate. The telling section in the CBS report is how producer Mary Mapes, Rather, et al reacted after their report was challenged. They dug in their heels and engaged in even more distorted reporting in an attempt to defend the veracity of their documentation

Wasn't this same dynamic reflected in the weeks after the inspectors gained access to Iraq, and were finding nothing to justify Bush's WMD claims? There is no question that Mapes and company "thought they were right" and that the memos were genuine --- and that the real problem was their resistance to the mountain of contrary evidence that raised questions about the authenticity of the Killian memos. How can you criticize CBS for "digging in their heals" yet excuse the exact same behavior by the Bush administration. (Especially since the CBS story was trivial when compared to the far more serious question of invading and occupying a foreign nation with American troops.)

At least the CBS story was grounded in tons of additional research and indisputable facts that supported the narrative described in the Killian memos --- when you know that something is consistent with the narrative established by documented evidence, its much easier to understand why CBS failed to question the authenticity of disputed documents despite mounting contrary evidence. But the Bush regime never had the kind of solid documentation that would butress their belief in WMDs (let alone a Saddam-al Qaeda connection, or the existence of a threat posed by Iraq) -- we now know that their "belief" was built on nothing but sand -- and that as the record developed that proved there was nothing but sand, the Bush regime simply added more sand to the pile.

These are fake memos. They are plain typewritten pages with no authentification. The originals were "destroyed." Really? They just now came out. Why? Dan Rather and his IBM Selectric msword memos were more convincing.

The administration was clearly wrong about the WMD threat -- but I think they thought they were right.
I agree with you here. But, as the memo states, the intel was fixed to support the policy of going to war. There are various reasons to disregard external information (incompetence, recklessness, personal hubris), but none of them are good.

DD: " Others have made much of the sentence that "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." While this has been a subject of serious venting on this blog, I'm not sure that this sentence is as devastating as people think. This took place in mid-2002, six months before anyone thought military action would take place. Some serious discussions should have been started around then, but blasting the administration for not having completely thought out the matter six months in advance seems a bit much. "

Huh? Dan, where do you get that idea from? The US was planning on invading a country of 21 million people, destroying its government, and ruling it for a few years, re-organizing it to the liking of the administration. And six months is a bit long?

As to having the matter completely thought out, the administration has not thought things out even now; they didn't have a plan which was worth anything to start, and have gone down from there.

carl--critics of the war ought to remember the 17 UN resolutions that saddam had violated, and how 1441 said that severe consequences would result from failure to comply....this context explains, in part, why iraq is different from iran or n.korea.

E. J. Dionne is one of those Op-Ed columnists who is around now mostly because he's been around for a long time; his columns are normally turgid and predictable, and he rarely has anything new to say. But today he has a piece that nails the essential issue here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/20/AR2005062001177.html

The Bush administration moved toward war in Iraq based on the things it assumed rather than the things it knew about WMD and Saddam's connection to al Qaeda. It sought a spectacular coup against a well-known, unpopular enemy of the United States, and didn't worry too much about what would come after that. It based a crucial change in policy affecting large areas of the government and involving the expenditure of lives, equipment and vast quantities of (borrowed) money on wishful thinking and a fervent desire to be seen doing something about threats to America. And it did this all in public.

To anyone serious about foreign policy this is a damning indictment, suggestive of fecklessness, intellectual laziness, even raw incompetence. The Downing Street Memos mostly confirm the indictment, and because they do I'm reluctant to point out that the people getting most excited about them are most of them profoundly unserious about foreign policy. Led at the moment by the professional ninny John Conyers our Downing Streeters are waving the Memos and crying "See, Mommy: he lied to us!"

I took a few minutes last night to go back to my own Internet postings and e-mail archives from 2002, to see what I was saying about Iraq. I'm no Washington insider -- I haven't even set foot in Washington in over ten years -- and yet the theme I found I had returned to again and again was the risk Bush was taking by giving the Iraqis so much public notice that the Americans were coming. It may be going too far to say that if I could see where the administration was going on Iraq anyone could, but if it is it's not by much.

Having said that, I want to close by pointing to Dan's apology for the state of administration planning for the postwar in the summmer of 2002. Yes, it is likely that thinking about the postwar was at a rudimentary stage then; much work was done on it later. We should not forget, though, that most of that work was done in or under the sponsorship of the State Department, by people who were largely shut out of actual Iraq policy from early 2003 onward. There is very, very little evidence that senior officials driving Iraq policy -- meaning the President, Vice President, their staffs, and above all the Secretary of Defense and his staff -- devoted anything like the amount of attention to postwar issues they required at any time before the war started.

I mention this point only because Paul Wolfowitz in the Atlantic has already started laying out some revisionist history, defending himself against the charge of not planning for the postwar by pointing to all the planning done by administration officials that he and his boss ignored at the time. Wolfowitz's interview with Mark Bowden can be found here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200507/bowden

"the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy"

Who here has heard the old saw about the US and UK being two countries separated by a common language? Well, spare a thought here to the different nuances of the word "fixed" on either side of the pond. Here, being fixed is synonymous with fraud--machines can be fixed in a good sense, but nothing much else. By contrast, in the UK things are "fixed" in place around other things, thus, having intelligence "fixed around policy" simply means that one is prioritized over the other, not that false information is being generated to cover one's tracks.

I am astounded, given the number of Americans who speak "British" and the reverse that this point has not been raised, yet it is critical to understanding the memo IN ITS PROPER CONTEXT.

Next.

1. The idea the DSMs are fakes is silly. If someone were faking, you'd think they'd come up with something that was actually...um...damning.

2. The memos have the ring of authenticity because they tell us nothing that we do not already know. Anyone reading a newspaer in the Summer of 2002 knew that Bush had his eyes on Iraq. Newspaper readers also knew that the decision to go through the UN was to get blessing on a pre-determined policy.

3. So much is made over the little word "fixed". The implication is that Bush "made up" intelligence cannot be based on this memo. I take the fatal sentence as saying that intelligence was being gathered and evaluated in a manner designed to prop up the policy outcome, rather than being evaluated in an unbiased fashion. Alas, this is not something we really knew in 2002, but it's certainly been clear in the days following the failure to find WMD.

It's funny that the left wants to waste this coutry's time to wallow in the past. Usually that's what the Right likes to do. Also, I would recommend that George Soros and the Media Matters crowd hire Zathras immediately -- as his critiques of this administration's policy are usually far more devestating than the endless repetition of the blindingly obvious (in the most offensive manner possible) that Atrios, Kos and friends seem to favor. (Think we'll have an Iraqi ambassador anytime soon, Z?)

Sam, Woodward's book Plan of Attack did no such thing as you describe. It describes an administration that clearly believes there is a threat of WMDs in the hands of terrorists. By the way, the UN thought Saddam had WMDs and voted several resolutions to sanction Iraq for failure to comply with the terms of their 1991 surrender in the 1st Gulf War. Bill Clinton thought Iraq was dangerous and stated that a regime change was more or less inevitable. Even the French thought Iraq was dangerous. (But of course they refused to back up their words with actions because they were making billions selling Iraq small arms as well as dual-use technology.)

You can fault the Bush administration for believing bad intelligence and for poor planning. But you have have to include all of the world's leaders in that criticism. The difference is that only Bush had the courage of his convictions. For the record, I was against invading Iraq. But I have to admit that in an alternate universe we could easily be debating why the president didn't do anything before a suicide bomber had a chance to nuke Chicago.

I am sooooo not understanding this reaction:

The administration was clearly wrong about the WMD threat -- but I think they thought they were right.

Like this makes it okay?

WHY did they think they were right? Answer: because they "fixed the intel and facts around the policy," rather than vice-versa (or a dialectic, if you can bear the D-word).

Our president took a naked policy preference and saw to it that it was dressed up in "intel and facts," and then went to the American people saying that the policy was compelled by the intel and the facts.

Believers in "intelligent design" do the same thing, and they think they're right, but that doesn't excuse their utter scientific incompetence. Bush's utter political incompetence is getting a pass from Drezner, and I think it's a crying shame.

Thanks for the kind words, AM. Zalmay Khalilzad was confirmed as Ambassador to Iraq last week, and had his first meeting with President Talabani yesterday.

Theres no there there. Where is the author of the memos sources, proof? Its just some clowns opinions of what happened. Im sure I could dig up some government dolt from the 40s talking about his suspicians of Roosevelt allowing Pearl Harbor to happen. Forgive me one Brits opinion of what he observed doesnt make me want to march on Washington.

I hate to be 'that guy', (but i will), I put up a blog if anyone is interested.
http://pharsalia.blogspot.com/

You can fault the Bush administration for believing bad intelligence and for poor planning. But you have have to include all of the world's leaders in that criticism.

this is true only up to a certain point. But as it became increasingly clear that Iraq was cooperating with the inspections and (more importantly) that the intelligence concerning stockpiles of WMDs and WMD programs was being repudiated by the inspections process, it is abundantly clear that almost "all of the world's leaders" were having second thoughts about what they had once believed.

As I noted above, the biggest problem with the CBS Killian memo report was not so much that the documents were not verified properly initially and that "early warning signs" were ignored --- the real problem was that CBS refused to back down in the face of some rather compelling evidence suggesting that the documents might not be authentic to the point where "fake but accurate" became a catchphrase.

The same holds true for the Bush regime and WMDs. What is disturbing is not their conviction that Saddam had WMDs in the spring of 2002, but their insistence in the February and March of 2003 that those WMDs existed, and that more were being produced, despite the overwhelming evidence that made it clear that there was no factual basis for those claims.

Mapes and CBS were pilloried for making that mistake on a story that will be lucky to be considered an historical footnote --- their critics should at least have the integrity to hold the Bush administration to the same standard in pursuit of an invasion that has cost over 1700 American military lives...

When did they "discover" that there were no WMDs, and why at the outset of the war did the focus of the invasion focus on democracy and not the WMD threat?

It is incredibly hard to swallow the fact that there were significant institutional changes which focused on primarily digging up any evidence what-so-ever supported their claims?

Adding a political element to the purported a-political intelligence agencies (Douglas Fieth and others) was a recipe for disaster, and a simple hand waving about the final results seems ridiculous.

Its just some clowns opinions of what happened.

Some clown? The head of MI-6 is some clown? Give me a frickin' break. (My apologies if you're flogging the "fake memos" line - I want to criticize you for what you're actually wrong about.)

"Some clown? The head of MI-6 is some clown? Give me a frickin' break"

Some clown. Invoking of authority. Without specifics his opinion means little to me. Who knows what his motivations were in writing this.

"To anyone serious about foreign policy [the lack of planning] is a damning indictment, suggestive of fecklessness, intellectual laziness, even raw incompetence.... I'm reluctant to point out that the people getting most excited about them are most of them profoundly unserious about foreign policy. Led at the moment by the professional ninny John Conyers our Downing Streeters are waving the Memos and crying "See, Mommy: he lied to us!" -- Zathras

If you are going to mock Conyers for saying something that's been obvious for some time now, it hardly makes sense to call the memos a "damning indictment" of the administration's incompetence, which has also been apparent for some time now. The truth is you and Appalled Moderate are offended by the administration's incompetence but not its ideology, so you can excuse Bush's lying for a war you support but not its lack of planning for same.

In both cases, the memos are inside dirt on what we already know. So one question: if Conyers was holding hearings about Bush's lack of planning, would you support Conyers?

By contrast, in the UK things are "fixed" in place around other things, thus, having intelligence "fixed around policy" simply means that one is prioritized over the other, not that false information is being generated to cover one's tracks. -- Kelli

Interesting defense Kelli. Too bad Tony Blair hasn't used it.

rosignol: "What makes you think it's an issue now?

My gut feeling is that if they had known the actual state of Saddam's WMD programs, they would have either emphasized other issues while trying to make the case for action, or (if the Bush administration is as duplicitious as many on the left seem to think) they would have arranged for WMDs to be 'found'.

That this was not done does not speak well of their competence, but it does indicate that they were acting in good faith.

I can live with that. "

Considering that they didn't bother to secure known conventional weapons depots, or a nuclear reactor and it's fuel, or the ministry buildings necessary to run the government, or lots and lots of other stuff,
why would failure to fake WMD's be proof of their good faith?

"Some clown. Invoking of authority. Without specifics his opinion means little to me. Who knows what his motivations were in writing this."

posted by: Mark Buehner

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Kool-aid.

The point is this: The Administration sold the nation on a war, based not merely on the existence of a threat, but on the existence of an imminent threat. The memos are “news” because they show that the governments pushing for the war knew that, whatever threat may have existed, it was not imminent. The existence of this consensus required the Administration to deceive the country in two important ways. First, the Administration had to hide the consensus that Iraq was not a imminent threat. Second, it had to manipulate the evidence to create the appearance of an imminent threat.

On the first deception, the Administration had been completely successful until these memos leaked out. On the second deception, the Administration was steadily found out. It is from this strategy of deception that we get those misrepresentations or falsehoods that already have been exposed: the yellow cake, the aluminum tubes, and Tony Blair’s 45 minute claim. The memos are important, therefore, because they show how and why these latter misrepresentations were necessary and thereby support the case that the misrepresentations were deliberate.

Consequently, issues such as whether the Administration had a good faith belief in either Iraq's potential to become a threat or in Iraq’s possession of WMD, therefore, are immaterial to the issue of whether the Administration committed a deception. Even with such a good faith belief, the Administration still was forced to sell the nation an bill of goods.

"The administration was clearly wrong about the WMD threat -- but I think they thought they were right. They deserve any criticism they get about being wrong -- but they don't deserve the meme that they consciously misled the American people."

Except for one thing: their actual conduct of the war demonstrated that they didn't take the WMD threat particularly seriously.

As this WaPo story from May 2003 details, during the 3-week combat phase of the war, our frontline troops would periodically drive Saddam's troops away from what was expected to be a WMD site. Did they guard such sites, once they were initially under U.S. military control?

No, they didn't. They drove on to Baghdad, leaving nobody behind to prevent the sites from being looted to the ground.

According to the troops on the ground, this was because we didn't have enough troops to both press the offensive towards Baghdad, and leave troops behind to guard such sites. But there are two problems with this:

1) Rumsfeld worked hard to drive down the number of troops involved in the Iraq war's combat phase. He could have had enough troops for both missions; it was his choice to make it difficult to meet both objectives.

2) If the war was about WMDs, then guarding the WMD sites should have had first priority anyway.

The conduct of the war was based on a war plan that clearly didn't take WMDs particularly seriously. (If there had in fact been WMDs in Iraq before the war, they'd have quickly fallen into enemy hands, and would have almost surely been used against us by now. Think on that for a moment, given that the main war aim was supposedly to prevent precisely that outcome.)

We were lied to about WMDs. And we still don't know what were the real reasons for this war.

Kelli,

"Michael Smith: There are number of people asking about fixed and its meaning. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it.... [A]s for the reports that said this was one British official. Pleeeaaassee! This was the head of MI6. How much authority do you want the man to have? He has just been to Washington, he has just talked to George Tenet. He said the intelligence and facts were being fixed... cooked to match what the administration wanted it to say to justify invading Iraq....

Ever even been to England? Heres a native completely disputing your interpretation.

Next.

Carl puts his finger on the reason I find so much of the discussion about the Downing Street Memos uncomfortable.

Can one make a strong case that senior Bush administration officials never lied about Iraqi WMD? Sure. They never referred to Iraq as an "imminent threat," for one thing. I thought in 2002 and early 2003 that they were leaving hostages to fortune by dwelling only on the worst case scenarios (this goes for Tony Blair as well), but as far as lying -- the deliberate statement of untruth known by the speaker to be so at the time it was made -- this is something one believes if one has made up one's mind to believe it and not otherwise.

The argument over the war's legality is similar. The cases for and against the proposition that international law is there to protect regimes like Saddam Hussein's can be made at great length. Carl is not wrong to think that I look on this argument as well as the "lying" argument as mostly irrelevant.

I have no problem with the decision for war as a matter of right. From my point of view the real outrage about American policy toward Iraq is that dismantling Saddam Hussein's regime was not done in 1991. I don't consider that Saddam or his regime had any right to continue abusing his people that we were bound to respect, and I quite believe that had war been decided against the sanctions regime set up after the Gulf War would have swiftly collapsed and Iraq at some point have resumed threatening its neighbors.

But the wisdom of the war is another question. It is a question inseparable from the matter of whether the administration planned adequately both for the invasion (which it mostly did) and the aftermath (which it did not) -- and inseparable as well from still another issue, this idea of spreading democracy throughout the backward tribal cultures of the Arab world.

They didn't claim that they believed there were WMD, they claimed to know that there were, and offered a bunch of ginned up phony "evidence."

THAT is the dishonesty. What they believed means absolutely nothing, and the case was NEVER presented as a belief.

Instead, they applied a sadly creationist standard to the evidence, and now thousands have died for nothing. Their beliefs excuse nothing.
.

1441 said that severe consequences would result from failure to comply

Yes, and the weapons inspection regime was removed by Bush. Imagine how many lives we could have saved if we HADN'T had to find out the hard way that Saddam was more honest than Bush?
.

By contrast, in the UK things are "fixed" in place around other things, thus, having intelligence "fixed around policy" simply means that one is prioritized over the other...

No, it doesn't.

Speaking as someone who's actually lived and worked there (and who has to read British English every day), it's just pathetic that anyone even tried this dodge, and even sadder that anyone's still sticking to it this week.

Next dodge, please.
.

You can fault the Bush administration for believing bad intelligence and for poor planning. But you have have to include all of the world's leaders in that criticism. The difference is that only Bush had the courage of his convictions.

Again with the phony international concensus? Um, no. "All of the world's leaders," or rather their intelligence services, admitted they had no new info, nothing since 1991.

Bush had phony intel laundered through the OSP and INC, and then forbade their investigation, which is why the CIA took a bath. That's dishonesty, not "courage."
.

When you intentionally disregard or disable rules that were put in place in order to prevent you from making mistakes of judgment due to lack of correct information, then disregard contrary information that somehow still makes it through your screening, then you aggressively promote just the shit that sounds so scary that people react emotionally--gee, I don't know how anybody can consider that "bad faith." Don't they know what faith is?

They never referred to Iraq as an "imminent threat," for one thing.

And yet they repeatedly referred to Saddam as a thread that was imminent.

Next dishonest ploy, please?
.

thread=threat

no pun intended

Bush critics are conflating two entirely different points.

Many of the regularly quoted parts of the DSM suggest that members of the British government had a different view of the situation than the Bush administration did. But that isn't in any way "Bush lied." Bush claiming that the threat from Iraq was imminent -- he didn't, by the way -- cannot be shown to be a lie by showing that the Blair cabinet didn't think the threat from Iraq was imminent.

The idea that the head of MI6 is just "some clown" is ridiculous -- but let's keep in mind that the DSM is not a report about what the Bush administration said, but rather is a report of British officials' impressions. If the head of MI6 thought that the threat wasn't imminent, that doesn't mean Bush told him it wasn't.

A Blair cabinet member thinking that war seemed inevitable -- who didn't? --cannot show that Bush was lying when he said he hadn't made a final decision.

The single sentence in the entire DSM that can possibly be damning (at least in terms of honesty, not competence) is the "fixed" sentence.

The problem is, it's rather an offhand remark upon which to construct a foundation for a gallows for Bush. You'd think that if someone went to Washington and decided that Bush knew there were no WMD in Iraq and was perpetrating a massive fraud about it, he'd say a little more than that one ambiguous sentence.

(Moreover, I'd think it a little strange if the Bush administration would tell British officials, "Hey, we're lying about this.")

Not only that, but the rest of the contents makes clear that the British government did believe that there were WMD.

Given those facts, the only thing I can assume is that the statement was intended to convey the notion that the Bush admin was engaged in spin, not lying.

And as to that, of course they were. This surely isn't a revelation.

A couple points not seen in the comments. Given the success in Afghanistan at low cost, I think Bush and company were irrationaly exuberant over the prospects in Iraq. That's dangerous, as sequels rarely play out well.

The real intelligence failure was not in believing that Saddam still had WMD's, but in not understanding the condition of Iraqi society. I suspect our security bureaucracies knew a lot more about Afghanistan in 2001 based on experience from the war against the Soviets than we did about Iraq.

I think E.J. Dionne (cited above) got it--the administration fooled themselves. I don't think anyone has offered an obviously superior alternative to the decision Bush took. "Do nothing", which is often a good policy, might have been superior. But don't ask any politician to beat Bush's policy with "do nothing."
but it certainly isn't an alternative

And yet they repeatedly referred to Saddam as a thread that was imminent.

And yet, they didn't.

In fact, they "repeatedly" argued that they needed to act before the threat was imminent -- which means they were agreeing it wasn't yet.

David Nieporent: you're right, they used terms like "grave and gathering" instead of "imminent." So what? Their argument was that the threat was 'gathering' rapidly enough that even waiting until fall 2003 to invade would constitute an unacceptable risk.

Under these circumstances, on what basis do you attribute any importance to the distinction?

Drezner worries me, linking to this Cavanaugh nonsense:

But wasn't it clear before 9/11 that Bush was going to invade Iraq? Wasn't it clear before he was inaugurated that Bush was going to invade Iraq?

Um, let me think ... okay, I've got it ... NO, IT WASN'T.

What are they smoking at "Reason" (sic)?

they used terms like "grave and gathering" instead of "imminent."

someone more clever than I pointed out that "grave and gathering" is the equivalent of "imminently imminent" --- and there is really no distinction between "imminent" and "imminently imminent".

Its rather sad to see intelligent conservatives resorting to Clintonian parsing of statements in order to continue to assert that Bush didn't lie in order to gain public support for the invasion of Iraq.

At least Clinton's allies didn't descend to defending "I didn't have sex with that woman" by insisting that "sex" means "intercourse", and that Clinton wasn't lying to the American people about his personal conduct (that didn't cost the American people a dime, let alone the lives of 1700 of their finest soldiers....).

Sorry, Nieporent. Your grasp of the facts is as tenuous as your hair-splitting evasions.

"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."
• White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03

"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
• President Bush, 7/17/03

Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time."
• White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03

"Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now."
• President Bush, 7/2/03

"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended."
• President Bush 4/24/03

"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03

"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."
• Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03

"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
• President Bush, 3/19/03

"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."
• President Bush, 3/16/03

"This is about imminent threat."
• White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03

Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03

Iraq "threatens the United States of America."
• Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03

"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03

"Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03

"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat."
• President Bush, 1/3/03

"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America."
• President Bush, 11/3/02

"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."
• President Bush, 11/1/02

"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein."
• President Bush, 10/28/02

"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace."
• President Bush, 10/16/02

"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
• President Bush, 10/2/02

"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."
• President Bush, 10/2/02

"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
• President Bush, 9/26/02

"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02

.

Imminent...immediate...grave...serious. You are just arguing semantics. http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=24970

"They deserve any criticism they get about being wrong -- but they don't deserve the meme that they consciously misled the American people."

They almost certainly misled the American people and the DSM is one more piece of evidence to add to the pile. The DSM and related memos do not prove that Bush consciously misled the American people, but they point very strongly to that conclusion when taken in the context of all the other information now known about the Bush Administration's doctoring of the intelligence. (There are a large number of books available on this subject, but Seymour Hersh's "Chain of Command" may be the best).

The right wing is trying to attack the damning DSM with close parsing of the DSM language but that is not necessary. It is obviously genuine and obviously supports the case, even if it doesn't prove it, that Bush was hellbent on attacking Iraq and was only looking for a plausible cover to sell a war to the American people.

I won't waste time arguing with the wingnuts claiming that the retyping of the memos means that they are fake, just like the Killian letters in the Dan Rather story, other than to point out this: The purported author is alive and well, the purported recipients of the memos are all alive and well, and none of these parties have come forward to say the memos are forgeries.

1441 said that severe consequences would result from failure to comply...

And just what were these "severe consequences?"

"10. Requests all Member States to give full support to UNMOVIC and the IAEA in the discharge of their mandates, including by providing any information related to prohibited programmes or other aspects of their mandates, including on Iraqi attempts since 1998 to acquire prohibited items, and by recommending sites to be inspected, persons to be interviewed, conditions of such interviews, and data to be collected, the results of which shall be reported to the Council by UNMOVIC and the IAEA;

11. Directs the Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC and the Director-General of the IAEA to report immediately to the Council any interference by Iraq with inspection activities, as well as any failure by Iraq to comply with its disarmament obligations, including its obligations regarding inspections under this resolution;

12. Decides to convene immediately upon receipt of a report in accordance with paragraphs 4 or 11 above, in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security;

13. Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations."

Please note that violation of the resolution would only be resolved within the context of the UN - that no individual member nation had the right, under 1441, to take action on their own - which, of course, is exactly what we did, isn't it?

It is obviously genuine and obviously supports the case, even if it doesn't prove it, that Bush was hellbent on attacking Iraq and was only looking for a plausible cover to sell a war to the American people. Bob C

And this is "news" why? And the American people weren't already aware of this before voting in W fo his second term? Please. This DSW dog won't hunt, for the reason that it only shows that Mr. MI-5 was at least as smart as the average American who reads the papers.

And another observation. Think of W right now as the 16 year old young buck who lied her way into some gal's pants and gets her knocked up. We know that that boy lied his way into fatherhood. We know that if he told the truth, old papa USA wouldn't be saddled with the price of doing right by the young lady.

But there's still a baby. One we are morally responsible for. Even if we had no role in the making of the child. The Left's great plan, right now, is to haul our troops out, leave Iraq trashed, and blame the ensuing state of affairs on W.

1) The big elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring is that Iraq
was invaded part as part of a mythical "war on terrorism" but as part
of a very real war for power --for control of the US government.
$Trillions of dollars are at stake.

Bush knows that a huge chunk of the Democratic Party's funding comes
from billionaire supporters of Israel and he has been doing everything
possible to court those supporters over to the Republicans. Even though
His unquestioning support of Sharon and Likud brought on the Sept 11
attack( 3000+ dead and cost of $1 Trillion+). Even though taking out
the Hussein threat to Israel has cost 1500+ US dead, tens of thousands
wounded, and $300+ billion.

A few FACTS in this area:

a) November 2000- 2002: The biggest campaign donor to the Democratic Party
is Israeli billionaire Haim Saban, who contributes $12.7 million in the
2000
and 2002 campaign cycles. (His wife Cheryl's donations raises the total to
$13.7
million) [1]

b) May 2002: Haim Saban funds the "Saban Center for Middle East Policy"
at the Brookings Institute. One of the four stated research areas is
"the implications of regime change in Iraq". Another task is providing
"future policymakers with a better understanding of the complexities of the
Middle East and the process of developing effective policies to deal with
them"
[2]

c) June 30,2002: St Petersburg Times notes that "leading congressional
Democrats were concerned that Jewish voters and donors were reassessing
their
relationship "with the Democratic Party given Bush's strong pro-Israel
stance [3]

d) September 10, 2002: During a conference at the University of Virginia,
high level intelligence adviser to the White House, Philip Zelikow, states:
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us?
I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since
1990 -- it's the threat against Israel," [4]

e) December 19, 2002: In a Los Angeles Times op-ed "Lock and Load",
the Directors of Haim Saban's Center for Middle East Policy ,
Martin Indyk and Kenneth Pollack, state
"Saddam Hussein has failed to come clean. His denial of possessing any
weapons of mass destruction makes that clear ... As former U.S. government
officials who had access to the most sensitive U.S. intelligence on Iraq,
we are well aware of Iraq's continued efforts to retain and enhance its
weapons
capabilities"
They then advocate launching a war on Iraq.[5]

f) January 17, 2003: Atlanta Jewish Times notes that " pro-Israel interests
have contributed $41.3 million" in campaign donations over the past decade,
with
more than two thirds going to the Democrats. Article also notes that
Republicans
are making a strong push to court those big donors. [6]

g) June 20, 2003: In a New York Times column, "Saddam's Bombs? We'll Find
Them", Saban Center Director Kenneth Pollack states "Where are Iraq's
weapons of
mass destruction? It's a good question, and unfortunately we don't yet have
a
good answer... In any event, the mystery will be solved in good time; the
search for Iraq's
nonconventional weapons program has only just begun." [7]

h) September 2004: John Kerry attempts to criticize the Bush war on Iraq
but can only make incoherent, strangled sounds.

i) November 2004: Instead of $12.7 million, Haim Saban's campaign donations
in the 2004
election only total $84,000 -- and $2,000 goes to George W Bush, in case
the Democrats don't get
the message.[8]

j) November 2000-2002: Another large Democratic donor is billionaire S
Daniel Abraham of West Palm Beach, Florida --who donates over $2.3 million
to the Democrats in 2000-2002. [9]
Mr Abraham has long been a strong advocate for Israel in US foreign policy
circles via his Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation [10]

k) March 18,2003: S Daniel Abraham donates $2,000 to Howard Dean's campaign
[11]

l) September 11, 2003: Howard Dean receives a storm of criticism from the
Democratic leadership after saying that the US needs to be evenhanded in
the Israel-Palestinian issue [12]

k) November 2003-Feb 2004: Howard Dean campaign is destroyed in Iowa
primary
by barrage of attack ads from a mysterious group "Americans for Jobs and
Healthcare". Leader of
group refuses to disclose funding sources. Disclosure to FEC not required
until end of quarter. [13]

l) March 2004: FEC report indicates that attack group "Americans for Jobs"
received $1
million in funding, with the largest donation --$200,000 -- coming from S
Daniel Abraham.[13]

m) November 2004: Instead of $Millions, S Daniel Abraham only gives the
Democrats $81,500 in the 2004 election [11]

n) October 2004: John Kerry attempts to criticize Bush's invasion of Iraq
but can only make
incoherent, strangled sounds.

-------------------
References:
[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp , enter "Saban, Haim" and
select election cycles 2000,2002

[2] http://www.brookings.edu/comm/news/20020509saban.htm

[3] http://www.sptimes.com/2002/06/30/Columns/Jewish_voters_noticin.shtml

[4] http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=23083

[5] http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/indyk/20021219.htm

[6] http://www.atljewishtimes.com/archives/2003/011703cs.htm

[7] http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/pollack/20030620.htm

[8] http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp (enter "Saban, Haim" and
choose 2004 )

[9] http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp , enter "Abraham, S Daniel"
and 2000,2002

[10] http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/mojo_400/1_abraham.html

[11] http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp , enter "Abraham, S
Daniel" and 2004

[12] http://www.cbs2.com/politics/politicsla_story_254070009.html

[13] http://www.public-i.org/report.aspx?aid=194&sid=200

-------------
2) Let's magnify two of the above events:
e) December 19, 2002: In a Los Angeles Times op-ed "Lock and Load",
the Directors of Haim Saban's Center for Middle East Policy ,
Martin Indyk and Kenneth Pollack, state
"Saddam Hussein has failed to come clean. His denial of possessing any
weapons of mass destruction makes that clear ... As former U.S. government
officials who had access to the most sensitive U.S. intelligence on Iraq,
we are well aware of Iraq's continued efforts to retain and enhance its
weapons
capabilities"
They then advocate launching a war on Iraq.[5]

--------
g) June 20, 2003: In a New York Times column, "Saddam's Bombs? We'll Find
Them", Saban Center Director Kenneth Pollack states "Where are Iraq's
weapons of
mass destruction? It's a good question, and unfortunately we don't yet have
a
good answer... In any event, the mystery will be solved in good time; the
search for Iraq's
nonconventional weapons program has only just begun." [7]

==========
In that same article, Kenneth Pollack goes on to say:

"before the war I heard
many complaints from friends still in government that some Bush officials
were mounting a ruthless campaign over intelligence estimates. I was told
that when government analysts wrote cautious assessments of Iraq's
capabilities, they were grilled and forced to go to unusual lengths to
defend their judgments, and some were chastized for failing to come to more
alarming conclusions. None of this is illegal, but it was perceived as an
attempt to browbeat analysts into either changing their estimates or
shutting up and ceding the field to their more hawkish colleagues."
Ref: http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/pollack/20030620.htm

-------------------

2) So what is the end result of Kenneth Pollack's Dance of Seven Veils?
On March 31, 2005: The Iraq WMD Commission reports to the President
that:
" We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all
of its
pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major
intelligence failure....
..
After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the
Intelligence
Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction. What
the intelligence professionals told you about Saddam Hussein's programs was
what they
believed. They were simply wrong."
Ref: http://www.wmd.gov/report/wmd_report.pdf

So why wasn't Iran looked at first?

Iraq was the low-hanging fruit.

Making the case for an invasion of Iraq was much easier. It was in open violation of UN resolutions, was ruled by people who were not merely brutal and dictatorial but imperialistic and genocidal, and was militarily much weaker. In addition, there is some hope that Iran can be changed from within. The mullah's control of the country is nowhere near that of Saddam over Iraq, and most of the younger generations are pro-Western.

In any case, my only concern about the WMD issue is that I'm unconvinced that the stockpiles didn't exist (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence) -- I'm worried that something happened to them, either during the war or prior to it. After all, there is no question that Hussein used to have chemical and biological weapons. The only question is whether he (a) gave up all his weapons and then lied to the UN to claim he had more or (b) if he really did have more weapons, and they're missing. I can't think of a convincing reason for (a) to be true.

One final note -- lying is saying something you know to be false. There is no evidence at all that the Bush Administration lied about Iraq's possession of WMDs. Those who wish to claim otherwise are invited to explain why Clinton and Gore told the same lie, both during their administration and in the 2001/2002 pre-war period. Are they working for Karl Rove too?

p. lukasiak writes, But as it became increasingly clear that Iraq was cooperating with the inspections and (more importantly) that the intelligence concerning stockpiles of WMDs and WMD programs was being repudiated by the inspections process, it is abundantly clear that almost "all of the world's leaders" were having second thoughts about what they had once believed.

There are a couple of concerns with that: first, what is the evidence that Saddam's Iraq was cooperating in the last year prior to invasion? There was noise about cooperating, but Saddam was still making the same game of hinder, obstruct and obfuscate. We now know that Saddam's intel people had penetrated Mr. Blix's mission and generally knew what was coming.

Because of this, the inspections process could really "repudiate" nothing. Mr. Blix and his team, with only a few exceptions, only saw what Saddam wanted them to see. And the Bush team knew this.

Remember one important point in this equation: Saddam acted guilty. He was buying protective biochem suits, atropine syringes, and other protective gear on the sly. He threatened the use of WMD even as he proclaimed he didn't have any. A fair number of his generals (generally a mediocre bunch) thought that it was the next unit around the corner with the biochem weapons.

And remember another point: Saddam had used chemical weapons on the Kurds. So there wasn't much doubt about Saddam's willingness to use WMD.

Put it together post 9/11: the man acts like he has them, he threatens to use them, he's penetrated the Blix mission so that the information provided by Blix has to be considered at least some suspect, he's never come clean on the storage and production even as inspectors thought he had few (or no) stocks, he was known to be consorting with various terror groups who had fewer qualms than he had -- put it together and you have a reasonable (not air-tight by any means) case. Good enough to go to war? That's what we ask Presidents to judge, and hold them accountable afterwards.

A final note: the hullabaloo about the 9/11 Commission was why didn't the Bush team connect all the dots to stop 9/11. Now we're blaming the Bush team for connecting dots.

By contrast, in the UK things are "fixed" in place around other things, thus, having intelligence "fixed around policy" simply means that one is prioritized over the other, not that false information is being generated to cover one's tracks.

Kelli, I'm quite amused (and even somewhat impressed) by, shall we say, the suppleness of your apologia. While it's quite likely that you were being intellectually dishonest rather than merely misguided, I'm still tempted to engage your theory on the usage of "fixed":

1. You ignore that "fixed" refers in that sentence to "the facts" as well as "the intelligence". Your own explanation would then mean that policy was being prioritized over the facts, which is not any more charitable than the allegations that are being discussed here.

2. The sentence reads "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." If you read the preceding sentence, the word "but" here is qualifying the justification being sought by Bush. If "fixed" was used merely to suggest priority, such a qualification would hardly be necessary.

You are a valuable tool for weasels across the political spectrum, and I'd highly recommend you for a professional apologist position.

Dan: "One final note -- lying is saying something you know to be false. There is no evidence at all that the Bush Administration lied about Iraq's possession of WMDs."

Their purported belief in their claim that the WMDs constituted any sort of worrisome threat is disproved by their actions. See my first post in this thread.

Please note that violation of the resolution would only be resolved within the context of the UN - that no individual member nation had the right, under 1441, to take action on their own - which, of course, is exactly what we did, isn't it?

perhaps even more importantly, the US proposed language for 1441 included the phrase "all necessary means" --- UN speak for authorizing military action. The Security Council made a point of specifically rejecting the language that would authorize military action, substituting the "serious consequences" phrase, after the US reportedly gave private assurances to the Security Council that the "serious consequences" phrase would not be used to justify military action. (And, if anyone disputes this, let them explain how 1441 was passed unanimously, including an affirmative vote from Syria that was absolutely and irrevocably opposed to voting for anything that would have provided the US with the justification to invade and occupy Iraq.)

"We know for a fact there are weapons there." - Ari Fleischer, Jan. 9, 2003

"But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about." -Ari Fleischer Press Briefing 4/10/03

One final note -- lying is saying something you know to be false.

You mean like when Bush says that war is a "last resort"?

Seems to me the DSMs are pretty damn compelling on that whopper.

And this is "news" why? And the American people weren't already aware of this before voting in W fo his second term? Please -- Appalled Moderate

Well, Appalled, it's all old news, including Zathras' incompetence meme. Bush is a known quantity, and if old news is no news, then we political junkies will have to take a vow of silence for the next 3 1/2 years.

But there's still a baby. One we are morally responsible for. Even if we had no role in the making of the child. The Left's great plan, right now, is to haul our troops out, leave Iraq trashed, and blame the ensuing state of affairs on W.

But here's the problem: we don't have nearly enough troops in Iraq to defeat the insurgency, or even to keep the country together. This situation is unlikely to change unless we have a draft, and even then it would take us 2 years to get enough troops there, and success would still depend on the Iraqis willingness to fight for us and stop singing Saddam's praises.

The blogger Tacitus -- not a liberal, libertarian, or moderate -- says we need to start a draft, pull out, or destroy the Army. He views the last as unacceptable, as do I. But this is Bush's position, and he deserves the credit for it.

Saying we're morally responsible for a problem does not mean we're capable of fixing it.

The army was almost destroyed by budget cuts in the 1990s. A military spend-down in the 90s helped create a phantom budget surplus which helped fuel foreign investment in the tech boom-bubble.

The army was used to promote political flunkies like the former commandante of Abu Ghraib, Janice Karpinski.

As a volunteer force in the 2000s, the US army is recovering from the intentional corruption of the 1990s, and is more professional and capable than it has been for decades.

There are a couple of concerns with that: first, what is the evidence that Saddam's Iraq was cooperating in the last year prior to invasion? There was noise about cooperating, but Saddam was still making the same game of hinder, obstruct and obfuscate. We now know that Saddam's intel people had penetrated Mr. Blix's mission and generally knew what was coming.

Saddam allowed the inspectors unrestricted access to every inch of Iraq. And as is now abundantly clear, he was making every effort to comply with the demands of the UN for a full accounting of his WMD programs --- but because he had covertly destroyed most of his biological and chemical weapons programs in 1991-92 in order to hide the true nature and extent of those programs (while maintaining documents containing the knowledge base necessary to reconstruct those programs once UNSCOM left the country), he was unable to provide the kind of documentation that would "account for" everything Iraq once had. The proof simply did not exist after 1992. When, in 1995 Iraq was finally forced to admit the existence of previously denied biological and chemical weapons programs, the "knowledge base" documents were surrendered as well (thanks in large part to the defection of Saddam's son-in-law, who had detailed knowledge of the undisclosed programs, and their covert destruction.)

Everyone involved with the inspections process knew this -- they knew full well that nearly everything had been destroyed, but because there was no record of the destruction it was impossible to quantify precisely how much had been destroyed, and thus ALL of weapons and related materials were designated as "unaccounted for."

Given Saddam's record, the inspectors were rightfully skeptical about Iraq's claims that, in fact, absolutely everything had been destroyed. But the inspectors also knew that, with the possible exception of mustard gas, any chemical or biological weapons stocks that had existed prior to 1991 would be "useless gunk" over a decade later.

The inspections process in 2002-03 revealed that there was no evidence that pre-1991 weapons had been maintained, and no evidence of any effort to produce biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons since that time. When Blix went before the UN and asked for a few more months to complete the inspections process, it was obvious that absent the discovery of some undisclosed and highly compartmentalized secret program, UNMOVIC's job was simply to come up with as close to an accounting of what happened to all of the covertly destroyed materials.

There is simply no concrete evidence that Iraq continued to "hinder and obstruct" the inspections process. People like you simply assume that was happening, and then find "circumstantial" evidence that fit that assumption. The fact that most Iraqi scientists were unwilling to talk to the inspectors privately is not evidence of any effort on Iraq's part to hinder the inspections -- given the nature of Saddam's regime, no scientist in their right mind would have given any weight to any assurances from Saddam that it would be okay for them to talk to the inspectors without fear of future reprisals. Everyone in Iraq was well aware of what happened with Hussein Kamel, who was lured back to Iraq with assurances that "all was forgiven", and then promptly murdered upon returning to Iraq. Nobody needed to be reminded of that --- and it didn't matter how much Saddam wanted people to co-operate with the inspectors, they weren't going to do it.

Remember one important point in this equation: Saddam acted guilty. He was buying protective biochem suits, atropine syringes, and other protective gear on the sly. He threatened the use of WMD even as he proclaimed he didn't have any. A fair number of his generals (generally a mediocre bunch) thought that it was the next unit around the corner with the biochem weapons.

if you assume that Saddam is guilty, buying defensive materials related to WMDs make sense. But the fact is that Iran was a hostile regime that was known to have chemical and biological weapons, and to have used them against Iraq in the past -- and it made perfect sense for Iraq to purchase material essential to the defense against the use of such weapons.

And the generals did not think that the next unit over had WMDs. Its not like these guys didn't talk to each other. The generals simply didn't know for a fact that Iraq didn't have some bio/chem weapons capacity. This is no different from American generals, most of whom don't have the first clue about the nature and capacity of America's secret weapons programs.

And remember another point: Saddam had used chemical weapons on the Kurds. So there wasn't much doubt about Saddam's willingness to use WMD.

And remember another point: Saddam had used chemical weapons on the Kurds. So there wasn't much doubt about Saddam's willingness to use WMD.

lets keep this in context, shall we. Ignoring the fact that there is considerable evidence that it was Iran, and not Iraq, that was responsible for the gassing of the Kurds, chemical weapons were deployed by both Iran and Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. But they were not used when Iraq invaded Kuwait, nor were they used defensively during the first US-Iraq war when Iraq was thrown out of Kuwait. Nor were they used in the suppression of the Kurdish and Shia uprising in the aftermath of that war. Iraq reserved the use of chemical weapons to retaliatory measures in extremis during the Iran-Iraq war, and there is no evidence that suggests that Iraq would use them in any other circumstances. Indeed, given the various "opportunities" in which those weapons could have been used, the fact that they were not used strongly suggests that Saddam would not have used them offensively under any circumstances, and that the "threat" represented by Iraq's possession of WMDs was greatly exaggerated.

A lot of interesting points that ignore the real issue: this administration sent our military into battle without the resources they needed to control the country and two years later they still have done nothing to correct this fatal error. How long are we going to argue over how many angels can sit on the head of a pin and ignore the obvious fact that we are losing the GWOT because this administration still refuses to fund it.

I'm amused by the sniping my initial comments have received. A short rejoinder here. To those who don't like my parsing of the phrase "fixed around" I defer to the (proper Englishmen) Robin Niblett, head of the Europe Program at the (profoundly non-partisan) CSIS in Washington and Christopher Hitchens in his most recent Slate column. I'll stack my two years' residence in the UK and Ph.D. in British history against those of any aggrieved American debater. As for the Brits in the crowd, well, your education system hasn't quite been the same since they abolished grammar schools in the 60s, so I suppose I shouldn't hold it against you personally (nor will I) that you don't understand the usage here--though I've no doubt that the Oxbridge-educated head of MI6 DOES--no doubt HE went to a really good public school where such things are still taught.

As for Raj, who thinks it's still bad IF my reading of the phrase is correct--grow up. Policy determines which facts are stressed and which drop by the wayside in government, just as the central thesis of an article, book or book report determines which "facts" are highlighted and which aren't; just as a good lawyer carefully selects which "facts" to stress and which to cast aspersions on, etc., etc.

But at least Raj allows that semantics MAY be important, which many careful readers of this overhyped memo choose (hypocritically?) to deride, when, in fact, what else can one do but parse and break down syllable by syllable such a document, given that anti-warriors are attempting to use it as a cudgel against Bush and Blair? Typical that they would hang all their hopes on such a weak document, and sadly typical that they would also harangue shrilly against alternate readings of this wafer-thin memo.

Carl:

I don't see the insurgency actually winning. It's like an alliance with Jerry Falwell and, well, Saddam Hussein, with guns, and they lose support the more they expose themselves to the Iraqi people. But, given the lack of troop strength, it will take a real long time before things are settled down. And my guess is Sunni country will eventually settle down to being like today's Northern Ireland. Never quite happy, but not strong enough to leave, and always coping with a mafia-like group that pretends they are revolutionaries.

Blame our adminstration for this pass. But you have to actually deal with the problem in a mature fashion -- not just ignore it and leave.

By the way -- for this to be Vietnam requires there to be a nation like USSR always willing to fund insurgents and allow them free sanctuary. Syria does not have the money or the will. Iran would not rejoice in a Sunni victory.

Re Appalled's comment "for this to be Vietnam requires there to be a nation like USSR always willing to fund insurgents and allow them free sanctuary"

Bush's invasion of Iraq violated Article 51 of the UN Charter --the most fundamental international forbidding an attack on another nation. That has upset nations far more powerful than Iraq. I don't think the Iraq insurgency will lack for financial support.

If the other powerful nations have concluded that the USA is being run by psychopaths, then
It is in the interest of CHina, Russia, and Europe for the US to continue to be bogged down in Iraq for years. THe Iraq flypaper is giving surrogates like North Korea time to develop nuclear ICBMs, for example.

A North Korean nuke tossed into LA or Silicon Valley would cause quite a stutter in the US Economy -- which in turn would halt the neocons' aggressive push to conquer the world via seizure of the major oil deposits.

Would North Korea's leadership commit such a mad act? Maybe, if they were promised a lifetime of luxury living in China, hidden from US retaliation. Saddam's fate certainly showed that, when dealing with the US , it is better to be feared than to be loved by Washington.

Plus, Iraq is showing future enlistees in the US volunteer Army that the reward for patriotism is to have your legs blown off try to grab an oil patch for Dick Cheney's patrons. Those dead soldiers signed up to defend the US, not to defend
Chalabi's and Bush's lies.

Steve White made an important point upthread, not so much about senior Bush administration officials but about the intelligence community that supplied them with information.

The readiness to imagine the worst case about Iraqi WMD, and the willingness to discount evidence against it were both much greater in CIA and the Pentagon because the conspiracy that led to 9/11 (and, for that matter, the Cole and the Nairobi embassy) had been missed so badly. Add to that the institutional memory of WMD estimates before the Gulf War that dramatically understated the C/B arsenal Iraq had and it becomes easier to understand why the intelligence community would have been at pains not to ignore a potentially lethal threat.

This is not a policy statement of any kind. I just think we need to understand that history did not start in the summer of 2002, and that the people in responsible positions are likely to have memories of past errors and a strong desire to avoid them. Sometimes, often in fact, this is a good thing, but it sometimes contributes to the making of different errors.

I think you all should take a look at the
H. J. RES. 114 of the 107th Congress. There
you will find the legal basis for the United
States of America to make war against Iraq.

Certainly there are references to W.M.D.'s.

There are also references to Iraq's willful
disregard of at least 4 UN Security Council
resolutions.

And Iraq's willful disregard of it's agreed
to terms for the cease-fire following its
forcable removal from Kuwait.

And Iraq's role in harboring and aiding
terrorists organizations.

You may not like the administrations
justification for the war. You may
believe that the administration actively
mislead the Congress and the people of
the United States into the war. You may
feel that the war itself is illegal.
You may feel that that the war is
counter-productive to the best interests
of the West in general and the United
States in particular.

But there isn't a thing you can do about it.

Other than rant and rave incorrectly about
the administration's justification and
congresses approval for going to war.

You should beware of looking like the
'boy who cried wolf'.

Now, when something REALLY BAD comes along,
and you try warning us about it, no one is
going to pay you the slighest heed.

It's time to 'move on', kiddies.

Re Ted's comment:
"But there isn't a thing you can do about it.

Other than rant and rave incorrectly about
the administration's justification and
congresses approval for going to war."
----------
Actually, what we can do is knock the Republican Party's teeth out in the next election. And hold impeachment hearings with the Democratic majority in 2007.

The readiness to imagine the worst case about Iraqi WMD, and the willingness to discount evidence against it were both much greater in CIA and the Pentagon because the conspiracy that led to 9/11 (and, for that matter, the Cole and the Nairobi embassy) had been missed so badly. Add to that the institutional memory of WMD estimates before the Gulf War that dramatically understated the C/B arsenal Iraq had and it becomes easier to understand why the intelligence community would have been at pains not to ignore a potentially lethal threat.

this is a good point, but there were also other "pre-2002" factors at work that doubtless affected intelligence estimates. Throughout the 1990s, it was pretty much a given that maintaining a military presence in the Gulf was important to US National Security interests above and beyond any "threat" posed by Iraq. But that presence was predicated upon the existence of a continued "threat" being posed by Iraq.

In other words, it simply wasn't in America's larger national security interest to acknowledge evidence that suggested that Saddam was not a threat. The fact is that while we relied on Hussein Kamel's disclosures with regard to the full nature and extent of Iraq's pre-1991 WMD programs, we completely ignored the fact that he also told us that everything had been destroyed --- even though all of the (admittedly limited) evidence confirmed what he told us. Instead, we emphasized the fact that materials were "unaccounted for", knowing full well that the only reason they remained "unaccounted for" was UNSCOM's inability to quantify what they knew had been destroyed.

Basically, we needed Saddam to be a threat throughout the nineties and beyond, and that need was met by the skewing of intelligence estimates.

By "we," p. l., you mean the Clinton administration, any official of which could have listed in about five minutes the reasons that your theory is absurd. I am prepared to believe many things about Bill Clinton, but to accept the idea that the expense, inconvenience and ill feeling generated by the sanctions and containment operations against Iraq were just the cost of doing business in pursuit of a strategic design for the region I'd have to believe he was an idiot, and I don't. Just maybe I'd have to believe he was an idiot following a grand strategy, and I don't believe that either.

GMT - let me get this straight: you think the way to demonstrate that they called Iraq an imminent threat is to cite a lot of quotes where they use the word "threat"?

Hint: we're not debating the "threat" part of "imminent threat." We're debating the other word. The closest one you have was the last one, from Rumsfeld, where he said that he wasn't certain that it wasn't imminent, which is hardly an unqualified statement that it was.

As for the argument several people have raised in response that "it's all semantics," well, no, it isn't. The word imminent has meaning. If you meant that the Bush administration had said Iraq was a threat -- well, duh. Administration critics are including the word "imminent" to convey additional information beyond the word "threat." And that additional information is wrong.

Re David's comment: "As for the argument several people have raised in response that "it's all semantics," well, no, it isn't. The word imminent has meaning. If you meant that the Bush administration had said Iraq was a threat -- well, duh. Administration critics are including the word "imminent" to convey additional information beyond the word "threat." And that additional information is wrong."
--------
From WHite House spokeman Scott McClellan during
a press briefing:

"QUESTION: What about NATO's role? Belgium now says it will veto any attempt to provide help to Turkey to defend itself. Is this something the administration can live with, or is it a major obstacle?

MR. McCLELLAN: Two points. We support the request under Article IV of Turkey. And I think it's important to note that the request from a country under Article IV that faces an imminent threat goes to the very core of the NATO alliance and its purpose.

QUESTION: What can you do about this veto threat?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, I think what's important to remind NATO members, remind the international community is that this type of request under Article IV goes to the core of the NATO alliance.

QUESTION: Is this some kind of ultimate test of the alliance?

MR. McCLELLAN: This is about an imminent threat.
"
Ref: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030210-8.html

correct--grow up. Policy determines which facts are stressed and which drop by the wayside in government, just as the central thesis of an article, book or book report determines which "facts" are highlighted and which aren't; just as...

Kelli,
I agree with this point in principle, though I'd very much dispute the claim that the administration is culpable of merely an error of omission, or that it just emphasized some facts over others.
The claims about the aluminum tubes (or Iraq's nuclear program in general) and, perhaps even more so, the Iraq-al Qaeda connection, were more than the selective emphasis of facts. The fact that the Office of Special Plans was created with the express purpose of getting raw intel straight to the political appointees at the Pentagon, instead of being analyzed by the career analysts, casts a lot of doubt on the administration's good faith on this issue.

Thanks for being so civil in your response, btw, which was probably more than what my snark deserved. I have a good deal of patience for weak arguments, but not much for smug or disingenuous ones. I somehow got the impression that yours was in the latter category. My apologies.

I am prepared to believe many things about Bill Clinton, but to accept the idea that the expense, inconvenience and ill feeling generated by the sanctions and containment operations against Iraq were just the cost of doing business in pursuit of a strategic design for the region I'd have to believe he was an idiot, and I don't.

in hindsight, it may have been unwise to maintain a military presence in Saudi Arabia for so long, but it wasn't "idiotic" to see the strategic advantages of having bases in the mid-east. Beyond the question of "oil", there was the whole Iran threat, and the US presence in Saudi Arabia doubtless contributed to Israel's willingness to go along with Clinton's efforts to resolve the Palestinian crisis.

"Fixed" in the sense of "rigged" is U.S. slang. It would not be used in that sense by an educated Brit. Check the relevant OED definitions:

1. Placed or attached firmly; fastened securely; made firm or stable in position.

3. In immaterial sense: Firmly attached or implanted; securely established; secured against alteration or dislodgement. In early use often (now rarely) of persons: Firmly resolved; constant, steadfast; bent, set, or intent upon anything. name="1"fixed idea: an idea firmly rooted in the brain, with a tendency to become unduly dominant [F. idée fixe]. name="2"fixed fact: a well-established fact (U.S.).

7. Definitely appointed or assigned; not fluctuating or varying; definite, permanent.

9. Corrupted, bribed, ‘squared’; tampered with; of a sporting contest, having the result dishonestly prearranged. slang (orig. U.S.).

WRT to Saddam's WMD or lack thereof. While no significant stockpiles were found, there is little doubt that Saddam had the intent, knowledge, capability and resources to reconstitute his WMD program once those pesky inspectors and sanctions were removed (through the efforts of his good friends in France, Germany and Russia). Better to take him out now than wait until he'd done a deal with A.Q. Khan.

"One final note -- lying is saying something you know to be false.

You mean like when Bush says that war is a "last resort"?

Do you honestly believe that if Hussein had stepped down, held democratic elections, ceased sponsoring terrorists, and opened up his country to outside inspectors, we'd still have invaded? Because I don't. Of course, no rational person would expect Hussein to voluntarily do those things. Thus, war was both (a) the last resort and (b) inevitable.

I think the problem here is that you're one of those people who, when they hear the term "the last resort", mentally add "... which, of course, we will never reach" to the end. A "last resort" is the act you resort to when all practical alternatives have failed. In the case of Iraq, we had tried all practical alternatives for over ten years and were left worse off than when we'd started. It was time for the last resort. Bush made it perfectly clear that he was giving Hussein one final chance to do the right thing; Hussein said no. So we invaded.

What's hilarious about Pat's claim that "fixed" didn't really mean "rigged" is that Bush apologists are having to make that convoluted claim because the people who wrote/read the Downing St Memos are NOT making that claim.

Somehow the vast majority of British voters also understood "fixed" to mean "rigged" as well.
Just look at the British newspapers.

Actually, I think this discussion is a rather funny display of the right wing reality distortion force field at work. Soon we will have the White House Press secretary arguing what the meaning of "is" is.

"Actually, I think this discussion is a rather funny display of the right wing reality distortion force field at work. Soon we will have the White House Press secretary arguing what the meaning of "is" is."

Posted by Don the Greater

With the difference this time (tragedy, then farce being reversed) is that he'll get away with it. And those who said that 'is' means 'is' will have to publicly apologize for Hating America.

I don't quite understand what the controversy is about. The Downing street memo's say very little specific. When the memo says that the "facts were being fixed around the policy", does that mean fixed as in "fixing a race" or "fixed into cement", I think the latter. If Bush chose to present the intelligence in the light that most supported the action he wanted to take, that's what leaders do. It is nowhere near the lengths Roosevelt went to to get us into WW2, or Johnson into Viet Nam, one of which was clearly right, the other wrong, at least if we weren't sure we wanted to win.

Leaders lead. And that is what Bush did. I don't thing he took us into Iraq because he thought Saddam was a serious threat to us. I think we went into Iraq because Iran is next door and the largest state sponsor of terror, because Syria is on the other side and a distablizing influence in the middle east, because Saudi Arabia is to the south and home of almost all of the hijackers and source of the lions share of financing for global terror. I think he picked Iraq because Saddam had it coming and demonstrating US might and putting 100,000 troops in the middle east would change the landscape there. Bush went into Iraq because he thought it would make the US safer in the long run, he thought it would make easier to deal with the militants over there instead of over here. And most importantly he thought that if he took out Saddam because of 9/11, even though he had nothing to do with it, then there is no government that wants to be lax about harbouring terrorists and wants to see if they're going to be next if we get hit again.

And most importantly he thought that if he took out Saddam because of 9/11, even though he had nothing to do with it, then there is no government that wants to be lax about harbouring terrorists and wants to see if they're going to be next if we get hit again.

Well, it doesn't seem to have worked. The fact that we have a great segment of our army tied down by a ragtag bunch makes our future threats less credible, not more. Certainly we have no capacity to invade and occupy Iran or even Syria now.

In the case of Iraq, we had tried all practical alternatives for over ten years and were left worse off than when we'd started.

Saddam's army was a shambles, he had no WMDs, his economy was devastated. So who was worse off ?

It was time for the last resort. Bush made it perfectly clear that he was giving Hussein one final chance to do the right thing; Hussein said no. So we invaded.

This probably happened in some alternate universe. In our universe, Bush said that Saddam must disarm, Saddam said that he had already disarmed (which he had) and said that UN inspectors could verify it.