I've read the Duelfer Report, have you?

[Yonivore]

I’ve read the Duelfer Report and, I’m going to agree with James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal – It Damns the U.N. and exonerates the U.S.

”With a presidential election less than a month away and the press and the Democrats eager to discredit the Bush administration, most of what we've been hearing about the final report of Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, issued yesterday, has centered on the question of whether Saddam Hussein's regime possessed stockpiles of mass-destruction weapons. The U.S. and most other world intelligence services believed it did, and this was among the justifications for Iraq's liberation last year. The absence of such stockpiles is supposed to prove that the U.S.-led coalition was wrong to liberate Iraq--that Saddam Hussein did not deserve to be toppled and George W. Bush does not deserve to be re-elected.

It won't surprise anyone to learn that we disagree. This column has long supported the liberation of Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction were in our view at most a secondary part of the case (see here and here). To our mind, the main lesson to be drawn from the ISG report is that the United Nations is ill suited to manage international crises.

Consider where things stood preliberation. As we noted in January 2003, Saddam Hussein had been technically at war with the U.S. and "the world" for more than a decade. There was never a peace agreement to end the Gulf War, only a cease-fire conditional upon Saddam Hussein's compliance with 17 U.N. resolutions. These resolutions required not only that Saddam not possess weapons of mass destruction, but also that he prove to the world that he had destroyed all such weapons programs. Resolution 1441 enumerated his other obligations:

The Government of Iraq has failed to comply with its commitments pursuant to resolution 687 (1991) with regard to terrorism, pursuant to resolution 688 (1991) to end repression of its civilian population and to provide access by international humanitarian organizations to all those in need of assistance in Iraq, and pursuant to resolutions 686 (1991), 687 (1991), and 1284 (1999) to return or cooperate in accounting for Kuwaiti and third country nationals wrongfully detained by Iraq, or to return Kuwaiti property wrongfully seized by Iraq.

The alternatives to military intervention were continuing the 12-year status quo, in which the U.N. applied sanctions designed to force compliance, or lifting the sanctions. In either case, the U.N.--and the U.S., had it continued to cooperate--would have been complicit in keeping this vicious dictator in power.

Twelve years of sanctions should have been enough to prove that they were ineffective in forcing Saddam to comply with his obligations--except, it now seems, for his obligation not to possess weapons of mass destruction. And of course because Saddam failed to verify the destruction of those weapons, he could not be trusted even on that score.

According to the Duelfer report (at page 63 of this PDF do ent), Saddam "used to say privately that the 'better part of war was deceiving,' according to Ali Hasan Al Majid," the Saddam henchman known as "Chemical Ali." The report says that al-Majid, in coalition custody since August 2003, "stated that Saddam wanted to avoid appearing weak and did not reveal he was deceiving the world about the presence of WMD."

The sanctions regime had the effect of punishing the Iraqi people while allowing Saddam to remain in power. Saddam was able to cir vent the sanctions by misusing the Oil for Food program. At the same time, he sought to end the sanctions by offering material inducements to sympathetic countries with permanent U.N. Security Council seats.

According to the report (pages 68-69 of the above PDF, which we've reproduced here), Saddam's regime "sought a relationship with Russia to engage in extensive arms purchases and to gain support for lifting the sanctions," and "in order to induce France to aid in getting sanctions lifted, [Baghdad] targeted friendly companies and foreign political parties that possessed either extensive business ties to Iraq or held pro-Iraqi positions."

Had sanctions been lifted, the report makes clear, Saddam was preparing to rebuild his weapons capabilities. "According to Abd Hamid Mahmud [his private secretary], Saddam privately told him that Iraq would reacquire WMD post-sanctions" (page 76). "Saddam asked in 1999 how long it would take to build a production line for CW [chemical weapons] agents, according to the former Minister of Military Industrialization. . . . An Iraqi CW expert separately estimated Iraq would require only a few days to start producing mus --if it was prepared to sacrifice the production equipment" (page 88).

The end of sanctions might have meant a nuclear-armed Iraq. "Saddam would have restarted WMD programs, beginning with the nuclear program, after sanctions, according to [Deputy Prime Minister] Tariq Aziz. Saddam never formally stated this intention, according to Aziz, but he did not believe other countries in the region should be able to have WMD when Iraq could not. Aziz assessed that Iraq could have a WMD capability within two years of the end of sanctions" (page 80).

If President Bush had decided not to liberate Iraq without yet another U.N. resolution, it seems clear that Saddam's coalition of the bribed would have continued to balk. The Iraqi people would have continued suffering under dictatorship or sanctions, while Saddam bluffed the world by pretending to have weapons of mass destruction.

Had the sanctions been lifted, Saddam likely would have acquired such weapons for real. Given that he had used them in the past, against both Iranians and Iraqi Kurds, there's no assurance he would have employed them only as a "deterrent"--or that he would not have given them to terrorists.
As it is, Saddam is in prison, and Iraq is disarmed and moving toward democracy. Can there be any doubt that America is safer--or that it would imperil both America and the world if a president were to subject U.S. national security to a "global test"?

[Marcus Bryant]

Kerry has criticized Bush because Bush was unwilling to give control of this nation's national security strategy to a true "coalition of the bribed and the coerced"?

So much for Kerry's "global test."

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Kerry's global test is legit - just make sure you have a big pocketbook

[Yonivore]

WMD's were never the only justification.

President Bush's case for war, which I'll briefly summarize:

Despite the demands of the United Nations, Saddam Hussein has continued to pursue weapons of mass destruction, which he could give to terrorists to use against us.

Iraq under Saddam's Baathist regime is a human-rights nightmare, one of the most brutal and repressive dictatorships in the world.

Saddam supports terrorism--openly and notoriously in the case of groups like Hamas. There is some evidence of connections between Baghdad and al Qaeda, although this is controversial.

And finally, the liberation of Iraq from Saddam would create an opportunity for democracy to gain a foothold in the Middle East, enhancing the prospects for peace, freedom and security in the whole region.

Now, I find all these arguments convincing. I would add one more. In 1991, after we drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, then-President Bush urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. They did, and America abandoned them. Saddam's forces killed tens of thousands of people and made refugees out of tens of thousands more. I would argue that this betrayal leaves America with a moral obligation to free the Iraqi people.

[Marcus Bryant]

ABK. No doubt.

[Nbadan]

The spin is in full-spin-mode.

[travis2]

What, you can't come up with something better than that, NBAJoeStalin?

Face it...you and your buddies have been lying this entire time and the world knows it. The only platform you have is misery. Your only policy is racial tension. Truth? Irrelevant. It's all about how much you can lord over someone else.

[CommanderMcBragg]

The conservatives will spin it to their liking.
Why it is so hard to admit after report, after report keep coming up with the same conclusion.
There is NO link between Saddam and 9/11.
There was NO WMD before we attacked.

The 9/11 Commission report and now this.

I'm sorry, but in my day we looked at the facts, acknowledged our mistakes, made the necessary corrections to get the job done.

Why won't Bush and Cheney do the same?

Are they really so intent on saving face?

Mark my words. If Dubya wins, you'll see things change.

But for now, Dubya is between Iraq and a hard place.

If he makes a change he will be doing a major flip-flop and he can't have that happen until after the elections. Right now it is all about his re-election and the with what is really going on in the world.

[CommanderMcBragg]

Face it...you and your buddies have been lying this entire time and the world knows it.

All reports have made it clear that this administration was the one doing the lying and now the world does know it.

It is a real shame this president cannot admit anything he has done wrong.

[whottt]

All reports have made it clear that this administration was the one doing the lying and now the world does know it.

It is a real shame this president cannot admit anything he has done wrong.

The Administration has admitted it made a mistake on the WMD.

Unfortunately Kerry chooses to call them liars, when he said the same things they did based on the same evidence...he said he would have conducted the war differently...and by this he meant waiting on the bribed and corrupt countries to give us permission.

Understand, Kerry voted for this war, for the same reasons the Bush administration and the Brits supported this war. How can you even deny this? Kerry said the same things about the threat of Saddam that Bush said.

Why won't you admit it? Kerry is the one denying things he said...Kerry is the one running his campaign based on a huge lie...

[whottt]

John Kerry said this:

All those miscalculations are compounded by the rest of history. A brutal, oppressive dictator, guilty of personally murdering and condoning murder and torture, grotesque violence against women, execution of political opponents, a war criminal who used chemical weapons against another nation and, of course, as we know, against his own people, the Kurds. He has diverted funds from the Oil-for-Food program, intended by the international community to go to his own people. He has supported and harbored terrorist groups, particularly radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and he has given money to families of suicide murderers in Israel.

I mention these not because they are a cause to go to war in and of themselves, as the President previously suggested, but because they tell a lot about the threat of the weapons of mass destruction and the nature of this man. We should not go to war because these things are in his past, but we should be prepared to go to war because of what they tell us about the future. It is the total of all of these acts that provided the foundation for the world's determination in 1991 at the end of the gulf war that Saddam Hussein must: unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless underinternational supervision of his chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems... [and] unconditionally agree not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon-usable material.

Saddam Hussein signed that agreement. Saddam Hussein is in office today because of that agreement. It is the only reason he survived in 1991. In 1991, the world collectively made a judgment that this man should not have weapons of mass destruction. And we are here today in the year 2002 with an uninspected 4-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them.

And we are here today in the year 2002 with an uninspected 4-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them.

And we are here today in the year 2002 with an uninspected 4-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them.

And we are here today in the year 2002 with an uninspected 4-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them.

And we are here today in the year 2002 with an uninspected 4-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them.


At best John Kerry was part of the lie. At worst he is ing stupid.


Do I need find his umpteen comments on how we need the support of the UN? The UN we are finding out now, was truly the coalition of the bribed and coerced?

[travis2]

All reports have made it clear that this administration was the one doing the lying and now the world does know it.

It is a real shame this president cannot admit anything he has done wrong.

Prove it. We've seen the intel the administration was given. We've heard your liberal buddies' words after they saw that intel...supporting the President.

We can prove you liberals lie. And have.

Prove the lie you claim or STFU. We're not backing down from your oral fecal matter anymore.

[Marcus Bryant]

Making a decision based upon inaccurate information does not necessarily cons ute a lie.

The information was inaccurate because of Hussein's flaunting of the weapons inspections efforts for all of those years. The world thought that he had WMDs and that included all major intelligence agencies.

Sure, it would be nice if we lived in a world in which everyone had perfect information at their disposal whenever they had to make a decision. But that is a fairy tale, a myth advanced by a number of people, most of whom have not had to make a significant decision based on imperfect information in their lives.

After 9/11, the world did change. No longer could we wait. No longer could we put up with Hussein's games at the UN.

First and foremost the reason for the Iraq invasion was that Hussein had not verified the elimination of his WMD programs with the UN. He had screwed with the weapons inspections. It was not known with full accuracy what he had because of this.

Secondly, yes, was the existence of WMDs as well as Hussein's demonstrated willingness to procure and use WMDs.

Even John Kerry grasped this before he started running for president.

[JoeChalupa]

All I know is that there is plenty of mud slinging going on in here.

Conservatives are calling liberals liars and liberals are calling conservative liars when we all know that both sides have lied, stretched the truth, not given a clear picture or what ever.

It is clear that neither side is going to change unless you are one of those undecided voters and if I were an undecided voter and reading the previous posts I'd be more undecided than ever.

Did we rush to war or act too quickly when the evidence know shows that there are no WMD? Sure Saddam could have re-started his WMD program but I don't think he was an imminent threat to our security. That is just my opinion.

If you are one of those who believe we did not rush to war because of Saddam's poor record with sanctions and the weapons inspections then that is your opinion.

Nobody knows, other than Saddam, what would have happened with further inspections. All that is speculation on both sides.

But both sides are putting up a good fight and it is good to see because of the fact that we can disagree here in the USA!

Keep it to continue.

[whottt]

Both sides may be liars but the Democrats are the only ones we can flat prove are lying when they say Bush lied about WMD. IF he is a liar then so are they. They are the ones politicizing this war to get elected.

They know he's not lying, just like they know the Haliburton controversy is nothing but unverified propaganda... but it fits the criticism that their voting base likes to hear so they perpetuate it...

No one denies Bush at the time was he elected was definitely on the side of big oil and didn't give two s about the environment, that he installed a cold war cabinet 20 years after it's time, arguably that at the time he was elected it was huge step backwards for the US Govt diplomatically.....those criticisms are valid...

But they ceased to be valid after September 11th 2001. We we're attacked, we were declared war upon by some crazy mofo's who killed themselves to wound us. There's no propaganda there...It's real. We all saw it.

After September 11th we were lucky things turned out that Bush got elected because as it turns out...the cold war wasn't over, we just had a new, and far more dangerous opponent to fight it with.

I don't see how anyone can question Bush's patriotism or love of this country or ever think he would deliberately do anything to hurt it. This guy wants to be John ing Wayne...he thinks he is John Wayne. John Wayne doesn't go around selling out his country and letting other people blow it up. John Wayne is the big ugly American who goes around shooting the bad guys. All you got to do is look at Bush's face after September 11th...you could see everything he ever thought about himself and the invincibility of this country was wounded and bleeding. His agenda at that time became a noble one and a true one IMO. He hates these terrorist s and when he says he's going to go get them, he means it, and he doesn't give a if Europe likes it or not. Go W Go.

I gurantee you the next time he tells a country that he is about to declare war upon them, they aren't gonna sit around wondering if he means it or not. That's a good thing in this environment...we need a president that people know better than to with.

John Wayne. Cowboy. Red Neck Mother.



And that's what need to be right now..that's what made America the greatest nation in the world. this Euro sensitivity bull ...we promise nothing other than fairness... with us wrongly and you just might get nuked off the planet...

Bush is the right president for this environment...he was a horrible choice IMO for the pre Sept 11th environment based on what we knew then.

But there should be absolutely no doubt Bush is better for America than pussy Kerry who wants a war where no one dies and everyone likes us(as long as we lose).

[JoeChalupa]

Just proved my point.

Conservatives are innocent and liberals are liars.

[travis2]

Just proved my point.

Conservatives are innocent and liberals are liars.

ummmm...Joe, he didn't say that at all...

[JoeChalupa]

I don't see how anyone can question Bush's patriotism or love of this country or ever think he would deliberately do anything to hurt it.

I dont' see how anyone can question Kerry's patriotism or love of this country or ever think he would deliberately do anything to hurt it either.

I've never questioned Bush's patriotism and have acknowledged that he served in the Texas National Guard. I freakin' hate it when somebody questions my patriotism of support of the troops simply because I question our government's actions or policies.
I'm more of the thought of Teddy Roosevelt who said citizens should question their government.

[Samurai Jane]

"Conservatives are innocent and liberals are liars."

Joe, how can you make this statement when Kerry is the one who has been all over the media calling Bush & Co. liars and misleaders, yet he said the same things before the war. If they lied about it, then Kerry & Edwards lied about it too. You can't have it both ways, it was either a lie or it wasn't, the truth doesn't change based on who's mouth it's coming out of.

[JoeChalupa]

And while I may refer to Bush as Dubya, I've never referred to him as a "pussy".

[Marcus Bryant]

Indeed Whottt. It would have been irresponsible to have not dealt with Hussein post-9/11. The criticisms levelled by the opponents of that decision at this point are infantile and absurd.

We have tried the approach of turning a blind eye to terror, of waiting out threats in the hope that they would go away, of treating it as a law enforcement matter, and of general reaction instead of proaction. We tried playing the sanctions and weapons inspections game with Hussein. We played along as other Security Council members were bought off by Hussein to thwart our efforts to improve our national security.

The Clinton administration certainly took Hussein seriously, believed he had WMDs and certainly worried about evidence of connections between him and Islamist terrorists.

But of course that was a Democratic administration, not a Republican one.

it, I'm for the man who is willing to deal with real threats to this nation instead of dithering ourselves out of responsible action just because we'd like to please everyone in the world. I'm for the man who is willing to make a less than universally popular decision without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and accept the political consequences.

I'll take that man anytime over the other who hasn't shown much consistency except that he believes that America is the problem in the international community and that he believes that the best approach to national defense is to weaken America's military while at the same time accomodating America's foes. Also an individual who is indeed willing to submit American power and security to the desires of foreign governments.

The choice is clear. Either we have leadership which is responsible enough to make the correct, yet politically tough decisions or we have leadership which will make irresponsible, yet politically correct decisions.

It is sad that some of you are so willing to select the latter for God knows what reason. The responsible choice was based on a conclusion reached by a broad range of government officials across the political spectrum. Based on what was known at the time, the American political establishment agreed that we had to remove that threat to this nation. Now people want to second guess it for crass partisan political purposes.

you. I'm tired of your nonsense. If you truly believe what you spew then you are woefully ignorant about the subject at hand.

[JoeChalupa]

I've said that BOTH sides are liars.

[spurster]

Yes, Kerry had the same intel that the administation made up.

Overall, I don't think either Bush or Kerry has a very good grip on the truth, but if BushCo did not lie about the rationales for this war, it was the next thing closest to it. Those lies (or whatever euphemism you want to call it), I cannot forgive.

[Marcus Bryant]

It was not a "lie" it was a responsible decision made on inaccurate information. John Kerry made the same responsible decision based on that inaccurate information. If you cannot handle such decisionmaking perhaps you should consider other alternatives.

[JoeChalupa]

it. I'll feel safe under either Bush or Kerry as I have all my life.