Rising Hegemon
We went to war based on errors, overgeneralizations, mistakes, lies and blind policy.
Thousands dead for, to be more generous than any Bush Administration official would ever be, a mistake. But more likely a policy-driven lie. The Washington Post today sums it up:
U.S. 'Almost All Wrong' on Weapons
Report on Iraq Contradicts Bush Administration Claims
The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that contradicts nearly every prewar assertion made by top administration officials about Iraq.
Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, said Hussein's ability to produce nuclear weapons had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."
...
Duelfer's report, delivered yesterday to two congressional committees, represents the government's most definitive accounting of Hussein's weapons programs, the assumed strength of which the Bush administration presented as a central reason for the war. While previous reports have drawn similar conclusions, Duelfer's assessment went beyond them in depth, detail and level of certainty.
"We were almost all wrong" on Iraq, Duelfer told a Senate panel yesterday.
...
Hussein, the report concluded, "aspired to develop a nuclear capability" and intended to work on rebuilding chemical and biological weapons after persuading the United Nations to lift sanctions. But the report also notes: "The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam" tasked to take this up once sanctions ended.
Among the most diplomatically explosive revelations was that Hussein had established a worldwide network of companies and countries, most of them U.S. allies, that secretly helped Iraq generate $11 billion in illegal income and locate, finance and import banned services and technologies. Among those named are officials or companies from Belarus, China, Lebanon, France, Indonesia, Jordan, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
What companies? Is one of them an affiliate of one that rhymes with Cheneyhurtin'?
Duelfer's report contradicted a number of specific claims administration officials made before the war.
It found, for example, that Iraq's "crash" program in 1991 to build a nuclear weapon before the Persian Gulf War was far from successful, and was nowhere near being months away from producing a weapon, as the administration asserted. Only micrograms of enriched uranium were produced and no weapon design was completed. The CIA and administration officials have said they were surprised by the advanced state of Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear program, which was discovered after the war, and therefore were more prone to overestimate Iraq's capability when solid proof was unavailable.
There also was no evidence that Iraq possessed or was developing a mobile biological weapons production system, an assertion Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others made before the invasion. The two trailers that were found in early 2003 were "almost certainly designed and built . . . exclusively for the generation of hydrogen" gas.
Duelfer also found no information to support allegations that Iraq sought uranium from Africa or any other country after 1991, as Bush once asserted in a major speech before the invasion. The only two contacts with Niger that were discovered were an invitation to the president of Niger to visit Baghdad, and a visit to Baghdad by a Niger minister in 2001 seeking petroleum products for cash. There was one offer to Iraq of "yellowcake" uranium, and that was from a Ugandan businessman offering uranium from Congo. The deal was turned down, and the Ugandan was told that Baghdad was not interested because of the sanctions.
With response to that last paragraph I think every chuckling SOB at the Corner, or the even nuttier right-wing publications to apologize to Joe Wilson. Remember the putrid addendum from a small group of Republican Senators saying that Hussein did try to buy yellowcake and how this was used to browbeat and undermine Wilson a few months ago?
Well, as usual, the right-wing noise maching LIED! Pathologically.
Will they apologize? Of course not.
What's more. Iraq destroyed its biological weapons stockpile and DID NOT SMUGGLE them across the border.
Duelfer's report is the first U.S. intelligence assessment to state flatly that Iraq had secretly destroyed its biological weapons stocks in the early 1990s. By 1995, though, and under U.N. pressure, it abandoned its efforts.
The document rules out the possibility that biological weapons might have been hidden, or perhaps smuggled into another country, and it finds no evidence of secret biological laboratories or ongoing research that could be firmly linked to a weapons program.
And no chemical weapons:
Duelfer's report said that no chemical weapons existed and that there is no evidence of attempts to make such weapons over the past 12 years. Iraq retained dual-use equipment that could be used for such an effort.
And here comes a shocker, Cheney lying about stuff...
"The issue is that he has chemical weapons, and he's used them," Cheney told CNN in March 2002. The National Intelligence Estimate said that "although we have little specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile, Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW agents -- much of it added in the last year."
...
Iraq's responses to U.N. inspectors regarding chemical weapons appear to have been truthful, and where incomplete, with differing recollections among former top officials, mostly the result of fading memories of when or how stockpiles were destroyed. Those were the identical reasons Iraq offered to U.N. inspectors before the war.
One of the key findings of the report is that "Saddam never abandoned his intentions to resume a chemical weapons effort when sanctions were lifted."
The evidence included in the report to back up claims of Hussein's intent is described as "extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial." The report quotes a single scientist who reached that conclusion in hindsight and based on information he learned from the U.S. inspection team long after U.S. troops had captured Iraq.
After 17 months of investigation, the U.S. team was able to find only 30 of 130 scientists identified with Iraq's pre-1991 chemical weapons programs. "None of those interviewed had any knowledge of chemical weapons programs" or knew of anyone involved in such work, according to the report. There was one exception, the reported noted, from a scientist who maintained he was asked to make a chemical agent, but that story was uncorroborated and there was no follow-up.
Jeebus.
Not one shred of the reasons asserted by the Bush Administration for going to FUCKING WAR has been substantiated.
Kerry is absolutely right. WRONG WAR, WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME.
Even Polk had more reason for starting a war.
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