Friday 3 June 2005

Those old WMD blues again

For those still opening their mouths about Weapons of Mass Destructionn and letting the wind blow their tongues around, specifically over the supposed absence of said WMD, then repair ye to Irfan Khawaja's blog where he examines soundly both the claims and the Weapons Inspectors' reports.

Some of the participants on this thread could sure use the insight.

Says Irfan,
Every schoolchild knows by now that Iraq had “no WMD,” and that we could easily have avoided war if only we had “let the inspectors do their work,” because “the inspections were working.”

Unfortunately, every schoolchild is dead wrong on both counts. One of my long-term projects on this blog is to drag those of you willing to face the evidence kicking and screaming through every last bit of it to explain why. It’s going to be an excruciatingly tedious task, but when the stakes are as high as they are, I find tedium preferable to falsehood. My hope is that some of you do, too. Read on here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm none the wiser for having read the article you link to. Far from offering conclusive evidence all he does is lower the bar and suggest that "the relevant search was for “small quantities” of WMD as well as components and know-how that could generate those quantities". Isn't this exactly the same furphy put about in the end by the Bush administration that it was really about their capacity to develop WMD "programs".

What we now know of course is that it was never about WMD's. Mark Danner's examination of the British 'smoking gun memo' is essential reading for those that wish to understand how the intelligence was cooked to justify a predetermined policy.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2486

I can never understand this fixation on WMD's. What is a WMD? It seems to me it's something the other side has that is used to justify your own use of WMD's.

What was always clear was that Iraq was not a threat to even it's immediate neighbours much less a threat to those that attacked it.

Peter Cresswell said...

Lloud, you said, "What was always clear was that Iraq was not a threat to even it's immediate neighbours much less a threat to those that attacked it."

How exactly was this clear, and to whom?

Peter Cresswell said...

Sorry Lloyd, that was a typo, not a dig. I'm sure you're actually very quiet. :-)

Anonymous said...

Prior to the invasion it was clear that the vast majority of the people in the countries immediately surrounding Iraq - Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iran were opposed to the invasion and did not see Iraq as such a threat that invasion and war were necessary. I think it was clear to anyone who cared to look beyond the smokescreen of misinformation, propoganda and outright lies that were propogated by the proponents of war. The subsequent finding that Iraq was a weak and shattered state only reinforces the fact that it was not a threat. Read the Danner article. It's clear that Bush and Blair did not believe it was a threat.

Anonymous said...

It's not quite the topic but essential reading for anyone who actually cares about truth in government which WMD's and Iraq exmplifies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/02/opinion/02herbert.html?incamp=article_popular_1