So did you hear that they discovered WMD in Southern Iraq? Yeah, yeah, I’m sure everyone will dismiss it as yet more old stuff that pre-dates the first Gulf War. Of course, this time there’s the former intelligence officer and special investigator for the Pentagon who’s been waging a one-man war to get these four sealed underground bunkers suspected of containing chemical and biological weapons inspected for the past three years.
Yes, yes, any one man crusade risks success or failure on the credibility of that one man. Who is he? Why would there be a coverup? It all bears looking into. But I do recall that Iraq is a very large country, about the size of California, and Saddam was very motivated to hide WMD very well and he had lots of money to throw at the problem.
On the other hand, there’s this article about an Iraqi document that describes Iraqi WMD being moved to Syria before the war. Why would Saddam send his most potent weapons to another country? There is precedent. Before the first Gulf War, Saddam sent nearly all his air force to Iran for safekeeping, even though Iran was his mortal enemy. At least Syria is Ba’athist, like Saddam was. Of course, that’s probably more wishful thinking too. It’s certainly easier to believe Bush lied or was duped.
“On the other hand, there’s this article about an Iraqi document that describes Iraqi WMD being moved to Syria before the war.”
Listen to what you are saying here. The Iraq war was putatively waged to prevent WMD proliferation, among many other protean reasons. If what you say is true, we ended up letting these weapons fall into the hands of Syria and who knows how many other black marketeers. That’s not exculpatory evidence, but evidence of incompetence. The Bush administration probably doesn’t want that kind of information getting out.
If Bush is in a lose-lose situation here, perhaps he only has himself to blame.
“…we ended up letting these weapons fall into the hands of Syria….”
Listen to what YOU’RE saying, Kevin!
Do you really believe that the United States is omnipotent? If Saddam knew that the invasion was imminent—as he most surely did—and decided to ship his WMD to Syria, how in the world do you expect that we could have prevented it? Do you think we can prevent actions from taking place inside a sovereign nation prior to our assuming control of it?
It’s not evidence of incompetence; it’s evidence of Saddam’s imperialist and terrorist ambitions, which the rest of the world saw but refused to confront.
Especially given that we had to telegraph our movements prior to the start of the war by going to the UN…
President Bush is certainly not the first to endure a kind of Pavlovian hate response to everything and anything that he does, says or thinks. But he is certainly among the A list as a target of sheer blind calumny by a swarm of otherwise seemingly intelligent people. I have some bones to pick with Mr. Bush, but also plaudits where they are due—and as of today the country has been quite safe since September 11, 2001.
There is continued thought and now more than speculation that the WMDs were shipped out of Iraq possibly with the connivance of Russia—which is a tepid ally at that. It has nothing to do with incompetence on the part of the Administration and everything to do with the blind domestic opposition that has greatly hindered efforts at stopping terrorism abroad.
“Do you really believe that the United States is omnipotent?”
Father,
The administration’s overambitious plans to democratize the Middle East suggest I’m not the only one who has suffered from delusions of American omnicompetence.
I watched all of Powell’s UN presentation, which briefly swayed me to the hawk position. Even after I again became a war skeptic, I assumed US intelligence was good enough that we could secure at least some WMD stockpiles and observe attempts to relocate some of them—especially to a foreign country. That this is allegedly happening only years later hardly inspires confidence in American foresight.
Or that people have misunderstood a private revelation or invested in it the power of doctrine, public revelation, and/or a pronouncement of the extraordinary magisterium.
People would do well to read Fr. Groeschel’s excellent book “A Still, Small Voice,” to understand that in private revelation—unlike public revelation—the interface of the supernatural with fallible human psyche can introduce a certain degree of error, like St. Catherine saying the Blessed Mother told Catherine that she wasn’t immaculately conceived.
While this interesting it is off the topic of this thread. Nevertheless I don’t think you’ll find any pope specifically claiming to fulfill the conditions of the apparition. And just because an apparition is approved doesn’t make every single aspect of it akin to doctrine. I doubt the reign of peace was meant to be a time without any violence or conflict. We won’t see that untl the second coming.
“There’s a reason why people in the service still joke around about “military intelligence” being an oxymoron.”
Just finished retired marine Jim Webb’s Born Fighting, and he actually took offense at this joke. In his telling, he first heard it on the lips of a condescending lefty professor in the Vietnam era.
Chris: Without addressing the substance of your comment, I have to express skepticism here. There is no way all of Russia’s missiles were in a contained area on one base where one explosion could destroy 80 percent of them. Russia, like the US, deployed its nuclear arsenal throughout its country in hardened missile bunkers (for land-based missiles), on air force bases (for air-launched) and under the world’s oceans on strategic missile submarines.
Otherwise, one pre-emptive strike by the US—or an accidental explosion—would wipe out the arsenal.
Likewise, the destruction of one ammunition dump would hardly cripple the Soviet Union’s armed forces. Maybe one division for a few days (the factories were constantly producing more), but not destroying their superpower status.
If anyone thinks that we will be told (and therefore our enemies will be told) about national secirity secrets such as how many and where are Saddam’s WMD’s you’re out of your mind. We don’t have a “right to know” how our government is protecting us from our enemies. If WMD’s were shipped to Syria, we have probably (hopefully) been tracking their movement and possibly (hopefully) removing them as a threat. I don’t for a second believe that we are as dumb as the media would like us to believe. AND our bad intelligence schtick actually probably works to our benefit in terms of better intelligence. It is much better to be underestimated than overestimated. We clearly are underestimated.
You can call this naive, or ignorant, but I believe in 50 years we will find out the truth; that George Bush was an unbelievable President who saved many American lives (while getting his rear end kicked by the cowardly media and the disloyal and whiney citizens of our great country).