Discovering WMD

[lukpac]

I guess now the story is "Saddam wanted sanctions lifted, so of course we had to take him out!"

Cheney: Weapons Report Justifies Iraq War
Dick Cheney Says Weapons Inspector's Report Justifies President Bush's Decision to Attack Iraq

The Associated Press

MIAMI Oct. 7, 2004 — Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Thursday that a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, who found no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991, justifies rather than undermines President Bush's decision to go to war.

The report shows that "delay, defer, wasn't an option," Cheney told a town-hall style meeting.

While Democrats seized on the new report by Charles Duelfer to bolster their case that invading Iraq was a mistake, Cheney focused on portions of the report that were more favorable to the administration's case.

While saying that Saddam's weapons program had deteriorated since the 1991 Gulf War and did not pose a threat to the world in 2003, the report did say that Saddam's main goal was to get international sanctions lifted.

"As soon as the sanctions were lifted he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.

Cheney said the report also concluded that the United Nations' "Fuel for Food" program "was totally corrupted by Saddam Hussein. There were suggestions employees of the United Nations were part of the scheme as well."

"The suggestion is clearly there by Mr. Duelfer that Saddam had used the program in such a way that he had bought off foreign governments and was building support among them to take the sanctions down," Cheney said.

That being the case, there was no reason to wait to invade Iraq to give inspectors more time to do their work, Cheney said.

Duelfer's report said what ambitions Saddam harbored for such weapons were secondary to his goal of evading those sanctions, and he wanted them primarily not to attack the United States or to provide them to terrorists, but to oppose his older enemies, Iran and Israel.

The report of the weapons hunter was presented Wednesday to senators and the public in the midst of a fierce presidential election campaign in which Iraq and the war of terror have become the overriding issues.

[lukpac]

I'm still trying to figure out how anyone can actually buy into this reasoning. They are basically saying "well, Saddam didn't have any weapons, nor did he have the ability to make them, but man, the second we would have turned our backs he would have started to try again." THAT'S WHY WE WOULDN'T HAVE TURNED OUR BACKS, DIPSHITS. It's almost like saying "if we get rid of the security system at the bank, everyone will steal the money, so we have to get rid of the bank."

[Rspaight]

To play devil's advocate -- the line I hear is that international pressure against the sanctions was building and it would have been untenable to maintain them much longer. In addition, the oil-for-food program was hopelessly corrupted. Therefore, the only way to stop the humanitarian disaster of the sanctions was to either (a) end the sanctions and leave Saddam to his own devices or (b) take him out.

Sounds like a false choice to me, but that's the reasoning.

Ryan

[lukpac]

Of course, though, even ending sanctions still wouldn't "leave Saddam to his own devices".

And on top of all of that, it still seems doubtful that *if* Saddam eventually got weapons again (big 'if") he'd use them against the US or give/sell them to terrar-ists.

[Rspaight]

And on top of all of that, it still seems doubtful that *if* Saddam eventually got weapons again (big 'if") he'd use them against the US or give/sell them to terrar-ists.

Absolutely. He was much more interested in deterring Iran and intimidating Israel.

In fact, Iran was probably the big reason he wanted the world to believe he had WMD.

Ryan

[Rspaight]

Damn, I'm channeling Bush. I need a lobotomy. No sooner do I post about corruption in the oil-for-food program than I read this.

So, hmmmm. There were no WMDs, and no real links to al Qaeda. So we had to invade because... Saddam was abusing the oil-for-food program! Yeah, that's worth nine figures, 1000+ American lives, and a boost to terrorist recruitment. Nice work, George.

Cheney sez: He wanted the sanctions lifted! Well, yeah. This is news?

I love the quote at the end. No, you dumb monkey, Kerry didn't vote to go to war, he voted to give you the authority to go to war. Which you screwed up.

The part about Poland is pretty funny, too, given how Bush held them up as a shining example of goodness in the last debate. Now they were an active participant in the activity that justified the war! Oh, God, my head hurts.

Bolding mine.

Bush, Cheney Concede Saddam Had No Weapons of Mass Destruction

By Scott Lindlaw Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 7, 2004

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue - whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.

Ridiculing the Bush administration's evolving rationale for war, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry shot back: "You don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact."

Vice President Dick Cheney brushed aside the central findings of chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer - that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any either - while Bush unapologetically defended his decision to invade Iraq.

"The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said as he prepared to fly to campaign events in Wisconsin. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away."

Duelfer found no formal plan by Saddam to resume WMD production, but the inspector surmised that Saddam intended to do so if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Bush seized upon that inference, using the word "intent" three times in reference to Saddam's plans to resume making weapons.

This week marks the first time that the Bush administration has listed abuses in the oil-for-fuel program as an Iraq war rationale. But the strategy holds risks because some of the countries that could be implicated include U.S. allies, such as Poland, Jordan and Egypt. In addition, the United States itself played a significant role in both the creation of the program and how it was operated and overseen.

For his part, Cheney dismissed the significance of Duelfer's central findings, telling supporters in Miami, "The headlines all say 'no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad.' We already knew that."

The vice president said he found other parts of the report "more intriguing," including the finding that Saddam's main goal was the removal of international sanctions.

"As soon as the sanctions were lifted, he had every intention of going back" to his weapons program, Cheney said.

The report underscored that "delay, defer, wait, wasn't an option," Cheney said. And he told a later forum in Fort Myers, Fla., speaking of the oil-for-food program: "The sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams. Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars."

Yet Bush and Cheney acknowledged more definitively than before that Saddam did not have the banned weapons that both men had asserted he did - and had cited as the major justification before attacking Iraq in March 2003.

Bush has recently left the question open. For example, when asked in June whether he thought such weapons had existed in Iraq, Bush said he would "wait until Charlie (Duelfer) gets back with the final report."

In July, Bush said, "We have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction," a sentence construction that kept alive the possibility the weapons might yet be discovered.

On Thursday, the president used the clearest language to date nailing the question shut:

"Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there," Bush said. His words placed the blame on U.S. intelligence agencies.

In recent weeks, Cheney has glossed over the primary justification for the war, most often by simply not mentioning it. But in late January 2004, Cheney told reporters in Rome: "There's still work to be done to ascertain exactly what's there."

"The jury is still out," he told National Public Radio the same week, when asked whether Iraq had possessed banned weapons.

Duelfer's report was presented Wednesday to senators and the public with less than four weeks left in a fierce presidential campaign dominated by questions about Iraq and the war on terror.

In Bayonne, N.J., Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards on Thursday called "amazing" Cheney's assertions that the Duelfer report justified rather than undermined Bush's decision to go to war, and he accused the Republican of using "convoluted logic."

Kerry, in a campaign appearance in Colorado, said: "The president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq."

A short time later, while campaigning in Wisconsin, Bush angrily responded to Kerry's charge he sought to "make up" a reason for war.

"He's claiming I misled America about weapons when he, himself, cited the very same intelligence about Saddam weapons programs as the reason he voted to go to war," Bush said. Citing a lengthy Kerry quote from two years ago on the menace Saddam could pose, Bush said: "Just who's the one trying to mislead the American people?"

[Rspaight]

The report underscored that "delay, defer, wait, wasn't an option," Cheney said. And he told a later forum in Fort Myers, Fla., speaking of the oil-for-food program: "The sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams. Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars."

That's especially rich, considering that Halliburton, under CEO Dick Cheney, did billions of dollars of business with Iraq (through Eurpoean front companies) after sanctions were eased in the late 90s. So it's OK for Dick Cheney to profit from undermining the sanctions, but we had to go to war to stop the sanctions from eroding?

You heard it here first, folks: we had to invade Iraq to prevent Dick Cheney from making any more money from them. That's what the White House's case has been reduced to.

Ryan