The anti-Iraqi crowd (“anti-Iraqi” strikes me a neutral descriptive adjective for those who object to the policy of fighting terrorism against rank-and-file Iraqis, just as “anti-black” would suit someone who opposed doing anything to stop old-time Southern lynchings) is puffed with pleasure that the Iraqi Survey Group has wound up its search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq without turning up any stockpiles left over from the Ba’athist regime. That proves, they and their media facilitators repeat endlessly, that the principal reason for overthrowing Saddam Hussein has been proven to be a “lie”, “fraud”, “invention”, “deception”, pick your pejorative. Instapundit has a roundup of opinions on the other side, many of which, while sensible, sound a bit defensive. WMD’s are on their way, it appears, to becoming the Black Legend of the Iraqi campaign. Before the legend turns into a substitute for history, let’s subject it to examination.
The best starting point is the last set of facts on which every rational observer agrees: Ba’athist Iraq built chemical weapons, used them against both Iran and internal dissidents, and still had large stocks on hand after the Gulf War of 1991. Those weapons did not spontaneously self-destruct. If the ISG finds no sign of their presence in Iraq today, there are only a few possible explanations:
Saddam Hussein destroyed them without letting the rest of the world know what he was doing. (To establish that “Bush lied”, one must add that the U.S. government had unique knowledge of the true state of affairs but covered up Saddam’s innocence in order to preserve the case of military action.)
They were moved to other countries at some point before the Coalition took control of Iraq.
They were hidden within the country, and the ISG failed to locate them.
Anti-Iraqi commentators like to pretend that the first is the only scenario worth considering and have made an effort to devise believable rationales for such bizarre conduct by the Iraqi tyrant. In this they resemble pre-Copernican astronomers elaborating epicycles sosein ta phainomena without having to abandon the essence of their theory. Either of the alternatives has the Ockhamite virtue of requiring no convoluted analysis of why Saddam acted against his own prima facie interests.
The kerfuffle over the missing explosives at al-QaaQaa, a focus of media attention during the last week of the Presidential campaign, left much unresolved but did demonstrate that it was entirely possible for pro-Ba’athist holdouts to transport hundreds of tons of contraband out of reach of the Coalition even after the fall of Baghdad. That fact, not merely undisputed by the anti-Iraqis but emphasized (when they saw it as useful to an anti-Bush narrative), shows that the removal of WMD’s to safe havens, either abroad or somewhere within Iraq’s California-sized land mass, is not some wild speculation. What happened at al-QaaQaa could have happened more than once. Indeed, why wouldn’t Saddam Hussein have taken steps to keep his arsenal out of Coalition hands?
The assumption behind the ISG’s modus operandi was that Saddam kept his WMD’s intact, planning to use them against hostile troops. Its surveys establish pretty clearly that, although there are signs that Saddam himself thought that he had a deployable arsenal, such was not the case. Whoever was making decisions for the Ba’athist regime during its final days realized that chemical and biological agents are useless against an army with U.S.-caliber training and technology. Perhaps the Ba’athist higher-ups were subtle enough to figure out also that launching futile WMD barrages would inflame American opinion, while the weapons’ absence from the scene would enhance the credibility of anti-war elements.
Whatever the details, the ISG’s report does not tell us what happened to the weapons that existed in 1991. Treating it as support for a malign interpretation of American policy is idiotarianism distilled to its essence.
The balance of probabilities is that our leaders were right to believe that Iraq retained its WMD capabilities. That being the case, it would have been irresponsible folly to leave Saddam Hussein in power.
The reason for concern about the Iraqi weapons was, of course, that the Ba’athists were avowed and vehement foes of the United States and its allies. After 9/11, celebratory murals appeared all over Iraq. The danger that an antagonistic tyrant with a long record of vicious conduct would furnish chemical, biological or, for all we knew at the time, nuclear materials to terrorists operating in the West was too palpable to be disregarded. It was a danger against which United Nations sanctions would have been no reliable deterrent even if they had been vigorously enforced rather than in an escalating state of disrepair. Those points are all made in the ISG’s Final Report, issued last September. Oddly enough, anti-Iraqi commentators tend to ignore what the ISG said there; they pay attention only to what suits their purposes.
We now know, thanks to UNSCAM revelations, that Saddam was more dangerous than we realized. Enriched by liberal rake-offs from funds that were supposed to purchase food and medicine, he had billions of dollars at his disposal, some of which he spent openly on rewards for the families of suicide bombers. Covert financing for other terrorists was well within his means. In the alternative universe favored by our anti-Iraqi elitists, America would have done nothing to interfere.
A discouragingly large segment of the “Bush LIED!” demographic have passed beyond reason to blind, intransigent faith. It didn’t really matter what the Iraqi Survey Group found; no mass of data will ever weigh enough in certain minds to overbalance the supreme certainty that action against murderous tyrants is a fundamental breach of morality. The cleverest tactic for the White House, I begin to think, would be to spread rumors that Saddam Hussein was secretly a born-again Christian who disapproved of abortion and lobbied for the Federal Marriage Amendment. That might convince the Left that he deserved no further toleration!
Comments