e. magill's Intrigue

WMDs in Iraq and the Problem of Bipartisan Politics

[The following is part of an e-mail I recently sent to a friend of mine in response to an e-mail he sent me, proclaiming that Bush lied to the American public about WMDs in Iraq, that the war in Iraq was unjustified, and similar sentiments that you can probably predict concerning the administration and the state of our country. This friend spent many years as an aspiring physicist whose goal was to dethrone Stephen Hawking as the leading scientific mind on the planet, which is why you will find certain quasi-scientific language in the opening paragraphs of this response. Portions of the e-mail are not provided here, and what is provided has been edited.]

Before I get started, let me warn you about one thing. It greatly concerns me that you are so willing to throw around the word "truth" when talking about this matter. Politics and truth are two concepts that are very far removed from one another. To paraphrase some of science's greatest minds, there is no such thing as unbiased information (Heisenberg), there is no such thing as an honest politician (Einstein), and it is easier to understand the nature of the universe than it is to find political truth (Hawking). I do not assume to know what's really going on, I am willing to admit that my entire argument is based on opinion, assumption, and speculation, and I would hope that you could make the same admissions. From the tone of your e-mail, however, it seems that you are in an almost apocalyptic panic over your rather extreme beliefs that this country is becoming a fascist empire, and you tell me that what you believe is the "truth," which you must know is an elusive concept.

What you say about the administration and about the war in Iraq is based more on opinion than on fact, and neither of us seems to have been overly swayed by the information that has come to light in the past year or by the research we have done. This means that our political beliefs are based more in faith than they are in evidence, and you, of all people, should understand the danger of that. You cannot prove that Bush lied about Iraq any more than I can prove he didn't; therefore, we both must concede that we are not in possession of the truth and that this debate is nothing more than an academic intellectual exercise. To think otherwise is to narrow your vision and open yourself up to the inevitability of making horrible mistakes and miscalculations.

I find it hard to understand how a man as intelligent as yourself can honestly believe the things you just asserted in your e-mail to me. I am hardly a Bush apologist, but I cannot accept that it is anywhere within the boundaries of reality to think that President Bush, despite checks and balances and the choir of people who agree and disagree with him, is building a fascist, imperialistic empire of warfare, hatred, paranoia, and greed, that the scales of our future hang in the balance, that government spending is so out of control that we are going to be a bankrupt, impoverished nation, or that our civil liberties are in such dire straits that everything America stands for is being destroyed. But before I get to all of that, let me discuss the issue you began with, the issue of WMDs in Iraq.

The entire world (especially the UN) did not believe that there were WMDs in Iraq, you say.

Really? Then how do you explain seventeen UN resolutions that all stated, unequivocally, that Iraq had oppressive and illegal weapons programs, including unresolved nuclear, biological, and chemical clusters? Even Jacques Chirac conceded that WMDs in Iraq were a serious threat to world peace.

Indeed, until 2003, nearly the entire world was convinced that Iraq maintained clandestine WMD production. It wasn't until France, Germany, and Russia started to raise the specter of doubt last year that people started to honestly ask for evidence. So we offered UNSCOM reports from 1998 and testimonials from Iraqi defectors (this is UN intelligence, not U.S. intelligence) and agreed that another brief round of inspections was called for.

Then, on March 6, 2003, Hans Blix, after extensive work with UNMOVIC, submitted a written report to the UN, a report that outlined dozens of detailed "clusters" of information that Iraq had not accounted for or explained. Based on what was known, we had no way of determining whether or not there were large stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq, but the threat alone--combined with the repeated defiance of the nation to stick to international law or treaties it had signed, the continued sponsorship of terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (and, yes, possibly even Al Qaeda), and the repeated vocal hostility directed towards other nations--was enough to justify an alarmist perspective.

Before the invasion, we also unearthed banned conventional weapons in the form of Al Samoud II rockets that went well beyond proscribed limitations, staging grounds for additional weapons, prohibited UAVs with chemical sprayers attached to the nosecones, warheads rigged to carry chemical weapons, etc., and any one of these things--and any one of Blix's unaccounted for clusters for that matter--constituted material breech under UN mandate, mandate that called for serious consequences. If Hussein wanted to cooperate, make life better for his people, end sanctioning, prevent the invasion, restore sovereignty to his country, and maintain the Gulf War cease-fire that he had agreed to in good faith, he could have easily declared all of these, but instead, he did not. He chose to submit a weapons declaration that was as incomplete as the dozens of declarations that preceeded it, which forced us to rely on our own intelligence and the intelligence of the world community.

But, for some reason, France, Germany, and Russia continued to argue against military action to resolve the potentially catastrophic situation. It is coming out now, thanks to a newly formed independent Iraqi newspaper, that the Iraqi Oil Ministry was bribing a large number of very prominent government workers, agencies, and offices in all three of these countries. Even without illicit corruption, it should be noted, all three of these countries had more to lose, financially, from a forced end to the oil-for-food program than any other country. Therefore, when these countries pointed the finger at America, claiming corruption and political weight being thrown around Iraqi oil, it was nothing short of hypocritical projection. Why else would these three countries proclaim that another country is arrogant? Hello, pot, this is the kettle speaking; stop calling me black.

In short, I do not believe that France, Germany, and Russia acted out of a genuine belief that Iraq was innocent of the charges; I believe that they were covering their asses and are still doing so. I also reiterate my much stated position that the UN, by being unable to prevent abject corruption or accusations of corruption, by not having any system of checks and balances, oversight, or accountability, by being unable to enforce any of their mandates against any nation (including the U.S. and Israel, by the way), and by accomplishing nothing in oppressive countries except economic sanctioning (a practice that harms civilians more than governments), is a flawed, useless, and dangerous entity that does not improve--in any way--the brutal dynamic of international politics.

The UN's inability to either fully support the U.S. invasion of Iraq or to make the invasion illegal only proves my point more. What did the UN accomplish in Iraq, twelve years of sanctioning and suffering? Some fucking accomplishment.

And let's not forget that there were many nations not on the Oil Ministry list (the main ones being Great Britain, Spain, Italy, and Australia) that were ready to vote for the invasion of Iraq and that did, even without explicit UN approval, supply material and military support to the invasion and subsequent stabilization period.

So, while there is an independent investigation going on in regards to the intelligence leading up to the war, I still do not believe that Iraq was innocent of the charges or that the removal of Saddam Hussein was a bad thing. David Kay, the man responsible for the search for WMDs in Iraq, said that there are, indeed, no "large stockpiles" of WMD material that he can find. However, he asserted time and time again that there were extensive and massive programs, some active and some dormant, to study, produce, and disseminate WMDs, and when asked if the administration did the right thing, he answered that Iraq posed more of a threat than we had assumed, that the Bush administration was more than justified in invading.

Many Iraqi officials had even made it a habit to convince Saddam that more weapons existed then there really were, which makes it ten times harder for us to assert that we "should have known" that the large stockpiles would not be found. Enough evidence has been found to conclude that, gone unchecked, Iraq would still have posed the threat we believed she could pose, and given enough time, she would have successfully lobbied the UN to end sanctions and would have been able to resume many of her WMD operations. In fact, the possibility, which Kay conceded was not a remote one, that Iraq had WMDs that are now in the hands of terrorists or in the possession of another country (popular belief leans to Syria) might cause one to reach the conclusion that we waited too long and gave Iraq too much time to prepare for our invasion.

And let's not forget that Iraq did nothing to prove her good behavior after the first Gulf War. She lied repeatedly and hid from inspectors a biological weapons program that wasn't uncovered until late 1995 and wasn't dismantled until 1997. UNSCOM reports from 1998, when inspections ceased before Desert Fox, concluded that there were many simple methods and avenues available to Iraq, if she wished to alleviate the fears that the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs had not been effectively destroyed, methods and avenues that Hussein chose not to use.

At that point, President Clinton, citing the threat posed by Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and failing to ask for the permission of Congress or the UN, bombed Iraq. There was no outcry, and there were no voices (even in the UN) shouting that Clinton had lied or used faulty intelligence*, despite the fact that Bush would use some of the same intelligence, five years later, and get accused of lying to and misleading the American people. The assumption is that Iraq was innocent until proven guilty, but the truth is that the burden of proof was never on America, but on the Iraqi government; Iraq was on probation following the Gulf War, and a man on probation has to prove his good behavior.

[*Republicans did, predictably, try to argue that Desert Fox was politically driven, that it was a diversion from the Monica Lewinski scandal, but very few Republicans, if any, argued that Clinton’s justifications for bombing Iraq were invalid. Personally, while I find the timing suspicious, I am not cynical enough to believe that any president would use warfare as a diversion from sexual indescretion. It’s possible that he changed the timing of a planned attack based on political pressure, but I’m willing to give the former administration the benefit of the doubt on this one; it may have just been coincidence.]

So, after twelve years of sanctions that hurt Iraqi civilians, the UN was impotent in changing Saddam Hussein's brutal government of hatred, because Hussein absolutely refused to live up to his promises. This all would have been over with if, in 1992, the UN hadn't urged us to give peace a chance. The truth is, we gave peace a chance (which may or may not have been the right call), and we gave Iraq seventeen last chances to make it work, and peace now lies in ruins upon the desert after twelve preventable years of horror, death, sanctioning, and oppression. Bush is not the man to blame for the invasion of Iraq, and even if he were, don't forget that Congress and the unanimous consensus of the UN voted for it too.

If Bush lied about Iraq, then so did every other political leader in America until 2003, as did the UN and world leaders across the globe. If Bush knew that there were no WMDs in Iraq, then he must have had a clairvoyant knowledge that nobody on Earth--not even Saddam Hussein--had. It is nothing short of bipartisan mudslinging to conclude that Bush is the only man responsible for possibly faulty intelligence or that we could safely calculate with any degree of accuracy that Iraq was not a threat to our security. We did not know, and that was the problem. When anything is possible, the only way to be safe is to assume and prepare for the worst, and the worst, in this situation, went well beyond unacceptable.*

[*George Tenet, head of the CIA, agrees with this assessment. After I wrote this, he held a press conference in which his main points were (1) while intelligence may have been slightly exaggerated, it was following worst-case scenario thinking, which must be done when the burden of proof remains squarely on the head of a lying dictator (he also made it very clear that the intelligence was prefaced with caution and disclaimers about its uncertainty), (2) Iraq was never considered by the intelligence community to be an "imminent threat," but the administration never considered it such either (the president, in many press conferences and in his 2003 State of the Union Address, argued that the only time we could be sure that Iraq was an "imminent threat" was after Iraq had attacked another nation or after a WMD was used by terrorists), and (3) the only logical conclusion that the intelligence community could reach, based on history and based on the information, was that there was a high probability that WMDs existed in Iraq.]

And how, in any estimation, can you conclude that the removal of Saddam Hussein was a bad thing? How can you possibly believe that life in Iraq is worse now than it was during the times of torture, rape, assassination, oppression, genocide, international sanctioning, starvation, and no scrap of free speech or religious freedom? If you buy into the belief that life in Iraq is worse now, then you are nothing short of brainwashed. Get online and read the blogs coming out of Iraq, talk to any soldier who has returned from Iraq, look at the Gallup polls taken from the Iraqi people, or go out and pick up one of the new independent Iraqi newspapers, and then tell me that the invasion of Iraq was a bad thing. I simply cannot believe that giving freedom to an oppressed people, even when corrupt nations disagree with you, is wrong.

And let's look at the international response that so many people seem worried about. France, Germany, Russia, Syria, and China, while they have publicly stated that their alliances (or lack thereof) with America are unchanged, think that, in this case, we were arrogant and wrong. Oh no, let's panic! France, Germany, Russia, Syria, and China think we're wrong! Come on, man, this is a normal state of affairs; at what point in history did the entire world ever agree on anything?

But what about other nations? Lybia has announced an end and cooperative dismantlement to their WMD programs, North Korea is slowly backing down from their attitude of last year, Iran is agreeing to talks, Pakistan is allowing inspectors to examine their nuclear capabilities, and Saudi Arabia has admitted a team of investigators to look into 9-11 intelligence. None of this would be happening, in my estimation, if we hadn't made an example out of Iraq, and all of the cooperation would stop if Bush were removed from office in favor of a peace-monger who will pull troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, our alliances with Spain*, Japan, Poland, Australia, and others are stronger than ever because of their support.

[*Of course, our alliance with Spain has become far more tenuous now. Not long before I posted this, Madrid was bombed by terrorists, presumably Al Qaeda, and the election that immediately followed appears to have been motivated by a fear that Spain was targetted due to its cooperation in Iraq. Much of the old government was voted out in favor of a new one that has vowed to remove troops from the region, which is a sad testiment to the effectiveness of terrorism.]

How many times did you hear the sentiment that we should have "finished the job" back in 1992? How many lives were lost when, after being told the United States would help them, the Iraqi people attempted to rise up against Saddam back then? How many lives have been lost since then as a result of oppression and economic sanctioning? How many lives is too many before you do something about it?

I know that what this argument is really about is a particular ideological split between the two of us, a split that we have discussed many times before. You are an extreme passifist, believing that it is wrong, no matter what, to use violence to solve a problem. Unfortunately, I have been forced to accept a far more realistic view of the world, and I know that sometimes violent measures are the only way to deal with certain extreme and pervasive problems. I don't like war, in fact I think it is one of the worst horrors imaginable, but sometimes it is better than the alternative, which is not peace but appeasement.

When it comes to Iraq, I am a true believer in freedom and democracy--in the social experiment that defines America--and I believe that the Iraqi people deserve it no less than we do. I am willing to fight for these beliefs. I may not be on the physical front lines, but I am well aware of the cost--in human terms--of trying to convince people that war was necessary and that continued "occupation" is necessary; I have friends and relatives over there right now.

Did you really expect me to say anything else? Did you really believe that my opinion about Iraq or the necessity of its invasion has changed because we haven't yet found large stockpiles of WMDs? I do believe that we should investigate our intelligence and, if there was an intelligence breakdown (which I’m not so sure there was), then it is not the fault of President Bush. The President has no way of judging the validity of his intelligence; all he can do is take it for fact and act upon that intelligence. If it is flawed, it speaks to problems in our intelligence community, not to problems in our administration.

And let's not forget that, if there are no more WMDs in Iraq, then we have to explain the intelligence flaws in every other nation that investigated Iraq and the intelligence flaws of the UN, international inspections, and Hans Blix. But it's still way too soon to say that the intelligence was undoubtedly flawed. How long were you willing to wait for UN inspections before you deemed them flawed, another twelve years, another twenty-four years?

And if Bush is as duplicitous as you say, how come the administration hasn't planted WMDs in Iraq? If he can dupe the entire intelligence community, the UN, weapons inspectors, and Congress into believing that Iraq possessed WMDs (which they already believed anyway, but we'll pretend they didn't for the sake of argument), then certainly he could make them believe that a few drums of anthrax we depositted in Tikrit were made by Saddam (not to mention the fact that he could "convince" David Kay to say that he found large stockpiles in Iraq). Certainly we could fabricate evidence to connect Saddam to Bin Laden. If Bush could make up a war for political purposes and get his nation and other nations to go along with him, then fabricating evidence would be a cakewalk in comparison. Besides, if he did this for political gain, his estimation hasn't been too great; we're split almost 50/50 in this country (and in the world) on whether or not his justifications were valid.

Despite the fact that I agree with and will defend him and the neocons out there when it comes to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the War on Terror, though, I may not necessarily be voting for Bush. He says, in his 2004 State of the Union Address, that he wants to cut useless government spending, but then he goes into a laundry list of ways he wants to increase it*.

[*As I write this, Bush has just released his new budget proposal, in which the claim is that he has listed over 100 government programs to be cut and has come up with a way to cut the deficit in half in five years. I will take a look at this proposal and make a judgment after some analysis, but if it is as productive as some claim it to be, I may not be able to hold on to this particular complaint.]

The only thing that gives me more pause is when the Democrats (Daschle and Pelosi) respond, by stepping even further out of bounds and proposing social healthcare and complete and unequivocal amnesty for illegal aliens, not to mention the majority belief among Democratic voters that the threat of terrorism is less important than their hatred of a single man (recent polls from the Democratic primaries show this).

And John Kerry says that the threat of terrorism is exaggerated, shrugging his shoulders at the three thousand people who died on 9/11 and the hundreds more who have died at the hands of terrorism against America--essentially ignoring the radicals who want to turn this country into a warzone like the middle east--despite the fact that, thirteen months ago, Kerry was espousing the threat of terrorism and the threat of Iraq as vehemently as President Bush.

Therefore, if it came down to a choice between Bush and Kerry, with no other alternatives, I'd vote for Bush in a heartbeat, because Kerry isn't going to do anything to prevent another 9/11 while I live in a high-profile city. Indeed, Kerry will, if elected, and assuming he lives up to his current campaign promises, roll back many of Bush's policies, encourage the USA PATRIOT ACT to expire, pull out of Iraq, bow down to the corrupt leaders of this world, and pull for cuts in military and intelligence spending the way he has in the past. I may disagree with Bush on many things, but I agree with him on the most important thing in our country's current state of affairs. Besides, when it comes to the subjects on which the President and I disagree, I do not agree (for the most part) with the Democratic nominees' take on those subjects either.

Bush goes on to promote faith-based initiatives, banning gay marriage, increasing the government strangle-hold on education and healthcare, granting limited amnesty to undocumented workers while simultaneously increasing the cost of legal immigration, and illegalizing abortion. He goes on propagandizing the drug war and increasing the size of both government and deficit by leaps and bounds while standing firm on a self-righteous moral code that would curse you to Hell if you disagreed. He signed the Campaign Finance Reform Bill, despite its clear violations of the First Amendment, and he appointed John Ashcroft, a veritable fascist who once lost a State election to a dead man because the electorates thought the dead guy was less frightening, to his cabinet. I do not agree with everything that Bush stands for, and I fail to understand how so many conservatives out there (both social and fiscal) are willing to be his apologists. Can't they see that he is going against certain conservative principles*?

[*I’m not stupid, of course. I know that the reason Republicans are so defensive of Bush is that they don’t want any tarnish to cost him votes. And this is a central problem in a bipartisan system, because it allows us to elect and re-elect leaders who we do not fully believe in, causes us to justify what we would normally not, and steadily narrows our options for the future.]

But the Democrats, in response to Bush, propose nationalizing health care, increasing government regulation on education even more than Bush wants to, cutting intelligence and military spending, pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, repealing the USA PATRIOT ACT, granting universal amnesty to illegal aliens, increasing welfare and social programs, extending unemployment compensation again, overtaxing the successful, increasing government intrusion into the free market, overtaxing cigarette and alcohol manufacturers, ignoring terrorism, publicly apologizing to the UN, approving affirmative action, reinstating the "fairness doctrine," etc., and seem to be motivated more by sheer hatred than by anything else.

The bipartisan madness has become the politics of reaction. Nobody in the mainstream believes in anything anymore; it's all politics. The ideals have been left for the third parties, who nobody listens to, and the only choice we are left with is the choice between two groups of people entangled in hatred, bias, moral equivocation, and an unbending refusal to cooperate on anything. The Democratic Party's reaction to the Iraq situation is but one example of how a political party can change its position on any given subject by one hundred-eighty degrees simply because of the political affiliation of the man in the White House.

The people then have to struggle to make excuses for the behavior of their leaders, instead of making an intellectual effort to find the "truth" and make sound opinions based on evidence and empirical data.

According to the Democrats, America is hated across the globe and is about to be flushed down the toilet as the result of imperialism (and economic despair), but according to the Republicans, America is about to be blown to bits by terrorists, condemned by "moral decay," and then turned into a socialistic society of welfare (and economic despair). None of these outrageous assumptions are true; they are merely extreme exaggerations of real (perceived) problems. Certainly there are people who believe this extremist nonsense, but given a little more intellectual effort, I think the majority out there would be able to see through it and realize that the underlying problems are not so catastrophic.

You've also got political leaders espousing irrational consiracy theories without basis (Whitewater or Halliburton), despite all evidence that these theories are patently false, and when that fails, they turn to pointless personal attack (the Clinton impeachment circus or the 'Bush is an arrogant AWOL oil-thirty coke-snorting imperialistic cowboy' rallying cries) or they try to defend themselves against an attack that hasn't occurred ("They had better stop defending Saddam Hussein!" or "Why does the administration insist on calling us unpatriotic?!"). It's an absolutely ridiculous self-satire.

So it is possible that I will be voting for my ideals and against the bipartisan insanity by voting for a third party candidate, and I encourage you to consider doing the same. George Washington warned us, in his farewell address, that a two-party political system would be the death of the democratic experiment, by increasing polarization, political maneuvering, and corruption, and his wise words could not be any more correct and relevant than they are today. This country is suffering from a huge division and is hemorrhaging from the struggle (look at the 2000 election), but nobody seems intent on doing anything about it. I know that a bipartisan politician will win the election, but at least my vote will stand for what I think is right.*

[*Current events, especially what has happened in Spain and the rhetoric coming from John Kerry, have made me reconsider. Despite the differences I have with him, it seems likely that I will vote for President Bush, because I do not want terrorism to be ignored, downplayed, or appeased. There is no campaign issue more important to me, and I fear that, by denying Bush one vote, I would be helping John Kerry get into power and would be encouraging this country to slow down its War on Terror. I wish I could vote for a third party, but the urgency of this problem demands the strength, determination, vigilance, and leadership that John Kerry would not be able to provide.]

-e. magill, 3/20/2004