8.1.04
New reports: Bush "systematically misrepresented" Iraq's paper-based WMD
If we combine this new report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which found that the Bush administration "systematically misrepresented" the "threat" from Iraq's "WMD", with this report from the WaPo that Iraq's WMD existed only in the scribbled-down daydreams of Iraqi scientists and the deluded production orders of Saddam, we get a picture of elected officials deceiving the public and suborning democracy in order to invade a Third World country to get rid of the existential threat posed to Western civilization by crude drawings on scraps of paper.
Not a bad way to spend $200 billion dollars. And the lives of hundreds of dedicated young people.
But maybe it was worth it after all. Who knows what would have happened if Saddam had ordered his scientists to turn over these drawings to Al Qaeda? Why, the terrorists would have only needed advanced industrial facilities, secure import lines, some hi-tech jet fuel processing plants, a small corps of intelligent and trained scientists, appropriate delivery systems, a few years of testing and development, and a way to keep an operation combining all of these elements completely secret from the US before they might have had several missiles capable of flying a few hundred miles.
It is a scenario almost unbearable to think about. In fact, let's not think too deeply about it at all - it might be dangerous.
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Not a bad way to spend $200 billion dollars. And the lives of hundreds of dedicated young people.
But maybe it was worth it after all. Who knows what would have happened if Saddam had ordered his scientists to turn over these drawings to Al Qaeda? Why, the terrorists would have only needed advanced industrial facilities, secure import lines, some hi-tech jet fuel processing plants, a small corps of intelligent and trained scientists, appropriate delivery systems, a few years of testing and development, and a way to keep an operation combining all of these elements completely secret from the US before they might have had several missiles capable of flying a few hundred miles.
It is a scenario almost unbearable to think about. In fact, let's not think too deeply about it at all - it might be dangerous.
