"Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked"

This is from the Wall Street Journal's Editorial page: Opinion Journal

Revisionist History
Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked.

BY PETER WEHNER
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

"Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations--the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so--and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn:

The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war. "There is no question [the Bush administration] misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq," according to Ted Kennedy. Jimmy Carter charged that on Iraq, "President Bush has not been honest with the American people." And Al Gore has said that an "abuse of the truth" characterized the administration's "march to war." These charges are themselves misleading, which explains why no independent body has found them credible. Most of the world was operating from essentially the same set of assumptions regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities. Important assumptions turned out wrong; but mistakenly relying on faulty intelligence is a world apart from lying about it.

Let's review what we know. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the intelligence community's authoritative written judgment on specific national-security issues. The 2002 NIE provided a key judgment: "Iraq has continued its [WMD] programs in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

Thanks to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission, which investigated the causes of intelligence failures in the run-up to the war, we now know that the President's Daily Brief (PDB) and the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief "were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE" (my emphasis). We also know that the intelligence in the PDB was not "markedly different" from that given to Congress. This helps explains why John Kerry, in voting to give the president the authority to use force, said, "I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." It's why Sen. Kennedy said, "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." And it's why Hillary Clinton said in 2002, "In the four years since the inspectors, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program."

Beyond that, intelligence agencies from around the globe believed Saddam had WMD. Even foreign governments that opposed his removal from power believed Iraq had WMD: Just a few weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Wolfgang Ischinger, German ambassador to the U.S., said, "I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they continue to have weapons of mass destruction."

In addition, no serious person would justify a war based on information he knows to be false and which would be shown to be false within months after the war concluded. It is not as if the WMD stockpile question was one that wasn't going to be answered for a century to come.

The Bush administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments. Earlier this year, Mr. Gore charged that "CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House . . . found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases." Sen. Kennedy charged that the administration "put pressure on intelligence officers to produce the desired intelligence and analysis."

This myth is shattered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's bipartisan Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. Among the findings: "The committee did not find any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so." Silberman-Robb concluded the same, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments." What the report did find is that intelligence assessments on Iraq were "riddled with errors"; "most of the fundamental errors were made and communicated to policy makers well before the now-infamous NIE of October 2002, and were not corrected in the months between the NIE and the start of the war."

Because weapons of mass destruction stockpiles weren't found, Saddam posed no threat. Howard Dean declared Iraq "was not a danger to the United States." John Murtha asserted, "There was no threat to our national security." Max Cleland put it this way: "Iraq was no threat. We now know that. There are no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons programs." Yet while we did not find stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, what we did find was enough to alarm any sober-minded individual.

Upon his return from Iraq, weapons inspector David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), told the Senate: "I actually think this may be one of those cases where [Iraq under Saddam Hussein] was even more dangerous than we thought." His statement when issuing the ISG progress report said: "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities" that were part of "deliberate concealment efforts" that should have been declared to the U.N. And, he concluded, "Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction."

Among the key findings of the September 2004 report by Charles Duelfer, who succeeded Mr. Kay as ISG head, are that Saddam was pursuing an aggressive strategy to subvert the Oil for Food Program and to bring down U.N. sanctions through illicit finance and procurement schemes; and that Saddam intended to resume WMD efforts once U.N. sanctions were eliminated. According to Mr. Duelfer, "the guiding theme for WMD was to sustain the intellectual capacity achieved over so many years at such a great cost and to be in a position to produce again with as short a lead time as possible. . . . Virtually no senior Iraqi believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever. Evidence suggests that, as resources became available and the constraints of sanctions decayed, there was a direct expansion of activity that would have the effect of supporting future WMD reconstitution."

Beyond this, Saddam's regime was one of the most sadistic and aggressive in modern history. It started a war against Iran and used mustard gas and nerve gas. A decade later Iraq invaded Kuwait. Iraq was a massively destabilizing force in the Middle East; so long as Saddam was in power, rivers of blood were sure to follow.

Promoting democracy in the Middle East is a postwar rationalization. "The president now says that the war is really about the spread of democracy in the Middle East. This effort at after-the-fact justification was only made necessary because the primary rationale was so sadly lacking in fact," according to Nancy Pelosi.

In fact, President Bush argued for democracy taking root in Iraq before the war began. To take just one example, he said in a speech on Feb. 26, 2003: "A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America's interests in security, and America's belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq. . . . The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. And there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East. . . . A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region."

The following day the New York Times editorialized: "President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. . . . The idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy in the Arab world is one some members of the administration have been discussing for a long time."





These, then, are the urban legends we must counter, else falsehoods become conventional wisdom. And what a strange world it is: For many antiwar critics, the president is faulted for the war, and he, not the former dictator of Iraq, inspires rage. The liberator rather than the oppressor provokes hatred. It is as if we have stepped through the political looking glass, into a world turned upside down and inside out.

Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives."

Gah

ditto the gah, i didn't read the whole thing, but i think the problem with the war has been the lack of forsight of the withdrawl from iraq, and not the invasion itself...

Agreed. This post definitely needs a Gah option.

Revisionist History
...well that bit is correct anyway

"Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations.
well you only have to see that to give it the big GAH .

"gah" the intellectual equivalent of answering an argument by farting.... :laugh4:

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"Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations."

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The author's intellectual equivalent of having his head in the sand...

Goodness, Pindar! You have destroyed the backroom leftist's argument with one article.

And all of it is true.

edit:Look! All the liberals can do is insult it without providing an actual argument!!!!!




Well done, friend. Well done. :2thumbsup:

Good piece, but about 18 months late.

Despite Mr. Wehner's efforts, public opinion has already adjudged that:

There were no WMD's.

Saddam was evil, but posed no immediate threat.

The Bush administration "rushed to judgement" in launching the invasion.


These viewpoints, however erroneous (and I believe they are) will persist and cannot be altered for the forseeable future. In time, historians will revise and re-evaluate things, probably concluding that Mr. Wehner is largely correct, but that will not occur for some time.


The Bush administration needed to be fighting this perception war with a full-court press a long time ago. Wish they'd booted Mac' a lot earlier -- apparently Snow can at least see the need to do something on this front.

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Originally Posted by Pindar

"debunked" article ~:rolleyes:

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sorry WSJ, there is utterly no question whatsoever that the Bush Administration lied about the threat saddam posed. also, the nightmare scenario was nothing like anything the bush administration talked up.

the WSJ's thesis, is "the Bush administration did nothing funny with the intelligence, and the intelligence apparatus of the US, through no fault of it's own, dramatically overestimated saddam's buildup." whenever anyone went past the "yes/no" executive summary... they encountered the problem the CIA analysts encountered writing the NIE. the information was weak, and at the same time it said it would be ridiculous to think that saddam had rearmed, there was a small undercurrent of, "he could have super advanced weapons from the future... because we can't prove otherwise". any suggestion (from the intelligence community repudiating the intelligence the bush administration built their war claims on) otherwise fell on deaf ears. the bush administration had heard what they wanted, and tenet knew that their truth had little bearing on the zealotry displayed by cheney, and the singlemindedness of w. bush. then on the "yeah, there weren't any WMD, but he wanted them" the small problem with that, is Iran and North Korea have ACTIVE programs.

op/ed pieces are no better than blogs.

Any chance of a reader's digest version released?
Oh and GAH

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Originally Posted by Divinus Arma

Goodness, Pindar! You have destroyed the backroom leftist's argument with one article.

And all of it is true.

edit:Look! All the liberals can do is insult it without providing an actual argument!!!!!

Well done, friend. Well done. :2thumbsup:

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Here's some itty bitty things that he forgets to mention.

The media went form ............................................. to OMG SADDAM GOT WMD AND IS READY TO USE THEM. HE ALSO TRYING TO GET NUKES AND CAN FIRE THEM ON BRITAIN IN 45 MIN

when it comes to the WMD issue. Now, compare that to Iran and North-Korea.
Notice that this wasn't even a simple media focus from the US, this was letting Colin Powell presenting questionable (and later proven false) evidence as facts for the UN council.

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Originally Posted by the article

In fact, President Bush argued for democracy taking root in Iraq before the war began. To take just one example, he said in a speech on Feb. 26, 2003:

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Originally Posted by wiki

On February 15, 2003, as a response to the imminent invasion, the largest ever world-wide protests took place with 6-10 million people in over 60 countries around the world.

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Notice the dates. At this point he had argued since October 2002 about those WMD in a way that made most of the world quite certain that Bush wanted war. Liberation of the Iraqi people was only formed as an issue when the war was emminent and then still only mostly as a positive side-effect.

Don't have time to debate this more atm, but if you want to I can go into this deeper.

Oh, I've never argued that Bush lied to the public. What I'm arguing is that Bush started the hole debacle in October 2002 with the full intention of ending the Saddam issue (aka removing Saddam) once and for all, fully aware that war was the most likely option, with a considerble margin, to accomplish that goal. As a natural consequence, all information gathered and released by the Bush administration was focused onto accomplish war. No need to step outside those boundries and lie if you don't have to.

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Originally Posted by Pindar

This is from the Wall Street Journal's Editorial page: Opinion Journal

Revisionist History
Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked.

BY PETER WEHNER
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives."

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Is there any credible explanation of why British blood and treasure had to be spent to achieve this goal? If the White House wants freedom and democracy for Iraq, good on them, but why did we have to be involved? Blair certainly didn't say anything about freedom and democracy when he was justifying the war to Parliament in the vote before the invasion.

That is a great article. I read the entire thing. :yes:

Of course it reads like it was written for the Wall Street Journal, if he wants mainstream America to believe it he would have to put it into a “People” or “Star” format with some beauty tips and Britney Spears baby references intermingled. Having George Clooney or Bono read it would also help.

Sometimes I think if you were to give a plate of food to some starving people and tell them it was from the Bush administration they would starve to death. The same starving people would say with their last dying breath that the bush administration was only trying to keep them alive to torture them, rape them, and to steal their oil.

*sigh* Doesn't anyone remember that Saddam not only violated the Gulf War cease fire AND tried to kill a former U.S. President (via suicide bomber, aka: TERRORISM)? Just because some weak fool who was more concerned about getting his nob polished than foreign policy did nothing doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold Saddam accountable.

So I guess Yesdachi's reply counts as another "Gah" vote.

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Originally Posted by Lemur

So I guess Yesdachi's reply counts as another "Gah" vote.

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I’d vote for GAH or Britney’s baby, they both make more sense than mainstream America’s inability to see past the hype.

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Originally Posted by yesdachi

mainstream America’s inability to see past the hype.

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And that was apparently the reason for all this WMD and "Saddam is linked to AQ" nonsense - to have "mainstream America" buy into the war.

So Yesdachi, if I'm understanding your original "gah or britney's baby" post, everyone who disagrees with the Bush admin is either fixated on celebrity culture or an unthinking Bush-hater who would rather eat poison than admit Bush was right about anything. Am I getting you right, here?

I'm just not sure which camp I fall into. Besides the Gah camp, of course.

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Originally Posted by Article

"I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security."

Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives"

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Just these two things from the article.

One: To actually threaten the US Saddam would have to get a clutch of ICBMs, and those things aren't exactly easy to hide, acquire or build. If you've ever seen one, those things are huge, and cost like you wouldn't believe. Plus, they are essentially more like a rocket than a missile. Now, he may be pouring a lot of his economy into the army and weapons, but nevertheless, just the infrastructure to actually threaten the US would be huge.

Two: now, now, you would't expect the deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives to actually say something bad about his boss. He's a bearoucrat, his career depends on people above him, and telling they made a mistake would not be healthy (for his career, I mean, we're past those days when you could just kill the messanger).

Oh, and officialy, my answer is :gah:.

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Originally Posted by Divinus Arma

Goodness, Pindar! You have destroyed the backroom leftist's argument with one article.

And all of it is true.

edit:Look! All the liberals can do is insult it without providing an actual argument!!!!!

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It's obviously just well written propaganda.
"Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives."
What do you expect coming out of that. A bunch of former lawyers using misleading language.

It doesn't change the fact that Bush Administration lied and acted incompetently. They lied about the connection to Sept. 11, and they lied that Saddam had nukes, and soon that will cost America more lives than Sept.11 itself. It's true that Iraq is somewhat democratic now, but for how long? Once the US leaves, if it ever does, what makes you think they won't begin rigging elections again, or worse start a factional civil war that will completely destroy the place worse than it already is. And all this at what cost. All those lives for nothing. I think more than 10,000 innocent Iraqis are now dead from constant insurgency.

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Originally Posted by Byzantine Prince

It's true that Iraq is somewhat democratic now.

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As Fareed Zakaria said (I'm paraphrasing), "Iraq has a new government, but the question is how relevant it is outside the Green Zone."

What new does this article bring up? What new evidence it shows that would change the things Bush Government did? Maybe im loosing my skills to understand written english,becouse i dont see anything but a nicely written document to defend the Bush Administration.Words merely words.I say :gah:

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Originally Posted by Pindar

Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations--the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so--and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn:

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Dear lord, you could feed all of Ghenghis Khan's cavalry for a decade on all those straw men.

Lets take just a few for starters: first, on the issue of whether the president misled the country into war:

The article cites the NIE, etc. What it neglects to mention is that the senate report on the 9/11 intelligence is only half complete. The second part, that deals with how the intelligence was used by the goverment, has not been written nor, apparently, even begun, because the Republicans who control the committee won't let it begin. You can read all about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_...igence_on_Iraq

To summarize: no independent report has ever been published on how Bush et al. used the intelligence. That's is the real charge here, strawmen notwithstanding.

One other fun note: the article actually tries to argue the following:

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In addition, no serious person would justify a war based on information he knows to be false and which would be shown to be false within months after the war concluded. It is not as if the WMD stockpile question was one that wasn't going to be answered for a century to come.

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It's argument here is that Bush is a 'serious' intellect? How very persuasive.


BTW, Divinus, did you know that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, your signature is a virtual paraphrase of the theme from 'Team America: World Police'?

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Originally Posted by Hurin_Rules

Divinus, did you know that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, your signature is a virtual paraphrase of the theme from 'Team America: World Police'?

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It's meant to be facetious and poke fun at my own political inclination, although beer and chicks are certainly worth fighting for.

I have actually never seen the movie.

I suppose if I were liberal my sig would look like this:

Liberal Champion

Hybrids. Tofu. Marijuana. Arbor Day. Gay Pride
Parades. Tie-Dye Shirts. Grown Men Crying.

These are the values that San Francisco was built on. We left the U.S.
for a reason. They can keep their SUVs and rifles.

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Originally Posted by Ser Clegane

And that was apparently the reason for all this WMD and "Saddam is linked to AQ" nonsense - to have "mainstream America" buy into the war.

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There were AQ links to Iraq and Iraq equals Saddam. However, there have been no known links to Saddam, AQ and the 911 attacks. AQ operated freely in Iraq and that means Saddam supported them, if he didn’t he would have made an effort to remove them. There is a connection to AQ, Iraq and Saddam and to think otherwise is nonsense.

I also think there were WMD’s in Iraq and that they were moved prior to our invasion. An invasion that was known about for weeks if not months before it happened. Is it soooo out of the realm of possibility that the WMD’s were moved? Like to Syria? That could certainly explain why they were not found in Iraq. There is practically as much evidence indicating that they were moved to Syria as there was that indicated they were in Iraq in the first place but for some reason “mainstream America’s inability to see past the hype” that bush lied to us has made it impossible for the masses to believe that there could have been other options than, found WMD in Iraq = Bush told truth & didn’t find WMD in Iraq = Bush Lied, lets hate him and everything he ever does period do not cross go do not collect $200 that’s it he is the antichrist done.

Id suggest that people take off their (patent pending) “bush lied glasses” and looked at things without the jaded hatred for the man and you might see that everything the administration has done, has not been wrong or a lie.

Could anyone answer the question… Could there have been WMD’s in Iraq that were moved prior to our invasion? The answer has to be yes. Were there? We may never know, but that doesn’t make it nonsense or bush a lier.

System check: I may be ranting. ~D I have written this last half quickly, I just received a call that my grandfather has been taken to the hospital, I am on my way there now. Please wish him well.

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Originally Posted by Vladimir

*sigh* Doesn't anyone remember that Saddam not only violated the Gulf War cease fire AND tried to kill a former U.S. President (via suicide bomber, aka: TERRORISM)? Just because some weak fool who was more concerned about getting his nob polished than foreign policy did nothing doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold Saddam accountable.

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Why should it matter to Britain whether or not Saddam tried to kill a US president, or if Clinton was more interested in having his knob polished than foreign policy? Is there any credible reason why Britain should have been dragged into this venture?

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Originally Posted by Byzantine Prince

It doesn't change the fact that Bush Administration lied and acted incompetently. They lied about the connection to Sept. 11, and they lied that Saddam had nukes, and soon that will cost America more lives than Sept.11 itself. It's true that Iraq is somewhat democratic now, but for how long? Once the US leaves, if it ever does, what makes you think they won't begin rigging elections again, or worse start a factional civil war that will completely destroy the place worse than it already is. And all this at what cost. All those lives for nothing. I think more than 10,000 innocent Iraqis are now dead from constant insurgency.

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Originally Posted by Keba

Just these two things from the article.

One: To actually threaten the US Saddam would have to get a clutch of ICBMs, and those things aren't exactly easy to hide, acquire or build. If you've ever seen one, those things are huge, and cost like you wouldn't believe. Plus, they are essentially more like a rocket than a missile. Now, he may be pouring a lot of his economy into the army and weapons, but nevertheless, just the infrastructure to actually threaten the US would be huge.

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Originally Posted by Kagemusha

What new does this article bring up? What new evidence it shows that would change the things Bush Government did? Maybe im loosing my skills to understand written english,becouse i dont see anything but a nicely written document to defend the Bush Administration.Words merely words.I say :gah:

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Please note that my earlier post predicted these types of response. Mr. Wehner's belated attempts will fall on deaf ears and will have little or no relevance/effect in defending the President's efforts. To spend serious effort otherwise is wasting one's time.

Why does anyone want to defend this idiot of a president? It confounds me. :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by Pannonian Redux

Why should it matter to the U.S. whether or not Hitler tried to bomb and invade the Islands? Is there any credible reason why the U.S. should have been dragged into this venture?

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Heh.


Cause we're allies bro. Because I like the British and I would fight for their interests almost as hard as I would fight for U.S. interests. Because I believe that Britain is the moral/ethical equivalent of the U.S. in foreign policy. Because I belive that the British are a fair and noble just-minded population. Because the success and happiness of the British people matters to me as an American personally. Because the success and security of the British people matter to us as a nation as well.

:2thumbsup:

:unitedstates: :unitedkingdom: