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WMD:MIA?
'When will George W. Bush say, "We were wrong on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction"?' asks David Corn.
That question can either mean: when will Bush be in possession of sufficient information to judge rightly that "we were wrong"?
Or
Since we know that "we" were wrong, when will Bush fess up?
The Bush Administration's pre-war claims could be broadly put thus: Iraq is in possession of WMD; Iraq (recently) had been maintaining programs to develop and manufacture WMD; it's inconceivable that Saddam wouldn't pursue WMD - hence inspections would never neutralize his appetite for them.
That weapons can't be found doesn't mean that they're not there, but hidden; it doesn't entail that they weren't there, but were moved or destroyed. But to persist in believing these scenarios, one would have to possess some corroborating evidence to believe as much, or not have resolved outstanding questions and issues from pre-war intelligence (and other) assessments. This points to an issue which those who are keen to pounce on the current picture from Iraq illicitly ignore. It may be that the pre-war beliefs were wildly mistaken. But, that the evidence seemed so solid is reason in itself to proceed very cautiously, in order to "reconcile" the appearances. In other words, there are authentic unresolved questions which have to be addressed and harmonized with realities on the ground.
Simplifying, as things now stand, there is a troubling antinomy:
On the one hand, pre-war a broad consensus held that Iraq possessed, and was in some non-trivial way "pursuing," WMD. This can hardly be over-emphasized - this view wasn't simply an "intuition" or a "nagging suspicion," but was based on mulitple events, sources, and factors, mutually complementary and cross-corroborative. That is to say, it's not for naught that these beliefs were strongly held.
On the other hand, according to an exhaustive article by Barton Gellman in the Washington Post (upon which Corn relies) no WMD have been found, no secret programs or developed infrastructure have been found, and there is apparently a broad consistency in testimony from interviewees supporting a picture of no WMD to speak of for years - whether extant weapons, or production facilities.
Were it not for the corroborating testimony of Iraqi scientists and personnel reported by Gellman, it might be more plausible to persist in adverting to "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." Yet it would be just as wrongheaded to give a proverbial shrug of the shoulders and conclude in blanket fashion, "well, we must have been markedly wrong, pure and simple." A competent investigator has to tow a fine line between not letting the pre-judgments "explain away" the current picture, nor give up the pre-judgments wholesale owing to the view on the ground at present.
Because of the broad unanimity and apparent probative power of pre-war assessments, it's by no means a mark of desperation or pig-headedness to speculate as to clandestine destruction or cross-border shipments of the WMD. Factors listed by David Kay in his interim report keep the antinomy alive. Kay and his team claimed to find evidence that:
If we can trust these findings, we're brought back to the quip that if Saddam's regime had nothing to hide, an awful lot of trouble was taken to hide it. These factors, so far, are consistent with, and suggestive of, the pre-war picture.
It's interesting to note that Corn says in his article, "None of these claims [made by the Bush administration] have come close to panning out. And it's not because--as some Bush-backers have suggested--Saddam Hussein was so good at hiding the stuff or because he managed to ship his arsenal to Syria before US troops came knocking." Yet he does not develop this assertion in the body of his article, nor is it addressed in Gellman's Post article (though Gellmann does state, in an online chat subsequent to his article, that he's unaware of any evidence to support these rumors; this chat is a useful addendum to the main article). Corn may think the speculation a mere ruse, but that could only be the case to someone who had failed to take the unanimity and strength of pre-war estimates seriously - we might call it "the fallacy of premature abjuration"!
Hence, if we take Corn's initial question in the precise sense parsed above -- when (i.e., in light of what) should we say we were wrong? -- the answer is: when it's reasonable to do so. Pace Corn, the time has certainly not come - and an upshot of recasting the question is the realization that we may never be able to answer it definitively (like Kant viewed his own antinomies). This will be troubling indeed, but it's a possibility that has to be reckoned with.
And a word about mistaken assertions. One that Corn cites is from Dick Cheney: ""there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction...that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." It is wrong to represent facts "now" as somehow invalidating this statement. The statement, strictly speaking, was discernibly false at its moment of utterance - any statement the denial of which does not entail a contradiction is capable of doubt. Of course it was "doubtful" in some sense, from the get-go, that Iraq had WMD (along the lines of pre-war beliefs). Cheney's statement was a venial over-statement, common in politics; what he surely meant was "we are assured that ..." I often despair of the incautious/unattenuated statements of politicians, but it's worth considering how opponents of any decisive action in Iraq would have responded to more precise, "parsimonious" statements. Any sign of "doubt" would be the proverbial thin end of the wedge.
A wider aim of war critics, in seizing on the "side" of the antinomy favorable to them, is to show the war to be "fraudulent." But this ignores the prudential matter of deliberation in terms of what is legitimately believed at the time an action is undertaken, vs. ex post facto. For a very interesting discussion of relevance to this issue (testing and resolving suspicions), see No Weapons, No Matter. We Called Saddam's Bluff by Michael Schrage.
Update: I have added a related post.
January 14, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
RE:WMD:MIA?
The logic of the Bush administration in regard to WMD ("just because they haven't been found, doesn't mean they're not there"; "they just haven't been found yet", etc. can be used to make a claim for the existence of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. It cannot be conclusively proven that they do not exist; perhaps they just haven't been found yet. Of course, no one can prove that they haven't moved. Thus, I believe in the existence of Iraqi WMD, just as much as I believe in the existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Perhaps they're all in the same place.
Posted by: Mike Lauderdale at Jan 19, 2004 12:23:42 PM
Mike,
I'm sorry to see that I didn't convince you as to the "antinomy."
Sure, it would be fallacious if one invented any old claim and then parried doubts with "absence of evidence doesn't equal evidence of absence."
But the difference between WMD in Iraq and the Easter Bunny is that - correct me if I'm mistaken - no plausible evidence for the latter's existence has ever been adduced.
Despite what hasn't been found in Iraq, if the reasons which so plausibly informed the beliefs about WMD cannot yet be alternatively accounted-for (i.e., refuted and/or more innocently "explained away") then it's reasonable to keep the question open - or, put another way, it would be illicit to close the matter.
With Iraq's WMD, the evidence consists of, amongst other factors:
* twelve years of cat-and-mouse with UN-sponsored inspections
* large stocks of VX, anthrax, and mustard gas (amongst other agents) never convincingly accounted for by the Iraqis
* assessments by American, British, and other intelligence agencies that Iraq had in its possession, and was acting to increase, stocks of WMD (in terms of signal intercepts, U2 overflights, defector testimony, etc)
* Most recently (viz., trans- and post-OIF) violence against Iraqi informants cooperating with the ISG, systematic cleansing of WMD-related documentation, and apparently credible reports of WMD materiel being moved out of Iraq.
Until "the appearances" can be satisfactorily explained - viz., until it can be determined how the appearance of 13 years of gross Iraqi malfeasance was a great interpretive mistake, and now can be resolved in favor of a more innocuous reality - it's legitimate to wonder whether weapons might have been recently moved, hidden, or destroyed.
Thanks for stopping by.
Posted by: Paul at Jan 19, 2004 4:01:44 PM
War supporters have allowed themselves to be cornered by war detractors feigning Rumplestiltskin about Iraqi shananigans of the past decade and a half. Similarly, they've feigned amnesia over all those 'sexed-up' pre-war forecasts of hundreds of thousands of casualties, millions of refugees, famine, disease and, oh yeah, use of WMDs.
The world's governments, their intelligence agencies, the UN and anyone else who mattered believed the Iraqis to be in possession of things they weren't supposed to have -- indeed, things Iraq admitted to having but couldn't account for. This on top of serial violations of the Gulf War I cease fire and UN resolutions -- which provide more of a basis for this war's legality than its illegality.
Here's what it all comes down to:
Bush could have watched the costly sanctions regime -- you know, the one where the US gets blamed for dead Iraqi babies -- continue to crumble and be subverted by the very Security Council members (including "allies") who voted for them, until Saddam's French and Russian lawyers at the UN managed to get them dismantled altogether.
Then, he could risk that whatever weapons Iraq possessed or obtained, and whatever military capabilities it re-built, wouldn't be used to hold the global economy hostage or turn a major city into a smoking crater.
Or, he could remove the risk by toppling Saddam in the weakest state he would be likely to find him, given the above. A small war now, or a conflagration later. That it fit into an overall strategy of attempting to ignite change in that region was a bonus.
It was the right decision -- just a shame he couldn't explain it to an infantilized, pay-later public who would have insisted that there be no pain now, and would have also expected to be spared the disaster later. And how forgiving would that same public be had Bush let the unthinkable happen, or allow the global economic engine to be ground to a halt?
As Red Barber said, the fans always play the game better than the players.
Posted by: Cosmo at Feb 26, 2004 4:05:28 PM
P.S. As for Mike's smug little bon mot above, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny may not be real, but Iraqi WMDs were all too real to the residents of Halabja and Iranian soldiers.
And again, the assumptions of critics and defenders alike is backwards. The burden of proof was always upon Iraq to prove it had disposed of weapons it had admitted having (which it did not), not upon the Americans or British to find them. The discussion has been re-defined by moving goalposts and double standards.
Posted by: Cosmo at Feb 26, 2004 5:02:28 PM
P.P.S. And one final note, before I completely wear out my welcome at this blog --
The whole WMD 'debate' has become a bore, a shameless parade of rearview mirror opportunism, preening and selective memory.
Face it, whatever weapons were discovered in Iraq would have been dismissed as insufficient. Witness the sniffing at Colin Powell's pre-war presentation -- and remember, the sniffing wasn't about its accuracy, but about the severity of the threat he presented. Another hole in Manhattan would have been either blamed on Bush's failure to protect us or used as proof that his response to terrorism provoked the attack -- and we'd be right back where we started on September 12th.
Posted by: Cosmo at Feb 26, 2004 6:46:27 PM
