Back To Fantasyland

Let's start off with the obligatory proviso, when discussing Saddam's weapons programmes, that even if Saddam had maintained WMD stocks, facilities, and programmes up until the Spring of 2003 -- which the Bush Administration knew full well, before the invasion, was not the case -- it would not have justified the Administration's brutally barbaric attack upon the country's population and infrastructure (including with its own banned weapons -- Depleted Uranium, Cluster Bombs, and Napalm).

That out of the way, we can get down to cases.

About a year ago, we were afforded a hearty chortle when, in an attempt at explaining away the dearth of WMD in Iraq, we were told that Saddam had "put in place a double-deception program aimed at convincing the world and his own people that he was more of a threat than he actually was."

The point of the "double-deception", we were told, was to deter an attack from the United States. The "bluff" was so elaborate, we were told, that Saddam had even issued "pre-war...communications collected by U.S. intelligence agencies indicating that Iraqi commanders...were given the authority to launch weapons of mass destruction against U.S. troops as they advanced north from Kuwait."

Saddam, we were told, "may have misled the world", and "is thought to have...made ambiguous statements about his WMD programme as an elaborate bluff that backfired." [Emphases added.] No examples of these misleading and/or ambiguous statements were offered.

Fast-forward to today, and the release of the final status report acknowledging once and for all what Iraqi defectors and UN Inspectors had been telling us for some years -- Saddam abandoned his WMD programmes in the early '90s.

But, what about Colin Powell's fabulous presentation? What about the absolute certainty -- not only of the weapons' existence, but of their quantities and locations -- of the Bush Administration? Never mind that.

As he was a year ago, sneaky Saddam is to blame -- for pulling the wool over the world's eyes, "deceiving" us into "believing" that he was sitting on his massive pile of WMD. But now we are told that his deceptions weren't in attempt to deter a U.S. invasion, but rather to deter an Iranian invasion. (Either way, notice how we're now told that his supposed weapons would only have been used for deterrence?) And instead of intercepted communications, we now have knowledge of Saddam's "deceptions" thanks to interrogations of Saddam and his top commanders.

While "the report does not state explicitly whether Saddam himself has acknowledged that he engaged in a deception operation about these weapons before the war," we are now told (by the New York Times and Los Angeles Times respectively) that Saddam "hid behind ambiguities and evasions about whether Iraq possessed unconventional weapons," and that, "Although Saddam often denied U.S. assertions that he possessed WMD in defiance of UN resolutions, for years he also persisted in making cryptic public statements to perpetuate the myth that he possessed the banned weapons."

Alas, just like last year, no examples are given. So here's a request to everybody out there in readerland: If you know of any examples of Saddam's "double-deceptions" and "bluffing" (including especially any cited in the 1,000 page Duelfer report, which yours truly has not yet had time to peruse), could you pretty please with sugar on top link them up using the comments form? Would also like to see some evidence -- or even any speculation, prior to today -- that Saddam was in any way worried about an Iranian invasion.

This smells as ratty now as it did last year.

Speaking of stinking, the LA Times asks, unironically: "If Saddam understood he had no stockpiles of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons; why did he limit the activities of the United Nations inside Iraq, violate UN Security Council resolutions, and defy the outside world?" Surely the LA Times (as well as its mainstream media kinfolk) are by now well aware that, as Glen Rangwala put it in 2002:

In its October 1997 report, UNSCOM stated that "the majority of [weapons] inspections were conducted in Iraq without let or hindrance." (Annex I, para. 33.) Even up to its final inspection report on 15 December 1998, UNSCOM was recording how "the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's cooperation." Non-cooperation was recorded in only 5 out of 427 inspections in the round before inspectors were withdrawn on the request of the US; those 5 instances resulted in minor delays, not inspection refusals.

So enough of the "Saddam wouldn't let us in" crap, okay? And, you know, given that it's now been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that Saddam's WMD were destroyed shortly after the first Gulf War, enough of the "he repeatedly violated Security Council Resolutions ordering him to disarm" crap, too. Okay?

Similarly, we are solemnly told that:

On the one hand, Duelfer says, Saddam recognized the need to disarm to achieve relief from UN sanctions. On the other, he felt the need to retain such weapons as a deterrent.

"The regime never resolved the contradiction inherent in this approach," Duelfer says.

Uh, he "never resolved" the "contradiction"? How about, he abandoned his WMD programmes in the early '90s, and never attempted to re-start them -- even though "relief from UN sanctions" was not forthcoming? Even after the United States was caught using UNSCOM to help spy on the regime. Even after the Americans ordered inspectors withdrawn and started bombing. Looks pretty "resolute" from this angle.

Moving on to His Highness. Dubya's reaction to the report is as follows:

The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the UN oil for food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions. He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.

Is this the best you can do, George? We're supposed to believe that, even if the sanctions (which would have been lifted in 1998 had the Clinton Administration not chosen to play political games with Iraqis' lives) had collapsed as the French and the Russians salivated over securing business in Iraq's oil sector, the world would have "looked away"? That the United States would not have maintained its illegal, unilateral "no-fly zones" and several-times-weekly bombing runs? That periodic inspections -- and the spectre of renewed sanctions -- could not have been continued indefinitely? (Not saying that the shrill attention paid to Saddam's supposed WMD arsenal while ignoring all others' wasn't supremely hypocritical. Just that Saddam's "systematic gaming" of "the system" could easily have been subverted, even had sanctions been lifted.) Update, 10/25/04: The UN itself is now taking the piss out of the Bush Administration and the Duelfer Report over this very issue.

Saddam has plenty of crimes to be held answerable for. But these do not include maintaining his WMD programmes after the first Gulf War; nor, finally, restricting access in violation of Security Council Resolutions; nor making attempts at various sorts of "deceptions", "double-deceptions", and "bluffs".

UN inspectors, Iraqi defectors, and Saddam himself told us many times over that the weapons were long gone. The deceivers are those who, armed with this knowledge, chose to lie about it.

These deceivers have plenty of crimes to answer for as well, and it's long past time the mainstream media began making this case.

What you can do: Find examples of Saddam's "ambiguous" and "cryptic" statements regarding his WMD programmes! If none can be found, e-mail the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, demanding that they either provide examples of such statements from their archives, or issue retractions of their ass-kissing regurgitations of State Propaganda.

Update, 10/10/04: Time magazine has jumped onboard as well:

Saddam Hussein showed himself to be a master practitioner of the big bluff. Everyone outside Iraq [sic] and just about everyone inside believed that he harbored a secret stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. So imagine the shock his generals received in late 2002 when U.S. forces were massing on the country's borders for an imminent invasion, and Saddam suddenly informed them that Iraq had no biological or chemical or nuclear weapons at all. ... The dictator's cunning policy of deception had deceived the wrong side. [...]

The greatest mystery, though, was his long game of deception: if Saddam had destroyed his WMD to escape from sanctions, why did he work so hard from 1991 until he was overthrown in 2003 to perpetuate the belief he still had them?

Again, not a single example of Saddam's "big bluffs" or "long game of deception" is offered. And, uh, "everyone outside Iraq"? Is that why 90% of the World's population opposed the war?

Update, 10/12/04: The Los Angeles Times isn't finished yet:

The former official admitted that the CIA never understood that Saddam was bluffing about his long-abandoned weapons chiefly to deter neighboring Iran, Iraq's longtime enemy.

Yet a few paragraphs later, David Kay is quoted thusly:

[Tariq Aziz] said every time they raised it with Saddam, he said 'Don't worry about Iran because if it turns out to be what we think, the Israelis or the Americans will take care of them.' In other words, he was relying on us to deal with his enemy.

Moving along:

In the end, Saddam's bluff backfired. And Washington's failure to read the bluff has had a huge impact on both countries.

Saddam's mistake "was one of the more monumental miscalculations of history," the former official said. "Even larger than ours of not understanding what he was doing. ... We're used to people going out of their way to pretend they don't have bad stuff. But we hadn't before encountered someone who went out of his way to pretend he did. I know he said he didn't [have banned weapons], but all his actions said he did."

Got that? Five days ago, we were told that Saddam had "persisted in making cryptic public statements to perpetuate the myth that he possessed the banned weapons." Today, we're told that it was his actions that "said he did" have them.

You know, like, agreeing to allow UN inspectors back into the country, with unlimited access. Like compiling, in just a few weeks' time, the 12,000-page accounting of his weapons programmes (which was then promptly stolen by the United States, "on grounds that Washington had the best photocopying capabilities"). Like agreeing to the destruction of the Al Samoud missiles.

Well, those weren't among the LA Times' examples. Uh, oh yeah...the Times didn't give any examples of Saddam's evasive "actions", just as it hadn't given any examples of his "cryptic public statements".

Posted by Eddie Tews at October 7, 2004 05:38 PM