For The Love Of Condi

Condoleezza Rice is now explaining that Iraqi weapons per se will not be found because Saddam hid his WMD programme in "'dual-use' infrastructure". If this blog may be permitted to quote itself:

Right, well, this squares nicely with the Administration's repeated pre-war assertions that U.S. intelligence had proven (to the Administration, if not to its own agents, nor to anybody else) that Saddam had "failed to disarm" -- thus the critically urgent need to for the second time in a decade blast the holy fucking shit out of the country's beleaguered millions.

But Ms. Rice has let another cat out of the bag. The point of placing billions of dollars of holds on "dual use" items was, according to the State Department, to "help prevent the diversion of oil-for-food goods" that "Iraq can use to rebuild its military capabilities". But if Iraq retains the germ of a weapons programme in its "'dual-use' infrastructure", then Condi has contradicted the official State Department line. One (or both) of them is lying, in other words.

Now, there were, naturally, plenty of lies in the State Department's various sanctions-era apologia.

But supposing we were to take the Rice at her word? In that case, we find that the Administration is acknowledging that Colin Powell's 5 February presentation (not to mention The Superbrain's daily pronunciamentos) was straight-up bullshit; and that the sanctions regime, while it succeeded in killing a million children, could not succeed, hard as it tried, in preventing Saddam from acquiring "dual-use" technology.

So, in addition to contradicting itself about the nature of "dual-use" holds, the Bush Administration is by its own admission either lying about the reason for the absence of WMD in post-war Iraq or it was lying about (and fabricating evidence concerning) the existence of WMD.

Surprised?

Posted by Eddie Tews at May 1, 2003 10:37 AM