Uh, They're Entrusting The CIA With This Job?

Having failed to find banned weapons in Iraq, the CIA is preparing a final report on its search that will speculate on what the deposed regime's capabilities might have looked like years from now if left unchecked, according to congressional and intelligence officials.

The CIA plans for the report, due next month, to project as far as 2008 what Iraq might have achieved in its illegal weapons programs if the United States had not invaded the country last year, the officials said.

That would be the same CIA whose director just recently resigned in disgrace? The same CIA responsible for Colin Powell's ridiculous presentation before the United Nations?

Let's see. The Bush Administration has back-tracked, now, from, "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons," and, "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent;" to, "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat;" to, "Looking at an area that's the size of California and a terrain that's readily disposed to hiding stuff, I'm not surprised at all that they haven't found anything;" to, "You may find assembly lines, you may find pieces hidden here and there;" to, "[Saddam] is thought to have...made ambiguous statements about his WMD programme as an elaborate bluff that backfired;" to, "But, in regards to Saddam Hussein, if in fact he didn't have them, why on earth didn't he let the U.N. inspectors in and avoid the war? That is a real puzzlement to me;" to, "So what's the difference [whether he had them or not]?" to (presumably) "He would have been able to wipe the floor with our asses come 2008."

Next up, the Bushites plug Saddam's regime into a computer simulation, running over and over and over again on all of the Pentagon's computers; until, finally, on the nine trillionth (or so) iteration, Sim-Saddam develops a fuckin' bottle of Robitussin® Maximum Strength Cough Syrup by Sim-year 2112. The only question then will be whether this Smoking Gun (only a few straggler hippie America/Israel haters will now be able to doubt the overwhelming necessity of having undertaken the war) will have been revealed before or after the U.S. occupation of Iraq has ended.

Note what the CIA report apparently doesn't cover: the number of people not bombed and shot to death in the absence of a U.S. invasion (estimates range up to 37,000 civilians and 40,000 military personnel during the invasion alone). The tonnage of depleted uranium munitions not fired off in the absence of a U.S. invasion. The number of children not killed each month by un-exploded cluster bomb-lets not littering the ground in the absence of a U.S. invasion. The number of homes of "suspected insurgents" not destroyed in the absence of a U.S. occupation. The number of former CIA operatives not placed into power in Iraq in the absence of a U.S. occupation.

Note, too, that the exercise is a folly of a sham of a red herring. The Bush Administration was very much aware, well before the invasion of the status of Saddam's weapons capabilities. And if, four-plus years after the December 1998 demise of UNSCOM, those capabilities consisted of (according to the UNMOVIC inspectors vacating Iraq in advance of last year's invasion) "a few guys with paper and pencil and some computer in a back room,'' what might we reasonably expected them to have been five years later, in the absence of a U.S. invasion?

Meanwhile, don't let's tell anybody that the United States is developing a new generation of so-called "useable" nuclear weapons. Think they'll be ready for use by 2008?

Posted by Eddie Tews at August 20, 2004 04:59 PM