No WMD, So…

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) returned to the U.S. having found no cache of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. So, was the war a mistake? Or worse, did “Bush lie”? No and no.

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) returned to the U.S. having found no cache of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. So, was the war a mistake? Or worse, did “Bush lie”? No and no.

Leave aside for the moment the essential rightness of removing one of the past century’s worst dictators – a designation hard to come by, given the competition. Leave aside the essential rightness of removing the immorally applied sanctions regime that the UN said was responsible for 5,000 “excess deaths” of Iraqi children each month. And leave aside the essential rightness of stopping the flow of blood money into the corrupt pockets of the Oil-for-Food scammers and Saddam himself.

Go ONLY to the specific issue of Saddam, WMD and the ISG conclusion.

Far from pronouncing Saddam “clean,” the ISG concluded that Saddam was maintaining his WMD infrastructure, paying his scientists and making incremental improvements in their capabilities. He was betting that the “international community” could be induced to remove sanctions without making him meet the original (UNSCR 687) conditions – that Iraq “unconditionally accept” the destruction, removal or rendering harmless “under international supervision” of “all chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities.” Complying would have taken the capability away. He needed sanctions lifted without complying.

By 2001, international sentiment – notably French, German, Russian and UN, pushed along by the Arab states – was to remove the sanctions. Even Colin Powell and Dick Cheney agreed that there should be changes in the sanctions regime to help the children of Iraq. No one seriously considered the idea that the children would be better helped by removing the dictator than by removing the sanctions.

And so sanctions would have been long gone by now had 9-11 not intervened.

There is no direct evidence linking Saddam to 9-11, but the bombings produced two key changes in American security policy: a) no longer would the U.S. wait to be attacked; pre-emption would be our policy; and b) there was no way for bad guys to disassociate themselves from other bad guys. When President Bush said, “You are with us or with the terrorists,” Saddam’s failure to comply with international requirements put him on the same side of international justice as the terrorists.

Which was, as we now understand, in the crosshairs. The President is nothing if not clear: “Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime’s good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take.”

WMD or no WMD, Saddam sealed his own fate and paid the price.