Welcome to the latest annex of the Political Jihad’s war room!  Here, arranged for your convenience, are the 15 biggest liberal myths about Iraq, and enough ammo to shoot down every one of them.  The next time some idiot says something idiotic about Iraq, you can say, “Hey, idiot!  You’re wrong!  See here…” Just call me an altruist.

 

I think I covered just about everything.  If you come up with a liberal lie/asinine idea that I missed, just send me an e-mail. ([email protected]) If the liberals concoct some new whoppers, I’ll designate a spot for them here.

 

·        # 1 (Lie): Iraq was a “sovereign nation.”  “A nation that had never attacked the United States.  A nation that had never threatened to attack the United States.  A nation that had never murdered a single American citizen.”

·        #2 (Lie): “Fighting Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism.”

·        #3 (Lie): Bush falsely claimed that Iraq was involved in 9/11.

·        #4 (Lie): The 9/11 Commission said that there was no link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.

·        #5 (Asinine idea): Invading Iraq has only caused more terrorism.

·        #6 (Lie): Bush concocted the WMD.

·        #7 (Lie): Bush pressured the CIA on WMD.

·        #8 (Lie): Bush lied about Iraq trying to purchase uranium from Africa.

·        #9 (Lie): Iraq had no WMD programs.

·        #10 (Lie): The stated reason for the Iraq War was weapons of mass destruction.  There were no weapons of mass destruction.  Therefore the war was not justified.

·        #11 (Asinine idea): We could have solved the Iraq problem with UN weapons inspections.

·        #12 (Asinine idea): The war in Iraq was about oil.

·        # 13 (Asinine idea): Bush was just trying to get back at Saddam for trying to kill his dad.

·        #14 (Asinine idea): The war in Iraq was a distraction from the real war on terrorism.

·        #15 (Lie): The war in Iraq has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

 

# 1 (Lie): Iraq was a “sovereign nation.”  “A nation that had never attacked the United States.  A nation that had never threatened to attack the United States.  A nation that had never murdered a single American citizen.”

 

This gem, of course, is from our good pal Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 – right before shots of idyllic, fairy-tale Iraq under Saddam, followed by shots of dead Iraqis and bloodthirsty evil imperialist American troops.  It makes for a good intro.

 

It is also completely false.  Critics of the war would have us believe that Iraq was a peaceful, docile nation on which we launched an “unprovoked” attack.

 

The reality is that Saddam very much had the United States in its sights.  As Russian President Vladimir Putin said on June 18, 2004, “After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services, the intelligence service, received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests,” “American President George Bush had an opportunity to personally thank the head of one of the Russian special services for this information, which he regarded as very important.”

 

And as the Senate Intelligence Committee reported in July, “From 1996 to 2003, the IIS focused its terrorist activities on western interests, particularly against the U.S. and Israel.” The State Department’s 2002 Patterns of Global Terrorism report said, “[In 2002], the Iraqi Intelligence Services (IIS) laid the groundwork for possible attacks against civilian and military targets in the United States and other Western countries.”

 

Finally, Iraq never murdered an American citizen?  By law, anyone who harbors or aids murderers is an accessory to the murder.  Saddam funded Palestinian suicide bombers who killed Americans.  Saddam harbored Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an Al-Qaeda terrorist whose murdered American citizen Lawrence Foley in 2002.  Saddam harbored Abu Nidal and his terror organization, which killed Americans.  Abu Abbas, harbored by Saddam, shot 69-year-old, wheel-chair-bound American Leon Klinghoffer – an American citizen.   Abdul Yasin, harbored by Saddam, built the bomb that killed six Americans at the World Trade Center in 1993.  Khala Kadr al Salahat, harbored by Saddam, built the bomb that killed 189 American citizens on Pam Am 103. (Source) And of course, in 1993, Saddam Hussein tried to murder former president George H. W. Bush – who is certainly an American citizen - when he was visiting Kuwait.

 

#2 (Lie): “Fighting Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism.”

 

This quote is from Howard Dean, peacenik extraordinaire.  This should prove nothing except that Howard Dean is either extraordinarily dishonest or extraordinarily stupid.

 

According to a State Department report before the war, Iraq

• “was a safehaven, transit point, and operational base for groups and individuals who direct violence against the United States.”
• “Overtly” – in other words, in plain sight, before the eyes of Howard Dean and the rest of the world – assisted numerous terrorist organizations, including the Abu Nidal Organization, the Palestinian Liberation Front, Mujahedin-e Khalq, and the Arab Liberation Front, HAMAS and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
• Allowed PLF members to train in Iraq “for future terrorist attacks.”
• Harbored Ansar al Islam, a bin Laden-linked terror group.
• Had several hundred Al-Qaeda members within its borders. (“It is inconceivable these groups were in Iraq without the knowledge and acquiescence of Saddam’s regime.”)
• Harbored senior Al-Qaeda associate Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who “tried to smuggle suspect chemicals into Russia, Western Europe, and the United States for terrorist operations.”

 

As even the New York Times admitted, Iraq was training terrorists in explosives, marksmanship, and “foreign operations” at its camp at Salman Pak.  And as PBS reported in April of 2003, the Marines discovered a jet shell at Salman Pak “believed to be used to practice hijacking.” To Howard Dean, this has “nothing to do with terrorism.” This from the guy who thinks Bush was in on 9/11.

 

#3 (Lie): Bush falsely claimed that Iraq was involved in 9/11.

 

No, he didn’t.  In fact, he said just the opposite – many times.

·        “There is no question that there are some linkages between the Iraqi regime and Al-Qaeda, but so far I haven't seen anything that would give you a linkage to 9/11. We don't rule it out. We are constantly examining the information that comes to us, but there is no direct linkage between the regime in Baghdad and 9/11 yet” – Colin Powell, September 15, 2002

·        “I cannot make that claim.” – George W. Bush, January 31, 2003, when asked if there was a link between Iraq and 9/11.

·        “We don’t know.” – Dick Cheney, September 14, 2003, when asked if there was a link between Iraq and 9/11

·        “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the eleventh.” – George W. Bush, September 17, 2003

 

BUSH NEVER SAID THAT IRAQ HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH 9/11.  OK?  If you find a quote from him that shows otherwise, please, do share it with me, because that’s something no liberal has been able to do yet.

 

#4 (Lie): The 9/11 Commission said that there was no link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.

 

This lie was first perpetuated by the media and quickly picked up by John Kerry’s campaign.  The Commission’s Staff Statement 15 did say, “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.” But even the commission’s members agree that there was a link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.  The Democratic co-chairman of the Commission, Lee Hamilton, said after the media firestorm erupted, “There were connections between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government.  We don’t disagree on that.  What we have said is…we don’t have any evidence of a cooperative or collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein’s government and Al-Qaeda with regard to attacks on the United States.  So the sharp differences that the press has drawn are not that apparent to me.” And the Republican chairman, Thomas Kean, said, “Yes, there were contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida, a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely there.”

 

Here’s a concept that the media could not seem to grasp: “cooperating on attacks” is a bit different from “sponsoring” and “supporting.” Did Saddam Hussein ever sit down at a table with Mohammed Atta and say, “So, what’s next on the agenda, Mo?” Probably not.  That doesn’t change the fact that he funded Al-Qaeda, gave weapons to Al-Qaeda, trained Al-Qaeda and harbored Al-Qaeda – which is what the Bush administration had been saying all along.

 

Some interesting tidbits from the 9-11 Commission’s final report:

 

·        “Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda.”

·        “To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi [Sudanese ruler] reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam.  Bin Ladin apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamic extremists operating in a part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control.  In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces.  In 2001, with Bin Ladin’s help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al Islam.  There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.”

·        “With the Sudanese regime acting as an intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995.  Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this request.  As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish connections.” 

·        “In March 1998, after Bin Laden's public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence.”

·        “In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin.  Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Laden's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis.  In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December.”

·        “Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban.  According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq.  Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative.”

 

So much for no connection.

 

#5 (Asinine idea): Invading Iraq has only caused more terrorism.

 

First of all, in the words of Jonathan V. Last, “The creation of terrorists is one of those perfect little Rorschach tests since there is (a) no data on how many terrorists there are today; (b) no data on how many terrorists there were yesterday; and (c) no foreseeable way to collect data on how many terrorists there will be tomorrow. In other words: You can take whatever position you want with utter confidence because nobody will ever be able to prove you wrong.”

 

Second, which would inspire you to join a terrorist group more – the most powerful nation on earth backing down from confrontation with a pro-infitidah tin-pot dictator, or seeing one of your buddies who had joined a terrorist group get blown up by Marine gunships in Iraq?  Did the recruitment lines of the SS fill up as the Allies approached Berlin in 1945?  Generally, a show of brute force is more intimidating than Hans Blix. 

 

Third, even if more poor Muslims join terrorist groups once the U.S. goes on offense, so what?  Does that mean we should allow brutal dictators to build WMD and sponsor Al-Qaeda?  Should we just decide to not fight terrorism, and stand by while our homeland is under attack?  Yes, the job is hard.  Does that make it unnecessary?  Did anyone ever say it would be easy?

 

We have a choice here: to fight terrorism, whether it comes from Iraq or Afghanistan, or to not fight terrorism.  When we weren’t fighting terrorism, we got 9/11. Now that we are fighting terrorism, there hasn’t been a terrorist attack in over three years.  Does fighting terrorism cause terrorism?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  Does not fighting terrorism cause terrorism?  Absolutely.  As least with the first option, the new recruits are marked for death as soon as they sign up – courtesy of a president who’s not afraid to take them on.

 

#6 (Lie): Bush concocted the WMD.

 

The idea that the Bush administration concocted Iraqi WMD is the hoax of the century, and anyone who believes it was apparently in a coma from 1991 to 2003, because EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE THOUGHT THAT IRAQ HAD WMD.  Rowan Scarborough’s book, Rumsfeld’s War, reproduces a Defense Intelligence Agency report produced in 1999 that lists Iraq as a nation with delivery capability for chemical and biological weapons.  According to the report, “Iraq has modified its L-29 trainer aircraft into unmanned remotely piloted vehicles (RPV) suited for ‘suicide’ (one-way) sorties.  Some of Iraq’s L-29 trainer aircraft have been equipped with spray tanks that could be fitted for biological warfare (BW) delivery.” The report also says, “Iraq has retained the capability to restart its nuclear weapons program and, from the time sanctions are lifted, Iraq – given intent and foreign assistance – could develop a nuclear device in 5 to 7 years.  Such a capability will be alarming to Iran as it will be for Israel, Europe, and the U.S.” This is a report from the Clinton administration.  Speaking of Clinton, in July 2003, the former president told Larry King, “When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material [in Iraq] unaccounted for.  That is, at the end of the first Gulf war, we knew what he had.”

 

The UN was in perfect agreement.  Kenneth Pollack, a CIA Iraq analyst, wrote before the war, “The [UN] inspectors believe that Iraq has retained 6,000 or more chemical munitions (including missile warheads), large amounts of precursor chemicals, and chemical warfare production equipment and that it has the ability to manufacture additional agent, munitions, and production equipment.”[1] Army Colonel Richard Spertzel, who joined UNSCOM in 1994 and served as head of the bioweapons team until 1998, “discovered ample evidence that Saddam was directing a campaign to build and use unconventional weapons” – including viral programs to develop camel pox, rotaviruses and hemorrhagic conjunctivitis.  As Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project testified in 2001, “[UN] inspectors believe that Iraq retains at least 157 aerial bombs and 25 missile warheads filled with germ agents, retains spraying equipment to deliver germ agents by helicopter, and possessed enough growth media to generate three or four times the amount of anthrax it admits producing.” Milhollin also said that Iraq had yet to account for “almost four tons of the nerve agent VX; six hundred tons of ingredients for VX; as much as three thousand tons of other poison-gas agents; and at least five hundred and fifty artillery shells filled with mustard gas.”

 

In his testimony to the UN Security Council on January 27, head weapons inspector Hans Blix said, “Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it.” He also said, “Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.  Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.  There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared and that at least some of this was retained over the declared destruction date. It might still exist.”

 

Even the French thought that Saddam Hussein had WMD.  French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin said on November 12, 2002, “the Americans’ security is threatened by individuals like Saddam Hussein, who are capable of using chemical or bacteriological weapons.”

 

In short, if Iraq’s WMD were a Bush administration fabrication, it was a conspiracy stretching over a decade involving France, the UN and Bill Clinton.  Bush did not make up the WMD.  If there were no WMD, then every major intelligence agency on the face of the planet was fooled.  In the words of Jeff Jacoby, “If intelligence mistakes are inevitable, is it better to worry too much about potential threats or to worry too little?  Worrying too much resulted in the toppling of one of the planet’s most murderous dictators.  Worrying too little resulted in 9/11.”

 

#7 (Lie): Bush pressured the CIA on WMD.

 

No, he didn’t.  As the New York Times wrote in February, “Dr. Kay rejected charges that policy makers pressured analysts to bend their assessments to fit the administration's need to justify the coming war. He said he had talked to a number of C.I.A. analysts involved in the prewar intelligence reports, and none ever told of pressure by the administration to shape reports.  Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence who has been leading an internal review of the prewar intelligence, said in an interview on Friday that he believed that the C.I.A. reporting on Iraq was consistent from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration, and that there was no evidence in the finished reports of changes that were the result of White House pressure.”  And the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that, “The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.”

 

#8 (Lie): Bush lied about Iraq trying to purchase uranium from Africa.

 

In his 2003 State of the Union Address, as the United States was preparing for war, George W. Bush said, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Joseph Wilson IV, a CIA consultant and former diplomat who had been sent to Niger to investigate the claim, publicly claimed that the claim was false and that Bush had lied.  It was later revealed that some of the documents used to substantiate the claim had been forged.  The White House later admitted that the evidence for that claim had been too shaky for it to be included in the speech.

 

In the words of Jeff Jacoby, “Within days, Howard Dean was making comparisons to Watergate, a group of left-leaning former intelligence officers were calling for the resignation of Vice President Dick Cheney (who had taken a close interest in the uranium evidence), and the Bush-is-a-liar shrieking reached a fever pitch.  The Democratic National Committee cut an ad accusing Bush of deliberately deceiving the American people.  And the press embarked on a classic feeding frenzy, turning loose a tidal wave of coverage and commentary on what had been, by any sober estimate, only a very small piece of the administration’s case against Saddam.  Upshot: Bush’s credibility took a blow and support for the war in Iraq was undermined.”

 

Except Bush hadn’t lied. “CIA Director George Tenet took the blame for failing to have the reference removed.” Alright?  Making an incorrect claim based on someone else’s mistake is not a lie.

 

And besides, the claim was probably true.

 

Didn’t you hear?   Oh yeah, I forgot - the media isn’t one-tenth as curious in Bush’s accomplishments as it is in his “lies.” In case you didn’t know – since the media is ignoring it – the evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger is mountainous.  Consider: As Jeff Jacoby reported, an article from the Financial Times (U.K.) last June said that Iraq was one of five countries that negotiated with Niger for uranium trade.  And as the Associated Press reported, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on prewar intelligence released in July 2004 supports the Iraq/uranium/Niger claim. “French and British intelligence separately told the United States about possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger, the report said.  The report from France is significant, not only because Paris opposed the Iraq war but also because Niger is a former French colony and French companies control uranium production there.” And apparently, Joseph Wilson was lying, too. “Wilson told the committee that former Nigerian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki reported meeting with Iraqi officials in 1999.  Mayaki said a businessman helped set up the meeting, saying the Iraqis were interested in ‘expanding commercial relations’ with Niger – which Mayaki interpreted as an overture to buy uranium, Wilson said.” This is the guy who just a year ago had been publicly accusing the President of the United States of lying during wartime!  He even got a book deal! (The Politics of Truth – wonder which ghostwriter came up with that title.) The report also mentions a “West African businessman’s claim that Nigerian uranium bound for Iraq was being stored in a warehouse in the nearby African nation of Benin.”

 

So, in conclusion, the uranium-from-Africa claim was probably true, if not true was a CIA error, and in any case was a very small part of Bush’s case for war.

 

#9 (Lie): Iraq had no WMD programs.

 

This is patently false.  As Dr. Kay said in his October 2003 congressional testimony, “Iraq’s WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.” He later said, “Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [United Nations Resolution] Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities: one last chance to come clean about what it had.  We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial UN Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the UN about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.”

 

Here are Dr. Kay’s findings as he gave them in October 2003:

 

·        A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

·        A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

·        Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist’s home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

·        New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

·        Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists’ homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

·        A line of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles capable of spraying chemical and biological weapons] not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of  500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

·        Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

·        Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

·        Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles - probably the No Dong - 300 km range annti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

 

And the ISG would discover more.  As Charles Duelfer testified in March 2004, “Iraq did have facilities suitable for the production of biological and chemical agents needed for weapons.  It had plans to improve and expand and even build new facilities.” And the final report of the ISG (released in October 2004) says that Iraq “had a plan to produce and weaponize nitrogen mustard in rifle grenades and a plan to bottle sarin and sulfur mustard in perfume sprayers and medicine bottles which they would then ship to the United States and Europe.” To put it mildly: Holy crap!

 

#10 (Lie): The stated reason for the Iraq War was weapons of mass destruction.  There were no weapons of mass destruction.  Therefore the war was not justified.

 

Senator Carl Levin raised this point on January 28, 2004, during Dr. David Kay’s testimony to the Senate about his findings in Iraq.  Levin said, “Although the issue of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction intentions or ambitions and program-related activities is a serious issue, it is not why we went to war. The case for war was Iraq’s possession, production, deployment and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction.  A different case for war against Iraq can be made, but the case which the administration made to the American people was the presence of actual weapons of mass destruction.”

 

This is simply not true.  Although WMD was the most trumpeted reason for war, it was just one of many.  Congress’s October 2002 war resolution (The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002) contains twenty-three “whereases,” or reasons for war.   Only two “whereas” clauses contains a reference to Iraq actually possessing WMD. (Other justifications for war contained in the bill include Iraq’s flaunting of UN resolutions, atrocious human rights record, links to international terrorism, and attempted assassination of former President George H. W. Bush.)

 

Now I have to do some hairsplitting.  Levin says, “The case for war was Iraq’s possession, production, deployment and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction.” WRONG.  If the only reason we were invading Iraq was because it had weapons of mass destruction, we’d be invading Russia, China, Great Britain, India, Israel, etc., etc.  Rather, Congress’s war resolution says, “The United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq’s ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction make clear that it is the national security interests of the United States [to invade Iraq.]” In other words, we weren’t going to war about weapons of mass destruction.  We were going to war to prevent weapons of mass destruction from being used against the U.S. and our allies.  And even today, it is more clear than ever that, in this regard, Iraq posed a huge threat.

 

As David Kay said during his testimony, Iraq “was even more dangerous than we thought.

I think when we have the complete record you're going to discover that after 1998 it became a regime that was totally corrupt. Individuals were out for their own protection. And in a world where we know others are seeking WMD, the likelihood at some point in the future of a seller and a buyer meeting up would have made that a far more dangerous country than even we anticipated.” And as Dr. Kay’s successor, Charles Duelfer, said, “A risk that has emerged since my previous status report to Congress is the connection of former regime CW experts with anti-coalition forces.  ISG uncovered evidence of such links and undertook a sizeable effort to track down and prevent any lash-up between foreign terrorists or anti-coalition forces and either existing CW stocks or experts able to produce such weapons indigenously.” Even if Saddam had no WMDs sitting around in bunkers, any of his scientists could have produced the stuff on their own, and, as Dr. Kay, said, “met up with a buyer.” BOOM!  There goes Manhattan.  As Duelfer said, “It points to the problem that the dangerous expertise developed by the previous regime could be transferred to other hands.”

 

#11 (Asinine idea): We could have solved the Iraq problem with UN weapons inspections.

 

No, we couldn’t have.  You don’t go to a genocidal, maniacal, compulsive liar and say, “Will you please lay out all your weapons of mass death so we can destroy them and then let you get back to whatever it is mass murderers do in their free time?” That should have been obvious from the start.

 

Even so, we spent twelve years inspecting a country the size of California on Saddam’s terms.  Iraq fought us every step of the way.  So when it became obvious that Iraq was never going to let the UN do its job, Bush did the obvious thing and invaded.  And so all the liberals who were viciously anti-war but didn’t want to admit that they couldn’t care less whether or not Saddam had WMD jumped in and said, “WHY DIDN’T YOU GIVE THE INSPECTORS MORE TIME?” More time?  Twelve years isn’t enough time to verify that a country is not complying with international law?

 

Senator Hilary Clinton even had the gall to raise this point with Dr. David Kay in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in January 2004.  Clinton said, “We should be examining about whether or not the UN inspection process pursuant to [resolution] 1441 might not also have worked without the loss of life that we have confronted both among our own young men and women, as well as Iraqis.”

 

Dr. Kay’s answer was obvious and direct. “We have had a number of Iraqis who have come forward and said, ‘We did not tell the UN about what we were hiding, nor would we have told the UN’ …I think we have learned things that no UN inspector would have ever learned given the terror regime of Saddam and the tremendous personal consequences that scientists had to run by speaking the truth.” Well, duh!

 

Charles Duelfer, who succeeded Dr. Kay as head of the Iraq Survey Group in 2004, reached an equally direct conclusion: “The Iraqi Intelligence Service was tasked with monitoring and infiltrating UNSCOM and UNMOVIC.  Iraqi officials tell us hundreds of officers from multiple directorates were tasked to monitor the UN officials, employing a spectrum of capabilities from human to electronic surveillance.  Elaborate plans were developed and rehearsed to enable sensitive sites to be able to hide sensitive documents and equipment on as little as 15 minutes notice.  Iraqi intelligence engaged in a worldwide effort to collect intelligence on the UN, including efforts to recruit sources inside the UN, UNSCOM and UNMOVIC.”

 

Got that?

 

#12 (Asinine idea): The war in Iraq was about oil.

 

This could go under the “lie” category, but (a) there really isn’t an empirical way to prove it false since it deals with motivations and (b) it is so completely stupid on so many levels that I just had to put it in the “asinine” box.

 

I think Christopher Hitchens really put it best: “OF COURSE it’s about oil, stupid.” Consider: Iraq and Kuwait together account for 7% of the world’s oil production.  Saudi Arabia accounts for another 15%.  If Saddam Hussein ever developed a nuclear weapon – or acquired one on the black market, which, as John Kerry daily reminded us during the 2004 campaign, is not all that far-fetched – it wouldn’t take much for him to dominate all three of those countries.  As Kenneth Pollack (a former CIA Iraq analyst and a member of the Brookings Institution) wrote in 2002,

 

Saddam could…invade Kuwait and perhaps continue driving on to the Saudi oil fields…threatening to wipe out the oil fields with one or more well-placed nuclear missiles if the United States intervened.  …The United States and it allies would be faced with the choice of intervening anyway and risking the loss of 22 percent of global oil production, possibly permanently, or giving Saddam control of that same share of the world’s oil wealth.  …There is widespread agreement that it would cause a global recession probably on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, if not worse.[2]

 

It’s one thing to have a genocidal, maniacal mass murderer bent on nuclear weapons ruling any country on the map.  It’s quite another to have a genocidal, maniacal mass murderer bent on nuclear weapons sitting on top of 1/5 of the world’s bloody oil supply!  Once Saddam acquired WMD (assuming he didn’t already have them), he would have been poised to control the world economy through taking over its oil resources.  I’m betting that no one would be bringing up the morality of “preventive war” or holding up “no blood for oil” signs at peace rallies if that happened. (For one thing, they wouldn’t be able to drive to the peace rally…)

 

# 13 (Asinine idea): Bush was just trying to get back at Saddam for trying to kill his dad.

 

Now let’s pretend for a second that deliberately trying to assassinate an American president isn’t justification enough for war in of itself. (Even Clinton bombed Iraq when this plot was uncovered.)

 

Two words: SO WHAT?  So what if Bush wanted to get back at Saddam for trying to kill not only his dad?  Does that change the fact that Saddam was trying to attack the U.S., was building WMD for that very purpose, and was harboring numerous terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda?  NO!  Whatever Bush's personal motivations were, invading Iraq was still the right move.

 

#14 (Asinine idea): The war in Iraq was a distraction from the real war on terrorism.

 

This is one of those statements that can be refuted by asking a single question. (Sort of like, “Is postmodernism true?”) So, here’s the magical question: How on earth is a war against a dictator who harbored terrorists, funded terrorists, armed terrorists, trained terrorists, and collaborated with terrorists, a distraction from the war on terrorism?

 

 #15 (Lie): The war in Iraq has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

 

A study from Lancet, a British medical journal, is the latest cause celebré for the loony left.  Lancet claims that the war in Iraq has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians. “Aha!” the liberal psychotics cry. “Bush is Hitler!” You can no longer go into any discussion about the war in Iraq without some idiot claiming that it is a fact that 100,000 Iraqis have died in the war.  Big surprise – just like several hundred other myths the Left created about the war on terror, the 100,000 figure is almost certainly wrong.

 

For starters, it’s not as if Lancet went all the way around Iraq and counted every dead person.  The 100,000 figure is an projection.  Lancet surveyed 988 Iraqi households as a representative sampling, asking about deaths during the war, then extrapolated the numbers they got to the whole of Iraq.  It’s anything but an exact count.

 

Secondly, as Gerald Alexander of The Weekly Standard reports, “the study’s method only supports a 95 percent confidence in the conclusion that the war caused somewhere between 8,000 and 194,000 deaths, an extremely wide range.” In between 8,000 and 194,000?  That’s a pretty big margin of error.  You can’t say that 100,000 Iraqis have died, if it could have been 200,000, or maybe only 8,000, but you’re just not sure.

 

Even antiwar groups are criticizing the Lancet report.  Marc E. Garlasco, an analyst at Human Rights Watch, says, “The methods that they used are certainly prone to inflation due to overcounting.  These numbers seem to be inflated.” And the ferociously antiwar Iraq Body Count has reported, the Lancet researchers did not bother to ask the Iraqis they interviewed whether their dead relatives were civilians, or soldiers in Saddam’s army of terror. “The authors [of the Lancet report] clearly state that ‘many’ of the dead in their sample may have been combatants.” In other words, a good deal of the “100,000” (8,000-194,000) dead Iraqis may have been fighting for Saddam.  I don’t recall Donald Rumsfeld promising not to kill the enemy.

 

So, in conclusion, the Lancet “study” is not an exact count, but a projection; it does not say that 100,000 Iraqi civilians died, it says in between 8,000 and 194,000 Iraqis – soldiers and non-combatants – may have died; and everyone, even antiwar groups, agree that the count is inflated.  In short: it’s a joke. (More sober estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties usually agree on about 16,000 civilian casualties, for example, Iraq Body Count.)

 

People die in wars.  It’s inevitable.  That’s why it’s wrong to go to war unless it will prevent something much worse.  Something like Al-Qaeda terrorists operating out of Baghdad striking the U.S. with sarin and toxins, or terrorists trained by Saddam hijacking American airplanes, or Saddam Hussein engaging in another ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kurds and Shiites.  Saddam Hussein posed a real threat to the lives of millions of people around the world, as well as his own people.  This war was just.  Get over it.