Iraqi Dangers & American Failures

More than a year after the pre-war Bush administration adamantly denied the effectiveness of U.N. weapon's inspectors, after $110 billion has been spent in Iraq, and after 599 brave American soliders have lost their lives, new U.S. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer is saying that Saddam "may have" had "intentions" to develop WMD's. From the extravagant pre-war claims of impending destruction, mushroom clouds over New York, and the administration's certainty of specific WMD locations, from Colin Powell's U.N. security council presentation alleging concrete evidence of large WMD stockpiles, the administration's reasoning for launching a pre-emptive war has come to rely not on a reality, but on a possibility of an intention.

We've come a long way from those innocent days, when we believed that our government would give us the facts. Some of us understandably believed that Saddam had the capability to attack the U.S. via terrorists. Some of us understandably thought that Saddam posed a threat with his WMD stockpiles, and his continuing efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. A year later, the only problem is that these hundreds of tons of chemical and biological agents are nowhere to be found. These nuclear weapons facilities are nowhere to be found. Now, the U.S. weapons inspector is simply saying that Saddam could have intended to get WMD's, someday, possibly.

Since when does the United States of America go to war pre-emptively, based on the possibility that a leader's intentions might someday pose a danger to us? U.N. inspections, decried by conservative pundits and the Bush administration as worthless and impotent, have become, after a year of war, U.S. inspections. And these inspections have found even less than the U.N. teams. Oddly, it seems that our billions of dollars, our 21st century weaponry, and our intelligence-gathering superiority are more impotent than those rag-tag teams of inspectors. Those inspectors who, according to Bush & Co, were fooled and laughed at by Saddam seem to have done more to protect the American people than our forces in Iraq have.

Even granting Bush's administration the benefit of the doubt, assuming that somehow Saddam had WMD's that he was able to get rid of just in time to fake his innocence, who would Saddam most probably export these WMD's to? Why terrorists, of course. Terrorists who Saddam had no reason to do business with so long as he was comfortable. Terrorists who despised Saddam's liberal form of Islam, and had publicly denounced him. Terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that if Saddam had WMD's, and knew he would lose a war with the U.S., he had every reason to export these WMD's so as to eventually have his revenge on the U.S. In fact, no other means of resistance would have been logical for Saddam at the point of the American invasion. If Saddam had attempted to use his WMD's against American troops, the world would have rushed to the defense of the U.S., and America itself would have responded with immense force. If Saddam had simply sat on his WMD's, he would be seen as a villian in the eyes of the world, and the U.S. invasion would have been justified. It does not seem possible that Bush's administration simply failed to recognize this situation as the most probable course of action for Saddam. If this scenario is the true one, the American people are in more danger today than they were before the invasion of Iraq; the rapid growth of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East as a result of the war in Iraq, combined with this probable transfer of WMD's into terrorist hands, leaves the civilized world in a much more dangerous situation. If Saddam has distributed his WMD's to terrorists, containment is no longer an option, and the terrorists have gained a huge advantage in this War on Terror.

These points in mind, the invasion of Iraq was either an astronomical intelligence failure, an unjustified attack based on misleading information, or a tactical failure of immense proportions. Obviously the first option places the blame on the intelligence community. However, recent reports have shown that the intelligence community had serious doubts regarding Iraqi WMD's that they communicated to the Bush administration. (These doubts were not in turn communicated to the public.) The second scenario places the blame on the Bush administration. The third scenario, possibly the most disturbing, would indicate a massive failure at all levels of intelligence gathering, military planning, and implementation of national security measures. If in fact the third scenario is true, the invasion of Iraq has only quickened the distribution of these WMD's to terrorists (the prevention of which was the only logical argument for the invasion of Iraq), and the whole world is in great danger. The third option is also the most dark because, in light of current information, it presents an apparently blatant disregard for the well-being of the American people (due to this easily avoidable and obvious tactical failure) that has endangered every American citizen.

If Saddam did not possess WMD's, the American people have been thoroughly lied to and manipulated, and someone must answer for this. If Saddam did possess these WMD's, the American people are in grave danger, thanks to one of the greatest tactical failures in American history. We have either been lied to, or our government has done the equivalent of handing Nazi Germany an atomic bomb. We the American people are now put in the sad situation where being misled by our government is the best-case scenario.