Two fish, a barrel, and no smoking gun

Mona Charen has never been one to resist a pull on the administration hip flask. Bob Somerby has been—incomparably—on her case for years at the Daily Howler. But let’s see what she has to say today.

That Iraq once possessed these weapons is not in dispute. Are we to believe that Saddam destroyed them voluntarily but refused to provide proof of that destruction to the United Nations even as U.S. and British forces massed on his border? He knew that proof of the weapons’ destruction would avoid the war and his own removal.

Surely it is obvious that only three scenarios are possible. 1) Saddam secreted the weapons to Syria or some other country. 2) Saddam hid the weapons extremely well, and they will be found eventually. 3) Saddam destroyed the weapons at the last minute before the war began.

That’s my emphasis. All I have to say about that is, Charen should watch more CNN. And get a better psychic.

Turning to her three possible scenarios. Those are indeed three of the possible scenarios. Allow me to suggest a one more:

4) Saddam destroyed his weapon stocks sometime in the last 12 years, but kept baiting the inspectors because fear of his weapons programs was just as effective at keeping in place the sanctions regime (which benefited him personally while destroying the lives of his people), and keeping his neighbors afraid, as real weapons would have been. Bush and his merry men misread this situation, willfully or not, driven by a preconceived desire to oust Saddam; a desire which had been burning since the end of Gulf War I; a desire now inflamed by their feeling that to cow the terror-breeding Arab world would require the US knocking off a bigger target than Afghanistan. However, “we need to whack the Arabs a good one so they are more afraid of us killing them than they are afraid to die while killing us” was clearly not a tune that even the Rovian Wurlitzer could carry. So, for reasons of marketing, and perhaps bureaucracy as Wolfowitz has said, BushCo descended upon the threat of Saddam’s mighty WMD arsenal as the cassus belli of record for a war they wanted anyway. And now, we own Iraq, but have found no weapons, and the drive to war has been revealed as the fraud it was: either the weapons aren’t there, or they’re cached so deeply as to be useless, or they were there, and are now in the hands of who-knows-who, exactly the situation the war was supposedly fought to prevent. The fact that the search has been so lackluster ought to make it clear that even the administration itself does not now, and has never, truly taken seriously their own claims about the presence of WMDs in Iraq. Because if they were there, and we haven’t found them because somebody else found them first, then we are well and truly boned. “Bush lied” is the best scenario for everyone—even Bush.

Second barrel-dweller: U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson, R-New Jersey, who, according to The Express Times:
bq. blamed the failure to find forbidden large caches of weapons of mass destruction upon anti-war demonstrators in the United States and anti-war leaders in Europe.
bq. Public protests and objections filed by U.S. allies at the United Nations delayed the American invasion, Ferguson declared. The setbacks may have allowed Hussein to spirit some of his forbidden arms out of Iraq, the congressman claimed.
bq. “Had we had an opportunity to go into Iraq when the president originally wanted to, this process might have been much easier,” Ferguson said. “But because of the months of delay caused by a few people here at home and some of our allies in France and Russia, it gave Saddam Hussein several months to hide and conceal this program That delay that they caused may have given Saddam Hussein time to get some of those weapons out of the country.”
Funny, I would have thought that with all of those spy satellite dealies that can spot suspicious trucks moving around suspicious buildings from way up in the sky, and all those helpful guys from the INC just itching to get us on Saddam’s ass, someone would have noticed all of this weapon moving sometime when it was actually happening. Would have made a great line for a determined and resolute President to bring out: “He’s moving the weapons he says he doesn’t have!”
And which of Iraq’s neighbors, exactly, was on such good terms with Mr. Hussein that he would trust them with his arsenal, anyway?
Not that reason has ever slowed the Republican spin machine, so expect this one to make the full rounds soon. “No WMDs? Blame France!”—coming soon to a Mona Charen column near you.

Filed under: politics/war