Weapons of mass confusion?
UNITED NATIONS Ñ Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix (remember him?) made whatÕs likely the last of his equivocal presentations to the Security Council dealing with IraqÕs elusive weapons of mass destruction. The debate over WMD-a clinically terse term for horrifically ghoulish biological, chemical, and nuclear weaponsÑwas the primary reason for war against SaddamÕs regime. Now that SaddamÕs rule has been toppled, where are these weapons the war was fought over in the first place?
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and to a lesser degree President George W. Bush have been increasingly pressured to come up with the evidence. So has Secretary of State Colin Powell who made his WMD Show and Tell presentation to a less than convinced UN Security Council meeting in February. Naturally a healthy skepticism reigns and rules in any democracy and our politicians should expect this pummeling if they donÕt produce the long-elusive smoking gun.
First off, the fact we have not found them does not mean they donÕt exist. Hiding relatively small caches of weapons in a country larger than California may not be as difficult as you think especially when large parts of the country are trackless terrain.
Conversely though, that does not totally absolve the CIA and wider intelligence community who provided the President with the information in the first place.
Whether the intelligence on Iraq was tailored to fit political measurements is questioned.
Secondly, when former President Bill ClintonÕs attacked Baghdad in 1998 it was primarily to destroy these elusive weapons. The job was not follow through.
Thirdly, UN weapons inspectors booted from Baghdad in 1998, only returned to Iraq late last year, after strong-arm pressure by the Bush Administration to come clean or else. While the UN teams were professional and thorough, they found nothing. The entire UN argument prior to the war in March was not that such weapons donÕt exist, but that the international inspectors should be allowed more time and resources to discover them!
Still between late 1998 and 2002 there was more than adequate time for the Iraqis to destroy, hide, and ferret away the evidence. Saddam played a calculated shell game with the weapons to deceive and divide the international community. At this he excelled.
Blix conceded the need for outside pressure on Saddam which in turn backed up the diplomacy and inspection efforts. But Blix and the UN never declared Iraq disarmed and clean of the culprit WMD, it was just that they wished more time to discover them.
Still if there were no such proscribed weapons, why did Iraq behave as it did? Saddam could have literally gotten away with murder but instead he withstood sanctions and world opprobrium not to mention war, just to protect something he did not have? Hardly.
People often righteously muse, ÒWell were are they then?Ó Yet, IÕm always amazed that nearly sixty years after WWII, large caches of explosives and munitions are still being discovered. IÕm not just talking about an unexploded bomb or artillery shells unearthed by hapless farmers or construction crews. A few years ago maintenance workers at a major Paris train Station discovered it to be wired and packed with explosives placed by the retreating Nazis in 1944. This potentially deadly time-bomb was undiscovered right under everyoneÕs noses in a busy place!
At issue of course is political credibility both in Washington and London. Put bluntly, there are those who gleefully wish to badger Bush and Blair based on the charge that we wanted war, we created the excuse, and we then went after poor old Saddam. Intelligence hype, evidence tampering and manipulation are terms being thrown about. The case of the elusive WMD presents murky and deep political waters.
Calls for prudent patience, as U.S./UN Ambassador John Negroponte advised, seem to have been blindsided by political rushes to judgment.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
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