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Bush Did The Right Thing
By Matt Margolis | October 4, 2003
It is completely outrageous the way the media has handled the story of David Kay’s congressional testimony. I remember walking into the Starbucks the morning after, and seeing headlines like “No WMD in Iraq” on the papers in the stands. This sounded bad initially - as it would to anyone who skims headlines and doesn’t follow up with reading the full text of the story, or even checking out other sources.
When papers such as the Boston Globe or The New York Times run headlines like this, it empowers the naysayers into believing they were right from the get-go. To them, the headline that reaffirms their initial assumptions is good enough. The headline, however, was not enough to satisfy, and after reaching my office that morning, I looked online for more information since I had arrived early.
It wasn’t long before located a story painting a very different picture than the Times and the Globe had implied with their headlines. It was obvious to me what was going on. Anyone who took the time to delve further into this story would discover the same thing I had. However, knowing the determination of the Left to discredit Bush over anything, I knew it would take a bit more than cross checking a headline to a different story to satisfy the anti-Bush ideologues.
So, I had to read a transcript of Kay’s testimony myself. To prove to those who seem hell-bent on attacking me and discrediting my positions on any given issue, I’ve personally gone through the entire testimony and highlighted portions that I find extremely relevant and that show unequivocally that President George W. Bush was right to topple Saddam’s regime.
Firstly, it was plainly obvious from David Kay’s testimony that Saddam Hussein was pursing various weapons programs and went to extraordinary lengths to conceal these efforts from the UN weapons inspectors.
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.
Notice how he said “even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone.
I quote this mainly because it is worth distinguishing the differences between an anti-Bush ideologue and a mere disbeliever that WMD existed in Iraq. In discussions with friends and acquaintances, or through dialogue engaged here on my site, most of the people who were against the war in Iraq make definitive statements such as “there were no weapons in Iraq,” and “Bush deliberately mislead us to war,” etc. etc. etc. These are the same people who will scrutinize this post and claim they are still right based on Kay’s own testimony. I have come across several left-leaning websites already making such claims. However, this is not what Kay said, nor is it consistent with the details laid out further in the report.
Some people (in my experience, the minority of the naysayers) are at least willing to say that it is merely their opinion that there were no WMD in Iraq. Kay’s report, once read in full, should immediately cue anyone who has the ability to be objective, that there is no way to definitively claim there were no WMD in Iraq. Anyone who makes such definitive claims clearly has their heart set on distrusting George W. Bush and cannot be taken seriously.
David Kay laid out in specifics why the hunt for weapons has be difficult. This section alone should be enough to tell the average person that finding a “smoking gun” is not as simple as finding spare change in a couch.
Kay gave six principal factors contributing to the lack of conclusive results in the search for weapons:
1. From birth all of Iraq’s WMD activities were highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program.
This isn’t new information. However, it is certainly noteworthy.
2. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans- to post-conflict.
So, here we know that evidence on these programs was intentionally destroyed - not just years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, but shortly before, during, and after combat operations. Obviously there was plenty to hide.
3. Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning Iraq’s WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-OIF activities of Saddam’s regime.
I know it’s convenient for some people to believe that the evidence was just going to be sitting around waiting for us to find it, but the truth is - as Kay has said - that the looting which occurred played a role in the destruction of evidence and the dispersion of materials, which could have been done easily.
4. Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre/trans-conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them.
This information should be making people worry about where the WMD have gone - not doubt their existence.
5. Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small in relation to the total conventional armaments footprint and difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search procedures. It is important to keep in mind that even the bulkiest materials we are searching for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not much larger than a two-car garage.
This I find extremely important for people to understand. The amount of materials we’re looking for relatively small. Iraq is roughly the same size as the state of California. Considering the secrecy of such programs and the mere size of what is being sought after, no one can reasonable expect that we’d simply find the stuff in a matter days, weeks, or months. The fact that something hasn’t been found yet means very little when you consider this.
6. The environment in Iraq remains far from permissive for our activities, with many Iraqis that we talk to reporting threats and overt acts of intimidation and our own personnel being the subject of threats and attacks. In September alone we have had three attacks on ISG facilities or teams: The ISG base in Irbil was bombed and four staff injured, two very seriously; a two-person team had their vehicle blocked by gunmen and only escaped by firing back through their own windshield; and on Wednesday, 24 September, the ISG Headquarters in Baghdad again was subject to mortar attack.
It’s no picnic over there. It is not as simple as people coming out from hiding after the toppling of the regime and providing our people with information and evidence.
These six factors should be enough for people to understand an accept the fact that just because no “smoking gun” has been discovered yet means that they never existed or still exist today.
So what did Kay have to say about what has been found? Quite a lot, if you ask me.
What have we found and what have we not found in the first three months of our work?
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002.
So, in the late months of 2002, Iraq was still hard at work at WMD-related program activities and was hiding it from U.N. weapons inspectors. So much for letting the inspections work.
The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the U.N.
So this isn’t merely hearsay - they have evidence to support this claim. Kay detailed the evidence of the concealment efforts:
– A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to U.N. monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW (chemical biological weapons) research.
–A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW (bioweapons) agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N.
–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, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the U.N.
–Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists’ homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation.
–A line of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) 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 U.N.
–Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 km — well beyond the 150-km range limit imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout 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 anti-ship cruise missiles and other prohibited military equipment.
This is very damning evidence. This should clear up any doubt that Saddam Hussein was up to no good. In addition to this, plenty of evidence was destroyed, including computer evidence, “The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence,” Kay said, “hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use — are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts.”
Kay discussed the information collected on biological warfare activities, and revealed the discovery of information on “research and development of BW-applicable organisms, the involvement of Iraqi Intelligence Service in possible BW activities, and deliberate concealment activities.” Kay said, “All of this suggests Iraq after 1996 further compartmentalized its program and focused on maintaining smaller, covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of BW agents.”
Kay then talked about a network of laboratories and facilities that was “never declared to the U.N. and was previously unknown.” It’s hard to claim that Saddam Hussein was being totally upfront about what he had when we’ve discovered things like these that we’re just learning about. While the extent of what this network was connected to biological weapons and the Iraqi military, Kay did say that “this clandestine capability was suitable for preserving BW expertise, BW capable facilities and continuing R&D — all key elements for maintaining a capability for resuming BW production.”
From information given to us from Iraqi scientists, it is known that research and development efforts occurred where non-secret work with benign organisms were “surrogates for prohibited investigation with pathogenic agents.”
The scientists discussed the development of improved, simplified fermentation and spray drying capabilities for the simulant Bt that would have been directly applicable to anthrax, and one scientist confirmed that the production line for Bt could be switched to produce anthrax in one week if the seed stock were available.
So it appears that Saddam was certainly interested in covertly producing anthrax quickly if and when he needed them. These efforts were done while the U.N. inspectors were there in Iraq! People have to get out of the mindset that had inspections continued that they would have found something. As Kay stated:
A very large body of information has been developed through debriefings, site visits and exploitation of captured Iraqi documents that confirms that Iraq concealed equipment and materials from U.N. inspectors when they returned in 2002.
There has been some debate over the mobile labs issue and whether or not the two trailers discovered in Iraq in April were used for such purposes. Kay said, that while various processes were not ideally suite to these trailers, “nothing we have discovered rules out their potential use in BW production.”
While searching for retained weapons, ISG teams have developed multiple sources that indicate that Iraq explored the possibility of CW production in recent years, possibly as late as 2003.
As late as 2003. I’d have to say that is a damn good thing we went in there when we did - perhaps we wouldn’t have found out these efforts until such chemical weapons were deployed.
When Saddam had asked a senior military official in either 2001 or 2002 how long it would take to produce new chemical agents and weapons, he told ISG that after he consulted with CW experts in OMI (Iraq’s Military Industrial Organization) he responded it would take six months for mustard. Another senior Iraqi chemical weapons expert, in responding to a request in mid-2002 from Odai Hussein for CW for the Fedayeen Saddam, estimated that it would take two months to produce mustard and two years for sarin.
These inquiries occurred not in 1991, or 1998, but either in 2001 or 2002. This is not old information or old intelligence… this is new information on recent activities.
With regard to Iraq’s nuclear program, the testimony we have obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons. They have told ISG that Saddam Hussein remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. These officials assert that Saddam would have resumed nuclear weapons development at some future point. Some indicated a resumption after Iraq was free of sanctions. At least one senior Iraqi official believed that by 2000 Saddam had run out of patience with waiting for sanctions to end and wanted to restart the nuclear program.
It seems quite clear to me, that no matter what, had inspections gone through and they found nothing, it would have created an environment where Saddam Hussein could have easily resurrected his covert programs without starting over from scratch. This means that had we not taken Saddam out of power, he’d have remained a threat, even while the world was under the impression he wasn’t. And, and as Kay said, “according to documents and testimony of Iraqi scientists, some of the key technical groups from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program remained largely intact, performing work on nuclear-relevant dual-use technologies within the Military Industrial Commission (MIC).
With regard to delivery systems, the ISG team has discovered sufficient evidence to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system improvements that would have, if OIF had not occurred, dramatically breached U.N. restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.
As the testimony continued, it’s only gotten clearer and clearer why it was absolutely necessary to go into Iraq when we did if not sooner. From Kay’s testimony it is clear that Saddam have every intention of continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction and there is proof that this was going on recently. It was also clear that throughout the entire ordeal, Saddam went to great lengths to deceive weapons inspectors and conceal his ongoing efforts. Saddam also had undeclared, long-range missiles, which were in violation of U.N. restrictions. We also know that there was active research and development activities regarding chemical and biological weapons that were highly secretive and undeclared to the U.N. When you add all this up, it is clear that Saddam was up to nothing by trouble, and that while no “smoking gun” has been discovered yet, there is no justification in coming to the conclusion that doesn’t mean there won’t be a “smoking gun” or that WMD never existed in Iraq.
So, when the media reports “No WMD found in Iraq” it only tells half the story. When a reasonable person reads a transcript of the testimony, they’ll come to realize going into Iraq was not only the right thing to do, but also it was absolutely necessary.
We should be thankful for George W. Bush and his resolve to remove the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his regime. In the war on terror, we don’t just need a President - we need a Commander-In-Chief. A President should not be willing to risk the lives of Americans on the supposed good will of an evil dictator, nor should a President be willing to wait for an attack to happen before taking action. I want a President who wants to take preventative action, not reactive action - that’s why I’m glad George W. Bush is President.
Topics: The Right Idea |
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October 5th, 2003 at 1:22 am
Matt that is a excellent job of point by point writing - congrats I know that took a long time to put together I for one appreciate your hard work
Paul
October 5th, 2003 at 1:35 am
Very well put together and written.
But I’m still left to wonder, what exactly constitutes a WMD? Must the bio-organism or chemical be loaded into a munition?
October 5th, 2003 at 2:28 am
Hey, Matt-
I said very much the same thing at my site, but covered a few other aspects. Check it out.
October 9th, 2003 at 1:58 pm
Just wait, once conclusive evidence is found, the Left will say that we planted it there… They’ll never concede on this issue. The way Democrats have in recent history treated the WMD issue, you’d think that the moment Bush took office suddenly WMDs no longer existed in Iraq - however, throughout Clinton’s Administration, Democrats were regularly warning about the dangers posed by Saddam and his WMD.
November 15th, 2003 at 11:40 pm
I really believe you are a inhuman with no emotions and truley thats no human and you should die in purgertury!
November 15th, 2003 at 11:43 pm
A Jew in purgatory.. there’s a concept.
November 15th, 2003 at 11:58 pm
Sherry…. insults will not change anyone’s mind, infact, it only weakens your arguments. You must be a liberal.