It seems to me that what you are telling me is that Saddam
wanted to have the bomb. Yes, I don't doubt for a moment that he did. And some people want to pick down the moon. The question is, what are they in fact able to do?
Saddam wanted the bomb. That is why there were all those international sanctions against him. And that is why all those international experts said that Saddam didn't have the bomb: he wanted to have it, yes, but he wasn't able to get it.
You quoted this part of the Iraq Survey Group to me:
Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability, after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized.
Who said that sanctions would be removed? I don't remember anything being said about that at all. In any case, if they had in fact been removed and I just don't remember it, it wouldn't have been hard for President Bush to insist on a very tough international weapons embargo against Iraq. He could have imposed various kinds of additional sanctions against Iraq. I don't see anyone contesting Bush over this. Everyone had agreed with Clinton on the sanctions, so why wouldn't they have agreed with Bush?
It seems to me that what you are saying is that most conservatives, including President Bush, think that the WMDs found in Iraq were nowhere near as frightening as they needed to be if they were to justify the war that was being fought against Iraq because of them. Conclusion: President Bush's initial claim that Iraq needed to be attacked because of the WMDs it possessed didn't hold up at all. All the conservative commentators who are invited to speak their minds in liberal media worldwide are, I guess, too embarrassed about the whole thing to suggest that Iraq's WMDs justified a war against that country.
I certainly agree with you on this:
Essentially the Bush Administration had lost the fight and weren't willing to stir up the controversy again. It was an incredulous statement, especially since it went straight towards the president's credibility. Instead the administration left people with the impression that there were no WMD's and there never were any to find.
Indeed. A President who is willing to defy the opinion of the majority of the people of the world, according to the surveys I have referred to earlier, and who does so because he insists that Iraq possesses dangerous WMDs, and who isn't willing, afterwards, to insist that he was right about this - well, such a President has lost all, or at least most of, his credibility in the eyes of the world.
And just one more thing. If that information from Fox News about the presence of WMDs in Iraq isn't impressive enough for President Bush, then I'm afraid that it isn't impressive enough for me.
Ann
