Thursday, January 13, 2005

No WMDs

I didn't want to blog about this because I didn't want to do an "I told you so" piece and because regardless of the end of the search for WMDs we are there now and have to finish the job. But I hope that this will give pause to some people and make them reassess their belief that this president is somehow infallible.

White House: Iraq Weapons Search Is Over (Link to Full Story)
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The White House acknowledged Wednesday that its hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — a two-year search costing millions of dollars — has closed down without finding the stockpiles that President Bush cited as a justification for overthrowing Saddam HusseinBush's spokesman said the president had no regrets about invading Iraq.

The Iraq Survey Group — made up of as many as 1,500 military and intelligence specialists and support staff — is ending its search of military installations, factories and laboratories where it was thought that equipment and products might be converted to making weapons.

McClellan said the active search had virtually ended. "There may be a couple, a few people that are focused on that," he said, adding that they would handle any future reports that might come in.
Posted by at

3 comments:

SC&A said...

I suppose there are enough 'I told you so's to go around,' but in the end, the matter was never clear- one way or the other.

Previous administrations thought the WMD's to be a real issue, as well.

My concern is that succesive administrations, have been short changed by the intel community- and therin lie the real culprits.

Yes, there were naysayers among them, but that in no way should be read as anything other than contrarian opinons- always solicited. The vast majority of conventional wisdom called it wrong.

Time for an overhaul, I think.

4:32 PM
Smoke Eater said...

Well, as a "wing-nut" (although one of the moderate ones, am I a "wing-bat"?) I didn't believe that we only went because of WMD's, but the fact that we did find as many weapons as we did find hidden (in school playgrounds no less) and we found nuclear material (even though it was not "enriched" or anything. The fact that a MURDERING DICTATOR is out of power, and the people of Iraq are now FREE to choose their own government tells me we are doing a good thing over there. And don't forget that Sadaam has supported terrorism (paid benefits to SUICIDE BOMBERS' families) for a while now!

5:31 PM
Dingo said...

I am asking this respectfully... Do you think the American people would have supported the war if WMDs were not the main issue? I don't think so. I think that if you take that out of the picture, we would never have done it. What does Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Pinochet all have in common? there were all supported by the US. Saddam was our friend back in the 80's and he was killing his own people then also.

As for the intelligence agencies short changing us, I somewhat agree. I think they did a poor job, but I think Bush was already determined to go to war with Iraq pre-9/11. We could have had weapons inspectors search that country top to bottom and verify he had nothing, but we still would have invaded under some sort of pretense. Iraq was central to the Neo-Con plan long before 9/11. And, that's why I think Bush didn't give the inspectors enough time to do their job. He knew that if the inspectors reported back to the world that they had found nothing, he would lose his chance to use WMD as his rationale.

6:30 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)