I hasten to add that even the best evidence can be wrong. This is another concept that people have trouble assimilating. If you allow your thinking to be influenced by the best evidence, and if it later turns out to have been the wrong way to think, it does not mean that you were wrong to base your conclusions on that evidence. Even the best evidence provides imperfect information (and can therefore lead you astray). In addition, a wild guess based purely on partisan political extremism can accidentally turn out to be right (just as any guess based on a coin flip can). Even so, your thinking should always be based on the best evidence, not on your strong, pre-determined partisan views. If you can't accept that fact, you are in a fairly primitive stage of intellectual development.
Concerning the idea that Bush lied about Saddam's WMDs, the best available evidence is that excruciatingly detailed, bipartisan, unanimously endorsed investigation carried out by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. If you read that long report with a calm mind, you'll see that it was the Intelligence Community that mistakenly concluded that Saddam possessed WMDs. Moreover, you'll also see that their conclusion was reasonable. I know how bizarre that must seem to you given that they were wrong, but it is nevertheless true. Reasonable conclusions that are supported by the weight of evidence can be wrong. This report provides the best account of why the intelligence community mistakenly believed that Saddam possessed WMDs. And their mistaken belief explains why Bush was mistaken. To me, these are the key excerpts from the report:
The Intelligence Community (IC) has long struggled with the need for analysts to overcome analytic biases, that is, to resist the tendency to see what they would expect to see in the intelligence reporting. In the case of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities, the Committee found that intelligence analysts, in many cases, based their analysis more on their expectations than on an objective evaluation of the infomation in the intelligence reporting. Analysts expected to see evidence that Iraq had retained prohibited weapons and that Iraq would resume prohibited WMD activities once United Nations’ (UN) inspections ended.
...
The roots of the IC’s bias stretch back to Iraq’s pre-1991 efforts to build WMD and its efforts to hide those programs. The fact that Iraq had repeatedly lied about its pre-1991 WMD programs, its continued deceptive behavior, and its failure to fully cooperate with UN inspectors left the IC with a predisposition to believe the Iraqis were continuing to lie about their WMD efforts. This was compounded by the fact that Iraq’s pre-1991 progress on its nuclear weapons program had surprised the IC.
...
The Intelligence Community did not accurately or adequately explain to policymakers the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
In other words, for very good reason, the IC strongly suspected that Saddam was again doing exactly what he had done before. Because of that conviction, the IC did not explain uncertainties behind their judgments to policymakers. And because they did not seem uncertain, Bush did not seem uncertain. It really is as simple as that, and you should take careful note of the fact that no one lied. If your mind is closed to this possibility, there is something wrong with your mind.
Concerning the idea that Saddam really did possess WMDs, the best available evidence is a report by the Iraq Survey Group (i.e., the Duelfer Report). It is, by far, the most detailed report on the subject, and it concludes that Saddam had essentially eliminated significant stockpiles of WMDs by 1995. I know that quite a few mustard gas artillery shells have been found in Iraq and that there is some fairly suggestive evidence that Saddam shipped his WMDs to Syria before the war. Thus, the Duelfer Report may be wrong. But that does not change the fact that it is the best information available. Indeed, the Duelfer Report discusses these very issues and acknowledges uncertainty about them. Here is what they say about leftover mustard-gas WMDs that are occasionally encountered in Iraq:
ISG assesses that Iraq and Coalition Forces will continue to discover small numbers of degraded chemical weapons, which the former Regime mislaid or improperly destroyed prior to 1991. ISG believes the bulk of these weapons were likely abandoned, forgotten and lost during the Iran-Iraq war because tens of thousands of CW munitions were forward deployed along frequently and rapidly shifting battlefronts.
And about the transfer of WMDs into Syria, they acknowledge that possibility while also suggesting that it is unlikely to have happened:
There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation.
ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war. It should be noted that no information from debriefing of Iraqis in custody supports this possibility. ISG found no senior policy, program, or intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of such movement of WMD. Indeed, they uniformly denied any knowledge of residual WMD that could have been secreted to Syria.
...
Based on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials.
According to the best available evidence, Saddam had no significant stockpiles of WMDs after 1995. Thus, Bill Clinton was seriously in error when he confidently suggested otherwise just before launching cruise missiles into Baghdad in 1998. Later on, Bush was similarly in error when he launched the invasion of Iraq. But both made decisions based on the best evidence available (at the time).
I am not trying to be Mr. Even-Handed here. I am trying to make the point that your thinking has to be influenced by the evidence whether you like what the evidence has to say or not. If you remain absolutely certain that Saddam still retained significant stockpiles of WMDs at the time of our invasion, you are as mentally inflexible as those who still angrily cling to the belief that Bush lied.
If you allow your thinking to be influenced by the evidence, you'll come to understand that it was Saddam Hussein who lied. He deliberately misled the world into believing that he had WMDs, and he was uniquely positioned to pull off that charade (having successfully lied about that very issue in the early 1990s). Incredibly, he (not Bush) lied because he feared an invasion from Iran more than he feared an invasion from the United States. He really thought that France and Germany would succeed in propping up his genocidal dictatorship, that UN sanctions would be removed when the inspectors failed to uncover any WMDs, and that he could resume his WMD program before Iran realized that Iraq was, essentially, defenseless against the Iranian army. That's the amazing truth, and, as usual, the truth is far more interesting than the partisan theory that prevents you from being rational when it comes to thinking about politically charged issues.
14 comments:
I'm an evidence guy. We(the usa) started a WAR. WE started a WAR. Let me say it one more time WE started a WAR. Your points are that Saddam was the cause is valid, but we started the real fight and yes we lied to make it happen. Tell me this. Our government told the US citizens that Saddam was a threat, he was not even close to it. Iraq is a mess and was a mess. This was a land grab and nothing more.
Here is my problem with the Bush WMD claim.
If you are going to use a piece of information to justify a war, you have a responsibility to be very certain that it is correct.
Now, in Clinton's case, he wasn't using the Saddam WMD information to justify a war. So it is reasonable of him to just accept the conclusions of the intel community.
But Bush was using the Saddam WMD assertions to justify a war. He said as much in his ultimatum:
intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
Furthermore, at the time, others were saying that the case was not proven. (See, for example, this article -- one of many similar articles that were published during the run-up to the war.)
So, you are President. You have some information that you want to use to justify a war. The correctness of that information is hotly disuputed. It is your responsibility to make certain that the information is correct. You can't just rely on the conclusions of your intel people -- because other people are coming to different conclusions. Which conclusion is correct? What are the sources, methods, and evidence of the two sides? The President needs to find someone who can reliably get into the details -- or to do so personally.
If the intel people are not sufficiently re-examining their assumptions, then it is the President's responsibility to ensure that they do so.
For their part, the intel. types are going to be perfectly aware of whether the President wants them to reexamine their assumptions or not. And they are going to conduct themselves accordingly.
About that bipartisan report. I don't agree that it's the best evidence. The problem is that the authors, including the Democratic authors, had an incentive to cover their butts. Because a lot of Democrats had made statements similar to Bush's.
Furthermore, the authors on the Democratic side had a different level of repsonsibility for the conduct of the intel. community. If intel types were not sufficiently examining their assumptions, the Democrats were not in a position to do much about it. But the President was.
It is for this sort of reason that the legal world has names for different states of mind: strict liability, negligence, recklessness, willful blindness, knowledge, and intention. The verb "to lie" is vague, because it's not clear what state of mind was being referred to. In the case of Bush and Iraq's WMD, it is clear that he did not have actual knowledge that the WMD were gone. It is equally clear that under a standard of strict liability, Bush's statements were incorrect. So the questions one can ask whether or not he was negligent, reckless, and wilfully blind. To me, it seems pretty clear that he was reckless, but probably not wilfully blind.
William,
Imagine that the IC had been right to suggest that Saddam had WMDs and that, at some later point, Saddam passed nuclear material to a terrorist group that proceeded to use it against the United States. Would you, under those conditions, now be insisting that Bush had a clear obligation to forcibly disarm Iraq unless he was absolutely certain -- beyond a shadow of a doubt -- that Saddam had rid himself of WMDs? That is, does the "absolute certainty" argument apply only in one case but not the other?
In my view, the argument applies to both cases. In addition, absolute certainty is a condition that exists only in the world of fantasy. In the real world, decisions have to be made under conditions of uncertainty.
Engram --
I didn't say that Bush was wrong to go to war. I think that question remains un answered, and we won't know until we see how Iraq turns out.
My post was about Bush's assertion that there was no doubt Saddam had WMDs.
William,
Fair enough. I assume you believe that Clinton was similarly wrong to express this kind of certainty:
And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal...In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.
I agree that our leaders should be more humble about these sorts of things. Bush often expressed too much confidence, but when directly pressed about Saddam's nuclear program he also said that (a) the problem is that we just don't know if he has a nuclear weapon and (b) the burden was on Saddam to prove that he did not have such weapons. That was the right way to say it, and Bush should have said it that way more often. He still would have invaded Iraq because, as we now know, Saddam was not about to prove that he did not have any WMDs. But the whole "Bush lied!" thing never would have gotten off the ground if Bush had put it that way more often. Of course, even in that case, the war would have been about lining the pockets of his Halliburton buddies or fulfilling a Christian prophecy or stealing Iraq's oil wealth or some such thing...
Engram -- I agree with pretty much everything in your last comment. However, I would say that while Clinton was wrong, his level of responsibility was lower than Bush's, because he wasn't using the information in the same way Bush was. Clinton also lied in a rather personal way about another matter, but that's a different story altogether . . .
At any rate, if the radical left only had Haliburton to yammer about, and not "Bush lied", I think we would all be better off.
Let me ask the question to those who want certainty before decision for war. How much is enough? Or put another way - are you willing to excuse an administration who chooses to NOT go to war when a small nuc detonates in a US city?
Intel is never perfect. The evidence only looks "good" in the rear view mirror when you can walk around. Regimes hide things, obscure things, and seek to misdirect other states (such as the US). Intel gathering and analysis seeks to gather bits and pieces of collected data (which may be good or bad) and assemble it. Then you have to determine the intent of your opponent.
No one in Bush administration was worried about Brazil or Argentina nuc threat to US. Why? Because the perceived threat was never seen as high even though both are technically capable of developing a nuc. Bush decided there was a threat in Iraq. Hindsight is always perfect. The crux of this still boils down to the President decided Iraq poised a threat and got Congressional approval prior.
Bush could have said something like this:
I don't know if Saddam has WMD or not. In light of his prior use of them, that's enough reason for me to go to war.
It may have been more diffucult for him to gather the votes he needed to go to war with that argument. I don't know. But I am sure that if he had used that argument, and with it had won the votes needed for war, the last few years would have been easier for him -- and probably also for the US in the world.
excellent post Engram. One point to add to the idea of following the evidence. It's important for each of us to realize that we are biased and will undoubtedly have our view of evidence shaded by our bias. It is important to acknowledge this and try and overcome it, not pretend it doesn't exist.
Let's not forget WMD were but one of, IIRC, 32 separate justifications given in the Joint Resolution authorizing the president to disarm Saddam. While it's true a majority of the 32 were actually each components of a single "dangerous man" argument.
The question, I'm afraid, is not whether Iraq had "stockpiles" of WMDs, but whether the dangerous man argument was made sufficiently well at the time it was made. A majority of Congress voted that it was.
I hate to open the adjacent can of worms, but I think it's now obvious that a significant majority of the Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force by the president were acting disingenuously. They believed that if they didn't vote for the war, and the US Army uncovered all of the barbarous things suspected to be in Iraq, that they would be pilloried and would never see another majority this decade, perhaps this century. They didn't feel they had a choice.
Others, however, figured Bush would back down. I suspect, based upon the absurd behavior of some regarding prevention of a supposed nascent attack on Iran, that Democrats felt betrayed by Bush. What they assumed would happen is that he would back down, the UN would broker some kind of deal, and they could all go back to important things like loading up the budget with Homeland Security pork projects.
This, in my opinion, is what agitates them most of all. They assumed Bush was bluffing. But he was not.
--Fresh Air
With few exceptions, we make up our minds first and use evidence and rationality only for confirmation (if even that). This is all the more true with respect to something complex and ambiguous like a war.
Indeed as a general rule we look for a worldview that is simple and fits with what we already believe, especially about ourselves (e.g. "The Iraq war is a Republican sham but I see through it," or "Liberals assume Iraq is in a civil war but I know better.") Then we stick with that worldview unless we notice that there is a better (i.e. more self-serving) one available.
It's a popular truism that you can't argue someone out of something that they weren't argued into in the first place. And hardly anybody is argued into anything in the first place...
My links didn't work :( Let's try this again:
Eventually number one
Eventually number two
Saddam Hussein started a war.
Saddam Hussein intentionally misled the world about his WMD.
Saddam Hussein used brinksmanship tactics as a rule.
Saddam Hussein could have allowed UN Weapons Inspectors to verify his probable compliance with WMD disarmament, but instead thwarted the very people who could have helped him.
Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein.
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