| | To Russ K--
Re the Resolutions: what you say is absolutely irrelevant. The entire 1991 war was fought under UN auspices, so that naturally, the post-war resolutions went through the UN. That doesn't change the fact that we were the primary force doing the fighting, so that any post-war resolution was primarily a resolution with us. I actually was not in favor of that war, but having fought the war, would you take it as a principle that the enemy should be allowed to flout its post-war treaty obligations? My answer is no. What's yours?
Re the chemical rounds: it doesn't matter how many there were, nor does it matter what the terrorists thought they were. I laid no stress on numbers or knowledge, and it doesn't matter anyway (and you know as well as I that there was more than "one" round). The point is that the Resolutions demand full, unconditional compliance in respect of all rounds everywhere in Iraq regardless of their numbers or nature, so that the presence of any unaccounted-for rounds anywhere is a violation of Iraq's post-war agreements. Recall that your claim was that Iraq 'had' no WMD in the first sense I specified. Well, that claim is false, and you're now tacitly admitting that it is, but backpedaling to the claim that you don't care about Iraq's possession of WMD and don't care about the post-war resolutions. OK, but the fact remains: they had WMD even in the first, literal sense of "having WMD." That is not, in my view the relevant or most important sense, but the fact remains that they had some.
Incidentally, I haven't, but easily could, belabor all of the various weapons violations of which Iraq was guilty, including its missile deal with North Korea, which was pre-empted by the war. That, too, is an unintendedly beneficial consequence of the war. But my view is not that the invasion was predicated on our knowledge that Iraq had weapons. It was predicated on the need to force Iraq to comply with its weapons obligations, something we had failed since 1991 to do, and only succeeded at doing once we invaded, since it was the only recourse left.
As for the gun/gun factory tangle, that's your doing, not mine. You were the one who came up with the analogy, not me. For purposes of gun control, it is perfectly sensible to treat a gun factory as equivalent to possession of guns, since gun factories produce guns. For purposes of arms control, it is perfectly sensible to treat WMD infrastructure as equivalent to possession of WMD, since infrastructure produces WMD.
You're right re Al Shifa, it wasn't Iraqi anthrax but Iraqi EMPTA, a VX precursor. Apologies on my confusion of anthrax and EMPTA, though that doesn't really change the point I was making. Let me quote you a long excerpt from the as-yet unrefuted Benjamin-Simon analysis I referred to. Nothing you say touches their claims. And Clinton's actions show absolutely nothing whatsoever about the presence or absence of EMPTA at Al Shifa. They merely show that the Clinton administration did not want to go public on the matter; they say nothing positive about the nature of the soil sample. But here is Benjamin-Simon, pp. 354 and following:
The next line of attack dealt with the famous soil sample. The CIA had been reluctant to publicize how it had established that materials associated with chemical weapons were present at al Shifa: to reveal the sample's existence could endanger the operative who had obtained it and make it impossible for him ever to collect another. Morever, the Sudanese and other chemical weapons producers around the world would immediately increase security at chemical plants, making it more difficult for the United States to collect samples everywhere. Still, once the sample was discussed on August 24 [1998], no amount of explanation would suffice. Some argued that the sample's chain of custody was improper, implicitly disregarding the fact that intelligence operations typically are not and cannot be conducted according to judicial standards of proof. A single operative with a bag of soil in Sudan would be hard-pressed to demonstrate that it could not possibly have been tampered with while in his control.
Others contended that to have analyzed the soil sample at just one laboratory was shoddy science and that EMPTA, the chemical found in it, could hypothetically have been a derivative of pesticide production. But the CIA's analysis, which reporters were given on August 24, showed that EMPTA had no commercial use anywhere in the world. This conclusion was never refuted; it was also widely ignored.[3] Officials who spoke with reporters also noted that Iraqi weapons scientists had been linked to al-Shifa, and this Iraqi connection was independently underscored by UN weapons inspectors. [4] There are several different methods for making VX, but the only one known to involve EMPTA is Iraq's. Again, this information was never contradicted, but few found it persuasive. ...
Even independently reported stories that should have strengthened the government's case skipped off the consciousness of other journalists and the public without leaving a ripple. Newsday correspondent Tina Susman reported from Khartoum that the general manager of the al Shifa plant was living in bin Laden's villa in the al-Riyadh neighborhood of Khartoum...
Footnote 3 refers to Paul Pillar's Terrorism and U.S Foreign Policy (Brookings, 2001), which corroborates the claim Benjamin-Simon are making (Pillar was former deputy chief of the CIA Counterterrorist Center), and footnote 4 refers to David Kay, the UN/US weapons inspector.
The quoted passage rebuts your claim. The soil sample could not have been a pesticide derivative if there were no commercial uses for EMPTA. For your claim to be probative, you have to demonstrate at least one commercial use which was available for production in Sudan as of 1998. Benjamin-Simon's point is that no one had succeeded in showing that at any time between 1998 and the publication of their book in 2002. I'm not aware that anyone has succeeded since then.
Bear in mind that Al Shifa was part of a military-industrial installation in which Osama bin Laden had a financial interest and that Sudan was itself on the State Department terrorist sponsors list.
As to the connection between Iraq and Islamism, before we get into it, you need to acknowledge my rebuttal to you on the question of Saddam's support for Palestinian Islamists. You said that Saddam kept Islamists down. I raised the issue of his support for Palestinian Islamists. What is your position on that? If you're not willing to acknowledge a simple fact that contradicts your claims, there is no point in taking the discussion further on more complex ones.
Incidentally, notice I did not say that the claim I made about Iraqi-Al Qaeda collaboration was "in" the 9/11 Commission Report. I was referring to claims that came out as a result of the 9/11 Commission investigation, including the final report, the staff reports, and the responses to the staff reports. The Iraqi Mukhabarat documents I referred to were not uncovered by the 9/11 Commission; they were uncovered separately, discussed in the press, and subsequently discussed by the 9/11 staffers, and discussed some more in the press. One of the most interesting features of the 9/11 Commission's investigation is the way in which the Commission's staffers tried to shape the final report on the Iraq-Al Qaeda question through their staff reports, how flimsy their arguments were, and how they were rebutted by independent observers. But I'll quote chapter and verse on that just as soon as I hear what you have to say about those Palestinian Islamists.
(Edited by Irfan Khawaja on 9/28, 2:28pm)
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