20 Years Ago on March 19…

 

Smoke covers the presidential palace compound during a massive US-led air raid in Baghdad, March 2003…US President George W. Bush ordered air strikes on Baghdad, launching the war for “regime change” and the ousting of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The war was premised on the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies. Such a belief is now deemed to have been false, although the length of time between Colin Powell’s February 5 address to the United Nations, in which he laid out the case, and the subsequent Allied invasion – exactly six weeks later – left plenty of time for such efforts to be covered up, dismantled, or moved.

And so, with apparent evidence on both sides to support their respective cases, the conspiracy theorists, and the conspiracy realists, continue to joust over the truth, which is likely never to be fully known.

Regardless, or irregardless as the case may be, I remember the television coverage of those aerial attacks on that day exactly two decades ago. It was awe-inspiring, and thrilling.  The subsequent initial phase of the land war – which lasted just over a month and was spearheaded by the United States with support from the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland, and the following “quagmire” years resulted in the deaths and wounding, both physically and mentally, of tens of thousands of Allied troops, and in consequences that we, and they, still live with today.

As cowards do, Saddam Hussein ran away and hid from reprisals, remaining undiscovered until December 2003, when American soldiers found him, filthy and deranged, hiding in a hole in the ground near ad-Dawr. He was subsequently interrogated, tried, and executed (by the interim Iraqi government) on December 30, 2006. Sic semper tyrannis.

Today, I remember not the meretricious crapweasels of the various governments on all sides who have been – ever since – revising the rather clear history of the war, those who started it, and even, sometimes, those who fought in it. I choose rather to remember the valiant soldiers from all services and all nations who fought, and those who were wounded and who died in the cause of freedom and to keep us safe.

From February 7, 2001–just a month into the first Persian Gulf War:

And from the UK:

Australia:

And Poland:

Thank you.

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  1. DonG (CAGW is a Scam) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a Scam)
    @DonG

    She: The war was premised on the the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies. 

    Which is the “lie of the century”:   WMD in Iraq or safe and effective?     

    • #1
  2. Brian Wyneken Member
    Brian Wyneken
    @BrianWyneken

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Which is the “lie of the century”: WMD in Iraq or safe and effective?

    I don’t think we know enough to confidently attach that label to either candidate.

    As the OP states: . . . . “left plenty of time for such efforts to be covered up, dismantled, or moved.”  and . . . “And so, with apparent evidence on both sides to support their respective cases, the conspiracy theorists, and the conspiracy realists, continue to joust over the truth, which is likely never to be fully-known.” 

    I was there (based in Oman) and was getting the briefings during the build-up to “shock and awe.” That was my experience, but that alone doesn’t add one ounce of credibility to anything that I might think about whether or not the WMD was a “lie”, a truth, a mistake, or whatever. I tend to believe what I was being briefed and have had insufficient reason over the years to seriously question it. But we had a few rather vocal sceptics at the time (in our squadron). The one thing I would say is that these few were consistently very averse to President Bush (or any republican administration).

    • #2
  3. JoelB Member
    JoelB
    @JoelB

    I met a man last December who claimed to have been a marine in the Iraq war and that he and his outfit spent a lot of time disposing of WMD. He had pictures that he showed us, which looked real enough. Of course, this is not incontrovertible evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq, but given the other lies that we have been exposed over the past few years, it seems more believable all the time that Saddam had them. I suspect that the length of the build-up to invasion gave Saddam plenty of time to haul most of them off to Syria and hide the rest.

    • #3
  4. She Member
    She
    @She

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Which is the “lie of the century”: WMD in Iraq or safe and effective?

    Not sure.  It might be a mistake to nominate one such, less than a quarter of the way through the said, current, century.  If you’re talking about going back until 1924 or so, and starting to count from there, perhaps there are other candidates?

    • #4
  5. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    She: The war was premised on the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    It wasn’t solely based on this but it got the most attention and the administration didn’t help itself by primarily focusing on this. Victor Davis Hanson recently talked about this on his podcast. The administration had numerous charges to include failure to abide by portions of the ceasefire agreement. 

    I pushed back, at the time, to people who talked about preemptive strikes. No, I’d say, they were reemptive. We had a ceasefire agreement, Saddam didn’t live up to the agreement, so we resumed fires. It was part of the early reasoning for going into Iraq. One of Bush’s failures was not defending himself. Instead of saying that there had been other reasons, when large stockpiles of WMD weren’t found, Bush let it stand that WMD was the only reason in the public’s eye.

    • #5
  6. She Member
    She
    @She

    Bishop Wash (View Comment):
    One of Bush’s failures was not defending himself.

    That’s true.

    • #6
  7. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    JoelB (View Comment):

    I met a man last December who claimed to have been a marine in the Iraq war and that he and his outfit spent a lot of time disposing of WMD. He had pictures that he showed us, which looked real enough. Of course, this is not incontrovertible evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq, but given the other lies that we have been exposed over the past few years, it seems more believable all the time that Saddam had them. I suspect that the length of the build-up to invasion gave Saddam plenty of time to haul most of them off to Syria and hide the rest.

    Reports started coming out of Iraq after a year or two that WMD was being found. It was a lot of older stuff and not huge quantities, if I remember right. By that time, I think the press wasn’t interested in helping Bush so it wasn’t highlighted. If mentioned, it was sold as not from a new, big program that the administration had claimed was happening. 

    • #7
  8. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    Twenty years ago I was a young lieutenant in the Air Force and halfway through the Air and Space Basic Course. A course for new lieutenants. It was interesting to be learning doctrine during the day and then go to my room and listen to Pentagon briefs using the same language. We actually fight as we teach, I thought. 

    • #8
  9. She Member
    She
    @She

    Bishop Wash (View Comment):

    JoelB (View Comment):

    I met a man last December who claimed to have been a marine in the Iraq war and that he and his outfit spent a lot of time disposing of WMD. He had pictures that he showed us, which looked real enough. Of course, this is not incontrovertible evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq, but given the other lies that we have been exposed over the past few years, it seems more believable all the time that Saddam had them. I suspect that the length of the build-up to invasion gave Saddam plenty of time to haul most of them off to Syria and hide the rest.

    Reports started coming out of Iraq after a year or two that WMD was being found. It was a lot of older stuff and not huge quantities, if I remember right. By that time, I think the press wasn’t interested in helping Bush so it wasn’t highlighted. If mentioned, it was sold as not from a new, big program that the administration had claimed was happening.

    Somewhere about this timeframe, I believe, was when “journalism” morphed from becoming what a few scrappy reporters did to uncover the difficult and sometimes dangerous truth of matters into the practice of reinforcing, and supporting, “the narrative” as it was required to be conveyed by those in power.

    @joelb’s friend the US Marine has become nothing more than the purveyor of the latest disreputable story, that of “anecdotal evidence.”  The fact that he was actually there at the time is immaterial.  His tale is inconvenient and therefore to be foresworn, mocked or ignored, because others know better.  There’s a clip somewhere of Christiane Amanpour arguing with–I forget who–‘splaining to her that it’s not a reporter’s job to dig out the facts, it’s merely a reporter’s job to relay the information already curated and provided by those who wish it to be told in the manner they invoke.

     

    • #9
  10. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Which is the “lie of the century”: WMD in Iraq or safe and effective?

    You must mean the mistake of the century. Lie implies correct knowledge and intent to misrepresent that truth. 

    • #10
  11. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    Bishop Wash (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    It wasn’t solely based on this but it got the most attention and the administration didn’t help itself by primarily focusing on this. Victor Davis Hanson recently talked about this on his podcast. The administration had numerous charges to include failure to abide by portions of the ceasefire agreement.

    I pushed back, at the time, to people who talked about preemptive strikes. No, I’d say, they were reemptive. We had a ceasefire agreement, Saddam didn’t live up to the agreement, so we resumed fires. It was part of the early reasoning for going into Iraq. One of Bush’s failures was not defending himself. Instead of saying that there had been other reasons, when large stockpiles of WMD weren’t found, Bush let it stand that WMD was the only reason in the public’s eye.

    Correct. There were about a half dozen justifications for it. I’m not going to jog my memory to recall them all. 

    • #11
  12. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Bishop Wash (View Comment):

    JoelB (View Comment):

    I met a man last December who claimed to have been a marine in the Iraq war and that he and his outfit spent a lot of time disposing of WMD. He had pictures that he showed us, which looked real enough. Of course, this is not incontrovertible evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq, but given the other lies that we have been exposed over the past few years, it seems more believable all the time that Saddam had them. I suspect that the length of the build-up to invasion gave Saddam plenty of time to haul most of them off to Syria and hide the rest.

    Reports started coming out of Iraq after a year or two that WMD was being found. It was a lot of older stuff and not huge quantities, if I remember right. By that time, I think the press wasn’t interested in helping Bush so it wasn’t highlighted. If mentioned, it was sold as not from a new, big program that the administration had claimed was happening.

    Biological weapons can be hazardous to handle, but destruction is straightforward: you kill it.

    Chemical weapons are harder, unless they are binary weapons whose parts can be disposed of separately.

    And then there’s either hiding them or exporting them, as Joel noted.

    • #12
  13. DonG (CAGW is a Scam) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a Scam)
    @DonG

    JoelB (View Comment):
    I suspect that the length of the build-up to invasion gave Saddam plenty of time to haul most of them off to Syria and hide the rest.

    Iraq had chemical weapons that they used against Iran in the 80’s.  But the nuclear program (yellow cake from Niger) and aluminum tubes was always a lie.    We have watched Iran spend the last 20 years trying to refine uranium without luck.  They claimed that yellow cake and tubes was an imminent threat. 

    • #13
  14. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Which is the “lie of the century”: WMD in Iraq or safe and effective?

    WMD in Iraq was not a lie.  Maybe there was some lie from someone in the CIA along the lines of “We know for sure he’s made some new ones.”  I don’t know.

    Google search terms:

    –for 2004: “sarin, mustard gas discovered separately in iraq”
    –for 2013: nyt 5000 wmd 2013

    There used to be one from 2005 or 2006, a declassified Congressional memo as I recall (with Rick Santorum’s name on it) about 500 WMD.  Google won’t find it anymore, to my complete non-shock.  Try this on DuckDuckGo:

    –for 2006: 500 wmd 2006 santorum memo

    • #14
  15. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Which is the “lie of the century”: WMD in Iraq or safe and effective?

    WMD in Iraq was not a lie. Maybe there was some lie from someone in the CIA along the lines of “We know for sure he’s made some new ones.” I don’t know.

    Google search terms:

    –for 2004: “sarin, mustard gas discovered separately in iraq”
    –for 2013: nyt 5000 wmd 2013

    There used to be one from 2005 or 2006, a declassified Congressional memo as I recall (with Rick Santorum’s name on it) about 500 WMD. Google won’t find it anymore, to my complete non-shock. Try this on DuckDuckGo:

    –for 2006: 500 wmd 2006 santorum memo

    Somehow, our “finders of fact” had it in their noggins that WMDs would be stored in vast stockpiles instead of 50 here, 75 there.

    • #15
  16. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Percival (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Which is the “lie of the century”: WMD in Iraq or safe and effective?

    WMD in Iraq was not a lie. Maybe there was some lie from someone in the CIA along the lines of “We know for sure he’s made some new ones.” I don’t know.

    Google search terms:

    –for 2004: “sarin, mustard gas discovered separately in iraq”
    –for 2013: nyt 5000 wmd 2013

    There used to be one from 2005 or 2006, a declassified Congressional memo as I recall (with Rick Santorum’s name on it) about 500 WMD. Google won’t find it anymore, to my complete non-shock. Try this on DuckDuckGo:

    –for 2006: 500 wmd 2006 santorum memo

    Somehow, our “finders of fact” had it in their noggins that WMDs would be stored in vast stockpiles instead of 50 here, 75 there.

    I’m concerned about electronic election fraud being real–that argument about statistically impossible repetitions of Trump/Biden ratios in repeated vote updates, for example.

    What really freaks me out is the thought that if it weren’t real, surely by now someone would have explained and refuted it.

    What makes me doubt that line of reasoning is the awful/awesome/awe-inspiring stupidity of the people who would have the job of explaining and refuting.  Maybe they’re just too dumb, and the electronic votes are fine.

    Either way, we’re doomed, of course.

    • #16
  17. Nathanael Ferguson Contributor
    Nathanael Ferguson
    @NathanaelFerguson

    This is such a difficult topic because it is clouded by nuance and the clarifying lens of history. In many ways I regard the invasion of Iraq as a mistake, but that is only because I know how it turned out. If I ask myself what was the correct call at the time, knowing what we knew or thought we knew at the time, the answer is murky and difficult. On the one hand it seemed like a “slam dunk” that preemptive action was necessary. In retrospect the folks saying it was a slam dunk were generally the same people who later made wild and unsubstantiated claims about Russiagate and the Hunter Biden laptop. If we take what we know today about the “intelligence community” and use that as the basis for deciding whether the Iraq invasion was justified, we easily conclude that we were lied into the thing by untrustworthy hacks with an agenda. But if we remember what things felt like at the time, in the months and early years after 9/11, it’s hard to say that invading Iraq was the wrong call. The decision was made based on the information available at the time provided by sources that were considered rock solid at the time.

    Knowing what we know about the intelligence community today, I would expect a Republican president to take their council with a much more skeptical view. I would expect a Republican president to demand a much higher evidentiary threshold for action. But the world of 2003 is quite different from the world of 2023. For one thing, the intelligence community back then was revered and almost implicitly trusted by the center-right. Today, the intelligence community is known to be mostly self-interested, agenda-driven, and almost exclusively left-leaning. We on the right don’t trust them in the same way that the left didn’t trust them in 2003.  

    • #17
  18. Quickz Member
    Quickz
    @Quickz

    Great post and informative comments. I saw this thread posed today and thought I would share:

    This doesn’t touch what was done in Libya or Syria to those societies. My goodness.

    • #18
  19. DonG (CAGW is a Scam) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a Scam)
    @DonG

    Manny (View Comment):

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Which is the “lie of the century”: WMD in Iraq or safe and effective?

    You must mean the mistake of the century. Lie implies correct knowledge and intent to misrepresent that truth.

    No, I mean lie.    I mean they said things that were known to be untrue.  I actually think the Climate Hoax might be the biggest lie, but the impact is mostly ahead of us.

    • #19
  20. Joseph Stanko Coolidge
    Joseph Stanko
    @JosephStanko

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):
    Iraq had chemical weapons that they used against Iran in the 80’s.

    I believe he also used them against his own people when they tried to overthrow him after the first Gulf War ended.

    Bishop Wash (View Comment):
    We had a ceasefire agreement, Saddam didn’t live up to the agreement, so we resumed fires.

    One of the terms of that ceasefire was that he was supposed to destroy his stockpiles of chemical weapons, but he kept giving the inspectors the run-around until he eventually kicked them out of the country.  There was no way to verify that he’d kept up his end of the bargain.

    If he’d had chemical weapons, and refused to prove he’d destroyed them, it seemed entirely reasonable to assume he still had them.

    • #20
  21. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):
    Iraq had chemical weapons that they used against Iran in the 80’s.

    I believe he also used them against his own people when they tried to overthrow him after the first Gulf War ended.

    Bishop Wash (View Comment):
    We had a ceasefire agreement, Saddam didn’t live up to the agreement, so we resumed fires.

    One of the terms of that ceasefire was that he was supposed to destroy his stockpiles of chemical weapons, but he kept giving the inspectors the run-around until he eventually kicked them out of the country. There was no way to verify that he’d kept up his end of the bargain.

    If he’d had chemical weapons, and refused to prove he’d destroyed them, it seemed entirely reasonable to assume he still had them.

    5,000 of them according to the New York Times, a former newspaper.

    • #21
  22. DonG (CAGW is a Scam) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a Scam)
    @DonG

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    WMD in Iraq was not a lie.  Maybe there was some lie from someone in the CIA along the lines of “We know for sure he’s made some new ones.”  I don’t know.

    Colin Powell told the U.N. that Saddam had a nuclear program (a lie).   There were stories of bio-weapon labs (false).  Everybody knew about the chemical weapons used in the 80’s.   The only surprise was how little was remaining in 2003.  

    The common denominator is that our government took advantage of a frightened population to push a lie to justify a multi-trillion dollar expenditure.  

    • #22
  23. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    WMD in Iraq was not a lie. Maybe there was some lie from someone in the CIA along the lines of “We know for sure he’s made some new ones.” I don’t know.

    Colin Powell told the U.N. that Saddam had a nuclear program (a lie). There were stories of bio-weapon labs (false). Everybody knew about the chemical weapons used in the 80’s. The only surprise was how little was remaining in 2003.

    The common denominator is that our government took advantage of a frightened population to push a lie to justify a multi-trillion dollar expenditure.

    I don’t know.  I haven’t bothered to study the old speeches and distinguish between all the different kinds of claims and evaluate them separately.  I am content if we’re not joining the mindless lefty “no WMD” myth.  Your critique here is either correct, or perhaps some mistake beyond my ability to refute.  Either way, keep it up!

    • #23
  24. Joseph Stanko Coolidge
    Joseph Stanko
    @JosephStanko

    She: although the length of time between Colin Powell’s February 5 address to the United Nations, in which he laid out the case, and the subsequent Allied invasion – exactly six weeks later – left plenty of time for such efforts to be covered up, dismantled, or moved

    It’s entirely possible that he had already sold most of his stockpile to Syria before this point, but had concealed this from the international inspectors for 2 reasons:

    1. Selling them would have violated the terms of the ceasefire he had agreed to
    2. He wanted his enemies within Iraq to fear he still had them to use against any more uprisings against him.
    • #24
  25. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):
    Colin Powell told the U.N. that Saddam had a nuclear program (a lie).

    Images of delicious yellow cake with chocolate icing.

    • #25
  26. Red Herring Coolidge
    Red Herring
    @EHerring

    There are a lot of pieces in the comments that make up the truth.  

    -To defend Clinton’s missile attacks, the NYT posted a detailed listing of the WMD that Saddam hadn’t turned over.   

    -To attack Bush, the NYT promoted the lie that there were no WMDs.

    -Later, to attack Bush and the military, the NYT ran an article about the military not caring for soldiers injured by WMD while destroying munitions. Seems one reason the WMD weren’t found initially was they were in unmarked munitions mixed in with conventional munitions in scattered bunkers throughout the country. Saddam’s military couldn’t have found them if the wanted to. 

    -To scare us into not attacking, Saddam wanted us to believe he had them and was successful in that regard. 

    • #26
  27. Red Herring Coolidge
    Red Herring
    @EHerring

    Bush and Cheney did a lousy job promoting the war. For all the reasons they went in, perhaps they concentrated on the WMD to get allied support for the war.  Once our troops were injured by munitions that contained WMD, they continued the line that Saddam didn’t have them. Oddly, the media knew. That is why the media talking point changed from no WMD, to not the WMD we were looking for, to stuff like what is under your kitchen sink. The “not the WMD we were looking for” spin was not countered. It was the stuff Saddam hadn’t turned in after the first war yet the media had turned the argument into one about new WMD. Bush and Cheney didn’t correct them. Gen Powell preferred to act miffed rather than to correct the record. 

    • #27
  28. Nanocelt TheContrarian Member
    Nanocelt TheContrarian
    @NanoceltTheContrarian

    I have a hard time dispensing with the notion that the deciding factor to go in to Iraq was not so much the wmd question as the personal fact that Saddam had tried to assassinate GHW Bush. I don’t think W was able to put that out of his mind enough to make a non personal decision. I have the feeling that the obvious guilt that W feels for the condition of the Iraq wounded stems from his consciousness that the decision had a personal element. 

    • #28
  29. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Nathanael Ferguson (View Comment):
    Knowing what we know about the intelligence community today, I would expect a Republican president to take their council with a much more skeptical view. I would expect a Republican president to demand a much higher evidentiary threshold for action. But the world of 2003 is quite different from the world of 2023. For one thing, the intelligence community back then was revered and almost implicitly trusted by the center-right. Today, the intelligence community is known to be mostly self-interested, agenda-driven, and almost exclusively left-leaning. We on the right don’t trust them in the same way that the left didn’t trust them in 2003.  

    It wasn’t as complicated as that. Saddam had deployed chemical weapons against both the Iranians and the Kurds. He therefore had the capability to produce them. Intelligence services excel at determining capabilities. Determining intent is the hard part. Saddam insisted on playing cute with the inspectors trying to determine if he still had weapons.

    And they don’t have to be deployed in a massive fashion to be massively destructive. Five members of a knucklehead cult killed 13 outright and injured hundreds more in a Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. If they had known what they were doing, they could have exceeded that by an order of magnitude, maybe two. So Saddam could, and he already had before. What are you going to do, knowing that?

    • #29
  30. Red Herring Coolidge
    Red Herring
    @EHerring

    -Another deceptive strategy was talking about “stockpiles.” This gave the impression that justification required huge quantities when for some Chem-bio agents, a briefcase size cache would be a very deadly “stockpile.” 

    – Another deception, depending on the spin wanted, the media vacillated between WMD “precursor” and WMD. That is like saying we found flour but no cakes so there is no proof baking is going on. The Wisconsin Project had a healthy list of precursors, the legal stuff that could be weaponized. One known precursor is an insecticide that could be weapon used into a nerve agent. Many barrels were found in a weapons bunker along with munitions, far more insecticide than could be justified for normal use. Nothing to see here folks, move along. 

    -A terrorist attack in Jordan was stopped. The  chemical agents the terrorists had were traced back to Iraq. 

    -What is the truth? The deep state culture was already in place back then. We will not be allowed to know the truth. 

    • #30
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