To assert that the scientists bypassed the Baathist infrastructure, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and Special Republican Guard commanders, all the while fooling Saddam is, to put it mildly, a real stretch. To this day, many still fear the consequences of cooperating with the ISG. We would need to see the detailed rationale for Dr. Kay?s conclusions on this matter to gauge if Saddam was really fooled by scientists scared to death of him and the Baath Party, or if he ran one of military history?s most successful deception operations. If he did the latter, we must also ask why he would risk the toppling of his regime, and his death or capture, over non-existent WMDs. The only alternative explanation to these two questionable scenarios is that WMD stockpiles did in fact exist, but that they have been hidden, and/or spirited out of the country.

Yes, but will anyone notice or care? I’m guessing no.

In a tapped phone call last Thursday [Samira Shahbander] arranged to meet the former dictator that weekend after demanding cash.
But the meeting was cancelled at the last minute – perhaps because Saddam was beginning to feel the heat that US forces were closing in. Late last Friday, US soldiers captured an Iraqi fugitive they had been hunting since July – who is believed to have given them the former dictator’s exact location – a farm at Ad Dawr, about 15km from Tikrit, his ancestral home and where he was caught late Saturday.
She told friends she was going first to France and then to Moscow – that Saddam had been secretly promised by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, to give her sanctuary.

Beginning then, the Chicago native’s brigade rousted some of Saddam’s relatives in Tikrit. Some had been financing the insurgency that was just heating up against the American occupation. Others had been active combatants in the guerrilla war.

Hmmm. I guess this debunks the leftie theory of Saddam having nothing to do with the attacks on our troops. They just keep looking more and more ridiculous, day after day.
Read the whole article.

Well, it’s a little like witch hunting. If you believe there are witches, and you look hard, you will probably find them; they did so in the Middle Ages. They wanted to come to that conclusion. And people have said that, we looked a lot at his (Saddam’s) record. He’s a man who really wanted them and he made use of them in the past, and he probably still has ambitions, so the suspicion was justified ? I think so too.
However, I think that what stands accused today is the culture of spin and the culture of hype. Now, we are used to advertising, exaggerating and hyping things, and we don’t take it so seriously. We know that you guys (journalists) want to make sensations of everything, so you are likely to exaggerate a bit and pick out the juicy pieces. And we also know that governments have to simplify to explain to the public that we want to pursue this policy for the following reasons, and it cannot be too complicated. But at the same time we expect governments to be very respectable and to be dependable and I think here is where they went too far. They over-interpreted what they saw. They wanted to come to a conclusion, and they served (up) things that in some cases certainly turned out to be wrong… In Iraq’s case, exclamation marks were placed where question marks should have been used…

He makes a good point. We are such a part of the culture of spin that the fact that governments do it should not be surprising. He essentially suggests that governments should spin with caution, and be respectable and dependable while doing so. He thinks the US and Britain overstated the case for war. I disagree with him there, but I can certainly see where he’s coming from.
Read the whole thing.

“The intelligence from Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2 was consistent” in concluding Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was trying to develop a nuclear capability, Clinton said this morning. And Saddam’s expulsion of weapons inspectors and “the behavior” of his regime “pointed to a continuing effort” to produce WMD, she added.

My, my.
She believes the evidence was sufficient enough to make a case for war. She’s actually defending Bush.
For some reason, I can only think of a number…2008.
I’ve really got to learn to suppress my cynical instincts. They’re making me so…cynical.

In the parlance once used by Howell Raines, Kay thereby will “flood the zone” and hope the press portrays what may be largely assertion — not fact — as compelling proof. Would the media possibly fall for this? There are disturbing indications that they would.

I don’t need to remind my readers of the tarnished reputation of Howell Raines. And does the author really believe that hundreds of thousands of pages will contain “largely assertion”? He bases his strange conclusion on the disputed 2,500 word article written by Charles Hanley that supposedly “demolished” Colin Powell’s February 5 United Nations report on Iraqi WMD activities.

Mr. Mitchell goes on to cite example after example of “press praise” for Powell’s “irrefutable” evidence supporting the war in Iraq. He does not care to acquaint us with the fact that Hanley’s article is subjectively anti-war and thus undermines itself, nor does he make us aware of the verifiable facts of Powell’s case – as yet undisputed by all but the most extreme and virulently anti-war Left.

How quaint! Mr. Mitchell is so willing and ready to rely on Mr. Hanley’s one article to oppose the war and the media’s so-called “support of the war”, yet urges more journalistic integrity when relying on government reports such as Powell’s, as if Powell was the epitome of a sleazeball government tool. Perhaps Mr. Mitchell should take his own advice and check his own “journalistic impulses” to trust the source.

Maybe someone in the peace movement should figure out that not only Bush could stop this war. So could Saddam ? by resigning his unelected post and saving his people any further sacrifice. Yet I?ve yet to see one anti-war placard allude to Saddam?s responsibilities in securing the peace.
But talk about quagmires. The peace movement, which promises so much in its scope and energy, itself remains bogged down in a minimalist program of simply and only opposing U.S. military action. That?s hardly enough. . . .
Blocking traffic when 74 percent of the American people support the war, or endlessly whining about CNN?s coverage, or grandstanding as Michael Moore did at the Oscars telling America that a president who currently enjoys (for all the sordid reasons we know) stratospheric popularity ratings is ?fictitious,? has much more to do with personal therapy than with effective politics. Continue on that tack and you can pretty much count on another four years of Bush, no matter how ugly the war turns…
Protecting the Iraqi people, as the peace movement rightfully desires, is one helluva lot more complicated than merely shielding them from the collateral damage caused by U.S. bombs. (That is, unless you really believe that America is the ?greatest terrorist state in the world,? as is so often repeated on KPFK?s drive-time shows. If your world-view is that facile, then indeed we have little more to discuss.)
Those who chant ?U.S. out of Iraq? ought to be prepared, then, to offer themselves as human shields to protect the Kurds against threatening Turkish troops (a task currently in the hands of U.S. special forces). Or as shields to protect the southern marsh Arabs against occupation by the theocratic armed forces of Iran.