Why did Obama go to Congress on Syria?

 

Late last week, President Obama abruptly decided to send a request for authorization to use force in Syria to Congress. The about-face came after several days of claims by aides that the president did not need permission from Congress to act. In fact, in a speech on Saturday, President Obama still denied that he needed permission from Congress and sources in the Administration told Press TV that the president had already made up his mind to strike Syria, even if Congress failed to give its approval.

Why did the president decide to seek congressional approval if he believes that he doesn’t need it and his mind is already made up? Obama has a long history of overstepping his constitutional authority in domestic matters so why does he suddenly feel the need to go to Congress when there is ample precedent for conducting limited attacks without congressional approval? Two years ago when Obama went to war in Libya, he not only did not ask for congressional authorization for the initial use of military force, but did not comply with the time limits of the War Powers Act, denying that U.S. forces were engaged in hostilities under the law, a position that Politifact said “violates our standards of common sense.”

There are three reasons that Obama may have moved the ball into Congress’ court. The first is that he wants to use the issue to split the Republican Party. There is an intense debate between the GOP’s foreign policy hawks and the party’s libertarian isolationist wing. Prominent Republicans like John Boehner, Lindsay Graham and John McCain have lined up to support the attack on Syria while Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have spoken out against it. Marco Rubio, who has advocated aiding the Syrian rebels for two years, seems to think that Obama’s response is too little, too late according to US News.

The downside to this strategy is that it has split Democrats as well. For the past half century, the Democrats have been the anti-war party (with the notable exception of President Clinton’s intervention in Bosnia). Florida Democrat Alan Grayson told the Australian that he believes as many as half of all Democrats will vote against the authorization.

Another motive may have been to share the blame if the intervention goes badly. President Obama’s foreign policy has led to a string of disasters from the expansion of Iran’s sphere of influence to include Iraq to the resurgence of al Qaeda and the rise of radical Islamism in many formerly secular Arab nations. Obama may well be looking at protecting himself politically if limited strikes ignite a wider war or lead to a victory by al Qaeda-supported rebels.

A key to understanding Obama’s flip-flop is the strong public opposition to attacking Syria. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Sept. 3 shows that only 19 percent support an attack on Syria. Fifty-six percent oppose any intervention. A Washington Post/ABC poll released the same day showed 59 percent opposed. Opposition was almost identical for both Republicans (55 percent) and Democrats (54 percent), but stronger (66 percent) among independents.

A final possibility is that Obama is having second thoughts about attacking Syria and is hoping that Congress will deny the authorization to attack. Almost as soon as Obama announced his decision to attack, Administration sources began to leak information that indicated that the attacks would be very limited and half-hearted.

Yesterday, Obama tried to walk back his statement from a year ago that Assad’s use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that would “change my calculus” on intervention in Syria. According to Politico, the president’s new line is that “I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line.” Obama continued, “So when I said that my calculus would be altered by chemical weapons, which the overall consensus of humanity says is wrong — that’s not something I just made up. I didn’t pick it out of thin air. My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line, and America and Congress’s credibility’s on the line.”

Although four months ago, White House officials made clear that the red line was “absolutely” the president’s, Obama is obviously having second thoughts in the face of overwhelming opposition. In spite of strong rhetoric from officials that the strike will happen regardless of Congress’ approval, it is unlikely that President Obama would make such an unpopular decision after being turned down by Congress.

A congressional defeat of Obama’s request may be likely. Political analyst Charlie Cook told the Financial Times on Tuesday that he would be surprised is the authorization passed Congress. A Washington Post analysis found the Senate split and heavy opposition in the House. Many members of both houses are still undecided.

Having stirred up a hornet’s nest of strong bipartisan opposition as well as finding little international support, President Obama may actually be hoping for Congress to deny his request. A loss in Congress would give the president the ability to avoid attacking Syria and the ability to save face by blaming Republican lawmakers.

Originally published on Elections Examiner

Obama was right on Syria… but then he screwed it up

President Obama was right in his initial decision to take military action against Syria. As evidence mounted that Bashar Assad of Syria had used poison gas against the civilian population of Syria, not once but repeatedly, the United States and the civilized nations of the world had to decide whether to take action or become complicit in the murders of untold thousands of innocents.

Though mass murders by dictatorial regimes are all too common, there has been an effective ban on the use of chemical weapons since shortly after World War I. The ban has only been broken four times. Italy used mustard gas against Abyssinia in 1935 and Japan used chemical agents in its conquest of China in 1938. In World War II, Adolf Hitler did not use poison gas against Allied soldiers for fear of retribution, but the Nazis did gas millions of people in their death camps. In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein used poison gas against the Iranian army as well as against the Kurds, an ethnic minority in Iraq.

Aside from the violation of international law and the moral implications of allowing Assad to gas innocent civilians, the U.S. also has a national interest in enforcing President Obama’s “red line.” Two of the Syrian government’s allies in the civil war are Hezbollah and Iran. Both Hezbollah and Iran have already shown willingness to take on the U.S. directly. Hezbollah, supported by Iran, was responsible for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut. In 1985, they hijacked TWA Flight 847 enroute from Athens to Rome. They were also allegedly responsible for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia which targeted US military members. Iran has also tried to attack the U.S. directly. Two years ago, Iran was implicated in a plot to carry out a series of bomb attacks in Washington, D.C. In spite of the plot and continued Iranian work on nuclear weapons, the Obama Administration has resisted any punishment for Iran including additional sanctions.

Ignoring Obama’s self-imposed red line for Syrian use of chemical weapons would increase the risk that use and development of weapons of mass destruction would become more common around the world. If the Iranians determine that the U.S. is not serious, it makes it even more likely that such weapons will be used again by terrorist groups like Hezbollah for use against Americans abroad, U.S. allies, or even the American homeland. It also makes it more likely that Iran would continue to develop and feel free to use nuclear weapons.

With ample evidence of Syria’s violation of international law and a compelling U.S. interest, President Obama should have ordered an attack on Syria’s WMD facilities and airbases as well as targeting President Assad. Although President Obama has a long history of abusing executive authority such an order would have been well within his constitutional role as commander-in-chief. The Constitution does not require a declaration of war in such an instance and there is a long history, dating back to Thomas Jefferson’s attack on the Barbary pirates, of presidents taking military action without congressional approval.

Instead, President Obama flip-flopped late last week after finding strong bipartisan opposition to an attack on Syria. After dithering for days, Obama abruptly decided that he would ask Congress for authorization to attack, but stopped short of asking representatives to cut their recess short and return to Washington to address the matter. According to CBS News, Congress will return to work on September 9.

The delay can only serve hearten President Assad and his allies in Tehran. Opposition to the attack in Congress could derail President Obama’s plan to attack Syria entirely. If it doesn’t, the Syrian government will have had nearly a month to prepare and disperse its chemical weapon stocks and other high priority targets. It will also have had plenty of time to beef up its air defenses making casualties among the attacking Americans more likely. All of this means that the deterrent effect of a strike will be lessened.

In reality, Obama would probably be relieved to be able to blame Congress for his inaction in Syria. His foreign policy has been one of American withdrawal from the world. Obama’s original campaign theme was calling for an end to the Iraq War. Today, the war in Iraq continues even though American forces are gone. Obama is planning a similar withdrawal from Afghanistan. During the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the beginning of the Syrian civil war, the Obama was conspicuously absent from supporting democratic activists. This policy led to al Qaeda domination of the Syrian opposition forces and Islamist victories in Egypt and Tunisia. Obama had to be dragged into his unconstitutional Libyan intervention by several NATO allies. He also squandered a chance to support Iranian dissidents during 2009’s “Green Revolution.”

Obama seems to have long held the belief that American power has caused problems throughout the world and that disengagement is a key to peace. Obama’s policy of withdrawal and “leading from behind” is how that belief was put into practice. The chaos in the Middle East is the result.

Originally published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Syrian intervention may shed light on Iraqi WMDs

Secretary of State John Kerry’s formal accusation today that Syria has used chemical weapons against rebel forces and civilians sounds somewhat similar to Bush Administration charges against the regime of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq a decade ago. Saddam had used his chemical weapons numerous times against Iraqi minorities and was all but ignored by the world.

When the U.S. led a coalition of nations to depose Saddam in 2003, the belief that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons as well as a nascent nuclear weapons program was a major justification for the invasion. Failure to locate large stocks of the weapons led to charges that President George W. Bush had lied to lead the United States into an unnecessary war.

The fact of Syrian use of chemical weapons should call the conventional wisdom about Iraq into question. The two countries were linked by their ruling Baathist parties and, as neighbors, engaged in trade, both legal and illegal, before the war. In 2006, Georges Sada, a former general of Saddam’s air force, detailed in his book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” how Saddam had secretly moved much of his WMD material to Syria before the U.S.-led invasion under the cover of providing relief to Syrian earthquake victims. Sada’s claims were detailed in Examiner in 2011. Sada’s claim was be supported by other sources as well. In 2004, a Syrian defector, Nizar Nayouf claimed that Iraqi WMDs had been hidden at three sites in Syria. Nayouf’s story appeared the Dutch paper Der Telegraaf and is summarized on WorldThreats.com. Satellite reconnaissance photos from 2010 published in Israel’s Haaretz show Syrian military facilities in the same areas that Nayouf fingered. The same sites were identified in the 2004 book “End Game” by General Thomas McInerney and Paul Vallely as well as another former Iraqi general, Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti. If the U.S. launches airstrikes against Syria, these facilities are likely to be targeted.

The lack of large stockpiles in post-Saddam Iraq led to the myth that Saddam’s WMDs were nonexistent. In reality, Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurdish minority was documented by the BBC in 1988. Saddam also used chemical weapons in his war against Iran and after the Persian Gulf War while combating the Shiite uprising of 1991. The destruction of an Iraqi munitions plant that produced the nerve gas sarin may be responsible for Gulf War Syndrome, a neurological affliction that affects as many as 30 percent of veterans from the Persian Gulf War in 1991 according to USA Today. In 2010, Wired Magazine detailed how classified military documents released by Wikileaks revealed the discovery of many small caches of chemical weapons by coalition forces during the occupation of Iraq.

While the shelf life of nerve agents such as the sarin, one of the chemical weapons found in Iraq and recently used in Syria, is short, an undated CIA report estimated that the Iraqis had improved their sarin stocks by increasing the purity of the chemical components and building binary weapons. In binary weapons, the components of the nerve agent are not combined until the weapon is ready to be used. This could make the shelf life of the weapon “irrelevant” and allow it to be stored for years before use. This means that if Iraqi stockpiles were transferred to Syria prior to 2003 they could still be lethal.

Syria has long had development programs for weapons of mass destruction of its own. In 2008, Time reported that North Korea was helping Syria to build a nuclear reactor. Israel bombed the Syrian reactor in 2007 according to Der Spiegel. The German weekly also reported last year that Iranian officers were involved in the testing of Syrian delivery systems for chemical weapons. The Nuclear Threat Initiative notes that Syrian WMD programs may have begun as early as 1971. The NTI also noted that the U.S. believed that Syria was dependent on “foreign sources for key elements of its CW program” as late as 2010. This may have included Saddam’s Iraq.

There are a number of objections to the theory that Syria benefitted from Saddam’s WMD programs. For example, Syria sided with the Coalition forces during the 1991 Iraq war. Therefore some question whether it would have cooperated with Saddam in later years. In reality, Syria was complicit in helping Saddam subvert UN sanctions on Iraq prior to the 2003 war. Congress estimated in 2004 that Syrian-Iraqi smuggling was worth more than $3 billion.

A second question is why Saddam did not admit to transferring the weapons when he was interrogated. Apparently Saddam did not take U.S. threats seriously and was more concerned about Iran. Transferring weapons to Syria would have prevented their discovery by UN inspectors, but would have left them available in the event of an Iranian attack. Not confessing as he faced death may have been as simple as going to his death knowing that he had the last laugh on his tormenters.

As yet there is no conclusive proof that Syrian chemical weapons can be traced to Saddam Hussein. Nevertheless, there is ample circumstantial evidence to take another look at the Iraqi-Syrian connection. If the Asad government falls, Syrian military files may shed light on the mystery of Saddam’s WMDs. The Syrian civil war may one day help to rewrite the history of the Iraq War.

 

Originally published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Chemtrails or contrails?

An enduring aviation conspiracy theory is the idea of chemtrails, the belief that jet airliners are spraying mysterious chemicals as they fly over the country. The motive of these sprayers varies according to different websites and conspiracy purveyors. Some claim that the chemtrails have to do with global warming. Others claim that it is a sinister New World Order plot to kill millions of people.

“Chemtrails” are actually composed of water vapor. More accurately they are known as contrails, or condensation trails. These trails occur when the cold air at high altitudes is meets the warm exhaust of an aircraft’s engine. The fuel burned by the engine contains water. As the water in the exhaust cools, it forms ice crystals or water droplets, forming a cloud. This is similar to how fog comes from a car’s exhaust on a cold day. Keep in mind that even if the temperature is hot on the ground, it is very cold at high altitudes where jets fly. There are many pictures of WWII bombers with piston engines leaving contrails in the sky. These pictures predate jet airliners and global warming theory by decades.

Variations in wind, humidity, and temperature aloft may cause contrails to dissipate more quickly in some areas than others. A chart on SkepticsProject.com shows under what conditions contrails form. As one would expect from a natural phenomenon, contrails form under scientifically predictable conditions.

If you watch airplanes landing on a damp day, you might also see a different kind of vapor trail. On some occasions, you can see vapor trails streaming from a plane’s wingtip close to the ground. These trails can be caused by the wing of the airplane changing the pressure of the air it flies through. Vortices from the wingtips reduce pressure and allow the already humid air to condense.

There are some airplanes that really do spray chemicals. These are known as crop dusters. There are important things to notice about crop spraying operations. First, the airplane only sprays very close to the ground. The higher the chemical is released, the greater the chance that will disperse or be blown away before settling on to the crop. A crop duster normally flies and dusts from altitudes lower than telephone and power poles.

Second, you can also see that crop dusters have a lot of plumbing on the trailing edge of the wings. These lines and nozzles are where the chemicals are dispensed. Airliners and military jets have no such apparatus. A typical jet’s wing has many moving parts such as flaps, slats, and spoilers that are designed to improve handling, especially at low airspeeds, and to slow the airplane down for landing. They have nothing in the way of pipes and nozzles, however. This is true even for military tanker aircraft, which transfer fuel to other airplanes by either a single boom or hoses that trail behind the tanker.

Crop dusters have been considered as a possible terrorist weapon. It is not outside of the realm of possibility that they could be used by a terrorist group to launch a chemical or biological attack. This would require not only the skill to fly the airplane low over an urban area, but also the technical knowledge necessary to get the proper mixture of the chemical or biological agent to work with the spraying equipment. This makes such a scenario unlikely.

The lack of spray equipment isn’t the only factor limiting the use of airliners as spray planes. Fuel is a major component of the weight of an airplane, especially one that travels for long distances.  If an airliner were to carry enough fuel to fly across the country or the ocean as well as a heavy load of chemicals to spray, there would be no room left for passengers or baggage.  

In some cases, chemtrail believers claim to have discovered fibrous material that fell to the ground after “chemplanes” flew over. This is apparently the caused by a variety of material, from plant fibers to spider webs to trash. An interesting explanation is that floating strands of fibers are actually the product of ballooning spiders.

Ballooning spiders have been observed for hundreds of years. According to Australia’s Museum Victoria, occasionally thousands of spiders will ride on thin strands of web. As they land, their webs can cover the ground or stick to other objects. Spiders can ride the wind on their webs for hundreds of miles according to Live Science. An article on Metabunk.org notes that the light strands of gossamer silk used by ballooning spiders can collapse when touched, giving the appearance of dissolving.

There have been real attempts to modify the weather with aviation, typically through cloud seeding. Cloud seeding is an attempt to control where rain falls by dropping materials such as dry ice or silver iodide into clouds to promote the formation of rain. In WWII, the British experimented with cloud seeding and may have caused a flood that killed 35 people. In June 2010, Smithsonian Air & Space magazine detailed a U.S. effort to divert hurricanes. Project Stormfury began in the 1940s and lasted until the 1980s when the experiment was deemed ineffective. In 2008, the Chinese attempted to seed clouds to prevent rain during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Cloud seeding is usually performed locally rather than on long range flights.

After the 9/11 attacks, when all flights above the US were grounded for three days, scientists did have a rare opportunity to conduct a study of how contrails affect climate. They did determine that contrails affect temperature, just as other clouds do. Scientists believe that contrails help to reduce the temperature range between daytime highs and nightly lows. Ironically, some scientists believe that, because contrails are more prevalent when the sun is out, that they may actually help to reduce global warming.

In the end, there really is a chemtrail conspiracy. Like many other conspiracy theories, it is a conspiracy to separate gullible people from their money. The sites that promote the chemtrail conspiracy often sell documentaries that purport to tell the “truth” about chemtrails or devices that they claim will neutralize the chemicals being sprayed. Save your money.

Instead, go visit your local airport. Many airports have viewing areas where you can watch the airplanes taxi, take off, and land. Even many military airports are located in urban areas where you can watch their flight operations from parking lots or roads. Take a pair of binoculars or a camera with a telephoto lens and look for mechanisms that would allow any of these airplanes to spray chemicals or drop “nanotechnology fibers.” See the truth for yourself.

This article was published on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/aviation-in-national/contrails-or-chemtrails

Whatever happened to Saddam's WMD?

Kurdish victims at Halabja

It has been almost eight years since The US-led Coalition invaded Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  There were several reasons presented to the American public to justify the war.  There was the Iraqi regime’s support for terrorism, its violations of human rights against Iraqi citizens, and, last but not least, Saddam Hussein’s efforts to amass an arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction which, it was argued, might one day be turned over to terrorist groups. 

Since the antebellum political discussions much has happened.  Saddam’s terror ties are confirmed and were thoroughly documented in a 2008 report, Saddam and Terrorism:  Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents.  Likewise, Saddam’s record of torture and mass murder is now a matter of historical record.  These facts have been overshadowed by the failure of Coalition forces to find the expected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, as well as indications of Saddam’s nuclear weapons program.  This, in turn, has led to charges that the Bush Administration lied about the WMD in order to sell the war to Congress and public.

Halabja (Sayeed Janbozorgi)

It is important to note that Saddam’s WMD programs were established as fact long before President Bush was elected.  During the latter half of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam’s regime had used chemical weapons against Iranian troop concentrations.  In 1987-1988, Saddam ordered chemical attacks against Kurds living in northern Iraq.  On March 16, 1988, an attack on Halabja killed an estimated 5,000 people by Iraqi forces using some combination of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and VX. Whole families and villages were murdered.  You can view actual video of the attack and its aftermath here (Warning:  This is not recommended for children or sensitive viewers).  Many thousands more were injured and suffered permanent injuries from the poison gas.  In all, an estimated 100,000 people were killed by Saddam’s government during the Anfal campaign, many of them by chemical weapons.  Saddam also had an active biological weapons program, although these may not have been used in combat.

Saddam never obtained nuclear weapons, but he had long sought them.  In 2004, Mahdi Obeidi, one of Saddam’s chief nuclear scientists, detailed in the book The Bomb in My Garden how Saddam’s nuclear quest began shortly after he assumed the presidency in 1979.  The program was set back by the Israeli raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981.  By 1991, Saddam was very close to a nuclear weapon, but the program was set back again by Operation Desert Storm.  After 1991, the Iraqis concentrated on hiding or destroying nuclear materials to keep them out of the hands of UN inspectors.  Obeidi hid plans and key equipment for nuclear material in his garden until Saddam’s government was finally toppled and he felt confident enough to bring the cache to US forces.

Saddam in happier days

After the fall of Saddam, the Iraq Survey Group scoured the country for traces of the nuclear program, as well as Saddam’s chemical and biological stockpiles.  The Duelfer Report, released in 2004, concluded that after the Persian Gulf War Saddam’s goal was to have the sanctions on Iraq lifted.  To that end, he hid or destroyed much of his WMD capability.  With the introduction of the Oil for Food program in 1996, was used to enrich the regime and undermine the UN sanctions.  Saddam’s stated intent was to revive the WMD programs after he evaded the sanctions.

Nevertheless, the belief that Saddam possessed no WMD or banned weapons by the time of the 2003 invasion is not true.  For example, prior to the invasion UN inspectors found that Iraq’s al-Samoud 2 and  al-Fatah ballistic missiles had ranges that exceeded the UN’s 150 kilometer limit.  Both missiles also exceeded the size limit of 600 mm in diameter imposed by the UN on Iraq.  Iraq also illegally imported banned missile engines and fuel. 

In 2004, insurgents used several artillery shells containing the nerve agent sarin as IEDs to attack US troops.  The shells were likely from small stockpiles that were not destroyed by Coalition aircraft or Saddam’s soldiers attempting to deceive UN inspectors.  The stockpiles were probably raided by insurgents before they were discovered by Coalition forces in the aftermath of the regime’s fall.

One of the claims that Bush had lied about Iraq’s WMD centers on the claim made by Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.  The story begins with Italian intelligence passing documents (that turned out to be forgeries) to the US.  The documents reportedly showed that Iraq was attempting to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.  The Italians gave the same reports to the British.  In response to debate over the Italian reports, Plame suggested that the CIA send her husband, Joe Wilson, to Niger to investigate the claims.  Wilson visits Niger and is convinced that the Italian reports are false.  Nevertheless, there is doubt about Wilson’s conclusions.

In the end, there was much other evidence pointing to a reconstitution of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.  Saddam’s regime was reported to be in the market for aluminum tubes, magnets, and other equipment needed for such a program.  Additionally, there are numerous reports from other foreign intelligence services that Iraq is trying to obtain uranium from Africa.

American soldiers on patrol in Iraq

After the fall of Saddam, the US captured more than 500 tons of uranium in Iraq.  Ironically, this may be the final proof that the Italian reports of uranium purchases from Niger were wrong.  After all, why would Saddam be frantically trying to obtain uranium abroad when he already had a stockpile in Baghdad?  (The answer may be that this material was already known to UN inspectors.  Saddam may have indeed wanted uranium that the UN inspectors would not miss when they returned.)

Further, it was CIA Director George Tenet who asserted that the case for Iraqi WMD was a “slam dunk.”  Tenet later claimed that his comment was taken out of context, but before the war he publicly supported the Bush Administration’s claims.  If he believed that the president was distorting his position, then Tenet had a duty to confront him.  Tenet was a Clinton appointee.

In 2006, former Iraqi Air Force General Georges Sada published Saddam’s Secrets.  Sada claimed that Saddam had ordered moved much of his WMD material to Syria under the cover of relief flights prior to the 2003 invasion.  This is a plausible claim because both Iraq and Syria were Baathist regimes at the time.  The Duelfer Report could not corroborate Sada’s claim, but neither could it disprove it.  It is known that the two countries engaged in legal and illegal trade during the years leading up to the war. 

In 2004, the Senate Committee on Intelligence issued its report on prewar intelligence.  The report found flaws in the intelligence and analysis, but failed to note any pattern of deception pressure (except in partisan additional views).  Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss was party to an additional view that decried the lack of human intelligence inside Iraq and the US reliance on foreign liaisons.  Chambliss also rebutted allegations of administration pressure on intelligence analysts. 

George W. Bush

The claim that Bush knowingly lied about Saddam’s WMD does not pass the logic test.  If President Bush fabricated claims about WMD, then he would have known in advance that the WMD stockpiles would not be found.  If Bush was so unethical and unscrupulous as to lie to start the war in the first place, the logical course of action would be to import WMD along with Coalition military supplies being shipped to Iraq.  Bush could have planted fake WMD and arranged to have the UN inspectors and the ISG find them.  He would have been vindicated in the eyes of the world.  Instead, Bush was as surprised as the rest of the world when Saddam’s stockpiles were not found.  The egg on Bush’s face is the strongest argument in favor of his honesty.  Being wrong is not lying.  Lying requires an intent to deceive that is absent from Bush’s Iraq claims.

So what did happen to Saddam’s WMD?  The evidence suggests that some was destroyed.  Some of this was by Coalition warplanes in 1991.  Some was by Saddam’s men in an attempt to deceive UN inspectors.  It is likely that some was sent to Syria and other friendly nations.  Some was also likely hidden inside of Iraq.  For someone as callous as Saddam, with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands, it would be simple to have laborers build underground storage facilities, move in the materials, and then have everyone involved killed.  Dead men tell no tales.  Some of these caches may yet be discovered underneath the shifting sands of the Iraqi desert.

What is certain is that had the US and its Coalition allies not toppled Saddam’s government, the Iraqi dictator would have soon escaped sanctions and restarted his programs for nuclear, as well as chemical and biological weapons.  The failure to find WMD stockpiles in Iraq was unexpected, but other US claims about Saddam and Iraq were substantially correct. 

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