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I do not believe for a second that either Blair or Bush actually believed in those mythical weapons of mass destruction or Iraq's capability or intention to use

by krylon 10y ago

I do not believe for a second that either Blair or Bush actually believed in those mythical weapons of mass destruction or Iraq's capability or intention to use them. I sometimes wonder if the WMD excuse was made up to convince the public to go along or to cover their butts later on. In Europe, as far as I remember, hardly anyone believed that excuse. Accept for Angela Merkel who travelled to Washington just to tell Bush that she would join the invasion without hesitation if she was chancellor.

arethuza 10y ago
The truly scary thing about the likes of Blair is that they can choose what they earnestly believe in to suit what is politically expedient.
lucozade 10y ago
My view prior to the report and from what I've seen so far in the Bush-Blair correspondence is the exact opposite. They and the intelligence services were so convinced about WMD that there was next to no questioning, at high levels, of the flimsy evidence for their continued existence. I believe that they thought they were justified and that finding WMDs would be vindication. It doesn't seem reasonable that such astute political operators would make WMDs the centre of their justification if they didn't think that they existed. The failing was that this blinded them to the possibility that the Iraqi regime was bluffing.
- sevenless 10y ago
  It makes sense when you consider they believed the war would succeed, in terms of installing a peaceful and compliant regime in Iraq. After all, nobody holds inquiries into military victories. The success in shifting the justification for war from WMD to getting rid of Saddam, or even less plausibly, fighting terrorism, shows that marketing strategy partly succeeded. Blair still justifies the war in terms of having got rid of Saddam Hussein. In short: they didn't know, and didn't care. Remember under Bush there was also Wolfowitz and Feith's Office of Special Plans, which supplied Bush administration officials with cherry-picked, dodgy, raw intelligence, bypassing the CIA. WMD were never a credible excuse for war in the first place, rather (ironically) a legal argument. The mere existence of chemical weapons is not a reasonable premise to launch a war. Claiming a castrated Iraq was any kind of threat to the United States or Britain was ludicrous. Finally, there was no bluff going on - that's revisionist history. Saddam was complying with weapons inspectors right up to the time the invasion began.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    I think another lesson is that you cannot conduct a "surgical" war. We have seen this in every failed military action since Vietnam. If you are going to go to war, the strategy should be total destruction of your enemy and his complete surrender. If you're not willing to do that, it's not worth even getting involved.
    - themihai 10y ago
      I think it worked in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. That was one of the arguments made by Blair today.
  - lucozade 10y ago
    > WMD were never a credible excuse for war in the first place I couldn't agree more. Neither the UK nor US were under an existential threat. Even if they had reason to believe that there was a direct threat to an ally i.e. Israel, that is no reason to wage pre-emptive war. > Finally, there was no bluff going on - that's revisionist history That's simply not true. The Iraqi government were deliberately dicking the IAEA inspectors around trying to maintain the fiction that they still had chemical weapons. They wanted the outside world to believe that they were a threat but gambled that there was no political will to do anything about it. They were right on the former and, until 9/11, right on the latter. What I find shocking is the gullibility of the intelligence services and the politicians. What I consider heinous is that they were willing to wage pre-emptive war regardless of the motive.
- michaelt 10y ago
  There were weapons inspectors in Iraq prior to the invasion and the intelligence services weren't able to direct the inspectors to any WMDs. So Bush and Blair would not only have to believe they had evidence WMDs exist - they'd also have to believe that the evidence was at once so /bad/ it couldn't direct inspectors to a single shred of evidence, and so /good/ it was believable in spite of that fact. Intelligence services might not have directed the inspectors to any WMDs but they did find time to spy on the leader of the weapons inspectors, with an aim to "provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program" [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/04/15/skirmish-on-iraq-inspections/1223f8bd-2129-4a05-b5e4-f1c5ca1c6582/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/04/15/s...
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    I remember reading an article by a German UN inspector who described that they got some "hot" leads from the CIA. At each of them they didn't find any evidence of activity within a few a few years. The response of the CIA was not to talk to them anymore.
- ams6110 10y ago
  Since there was incontrovertible evidence that Hussein had used gas against his own people, and WMDs are rather low-tech and easy to make, having been widely used in WW I, I never really doubted the intelligence at the time. It played in to what we already knew, and a lot of smart people were convinced.
  - sevenless 10y ago
    > Since there was incontrovertible evidence that Hussein had used gas against his own people With the full support of the Reagan administration at the time, mind you.
ACow_Adonis 10y ago
A common quality amongst many "leaders" in our society (and by "leaders", I mean a particular brand of relatively high functioning psychopath/narcissist that tends to thrive in such environments, be it politics or the boardroom/management/e-suite) is the ability to believe whatever they need to believe to paint themselves in the best possible light and achieve their ends at that particular time. If you do not have that little voice that whispers what you're doing is wrong, or that you're a fraud, or that you really shouldn't be doing that, or that its not fair or right... or even any internal concern with objective truth or fact, you will find it remarkably easy to climb in many hierarchical structures, because you don't have to pay the cognitive costs many of the the others need to pay to remain there. Now I, unsurprisingly, don't know Bush or Blair. Maybe they're actually people...who cynically make up facts, spread lies, and throw away lives for their own political agenda. Or maybe they're just ignorant fools who went into it all based on emotions and all the spineless yes men just set them up with a self-reinforcing circle jerk, like a government level facebook filter-bubble. That's probably the best/most flattering possible interpretation... But given I believe there are a disproportionate number of "reality-warpers" in leadership positions, I must at least concede its POSSIBLE they really did believe there were weapons of mass destruction. In reality, its probably some banal mixture of all the above...
- agumonkey 10y ago
  I tend to believe in similar structure. What amazes me is how this bubbling is so natural for societies. What is it that groups like in this kind of individual ? massive lack of doubt that appease flocks ?
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    Psychopaths are unusually charming and persuasive. Business, law, and politics are all about persuasion, not truth or honesty. So by default they're environments in which psychopaths can thrive. I think there's exactly one political problem - how to keep psychopaths away from money, power, and influence. Everything else that goes wrong in politics and business is a direct result of feedback loops that reward psychopathic traits instead of excluding them. The world would be an infinitely more pleasant and more effective place if this could be achieved.
rhino369 10y ago
Just think this through for a second. If they were bold enough to intentionally fabricate a lie to go to war, why didn't they fabricate some evidence of a WMD program? So either they told a lie that they knew would exposed within a couple months of an invasion OR they were wrong. The later is much more likely. Assuming malice actually turns us away from the real questions that should be asked. Why were they wrong? What did they do that led them down the wrong path? How can we make sure that doesn't happen again. But if you just assume they were being badguys you miss all that.
- grkvlt 10y ago
  yep. and of course, all the time saddam was playing a dangerous game of brinksmanship, pretending he had WMD in order to maintain iraq's position locally and globally, by refusing to allow inspections by the UN, and delaying and obfuscating facts when forced to comply. so it's no wonder the WMD line seemed plausible at the time.

by krylon 10y ago

arethuza 10y ago

The truly scary thing about the likes of Blair is that they can choose what they earnestly believe in to suit what is politically expedient.

lucozade 10y ago

My view prior to the report and from what I've seen so far in the Bush-Blair correspondence is the exact opposite. They and the intelligence services were so convinced about WMD that there was next to no questioning, at high levels, of the flimsy evidence for their continued existence. I believe that they thought they were justified and that finding WMDs would be vindication. It doesn't seem reasonable that such astute political operators would make WMDs the centre of their justification if they didn't think that they existed. The failing was that this blinded them to the possibility that the Iraqi regime was bluffing.

sevenless 10y ago
It makes sense when you consider they believed the war would succeed, in terms of installing a peaceful and compliant regime in Iraq. After all, nobody holds inquiries into military victories. The success in shifting the justification for war from WMD to getting rid of Saddam, or even less plausibly, fighting terrorism, shows that marketing strategy partly succeeded. Blair still justifies the war in terms of having got rid of Saddam Hussein. In short: they didn't know, and didn't care. Remember under Bush there was also Wolfowitz and Feith's Office of Special Plans, which supplied Bush administration officials with cherry-picked, dodgy, raw intelligence, bypassing the CIA. WMD were never a credible excuse for war in the first place, rather (ironically) a legal argument. The mere existence of chemical weapons is not a reasonable premise to launch a war. Claiming a castrated Iraq was any kind of threat to the United States or Britain was ludicrous. Finally, there was no bluff going on - that's revisionist history. Saddam was complying with weapons inspectors right up to the time the invasion began.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I think another lesson is that you cannot conduct a "surgical" war. We have seen this in every failed military action since Vietnam. If you are going to go to war, the strategy should be total destruction of your enemy and his complete surrender. If you're not willing to do that, it's not worth even getting involved.
  - themihai 10y ago
    I think it worked in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. That was one of the arguments made by Blair today.
- lucozade 10y ago
  > WMD were never a credible excuse for war in the first place I couldn't agree more. Neither the UK nor US were under an existential threat. Even if they had reason to believe that there was a direct threat to an ally i.e. Israel, that is no reason to wage pre-emptive war. > Finally, there was no bluff going on - that's revisionist history That's simply not true. The Iraqi government were deliberately dicking the IAEA inspectors around trying to maintain the fiction that they still had chemical weapons. They wanted the outside world to believe that they were a threat but gambled that there was no political will to do anything about it. They were right on the former and, until 9/11, right on the latter. What I find shocking is the gullibility of the intelligence services and the politicians. What I consider heinous is that they were willing to wage pre-emptive war regardless of the motive.
michaelt 10y ago
There were weapons inspectors in Iraq prior to the invasion and the intelligence services weren't able to direct the inspectors to any WMDs. So Bush and Blair would not only have to believe they had evidence WMDs exist - they'd also have to believe that the evidence was at once so /bad/ it couldn't direct inspectors to a single shred of evidence, and so /good/ it was believable in spite of that fact. Intelligence services might not have directed the inspectors to any WMDs but they did find time to spy on the leader of the weapons inspectors, with an aim to "provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program" [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/04/15/skirmish-on-iraq-inspections/1223f8bd-2129-4a05-b5e4-f1c5ca1c6582/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/04/15/s...
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  I remember reading an article by a German UN inspector who described that they got some "hot" leads from the CIA. At each of them they didn't find any evidence of activity within a few a few years. The response of the CIA was not to talk to them anymore.
ams6110 10y ago
Since there was incontrovertible evidence that Hussein had used gas against his own people, and WMDs are rather low-tech and easy to make, having been widely used in WW I, I never really doubted the intelligence at the time. It played in to what we already knew, and a lot of smart people were convinced.
- sevenless 10y ago
  > Since there was incontrovertible evidence that Hussein had used gas against his own people With the full support of the Reagan administration at the time, mind you.

ACow_Adonis 10y ago

A common quality amongst many "leaders" in our society (and by "leaders", I mean a particular brand of relatively high functioning psychopath/narcissist that tends to thrive in such environments, be it politics or the boardroom/management/e-suite) is the ability to believe whatever they need to believe to paint themselves in the best possible light and achieve their ends at that particular time. If you do not have that little voice that whispers what you're doing is wrong, or that you're a fraud, or that you really shouldn't be doing that, or that its not fair or right... or even any internal concern with objective truth or fact, you will find it remarkably easy to climb in many hierarchical structures, because you don't have to pay the cognitive costs many of the the others need to pay to remain there. Now I, unsurprisingly, don't know Bush or Blair. Maybe they're actually people...who cynically make up facts, spread lies, and throw away lives for their own political agenda. Or maybe they're just ignorant fools who went into it all based on emotions and all the spineless yes men just set them up with a self-reinforcing circle jerk, like a government level facebook filter-bubble. That's probably the best/most flattering possible interpretation... But given I believe there are a disproportionate number of "reality-warpers" in leadership positions, I must at least concede its POSSIBLE they really did believe there were weapons of mass destruction. In reality, its probably some banal mixture of all the above...

agumonkey 10y ago
I tend to believe in similar structure. What amazes me is how this bubbling is so natural for societies. What is it that groups like in this kind of individual ? massive lack of doubt that appease flocks ?
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  Psychopaths are unusually charming and persuasive. Business, law, and politics are all about persuasion, not truth or honesty. So by default they're environments in which psychopaths can thrive. I think there's exactly one political problem - how to keep psychopaths away from money, power, and influence. Everything else that goes wrong in politics and business is a direct result of feedback loops that reward psychopathic traits instead of excluding them. The world would be an infinitely more pleasant and more effective place if this could be achieved.

rhino369 10y ago

Just think this through for a second. If they were bold enough to intentionally fabricate a lie to go to war, why didn't they fabricate some evidence of a WMD program? So either they told a lie that they knew would exposed within a couple months of an invasion OR they were wrong. The later is much more likely. Assuming malice actually turns us away from the real questions that should be asked. Why were they wrong? What did they do that led them down the wrong path? How can we make sure that doesn't happen again. But if you just assume they were being badguys you miss all that.

grkvlt 10y ago
yep. and of course, all the time saddam was playing a dangerous game of brinksmanship, pretending he had WMD in order to maintain iraq's position locally and globally, by refusing to allow inspections by the UN, and delaying and obfuscating facts when forced to comply. so it's no wonder the WMD line seemed plausible at the time.