IRAQ AND WMD….My obsession with Valerie Plame has kept me from commenting on the Kay report, which is probably OK since I don’t have much to say. Basically, he found no WMD, but he did find just enough in the way of isolated clues and tantalizing documents to indicate that Saddam Hussein sure wished he had WMD.
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t doubt that. If we had ended the sanctions, Saddam probably would have started up his weapons programs again. The problem is, that wasn’t the Bush administration’s argument, despite what Andrew Sullivan says:
The administration claimed that Saddam had used WMDs in the past, had hidden materials from the United Nations, was hiding a continued program for weapons of mass destruction, and that we should act before the threat was imminent.
Sullivan is conveniently forgetting a little something here, isn’t he? The administration also claimed that Iraq had large quantities of existing WMD ready for battlefield use. Not programs, but actual weapons.
But since Sullivan’s memory has failed him, the Beltway Bandit digs into the memory hole to remind him of what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice actually said before the war. Sully ought to read it before he comments again on complicated issues like this.
