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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29161 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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I sometimes wonder if Saddam Hussein was aware there were no WMDs in Iraq - up to the point where resolution 1441 passes the UNSC, he acts like a man who has WMDs and expects to lose power if he gives them up.

I also think that W would have received a sufficient amount of stovepiped intelligence to convince anyone who doesn't start out with the prior that the entire US national security elite are lying liars that there were WMDs in Iraq. Apart from the fact that the national security establishment are lying liars who knew what the White House wanted to hear and were happy to provide it, Cheyney and Rumsfeld were exceptionally able DC power players, partially controlled the flow of intelligence to the Oval Office, and wanted the war even more than Bush.

The theory I heard is that Hussein was trying to pretend he had WMDs in order to intimidate potential rivals in the region like Iran, and accidentally did too good of a job.

The theory I heard is that the neocons in the Whitehouse wanted to find any kind of plausible reason to sell an invasion of Iraq to the American people, and just lied and lied and lied until they got it. I think there's more justification for this theory than the one you heard, however.

"There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me."

I don’t think W’s personal motivations for the Iraq War had anything to do with WMDs, and so said intelligence was likely superfluous, his reasons were primarily that he wanted to avenge his father and secondarily that as a born-again Evangelical he had some weird eschatological views about war in the Middle East in general.

I agree that it’s unclear that Saddam knew he didn’t have WMDs until quite late, and given the extreme levels of grift in the Baathist party and Iraqi military pre-invasion it’s entirely believable that his own officials had repeatedly lied to him and claimed they did (I don’t know if there’s ironclad proof of this). Obviously he strongly encouraged the perception that he did until late 2002 as you say.

his reasons were primarily that he wanted to avenge his father and secondarily that as a born-again Evangelical he had some weird eschatological views about war in the Middle East in general.

This is such a self-serving narrative, the blueprint for regime change in Iraq was written down by Zionists embedded in the American government for years before Bush II's invasion of Iraq, with the fabricated intelligence on WMDs likewise coming from Zionists in key positions in the highest places in American government. The last ingredient was 9/11, which created the American public demand for reprisal against the Arab world.

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (commonly known as the "Clean Break" report) is a policy document that was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel.[1] The report explained a new approach to solving Israel's security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on "Western values." It has since been criticized for advocating an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting its possession of "weapons of mass destruction".

I remember reading the "Bush invaded Iraq as revenge for his father" in high school, and looking back it is astonishing those textbooks do not mention Zionists influence as playing any role whatsoever in the war, and likewise the Wikipedia article on PNAC makes not a single mention of Zionism or Israel. How long can that charade last, and can you ignore the elephant in the room?

We’ve had this discussion before, but in any case I wasn’t saying that Bush’s personal motives were the reason that the Iraq War happened, simply that they had very little to do with WMDs (or neoconservatism, for that matter). And yes, the presence among Bush’s advisers and in his cabinet of his father’s men - many of whom saw not deposing Saddam in the Gulf War as one of HW’s biggest mistakes - obviously affected the decision to invade. HW was almost assassinated by Iraq in 1993, so W’s personal motivation was even more salient. There are few things many a powerful man would not do in vengeance for the man who tried to kill his father and who his own father blamed in part for his electoral humiliation, and for unfinished business that said father considered one of his biggest mistakes.

Dismissing the personal motivations of countless senior Bush I and II officials regarding the outcome of the Gulf War, and the dynastic relationship of the president personally, is what is ahistorical.

"Personal motives" include "being pressured by your own cabinet and Media apparatus", of which there is monumental evidence, whereas you just mentioned the "daddy revenge" theory which has no historical evidence. Indeed, the decision to invade Iraq and depose Saddam was not based on WMDs, it was predetermined by the written agenda of Zionists deeply embedded in the American foreign policy apparatus and the WMDs just became the last part of the narrative to tie a bow on the casus belli. Of course that same policy apparatus insisted that failing to institute regime change in Iraq in the Gulf War was HW's biggest mistake.

I sometimes wonder if Saddam Hussein was aware there were no WMDs in Iraq

I think the most believable retrospective history includes the idea that Saddam knew that there were no longer WMDs in Iraq, but he went to great lengths to obscure this fact, to the point that a significant portion of the chain of command of the Iraqi military absolutely believed that they did have them, planned their defenses around the expectation that they would have them, and had to scramble to replan after being blindsided by the fact that they weren't about to show up in the next month's logistics delivery.

Seems to me Saddam was trying to posture to prevent attack — if he admitted no WMD his regime was vulnerable. At the same time, he had to try to walk a tight rope to prevent a second Iraq war.

Seems to me Saddam was trying to posture to prevent attack

I don't think this was the case. I believe it was North Korea style posturing, where it was all tied up in his ego of what he wanted to be able to do even if he was unable to.

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