On Iraqi WMD and the Justification for War

It is becoming public knowledge that there were chemical weapons found in Iraq during the 2003-2011 Operations Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn. On its face this contradicts the long-running script that "we were lied to" about the pretenses for the war.

As usual, the truth is not so pure and simple.

I heard about these a few years back from a couple different Iraq vets. I mentioned it in passing when ISIS overtook an old chemical weapons plant this spring. We had captured the same plant in 2003 when we first swept through.

There is a key point that needs to be made: The difference between "Saddam's WMD program poses a threat" and "Saddam has old, leaky, improperly stored and probably inert WMD from the 1980's" is not a small difference.

What many people fail to realize is that hindsight is 20/20. They think that the indicators are obvious, when in fact they aren't. We "should have known" the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. We "should have known" about the 9/11 attacks. We "should have known" that Saddam's WMD programs were in a sorry state.

Saddam was surrounded by enemies and fickle allies who would happily turn on him if they sensed weakness. His regime HAD to create the impression that they had WMD as a deterrent. It worked on Iran, it worked on Israel, it worked on Syria and Jordan and Egypt, and it nearly worked on us.

As Sun Tzu said, "All warfare is based on deception". It is the function of Intelligence to try and peel back the layers of deception, and sometimes Intelligence fails. Critics of the war conveniently forget the way that Saddam blocked and delayed inspectors and rattled his saber in the days leading up to the war.

These revelations do not fully vindicate the Iraq invasion, but it does lend credit to the posturing that Saddam did in 2002-2003. We did go to war in Iraq because we were fed falsehoods, but it looks more and more like those falsehoods were fed to us by Saddam, not by George W. Bush