Saddam/Al Qaeda link? (Updated)
So, Paul Wolfowitz: is there solid evidence of a working relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda before the recent war in Iraq? Or of such a relationship between Baathists and Al Qaeda today?
Not really.
Update on Al Qaeda connection: Of course, the President himself has now said there is no known connection, and Rumsfeld before him. See Josh Marshall
here, here, and here.
Some spokespeople apparently went on TV last Sunday with the wrong message, like kids who took the wrong lunch to school. (Link from Hit and Run. Scroll to "Coup du Jour.")
WMDs: It is tempting for a cynic like me to say: they got it wrong, so it's the usual dilemma for their defenders: were they lying, or clueless? Obviously there is more to it than that. Bush especially, but even Blair to an extent, gets a full intelligence briefing every day. There are glimpses of "raw data," but it is the job of a lot of staff to distill the data, and present options and recommendations. Obviously on the WMDs issue before March, as on many issues, there were disagreements among senior intelligence people as to how to interpret the data, and what to recommend. Certainly there was a widespread view that Saddam still had WMDs. Clinton thought so, and Blix probably thought so. The view that Saddam had not built anything new since 1991, and indeed had destroyed a lot of things at about that time, which is increasingly emerging as likely to be the truth, probably didn't get a hearing from anyone. Was there spinning, as opposed to lying, at fairly high levels--in other words, telling the staff working on the slides to emphasize bad news, which would justify invasion, and downplay good news? I would think there certainly was. Was this spinning based on at least some evidence, "solid" by the usual standards, in the raw data? I would think so. Did either Bush or Blair know how much spinning or torquing was going on, or that they were on thin ice in some of their specific claims? Who knows?
Clifford Orwin (link will decay) has argued again that Saddam must have had WMDs, since all he had to do to save himself was to provide evidence of the fact that he had none, if it was a fact.
I still agree with Jack Shafer that it makes sense that Saddam wanted to be able to threaten his neighbours, while maintaining some ambiguity as to the extent of his military forces with the UN and the West. Can we say he either had WMDs, or maintained this ambiguity too long, to the point of craziness? Assuming Saddam had no WMDs, why would he keep up this ambiguity, to the point of being suicidal? (Did he bluff when he should have folded? I guess so).
Maybe he thought ambiguity would keep the Security Council at bay (which turned out to be true), and the U.S. would not, in the end, act without the support of the Security Council (which of course turned out not to be true). One of many bizarre occurrences, after all, has been Bush spending so much time trying to get a specific decision from the Security Council, then proceeding unilaterally anyway. It seems that you either think Security Council support is necessary in a particular case, or (far more likely) you don't. Bush acted as though he did, and perhaps this misled Saddam.
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