50 percent of U.S. says Iraq had WMDs

[Dardedar]

DAR
Breathtaking, colossal, nationwide ignorance.



***

50 percent of U.S. says Iraq had WMDs

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 25, 2006

Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 -- up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds. Pollsters deemed the increase both "substantial" and "surprising" in light of persistent press reports to the contrary in recent years.
The survey did not speculate on what caused the shift in opinion, which supports President Bush's original rationale for going to war. Respondents were questioned in early July after the release of a Defense Department intelligence report that revealed coalition forces recovered 500 aging chemical weapons containing mustard or sarin gas nerve agents in Iraq.
"Filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist," said Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, during a June 21 press conference detailing the newly declassified information.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who shared the podium, said, "Iraq was not a WMD-free zone."
In recent weeks, the Michigan Republican has recommended that more material confiscated since the invasion be declassified and made public, including a 1998 standing order to Iraqi officials to hide or destroy weapons and thus evade inspectors from the United Nations.
Meanwhile, the Harris poll offered some positive feedback on Iraq. Seventy-two percent of respondents said the Iraqi people are better off now than under Saddam Hussein's regime -- a figure similar to that of 2004, when it stood at 76 percent. In addition, 64 percent say Saddam had "strong links" with al Qaeda, up from 62 percent in October 2004. Fifty-five percent said that "history will give the U.S. credit for bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq."
And although the response is tepid, American confidence in the Iraqis has improved: 37 percent said Iraq would succeed in creating a stable democracy, up five points since November.
Americans remain in touch with the realities of Iraq: 61 percent said the conflict has motivated more Islamic terrorists to attack the U.S. -- a number that has remained virtually unchanged since 2004.
An additional 41 percent say the war has reduced the threat of another major terrorist attack in the United States, a sentiment also unchanged in the past two years.
The financial burden of the war may be less keenly felt. The poll found that 56 percent said spending "huge amounts" for ongoing military efforts in Iraq means less funds are available to protect Americans at home. The figure was 62 percent last year, but 51 percent in 2004.
Has the war earned respect for the U.S. overseas? Sixty-eight percent said "no," the same as last year. The figure stood at 62 percent in 2004.
The poll of 1,020 adults was conducted July 5 to 11 and has a margin of error of three percentage points.
***

[Doug]

The survey did not speculate on what caused the shift in opinion, which supports President Bush's original rationale for going to war.

DOUG
I suspect what the cause of the shift is. It is the same shift that the U.S. saw after we went into Vietnam. Before we went into Vietnam, support for the war was even lower than after we went in. Once we were there fighting, support grew.

"...research shows that when people expect to go to war–whatever educational level they are–they tend to support that war. Because of cognitive dissonance, people come to believe in what they have to do."

Here.

I think we are seeing that same shift again. People don't want to think that we went in there unfairly, without justification. (We did.) But also, like Vietnam, if the war goes poorly support will evaporate quickly. (It did.) And we are seeing that too.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

It all comes back to who owns the media. People believe the stuff W wants them to because the media presents his view - sometimes by not presenting the facts at all, sometimes by giving the facts a 15-sec soundbite followed by an hour "interpretation" by some wingnut with name recognition. Considering that 80% of America gets its news from the MSM, it's really more surprising the numbers are that low. A 50% belief in Iraqi WMDs says 50% don't believe it - and at least 30% of those are still getting their news from the MSM. Should the corporations owning the MSM decide the Bush line is not to their benefit, this coverage will do a 180, and the poll numbers will change overnight.

[Hogeye]

The reason for the change in opinion is obvious, and stated in the article: "Respondents were questioned in early July after the release of a Defense Department intelligence report that revealed coalition forces recovered 500 aging chemical weapons containing mustard or sarin gas nerve agents in Iraq."

If the defense dept found 500 WMDs, that pretty much proves they had 'em. Now, one can quibble over whether a deteriorated chemical found in a missile warhead is a bone fide WMD, of course, but I'm afraid the warmongers have a plausible case here.

The good news is: there is no reason for peaceniks to "hang their hat" on the WMD thing. Even if Saddam they had some WMDs, that would not justify the US aggression there. Saddam was no threat to the US whatsoever. Even if he had WMDs, he had no delivery system capable of reaching Europe, let alone US territory.

I suggest that peaceniks should treat WMDs as a red herring - one we got sucked into, admittedly - rather than get into a semantic argument over what is a "true" WMD. You can concede that Saddam had some chemical weapons without conceding that the invasion and occupation was justified.

[Dardedar]

If the defense dept found 500 WMDs, that pretty much proves they had 'em. Now, one can quibble over whether a deteriorated chemical found in a missile warhead is a bone fide WMD, of course, but I'm afraid the warmongers have a plausible case here.

DAR
Actually they don't. Not even close. You apparently haven't read the debunk of this howling distortion:

***
http://mediamatters.org/items/200607070007

"In fact, as Media Matters for America has previously noted HERE and HERE), intelligence officials, military officials, and the Bush administration have all confirmed that the pre-1991 shells were not the WMDs that the Bush administration cited in its argument for war."

If you read the above links, you will no longer say "the warmongers have a plausible case here." I think.

Good grief, even David Kay, Bush's hand picked investigator said the claims were junk.

From the above link:
"According to a June 22 Associated Press article, it was former ISG head David Kay who claimed that the degraded chemicals in the weapons were "less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point."

D.
------------------------
Rush admits they are going to have to work extra hard to get non-dittos heads so swallow this crap:

On the June 22 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh announced his intention to "get out the truth on weapons of mass destruction" and denounced the "three-year propaganda program on 'no weapons of mass destruction' ":

LIMBAUGH: It is going to be up to us, ladies and gentlemen, to get the truth out on weapons of mass destruction and overcome the obdurate stubbornness and blindness of the Democrats and the drive-by media. It's going to be up to us to give courage and backbone to our own people on our side of the aisle.

Edited by Savonarola, 20060726 2318: Fixed BBCoding error

[Hogeye]

I've read those links, Darrel. They confirm that there were pre-1991 shells found. No one denies that they were found. The quote you gave admitted they were found. They were found but they "were not the WMDs that the Bush administration cited in its argument for war."

As I noted earlier, you can quibble about whether "degraded" chemical weapons are WMD's, but you can't really argue that chemical weapons weren't found. Furthermore, they have also found agricultural chemicals stored in munitions dumps, clearly there for weapons use. Again, you can argue that these are poor excuses for WMDs, but you can't say no chemical weapons components were there.

So your choice, when arguing with warmongers, is to have a silly verbal dispute on what a WMD is - whether the found chemical stuff is really a WMD - or you can say, "Okay, they had some chintzy chemical weapons. Call them WMDs if it makes you happy. So what?"

I recommend the latter approach. Just because Saddam had some WMDs didn't make him an aggressor against the US.

[Dardedar]

They were found but they "were not the WMDs that the Bush administration cited in its argument for war."

DAR
Nor anyone else. So it is shameless to say after the fact that these degraded, under the kitchen sink equivalent chemicals are/were a threat to us in any way like the promised WMD's were suppose to be. It's an equivocation on the term "WMD."

As I noted earlier, you can quibble about whether "degraded" chemical weapons are WMD's,...

DAR
It's not a quibble to educate people that the WMD's we were promised are not this junk that they have found and knew were sitting around the whole time (we left it sitting there during the last war). As Bush's hand picked man says:

"Kay said, the decades-old sarin nerve gas was probably no more dangerous than household pesticides -- and far more likely to degrade at room temperature. "In terms of toxicity, sir," Kay told [Rep. Curt] Weldon [R-PA] at one point, "I suspect in your house, and I know in my house, I have things that are more toxic than sarin produced from 1984 to 1988."

This crap is not to be equated with the WMD's or the active WMD program we were promised by the Bush spin team.

"In his opening statement, Kay stated that Congress should not be surprised about the weapons discovery and that the risk they posed were minimal:"

So your choice, when arguing with warmongers, is to have a silly verbal dispute on what a WMD is..."

DAR
I don't think it is silly to inform people of the difference between the WMD's promised and this now desperate switch, and equivocation, to left over under the kitchen sink junk that everyone knew was sitting around for decades. I think it is also important to expose how they are spinning this to create confusion among the masses who do not watch things so closely. My response debunks theirs but takes a little explanation, yours conceeds it.

Just because Saddam had some WMDs didn't make him an aggressor against the US.

DAR
I totally disagree with your concession.

Even the Pentagon quickly disagreed with this pathetic political attempt to equate WMD's supposedly we went to war for, or sent inspectors over for, with these bits of crap:

"Pentagon officials quickly dismissed the recently declassified report by telling "reporters the shells are old and inactive, dating from the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s and that the shells are not the weapons of mass destruction we were looking for when U.S. forces went into Iraq."

LINK

[Hogeye]

I don't think it is silly to inform people of the difference between the WMD's promised and this now desperate switch...

But you are framing the question totally differently than the warmongers. The question they answer is, Were there WMDs in Iraq when the US invaded? The answer is "yes" if you consider the degraded chemical-laden warheads and tanks of agricultural pesticides to be WMDs. You are asking a partisan question quite different from theirs: Did Bush know about some specific WMDs when he ordered the invasion? The answer there is "no." But most warmongers are not interested in your loaded question, but rather their factual question.

If you and the warmongers are answering totally different questions, you'll simply talk past each other - there is no dialog. If you want real dialog, then tell them that WMDs don't matter so long as there was no aggression by the Baathist State against the US, ergo the US engaged in aggression, violating any semblence of just war.

If, by some amazing fluke, they found bone fide WMDs in Iraq, would you change your mind and become pro-occupation? If you are like most peaceniks, I doubt it. The WMD thing is a red herring, and you're unnecessarily setting yourself up for a "refutation."

[Doug]

The question they answer is, Were there WMDs in Iraq when the US invaded? The answer is "yes" if you consider the degraded chemical-laden warheads and tanks of agricultural pesticides to be WMDs.

DOUG
A device that cannot harm large numbers of people is hardly a weapon of mass destruction.

[Dardedar]

But you are framing the question totally differently than the warmongers.

DAR
Right, they set it up with an equivacation built in to theirs and play upon common peoples ignorance of weaponry. Under the simple ruse of pretending that the antique junk found belongs in some sense under the umbrella moniker of WMD. That's ridiculous. Even the pentagon didn't buy this. The only ones that go along with this little childish game (that actually blew up in their faces) are the ditto head types and those desperate for relief from the political pounding they have received over this awesome WMD fiasco.

The question they answer is, Were there WMDs in Iraq when the US invaded? The answer is "yes" if you consider the degraded chemical-laden warheads and tanks of agricultural pesticides to be WMDs.

DAR
If someone asks how many automobiles I have at my house I would say three. This is because I don't count the little remote control car the cat plays with even though technically one could quibble and say it is in some sense an auto. To confuse the two is to equivocate and use the term automobile in a dishonest and misleading way. We were promised full sized working automobiles and instead we found a little hot wheel car. To equate or confuse the two because they can in some simplistic sense both be referred to as "cars" is ridiculous. So of course you must defend it immediately. Like David Kay and the pentagon I don't grant them this equivocation. They are very glad that you do, and Rush Limbaugh thanks you for casting in with their side and helping spread the confusion demonstrated in the title of the link.

You are asking a partisan question quite different from theirs: Did Bush know about some specific WMDs when he ordered the invasion?

DAR
Your version of this question is a farcial caricature. I am sure you can't see this.

But most warmongers are not interested in your loaded question, but rather their factual question.

DAR
Oh, the dittoheads and Hannities are asking the factual question while mine is loaded. You are hilarious.

If you want real dialog, then tell them that WMDs don't matter...

DAR
Real, working WMD's do matter, especially according the Bush team who used it as their main justification for the war. Finding WMD's is very important to them and that they didn't find them is a profound embarrassment. I call them on their equivocation and can even refer to the White House to agree with me. You give it to them.

If, by some amazing fluke, they found bone fide WMDs in Iraq, would you change your mind and become pro-occupation?

DAR
No. Notice how you reveal that you really do know the difference between bogus WMD's and bona fide ones. Apparently you are just being argumentative.

The WMD thing is a red herring, and you're unnecessarily setting yourself up for a "refutation."

DAR
Hardly. Even the White House doesn't go with this equivocation. Even they aren't so stupid to pretend that these were in any meaningful sense the WMD's they sold their war on.

D.

[Hogeye]

We were promised full sized working automobiles and instead we found a little hot wheel car.

A better analogy is this: They said you had some cars three years ago. We looked today, and found some old cars in your yard, but the batteries were dead so they didn't run. (We don't know if they ran three years ago.)

Is this evidence for the claim 'you had cars three years ago.'? You bet.

Similarly, we don't really know whether the chemical weapons found were operable when Bush invaded. All we know is that when they were found years later they had deteriorated.

[Dardedar]

We were promised full sized working automobiles and instead we found a little hot wheel car.

A better analogy is this: They said you had some cars three years ago. We looked today, and found some old cars in your yard, but the batteries were dead so they didn't run.

DAR
I a better analogy. Put the car on blocks, mid eighties model, rear axle missing, wheel missing, rubber rotten, windows down and open to the elements. No sign of any attempt at recent rebuilding or an active "auto-repair program." Oh, and last time we visited the same car was sitting there rotting and we ignored it.

We were told we needed to go back BECAUSE we would find new state of the art cars ready to go and an active program to make new ones etc. We were not told we needed to go back because of an unusable broken down piece of junk.

The car on blocks described above is not to be confused with a state of the art car ready to go or an active program to make more. This according to the Pentagon and the White House who very much have a vested interest in producing the promised state of the art car ready to go and a program to make new ones.

That the existence of such cars would not be justification for a preemptive war is just an extra nail in the coffin.

D.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

David Kay's pre-Gulf II report (when they were pulled out of Iraq so W could start the war) indicated that they had located and either destroyed or sealed 97% of the weapons Iraq had left at the end of Gulf I. They knew what the other 3% were - chemical weapons that were old enough to have degraded beyond use. They hadn't had time to find them before the team was pulled out, but he wasn't worried about them, since they were beyond use.

This little cache is probably most, if not all, of that 3%. It isn't a weapon of mass destruction if it can't mass destruct.

[Hogeye]

I think we all agree that the chemical weapons in question worked in 1991. And we agree that they didn't work when found in 2005. When did they stop working? Were they working during Saddam's tenure? Is a non-working chemical weapon still a chemical weapon? Is a non-working car a car?

What about the stashes of pesticides found in munitions dumps? Are these not components for chemical weapons?

They knew what the other 3% were - chemical weapons that were old enough to have degraded beyond use.

Can you support this claim? It sounds dubious on the face of it since there's no way of knowing the condition of chemical weapons you haven't found. The claim that they had found all but 3% is also suspicious - how can you know how many weapons you haven't found? No one really knows how many weapons were used up in the Iran-Iraq war, or how many they started with for that matter. They may know approximately how many they got from the US, but that's about it.

Oh, and last time we visited the same car was sitting there rotting and we ignored it.

The 500 aged chemical weapons had not been found before - they were a new find. A car on blocks is still a car. Enjoy your semantic dispute with hawks.

All it would take now for you to hand a public relations coup to the warmongers is for one similar warhead to be found in a refrigerator undegraded. I still say you are falling for a red herring, rather than pointing out the deeper and more important issue of non-aggression.

[Dardedar]

DAR
Perhaps the biggest clue that your position is not tenable by any stretch or spin, and that these are not "bone fide WMDs" (your term for what has not been found), is that the White House and Pentagon, desperate as they are to find WMD's, won't even defend your position. And when it comes to stretch and spin we are talking about professional bullshit artists.

I think we all agree that the chemical weapons in question worked in 1991.

DAR
Wrong.

Darrel wrote:
Oh, and last time we visited the same car was sitting there rotting and we ignored it.

HOGEYE
The 500 aged chemical weapons had not been found before - they were a new find.

DAR
From the link you said you read:

***
From the June 22 broadcast of NBC's Nightly News:

CHIP REID (NBC correspondent): That's right, Brian [Williams, anchor]. While this big debate was going on in the Senate floor, there's a side battle brewing over weapons of mass destruction, and at the center of it all, Republican Senator Rick Santorum.

The story begins Wednesday afternoon, with the release of a one-page summary of a Pentagon report stating that "approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent" have been found in Iraq since 2003. Republican Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum rushes out a press release and heads for the Senate floor --

SANTORUM: This is an incredibly significant document.

REID: -- where he declares that the elusive weapons of mass destruction have been found.

SANTORUM: We now have found stockpiles.

REID: The claim quickly becomes a hot topic on cable TV and the Internet, but just as quickly, Pentagon officials pour cold water on the story, telling reporters the shells are old and inactive, dating from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and that the shells are not the weapons of mass destruction we were looking for when U.S. forces went into Iraq.

The only Senators who fell for this and made fools of themselves were Sanatorum and Hoekstra. As Colmes summarized:

***
COLMES: Congressman Hoekstra. You know, it's misleading to claim that these were the weapons the president was talking about. It's not liberals that said it was degraded, it was our own Defense Department. The White House isn't coming forward with this story because even its own Iraq Survey Group said that, yeah, there were some weapons still buried in Iraq, but not of military significance. They've said it all along. This is not new information.
***

A car on blocks is still a car. Enjoy your semantic dispute with hawks.

DAR
I do. I'll roast them just like I roast you. It would be much harder if I didn't have the White House and Pentagon on my side. Enjoy your passing along an argument based upon equivocation. Ditto-heads everywhere appreciate your support. Maybe with enough dittoheads out there spreading the propaganda we can get the numbers up and well over the 50% who think Bush as been vindicated by finding the WMD's he went to war over.

D.

[Hogeye]

Darrel, is your claim that the 500 warheads were never operative? If you prefer 1988 or even 1980 to 1991 as a date when they worked, that's fine for my point. (Which was: we don't know when they became unusable.)

I wrote, "The 500 aged chemical weapons had not been found before - they were a new find." Darrel, you made noises as if you were going to refute my statement, but then didn't. You put in bold, "telling reporters the shells are old and inactive, dating from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and that the shells are not the weapons of mass destruction we were looking for when U.S. forces went into Iraq," but this certainly does not imply that the weapons had been found before. I don't get it.

You keep on trying to switch the question from "Were there WMDs in Iraq?" to something else, such as "Were these the weapons Bush talked about?" or "Were these the weapons the USEmpire was looking for?" You are answering a different question than the warmongers, thereby ducking their claim. And misconstruing what the Defense Department said. The DD did not say there were no WMD's found. It said that the WMDs found were "old and inoperative." I doubt if the White House said either, as you imply, that they were not bone fide WMDs.

[Dardedar]

It said that the WMDs found were "old and inoperative."

DAR
Weapons of Mass Destruction that are "old and inoperative" are no longer Weapons of Mass Destruction, they are Objects Formerly Known as Weapons of Mass Distruction, or OFKAWMD. The only people that don't understand this are ditto-heads and/or very confused Bush apologist wannabes.

It could be accurate to refer to them as "Weapons of Mass Distraction" because that's all they are good for now. It works on a lot of people, see the topic of the thread.

I doubt if the White House said either, as you imply, that they were not bone fide WMDs.

DAR
Please desist from smoking crack before you post. It was you who implied, no said, that these items in question were not bone fide WMD's:

"If, by some amazing fluke, they found bone fide WMDs in Iraq,..."

This only makes sense, only logically follows, if you accept that what has been found is not "bona fide." Which certainly is true. So we agree.

D.
-----------------------
bona fide, adj.

Authentic; genuine: a bona fide Rembrandt.

being real or genuine

[Hogeye]

Weapons of Mass Destruction that are "old and inoperative" are no longer Weapons of Mass Destruction.

That is the semantic dispute that partisans quibble over, complicated by the question of when they ceased to be operative. (Did they work a few years before, in 2002? No one knows.)

I doubt if the White House said either, as you imply, that they were not bone fide WMDs.

You go off on irrelevancies in your response to this, Darrel, so I guess I need to backtrack and quote what you said earlier. Perhaps I misunderstood you.

Perhaps the biggest clue that your position is not tenable by any stretch or spin, and that these are not "bone fide WMDs" (your term for what has not been found), is that the White House and Pentagon, desperate as they are to find WMD's, won't even defend your position.

I took this to be a claim that the White House and the Pentagon admitted that the 500 chemical weapons were not bone fide WMDs. We've already seen that the Pentagon made no such admission. I doubt if the White House made such an admission either.

I don't consider them bone fide WMDs, but the White House does. And as I said, I'd rather attack their real weakness (just war) rather than get into the semantic argument.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

They knew what weapons they hadn't found yet because instead of wandering around in the desert going, "Yoohoo, WMDs where are you?" they systematically tracked what weapons and weapon components Saddam had purchased or been given - part of which, of course, came from the U.S. and our ambassador at the U.N. (don't remember the name, pre-Bolton) had a screaming fit about including the U.S.-sourced weaponry in the report). They knew what to look for and went after anything active or potentially active first. There was a reason why only UK and countries we could pressure/blackmail joined us in invading Iraq. Everyone except dittoheads knew Saddam wasn't a threat, much as he wished he could be notwithstanding. The neocons sure knew he wasn't a threat - that's why Iraq was chosen over, say, North Korea.

[Hogeye]

Barbara, they had some notion of what the US had supplied, and they had some allies claimed count of what they sold (though of course unofficial and unrecorded transactions occurred), but have no idea of weapons from other sources. After the massive intelligence failures surrounding e.g. the fall of the Shah of Iran and 9/11, I find it surprising that you think US intelligence was so accurate in this particular case.