IT WAS NEVER ABOUT WMD:

Puncturing Another Weapons Myth (NY Times, 4/30/05)

The last refuge of those who continue to insist that Saddam Hussein must have had weapons of mass destruction was virtually eliminated by the chief weapons inspector this week. Not willing to accept the unpalatable truth that the search for W.M.D. in Iraq had come up empty, die-hard supporters of the war had clung to the possibility that Mr. Hussein might have shipped his weapons off to Syria to avoid their capture. Never mind that American military leaders said that he could not have pulled that off during the war, when his regime was collapsing too fast to salvage much of anything, and that reconnaissance craft had seen no major arms shipments at the borders. Perhaps the wily dictator had spirited off the weapons before the war began.

The final report of the Iraq Survey Group, headed by Charles Duelfer, has now declared any mass transfer of illicit weapons improbable.

The World (NPR) did a very fine interview yesterday with Mr. Duelfer in which he stated truths that would be too uncomfortable for the Times to hear. He said that it was indeed true that the sanctions regime and the threat presented by the U.S. and British forces arrayed against him for twelve years had led Saddam to dispose of nearly all of his existing WMD. However, he retained the desire and intent to reconstitute the weapons programs at the first opportunity and the sanctions were so close to fallin g apart that his opportunity was going to be sooner rather than later. As Mr. Duelfer said (or, more accurately, as I recall he said): Saddam was capable of the strategic long-term planning that democracies are incapable of engaging in, so time was on his side.

It isn't anymore.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 30, 2005 10:18 AM