The Opinionated Bastard

(Report here in three sections: Summary, 1, 2, 3)

1. There were no WMD stockpiles in Iraq. This of course severely undermines the "official" justification for going to war. We're going to hear President Bush getting beat up about this until the election. It doesn't bother me so much, because I was getting my news from the internet even then, so I read the full justification for the war, which was really terrorism+WMD stockpiles. If you remove stockpiles, terrorism+WMD still remains. (See point 4)
2. Only Saddam knew there were no WMD stockpiles, he was lying even to his top generals. Since we had been "fooled" as well as the Iraqi generals, I suspect that we had an intelligence source in Iraq at a very high level, but it seems as if there was only probably 3 people who knew there were no WMD stockpiles: Saddam, Usay and Qusay. Saddam's logic here is just bizarre, as up until just before the invasion, the Iraqi generals all thought there were WMD, that they were lying to the UN. Evidentially, Saddam was afraid of Iran causing him problems if they thought he didn't have WMD stockpiles to use on them.
3. If sanctions were lifted, Saddam maintained the capability to produce more WMD. The report says that he would be restocked within months if sanctions we're lifted. This of course makes perfect sense for Saddam to do. Under the sanctions, he didn't really have the resources to support a war, so why keep around WMD? If the sanctions were lifted, he had all the knowledge and production facilities to reproduce them. This strengthens President Bush's argument for the war, so I expect the media to completely ignore it.
4. There were some small facilities which could have produced enough WMD for a terrorist attack or two, but not much beyond that. So we have terrorism+WMD, though not terrorism+WMD stockpiles. This also strengthens President Bush's argument for war, so again it will be ignored. However, if we combine it with some additional information that has come out since the war, I think this is a key point.

Additional information about corruption in the Oil-For-Food program has come out as well, giving us the following pieces of information, some of which we knew before:

• Saddam was robbing the program blind. This was really obvious, because the Oil-For-Food program was running about $10B a year in revenue, yet seemed unable to provide food or medicine for anyone in Iraq. Yet somehow, Saddam's palaces kept getting bigger. Meanwhile, other UN programs were able to feed 10 times as many people for 1/10th the money. All told, Saddam siphoned about $11B out of the Oil-For-Food program, on top of what he spread around as bribes.
• Some of that stolen money was being distributed to UN officials. The US suspected this but didn't have any evidence, since the UN insisted on keeping the books "private".
• Some of that stolen money was being funneled to politicians in countries on the Security Council, including France and Russia.
• Some of that stolen money was being funneled to "Islamic Charities", that were fronts for terrorist organizations.
• Some of that money was going directly to terrorists.

So that's the new information we had. Let's recap the old information we had about Iraq.

• Saddam was supporting and funding terrorism around the world. Not generally via Al Queda as long as we know, but everyone else: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc. This was well documented, and Saddam would even put out press releases on the fact.
• President Bush had received several warnings directly from Putin that Saddam planned terrorists attacks against the US in the wake of 9/11. This is especially significant in light of the limited WMD capabilities mentioned above. This didn't get much play in the press, but you can read about it here if you don't believe me. This is an example of something the President knew, but couldn't share with the rest of the US. Its also an example of something that Kerry or Edwards would also know.
• The US, Britain and Iraq were fighting a quiet war in the skies of Iraq in order to enforce the no-fly zone. (If you use the simple standard that trying to kill people in another country means you're at war with them, we've been an war with them since 1991 when they invaded Kuwait.)
• Iraq was actively working to get the sanctions lifted. To that end, they had negotiated contracts with France and Russia of over $100B/year.
• Al Queda was using the suffering of the Iraqi people under of the sanctions to recruit terrorists. On September 12th, I was poking around the Al Queda website, and I have to tell you, whether Saddam was working with them or not, it was all propaganda about Iraq.
• Al Queda was using the presence of our troops in Saudi Arabia to recruit terrorists. Again, i saw it with my own eyes on September 12th.

At this point, we can now start looking back on the decision to go to war and figure out what the consequences are. To start with, the President has the following choices in order of least severe to most severe:

1. Lift the sanctions. This would have been mindboggingly stupid. Even with the new ISG report we now know this would have mean more WMD production in Iraq, with those WMD almost certainly distributed to terrorists. However, its important to note that France, Russia and China were pushing for this in the Security Council. (Which is incredibly shortsighted, as the horror in Beslan could have been even worse if the US had let them do this...) Consequences: Dead citizens worldwide.
2. Do nothing. This wasn't a good option either, as the old sanction regime was a disaster. In some ways it's worse then lifting the sanctions, because the sanctions really put the screws to the Iraqi people, and made Saddam an even worse dictator. Consequences: Dead Iraqis, Dead citizens worldwide, especially in the US.
3. Tweak the sanctions. President Bush did this early on in his administration, implementing what he called "Smart Sanctions". They were more effective then the previous sanctions, and President Bush actually deserves some credit for the fact that Iraq didn't have WMD when we invaded because those sanctions helped prevent that. Before 9/11, this was probably good enough, though the sanctions had begun severely eroding. In fact, we know from the ISG report that Iraq was actively making plans for building weapons that needed components that were supposedly unavailable under the sanctions. Unfortunately, after 9/11, given Saddam's personality, it probably wouldn't be enough, because strangely, Saddam felt he was in competition with Usama Bin Laden. As Russia warned us, after 9/11, Saddam started planning a number of terrorists actions against the US. Its important to realize that Saddam could have caused a lot of problems for the US just by writing a large check to Al Queda. So this option is pretty similar to doing nothing in the end. Consequences: Dead Iraqis, Dead citizens worldwide, especially in the US.
4. Bomb some stuff. We've done this a lot, it's never worked. Consequences: Dead Iraqis, Dead citizens worldwide, especially in the US.
5. Putsch. That is, somehow topple Saddam. In hindsight, his government was fairly fragile given how it popped like a bubble, but at the time, it seemed impossible. Consequences: Dead Iraqis, some Diplomatic fallout
6. Assassination. This leaves the possibility of leaving someone worse in charge, like say, Uday or Qusay. We could never figure out how to do this as Saddam's security was too good, because there were too many people trying to kill him. Consequences: One Dead Iraqi, minor Diplomatic fallout
7. Well Planned War. This is what we actually ended up doing. We pushed on Saddam on multiple fronts simultaneously, to the point that his government just collapsed. The original plan had our most advanced battalion also attacking through Turkey, which would have helped prevent a lot of the looting and other problems we had after the government collapsed. Consequences: Dead Iraqis, Dead US Soldiers, Expensive, Diplomatic fallout
8. Original War Plan. Taking a modern army to war is a very complicated proposition. So much so that the Pentagon actually plans wars years in advance. The original war plan was typical of the old Cold War thinking of the Pentagon. Lots of money, lots of troops, lots of bombing, very little diplomatic or social pressure. Rumsfeld deserves credit here for pushing General Franks to overhaul this plan, he saved many US and Iraqi lives by doing so. Consequences: Large Numbers of Dead Iraqis, Large Numbers of Dead US Soldiers, Extremely Expensive, Even more Diplomatic fallout.

Reviewing this list, which option would you choose? None of the choices are very good, and the best choices (Putsch, Assassination) were unfortunately impossible. If you believe, as Bush believed after 9/11 that any choice that contains "Dead Citizens" is unacceptable, you inevitably end up with choice #7. Even knowing what we know now, invading Iraq was necessary.