Every Word They Say Chagrins Us

by hilzoy

Sidney Blumenthal in Salon:

"Both the French intelligence service and the CIA paid Sabri hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least $200,000 in the case of the CIA) to give them documents on Saddam's WMD programs. "The information detailed that Saddam may have wished to have a program, that his engineers had told him they could build a nuclear weapon within two years if they had fissile material, which they didn't, and that they had no chemical or biological weapons," one of the former CIA officers told me.

On the eve of Sabri's appearance at the United Nations in September 2002 to present Saddam's case, the officer in charge of this operation met in New York with a "cutout" who had debriefed Sabri for the CIA. Then the officer flew to Washington, where he met with CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, who was "excited" about the report. Nonetheless, McLaughlin expressed his reservations. He said that Sabri's information was at odds with "our best source." That source was code-named "Curveball," later exposed as a fabricator, con man and former Iraqi taxi driver posing as a chemical engineer.

The next day, Sept. 18, Tenet briefed Bush on Sabri. "Tenet told me he briefed the president personally," said one of the former CIA officers. According to Tenet, Bush's response was to call the information "the same old thing." Bush insisted it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. "The president had no interest in the intelligence," said the CIA officer. The other officer said, "Bush didn't give a f*ck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."

But the CIA officers working on the Sabri case kept collecting information. "We checked on everything he told us." French intelligence eavesdropped on his telephone conversations and shared them with the CIA. These taps "validated" Sabri's claims, according to one of the CIA officers. The officers brought this material to the attention of the newly formed Iraqi Operations Group within the CIA. But those in charge of the IOG were on a mission to prove that Saddam did have WMD and would not give credit to anything that came from the French. "They kept saying the French were trying to undermine the war," said one of the CIA officers.

The officers continued to insist on the significance of Sabri's information, but one of Tenet's deputies told them, "You haven't figured this out yet. This isn't about intelligence. It's about regime change." (...)

While one Iraqi source told the CIA that there were no WMD, information that was true but distorted to prove the opposite, another Iraqi source was a fabricator whose lies were eagerly embraced. "The real tragedy is that they had a good source that they misused," said one of the former CIA officers. "The fact is there was nothing there, no threat. But Bush wanted to hear what he wanted to hear."" (Emphasis added.)

Sometimes it's worth just stepping back to remind ourselves just how bad our President is. I mean: this is the guy who, when presented with a PDB entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US", told the person who presented it: "All right. You've covered your ass, now", and did nothing. This is the guy who said, just yesterday, that we're kicking ass in Iraq, and who believed that Iraq had WMD as of 2006. As far as I can tell, George W. Bush does not even have a distant relationship to the truth. He honestly wouldn't know the truth if it sat down next to him on the bus. And if he did -- if, say, the truth were wearing a big sign saying "TRUTH" -- he probably wouldn't care.

He was thinking of sending people off to war, and he "didn't give a f*ck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."

The title of this post is from Emerson's Self-Reliance:

"Most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right."

I don't know that this is true of most people, but it is definitely true of George W Bush. He is not just false in a few particulars, but false in all particulars, and every word he says chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set him right. Even if we did, he wouldn't care about that either. And the tragedy of it is that unlike most of us, whose errors play themselves out on a small stage with relatively few victims, when George W. Bush decides to disregard reality, entire nations crash and burn.

Comments

[kid bitzer]

welcome back, hil.
you did good work on sully's site in his absence.
kirchik was also a source of chagrin, but i think you managed to wipe that chagrin off his face a time or two.

query: blumenthal says that 'curveball' was "later exposed" as a fabricator.

i had thought that some western intel services already had the goods on him, even by that date.

[John Thullen]

"later exposed as a fabricator, con man and former (Iraqi) taxi driver, posing as a chemical engineer."

You know, one of the great things about America, and I hope we have transfered these values to the Iraqi people, is that one can become a chemical engineer, have one's job outsourced, but still make a living as a fabricator, con man, and taxi driver.

One can even run for President and 51% of the American people can pose as informed voters and elect your butt twice.

"He honestly wouldn't know the truth if it sat down next to him on the bus"

Well, that's why one should reserve the seat next to one for the Louis Vuitton handbag. Plus, Truth, that shabby liberal, tends to use public transportation quite a lot, which is why the limo comes in handy. If Truth's fare wasn't subsidized by the government, Truth would be forced by the market to drive alone to the office with the radio turned up and nobody would ever rub shoulders with Truth.

Yet another reason to defund public transportation.

Using Emerson's words to describe Bush is like sprinkling the shavings of the rarest black truffle on a bowl of canned refried beans. It's like filtering sewage through diamonds. It's like using the polio vaccine to make a cockroach walk again. It's like using the Mt. Palomar telescope to check out a naked Roseanne Barr through the window of a cheap motel room. It's like having Pavarotti sing the theme music to a FOX news spot. It's like ..........

[hilzoy]

John: Maybe it's like this? Or maybe this?

This, on the other hand, at least touches the point where downright weird becomes great.

[rich]

And this system, this condition has been replicated with high fidelity in every US institution including those institutions typically immune to change as the military.

[rilkefan]

Pontius Pilate: "What is truth?"
Christ:

Oh, never mind.

[J]

As Mary McCarthy said in another context, his every word is a lie including 'and' and 'the'. I know this point is too obvious, but why Oh Why, as the admin rolls out a new set of lies about the success of the surge and the Iranian menace aren't the papers and news broadcasts full of references to the 'sixteen words', the 'aluminum tubes' 'the intellegence being fixed around...', the 'dodgy dossier (Blair not Bush to be sure), 'mobile chemical labs' 'drones menacing the East coast' 'the mushroom cloud' 'yellowcake from Niger' and so on. The man has a record a mile long, and it's terrible. Yet it's as if every few months the memories of our elected representatives, of our newspaper writers and television journalists are purged, so they could listen judiciously to Bush's case for his next act of murderous folly.

[Fledermaus]

How bad off are we when ethics profs start getting shrill

[Brett Bellmore]

May I insert what I hope is a point of reason into this five minute hate?

"he "didn't give a f*ck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up.""

Was his mind made up about whether Saddam had WMD, or made up about whether we were going to invade? Because the latter certainly makes more sense of "This isn't about intelligence. It's about regime change." And doesn't carry the same "I'm going to believe what I want no matter what the evidence is!" implications.

Look, any sensible person, who was paying the slightest attention at the time, knew we had a list of reasons as long as your arm for taking Saddam down. So it really, geniunely DID NOT MATTER if this source or that was right on the WMD... The other twenty reasons for invading would suffice.

That's the position I take Bush to have been occupying, and it's not as irrational as the one you're all happy to attribute to him.

[Phil]

Except for the fact that the Administration continued to play the "we invaded because of WMD and we're going to find them" game long after the invasion started, and Rumsfield's and Cheney's "we know exactly where they are" comments, and Bush's shameful little film where he was searching for WMD underneath the Oval Office couch, and all that kind of stuff, Brett's comment makes perfect sense. Except for all that.

Look, any sensible person, who was paying the slightest attention at the time, knew we had a list of reasons as long as your arm for taking Saddam down.

We? You have a mouse in your pocket? Any sensible person -- I mean, you count yourself in this group, yes? -- knew that we didn't have any good reasons at all for "taking Saddam down."

[cleek]

So it really, geniunely DID NOT MATTER if this source or that was right on the WMD... The other twenty reasons for invading would suffice.

how many of those "twenty reasons" were not based on lies - 2, 3 ?

they sold this war to the American public, manipulating the post-9/11 fear of all, on the basis of things they knew to be false. and hordes of amateur GOP cheerleaders defended these WMD stories from 2002 all the way through 2004 - some are still doing it. they're still mocking Al Baradei, even today.

[Ugh]

So it really, geniunely DID NOT MATTER if this source or that was right on the WMD... The other twenty reasons for invading would suffice.

Did not matter to Bush? Maybe. To the american people? Absolutely. No WMD, much less support for the invasion.

And doesn't carry the same "I'm going to believe what I want no matter what the evidence is!" implications.

Did you read the piece Brett? Specifically, "Bush wanted to hear what he wanted to hear" and "lies were eagerly embraced" and "it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think"?

Besides, I thought the meme was that everyone thought Saddam had WMDs in the fall of 2002, including Bush.

[The Modesto Kid]

Brett's point implies that Bush wanted intelligence that showed Iraq to have nuclear capacity (because it would support his call for war) but was justified in ignoring intelligence that showed the opposite (because it would undermine the case for war, which he was already committed to for "a list of reasons as long as your arm") -- is this what you mean, Brett? Because it seems reprehensible to me -- the word coming from the administration at the time was not "We need to invade Iraq regardless of its nuclear capacities" but "We need to invade Iraq lest we are attacked with nuclear weapons". Your point seems to be (and I am not trying to imply here that I can read your mind -- that's why I'm asking if I'm reading you correctly) that Bush wanted intelligence only insofar as it served his propaganda purposes, and that you don't have any problem with that.

[The Modesto Kid]

Well, looks like Phil, cleek and Ugh all type faster than I.

[john miller]

Brett, you know I still haven't heard a single legitimate reason, so please enlighten me of legitimate rational reasons for us to invade a country that was not a threat to us despite 99% of the world and 60+ percent of the American people being against our doing so.

Obviously, from what you say, Bush must have realized that the other 20 reasons were illegitimate as well.

[J Thomas]

JM, I think Bush maybe has a different concept of "legitimate" than you do.

When you're the ultimate authority in the world's only superpower, "Because I want to" is all that's needed.

"Being a superpower means never having to say you're sorry."

[cleek]

there were a couple of people on the old Tacitus site who would argue that BushCo had to lie to us because it's the only way we could be convinced into going along with the plan - and the plan was absolutely necessary.

i never bothered asking why those people hadn't moved to North Korea, where views like that would be right at home.

[john miller]

JT, I realize that. In fact his definition of "legitimate" is different than that of most of the country.

Cleek's comment is appropriate in that regard.

For an individual who has espoused the concept of democracy, Bush has shown no respect for it.

[J Thomas]

JM, agreed. But then, Bush espousing democracy is like him espousing WMDs, right? Talking up democracy was the price he was supposed to pay to get what he wanted.

[rea]

All, all of a piece throughout;
Thy chase had a beast in view;
Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy lovers were all untrue.
'Tis well an old age is out,
And time to begin anew.--John Dryden

[Donald Johnson]

I'm a little suspicious here because of the author of the story. I think Blumenthal is a partisan Democrat who has written an account that reduces the WMD issue to one source known to Bush and unknown to the Democrats who told Bush there were no WMD's.

Another take on the story is here

Due to my html illiteracy, I've linked to the site, not the story, so you might have to scroll down a bit if you read this much later than I've posted it.

[russell]

Was his mind made up about whether Saddam had WMD, or made up about whether we were going to invade?

My guess is the latter. I think it's pretty clear that he didn't give a good god damn whether Saddam had WMD or not.

Look, any sensible person, who was paying the slightest attention at the time, knew we had a list of reasons as long as your arm for taking Saddam down.

And, for every one of those reasons, at least three against doing so, and most certainly at that particular time.

But, none of that was of any consequence, because his mind was made up.

His mind was made up, and on the basis of that he committed us to a long, expensive, bloody, possibly ruinous war, against the advice of pretty much anyone with any professional expertise on the matter, or without a pre-existing agenda in favor of invading.

Shorter form:

We went to war with Iraq because George W Bush wanted to.

If you read the writings of the authors of our Constitution on the topic of kings and wars, you will see that George W Bush is the poster boy for restraining executive privilege.

The man shouldn't be trusted to run a pop stand. I wouldn't let him park my car. If you went out for a beer with George W Bush, he'd order rounds for the whole bar on your tab, spill his drink on your new jacket, get sloppy drunk and make stupid rude comments to your friend the waitress, and then start fights with everyone in the joint.

Then he'd remember that his wallet was in his other coat.

Recognize that guy? Don't we all know someone like that?

That's our President.

Thanks -

[rea]

Another take on the story is here

Donald Johnson, you link to a story which claims that what Sabri really told us was that Saddam had chemical WMD, which he had hidden in the care of his tribal allies. Of course, that version of what Sabri was saying was still inconsistent with what "Curveball" was saying, and ought to have prompted a skeptical look at both stories.

Nevertheless, I suspect that Blumenthal's version of what Sabri was saying is more accurate, because: (1) The adminstration made no such contemporaneous claim, (2) The admistration made no attempt to secure any supposed WMD in the hands of tribal allies, ad (3)The tribal allies turned out not to have any WMD.

Still, Logic and Reason are partisan Democrats, so I can see why you might be suspicious of what they tell you.

[cleek]

rea: well, yeah. it's well-known that Logic gave $1000 to Gore in 2000, clearly proving it's a far-left hack.

[byrningman]

I think the basic gist of the Blumenthal account rings very true if we consider that Curveball was a German asset and that Sabri was a primarily French asset, and then think about the interactions between Washington, Paris, Berlin, London and Moscow in the run-up to the war.

French and Germany have a very close information-sharing relationship, so we can assume they both knew that Curveball was garbage and that Sabri was pretty credible, and that his account fit with what most neutral observers already believed - that Iraq didn't have any WMD worth a damn anymore (the idea that 'everyone' believed Iraq to have WMD at the time is simply untrue). It is likely also, I think, that Moscow would have had good information on the old regime, and thus also knew that there was little serious WMD presence in Iraq. 'Serious' in the sense that there may be some rusty barrels of goo lying around, but in the event, nobody has even found that much.

Now these capitals, at least Paris and Berlin, knowing that at least some part of the US government knows Curveball is garbage and Sabri legit, and seeing the Bush administration saying the contrary, has got to be wondering just what kind of scoundrels they really dealing with in Washington. The Brits in these matters have a foot in both camps, and the widespread official discontent in London in the run-up to the war makes sense if we assume that the government is making policy on bogus Washington-sourced info, while high-level people are being given a quiet word by their continental counterparts ("look old chum, we don't always see eye to eye, but it really looks like this is premised on fantasy, it'll be a massive farce").

Yes Chirac had a history of craven yankee-baiting, and Schroder needed to get reelected. But it's also worth thinking about the fact that they wouldn't have gone out on such a limb - unprecedented criticism of US policy by a German government - if they thought there was even a small chance of looking like total asses if WMD were found in Iraq. Especially Putin, always a cagey player until recently (and it's worth thinking about how much his recent abandonment of caginess might be prompted by a greater knowledge than ours of the nature of the current US government).

Finally, when it comes to the Mideast, French intelligence is probably the best in the Western world, and US intelligence one of the crappiest. So really, who are you gonna believe?

[Donald Johnson]

Rea, you misunderstood the piece I linked. Partly my fault--I made a derogatory comment about Democrats and you start assuming things. Jonathan Schwarz is in full agreement that the Bush Administration engaged in cherrypicking on the WMD issue. Furthermore, he doesn't believe that Saddam actually had WMD's or distributed them to tribal allies. He says in the piece that it's clear that Sabri was either misinformed or lying about that. His point is that the Salon piece may not be the smoking gun case against Bush that people think it is. According to that earlier Washington Post story, Sabri said something a little more nuanced (and also inaccurate) about Saddam's WMD program, something that Bush could have used as more justification for war.

I'd further add that we never needed a smoking gun case in the form of one more defector who allegedly did or did not say that Saddam did or didn't have WMD's. It was clear enough in 2002 that the issue was being hyped--in early 2001 the Administration was talking about "smart sanctions", not something they'd have been pushing if they really believed Saddam posed an imminent threat.

My own comment about partisan Democrats (not to be confused with Jonathan's argument, though I linked to the piece) is purely a gut reaction--Clinton and Edwards want to say they were misled into the war and I suspect this story was written in part to give them backing on this. (I like Edwards, btw, at least for a mainstream Democrat.) I don't think they should be let off the hook so easily and no, in general I don't trust most mainstream Democratic politicians or identify them as the party of Logic and Reason. Democrats are preferable to Republicans, of course, but that's a low bar.

[DaveC]

Here is something interesting to listen to - On The Ground. (if you have 20 minutes, which I unfortunately have, only temporarily)

Bill Ardolino and Blackfive

[Jesurgislac]

Brett: Look, any sensible person, who was paying the slightest attention at the time, knew we had a list of reasons as long as your arm for taking Saddam down.

But, look, Brett, any sensible person, who was paying the slightest attention to information provided by other sources than the White House press secretary, knew that there were a list of reasons longer than your arm for taking down any number of murderous dictators. Why pick on Saddam?

[Jesurgislac]

(Assuming, that is, that you have signed up to the political theory that it's perfectly acceptable for the US to "take down" the heads of state of other countries, while obviously remaining completely unacceptable for other countries to reciprocate.)

[Porcupine_Pal]

Remember Saddam's two sons in law, who left Iraq with their wives and fled to Jordan, only to be coaxed back to Baghdad and executed?

Well..one of them was the administrative head of the WMD program in Iraq. AND, he was exptensively debriefed by the CIA in Jordan, under the King's auspices.

And...he revealed to the CIA that all WMD's had been destroyed, in compliance with the UN mandate.

ALL of which was known to the US, and known by ME, reading my morning newspaper here in the US>! (Along with the magical thinking of Curveball, 'stovepiping', the selective editing of the NIE, the fabrication of the Niger documents, etc., etc., etc.)

We were hosed, and we knew it when it happened.

[Porcupine_Pal]

Of all the lies told by George Bush, the lie that makes me hope hell does exist, is the one he has told, over and over, to those bright eyed eighteen year old boys and girls in their fatigues: that the US was in imminent peril, requiring these boys and girls to risk their lives.

[KCinDC]

Speaking of being disconnected from reality, a Balloon Juice comment highlighted this from Rick Santorum:

The good news — from a new Public Opinion Strategies poll — is that despite a political environment that is extremely hostile to President Bush and his foreign policy, a plurality of Americans believe the threat from Islamic fundamentalism is greater than Soviet Communism was in the 1960s, and than Nazism was in the 1930s.

[cleek]

for more on the issue of Bush's lying to us for our own good see Sullivan.

[Porcupine_Pal]

<<<>>>

Those four giant air bases have water treatment and purification systems, electrical generation equipment, banks, Burger Kings, and very permanent loking infrastructure. You and I aren't mature enough to appreciate why these installations, along with that Pentagon sized embassy in Baghdad, are so, well, permanent.

[Anarch]

Brett: Not to pile on or anything, but on March 17, 2003, in his ultimatum to Saddam, Bush said

Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime have failed again and again -- because we are not dealing with peaceful men.

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.

...

Last September, I went to the U.N. General Assembly and urged the nations of the world to unite and bring an end to this danger. On November 8th, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm.

Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed.

So when you say

So it really, geniunely DID NOT MATTER if this source or that was right on the WMD... The other twenty reasons for invading would suffice. That's the position I take Bush to have been occupying...

you don't appear even remotely correct.

Ugh: Besides, I thought the meme was that everyone thought Saddam had WMDs in the fall of 2002, including Bush.

It's worth repeating this.

[tsam]

Was the generalization "WMD" in common use before the selling of regime change in Iraq? This term blurs the distinction between nuclear and other weapons. Its use allowed war advocates to imply a nuclear threat but not have to defend that implication.

[OCSteve]

tsam: I’d say that “WMD” was popularized with the regime change pitch. I always knew it as NBC (Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical) prior to that.
We’ve blurred the distinction for years. That is, since we (mostly?) did away with chemical and biological agents we’ve said that they are all the same. We have nukes, so we would respond to a biological or chemical attack with nukes. That is where WMD really came into play – we said that they are all WMD: biological = chemical = nukes.

[Jesurgislac]

OCSteve: That is, since we (mostly?) did away with chemical and biological agents we’ve said that they are all the same.

Unlike Iraq, the US consistently refuses to allow UN inspectors to examine all of the US's secret weapons development centers in order to prove that this is so. Which means no one except perhaps the Americans who still fondly assume their government wouldn't lie to them believes the US has done away with chemical and biological agents.

[Hartmut]

By now even the NBC (I prefer the German ABC: atomic, biological, chemical) is not encompassing enough for some. Now even conventional explosives (as e.g. used in car bombs) are subsumed under WMD in the propaganda talk.*
I remember that at one time even Iraq's ability to produce chlorine** was used as a "proof" that Saddam had chemical weapons. Is there any non-micro state in the world that does not produce or use chlorine?

*I wonder, whether Saddams dreaded cars of mass destruction would have reached the US in timeeven if launched within 45 minutes
**used in WW1 gas warfare but never since by a state actor iirc for that purpose.

[J Thomas]

Jes, to prove we didn't have BC weapons we'd have to show the inspectors *everything*. Area 51, hangar 18, you name it.

And we could still do it. Sometime after we first gave up bioweapons I visited the lab of a microbiologist who'd recently worked at Detrick. I happened to look through his catalog for a freezer and saw a series of strains marked "Rice Blast -- Agent" and I asked about them. "Oh, I haven't got that catalog revised yet." "But, are these things you should still have?" He got a little defensive. "I destroyed the stocks in the government archive. But these are research strains. I've spent my whole career developing these strains."

Another lab had one wing devoted to studying yersinia pestis. They had the pathogenic parts broken down into harmless pieces on plasmids to study. A second wing was doing more general molecular genetics and had plasmids for all combinations of antibiotic resistance. I was there when one of the lab workers asked, "How long would it take to reconstitute all that into a real biological agent?". The director of the lab said, "About 3 weeks.". He didn't have to think about it.

We used expensive extreme methods for biowarfare research because we didn't want to have an accident. The russians got by having some accidents. If it was an emergency, we could build bioweapon factories very quickly. Start with a modern brewery, maybe, and add some components. Inoculate the workers and move out any civilians who live nearby. If all goes well it could be running in 3 weeks.

In wartime we could be building bioweapon stocks within 2 months, starting from nothing. If things went well. It might even be possible to do that starting without written plans. It takes a number of people with expertise who know what needs to be done, and a big emergency, and funding.

So why should we let UN inspectors come in and look at our advanced planes and such, just so they can fail to tell whether we can do bioagents?

[Phil]

Wait, when and under what circumstances did the US refuse a UNSC directive to allow weapons inspectors into someplace? Can you provide a link or something? If it's true, I think we should submit to any weapons inspections as directed by the UNSC, but I don't think it's true.

[dmbeaster]

A most annoying aspect of the Brett Billmore comment is the acceptance that it is perfectly OK for his chosen leaders to lie us into war. Anything is OK as a means to start the war he wanted.

Overlooked in his comment is the Bush lie that allegedly he was not committed to the war -- something he was repeating right up into February, 2003. That I suppose was also OK since it was obvious to everyone that he did intend to go to war, so lying about that intent should not matter. Right?

For completeness, it is worth pointing out the extent to which this gang lies after the fact to cover their tracks. One glaring example, in reference to the PDB mentioned by Hilzoy, was Rice's howler that it was just a "historical document." As if the document that represents the boiled-to-the-nub version of what the intelligence community believed was the most important and timely security info for the President's immediate attention was simply a "historical document" about the Al Queda threat. And not a warning of an imminent threat for the President to act on. An historical analogy would be FDR getting a PDB on 12/6/41 that Japan was determined to attack the US, and ignoring it as simply a "historical document."

This lie was so brazen and deceitful by Rice that it is hard to grant her any credibility on anything that matters.

[John Thullen]

The recent terrorist plot uncovered in Europe last week had the feature of vast quantities of hydrogen peroxide collected for murderous purposes.

I'm of two minds about this:

Either extra security precautions should be taken at airports when Ann Coulter and the bevy of grinning, pissed-off blondes on FOX are flying,

or

Ann Coulter and the bevy of grinning, pissed-off blondes on FOX should be congratulated for soaking up the world's supply of hydrogen peroxide for peaceful purposes, if you exclude the explosive rhetoric.

Either way, the use of this chemical does not square with the newly-darkened beard of OBL.

Or maybe it does.

[Dantheman]

I've always wondered whether Weapons of Mass Destruction are actually possible. After all, isn't there a law of physics which requires the conservation of mass? The best we can do is convert mass into energy -- we can't destroy it outright.

(yes, I am in a silly mood)

[Jesurgislac]

J Thomas: Jes, to prove we didn't have BC weapons we'd have to show the inspectors *everything*. Area 51, hangar 18, you name it.

Yes indeed. On a regular basis, too. And your point is? Are you saying that there are military areas that the US won't permit the UN to inspect? No news there.

(Your point that the US could develop usable WMD within a month anyway is a much better one: demonstrably, the only way to keep an industrialized nation from developing WMD is to do to it the kind of embargo that the US/UK did to Iraq: and accept the mass deaths of civilians that would result. )

[Hartmut]

For chemical weapons even an embargo is not of much use because for many of them the raw materials are practically universal and used for processes no independent state can do without (in other words: if you can produce fertilizer, you can produce poison gas).

[J Thomas]

Jes, I was giving a best-case estimate. 3 weeks to assemble the pathogens and refurbish the breweries and immunize the workers, plus 5 weeks to actually make the product and distribute it -- that's the kind of schedule that gets software project managers to commit suicide. But it doesn't take a tremendous time even in reality, when we're at war and willing to accept that sometimes bad things happen in wartime.

[Jesurgislac]

Hartmut, that was why the mass deaths as a result of the embargo - because the US/UK, enforcing it, argued that all sorts of necessary things could not be imported to Iraq because it was possible they could be used to manufacture WMD.

J Thomas: But it doesn't take a tremendous time even in reality, when we're at war and willing to accept that sometimes bad things happen in wartime.

You mean, willing to accept that your government will break the law and manufacture illegal weapons? That would be a bad thing, yes.

[J Thomas]

Jes, I mean, willing to accept the possibility of accidents that result in persistent contamination of some of our own land, or horrifying but statisticly insignificant numbers of civilian death due to our own production accidents.

Such things did happen very occasionally in the USSR. I heard about an epidemic of botulinum poisoning, perhaps due to a whole lot of contaminated canned goods used all through a gulag at the same time. (Usually canned stuff will get a few prominent cases early and they pull the whole lot and investigate.) And of course there was that famous anthrax epidemic.

So, in wartime maybe we decide we need bioweapons and need them in a hurry, and we spend a lot of money fast getting it together, and maybe we have an accident that kills a few hundred to a few thousand to possibly a few tens of thousands of our own civilians. In peacetime it would be a giant scandal but in wartime it makes sense to just censor the whole thing and keep the forward momentum.

[Larv]

Jes, I'd kind of like to see the cites Phil asked for. It's not that I trust the government, but I don't really see what the point of maintaining stocks of such agents would be. I mean, under what possible circumstances could they be used? Given the extreme unlikelihood of deployment, together with the political risks of exposure, I just don't see the upside to such a capacity. It's the kind of thing I'd want to see some positive evidence of before I believe it.

[Larv]

Jes, I'd kind of like to see the cites Phil asked for. It's not that I trust the government, but I don't really see what the point of maintaining stocks of such agents would be. I mean, under what possible circumstances could they be used? Given the extreme unlikelihood of deployment, together with the political risks of exposure, I just don't see the upside to such a capacity. It's the kind of thing I'd want to see some positive evidence of before I believe it.

[Tim]

The russians got by having some accidents. If it was an emergency, we could build bioweapon factories very quickly. Start with a modern brewery, maybe, and add some components.

Egg farms, more likely.

[Hartmut]

I recommend J.B.Tucker War of Nerves on the topic of chemical warfare and its backgrounds (from WW1 to the present). I believe the guy also wrote about bioweapons but I'd have to check.

[The Modesto Kid]

After all, isn't there a law of physics which requires the conservation of mass? The best we can do is convert mass into energy

But this is precisely what nuclear bombs do, on a pretty tiny scale -- so "weapons of mass destruction/energy production" is an excellent name for them.

[Hartmut]

Weapons of mass transformation simply doesn't have the same ring to it.
Reminds me of a certain Futurama episode:
We will convert them! To radioactive dust!

[J Thomas]

I don't really see what the point of maintaining stocks of such agents would be. I mean, under what possible circumstances could they be used?

The point isn't that we have BC weapons we don't want inspectors to find. The point is that we have secrets that we don't want inspected. It doesn't matter which secrets we don't want inspectors to see, whatever they are we don't want them inspected and nobody can make us let them.

Consider for example that we've been doing nukes for over 60 years and we were the first to do it. We probably have some accident sites that would be embarrassing for outsiders to see. But we'd have to tell them what it's about and let them look the sites over.

We'd have lots of reasons to not want inspections besides illicit weapons programs. And so did Saddam for that matter. Our inspectors were going anywhere they wanted and taking GPS measurements to make it easy to direct cruise missiles to those sites. (We got irate later when we sent in the cruise missiles and Saddam was jamming the GPS signals. We acted like it wasn't fair; somebody must have helped him and they had no right to.)