Fascinating, exhaustive study by the LA Times into weapons smuggling from Syria to Iraq. Do you really think this is the last damning intelligence that wil be unearthed?
- A Syrian trading company with close ties to the ruling regime smuggled weapons and military hardware to Saddam Hussein between 2000 and 2003, helping Syria become the main channel for illicit arms transfers to Iraq despite a stringent U.N. embargo, documents recovered in Iraq show.
The private company, called SES International Corp., is headed by a cousin of Syria's autocratic leader, Bashar Assad, and is controlled by other members of Assad's Baath Party and Alawite clan. Syria's government assisted SES in importing at least one shipment destined for Iraq's military, the Iraqi documents indicate, and Western intelligence reports allege that senior Syrian officials were involved in other illicit transfers.
Iraqi records show that SES signed more than 50 contracts to supply tens of millions of dollars' worth of arms and equipment to Iraq's military shortly before the U.S.-led invasion in March. They reveal Iraq's increasingly desperate search in at least a dozen countries for ballistic missiles, antiaircraft missiles, artillery, spare parts for MIG fighter jets and battle tanks, gunpowder, radar systems, nerve agent antidotes and more.
....Files from the Baghdad office of Al Bashair Trading Co., the largest of Iraq's military procurement offices, provide no new evidence about chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq. And not every contract for conventional weapons was filled.
But the successful deals - such as the delivery of 1,000 heavy machine guns and up to 20 million bullets for assault rifles - helped Baghdad's ill-equipped army grow stronger before the war began in March. Some supplies may now be aiding the insurgency against the U.S.-led occupation.
And the files reviewed by The Times - about 800 pages of signed contracts, shipping manifests, export documents, bank deposits, minutes of meetings and more - offer a rare glimpse into the murky world of international arms smuggling and the ties between countries such as Syria and North Korea, which the administration calls "rogue states," and the ousted Iraqi regime. The documents illustrate the clandestine networks and complex deceptions Iraq used to evade U.N. sanctions and scrutiny by U.S. intelligence. Those include extensive use of front companies, sham contracts, phony export licenses, kickbacks and money laundering schemes.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - mike
These were purchases of conventional weapons to protect against the impending invasion. What were they supposed to do, give up?
Note the procurement of nerve agent ANTIDOTES. The U.S. is widely known to have stockpiles of nerve agents. Also, the article explicitly states that no materials to make enriched uranium were found. I note that you omitted that paragraph from your summary.
There's no "new" evidence of WMD acquistion, the article states, which means there is no evidence of WMD acquisition, period.
Also, Stern magazine is of questionable journalistic integrity, to put it mildly. Among its journalistic coups is the "fake Hitler diaries" story. How fitting in this context.
Try again.
2 - Michael Croft
Eric, I agree with your conclusion, but I think we disagree on the strength of the case.
I do not believe that the evidence presented supports the argument that Iraq possessed WMDs that posed an immanent danger to the US, the UK, or our allies.
Before the war, Bush and Blair and Powell and their supporters tended to be very clear about that. Not a plan for a weapons program, not a few items, not a misidentified truck, but the ability to hit Britain and the US east coast and inflict significant harm to thousands.
That was the case that was sold, and if they sold it with weasel-words crafted to imply that threat scenario while providing themselves with legal (but not moral) equivocation room, then shame on us for buying it. And more on us for electing a president whose moral leadership much be checked by the lawyers. Again.
If the standard for prophylactic invasion is "buying some things that might be made into threatening things", then we'd best get busy, because there are a lot of states that meet that lowered bar. Please let me know when Rangoon falls to coalition troops.
3 - David Flanagan
Eric,
I read the entire LA Times article with fascination. Saddam's web of contacts with various nations, including, of course, France, China, Russia, Syria, and North Korea, and the ease at which he was able to purchase just about any item was, to me, very chilling news.
I've seen a couple of comments that have claimed, basically, that Saddam was arming himself because of the impending invasion by the US, yet the documentation found makes it clear that Saddam's illegal importations have been in operation since at least 2000, well before President Bush began putting pressure on Saddam to comply with UN regulations.
While there is no direct evidence found in any of the documentation so far of WMD, we do finally have irrefutable proof that Saddam was actively and aggressively purchasing weapons banned by the UN both during President Clinton's term as well as President Bush's term. The only other comment I want to make for the nay-sayers out there who continue to say, "where are the WMD," is that, we should remember that it took us three months to find Saddam even though we've devoted massive amounts of time and effort in doing so. And he could hardly just bury himself in the middle of the desert and stay there. He had to move about, exposing himself at intervals to capture.
Will we find WMD? I have no idea, but I am worried that if we do not it will be because those weapons have already been spirited out of the country. Whatever happens, President Bush did exactly as he should have done. As Bush said during his last state of the union speech, we just couldn't wait until Saddam became an imminent threat, we had to force him to comply or take him out long before, which is exactly what we've done.
I think some of those who declare our actions in Iraq to be "illegal" should go to Iraq and ask the average Iraqi what THEY think. Specifically, you should try suggesting to average Iraqis that they were better off under Saddam, just to see what they say.
Let me know how that works for you. ;-)
Thanks.
David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com
4 - Dirtgrain
If only we had records of every country's arms and military technology transactions. It is an odd contrast with some of the claims in the aftermath of the war in Iraq that said that Saddam might have shipped his WMDs to Syria (there may be a link). I was never positive that Saddam had no WMDs, but I am skeptical--and I doubt that we had valid proof.
But when you trace out the world arms trade and figure out what companies and what countries were trading with "evil" countries, it seems like everyone should be indicted. And it's murky. How many of the weapons used by Iraq in Desert Storm were American? The findings of the article don't surprise me that much, although it is scary to see how much of this type of trading happens. Here is a summary of a report about US Arms trade from 1993-2000 (here is the original report in PDF). It is hard to fathom how vast the arms trade is. I wish I had a recent report of what all countries are doing with arms trading. I bet it would be shocking. North Korea? India? Russia? Germany? Turkey? Mexico? I want to know. Case in point:
The documents illustrate the clandestine networks and complex deceptions Iraq used to evade U.N. sanctions and scrutiny by U.S. intelligence. Those include extensive use of front companies, sham contracts, phony export licenses, kickbacks and money laundering schemes.
Yikes!5 - Brian Flemming
There go those goalposts again!
Whatever news breaks--yep, that's why we invaded, all right. Said it all along.
The sun rose? See? Told you it would. That's why we invaded Iraq. Because the sun rose. That's the case we made all the time.
So, let me get the latest revised history straight:
1. Back in March, anti-war nutcases claimed that Saddam Hussein never tried to gain any military strength whatsoever. In fact, he disbanded his army entirely and never really wanted to protect the country he ruled from invasions by anybody. He didn't have any bullets, anti-aircraft missiles or anything resembling the tools of war. He was the one dictator on the entire planet who had not a scrap of military hardware around him anywhere. Upon this premise the entire case of the anti-war commies was based.
2. No Administration hawk ever said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." What the hawks said was, "Saddam Hussein has 20 million bullets, and these bullets represent an imminent threat to the security of the United States, and wipe that smirk off your face, buster!"
6 - BB
Eric, not to be confrontational but did you forget the U.S. is one of the world's largest arms dealers and a bastion of weapons of mass destruction? Shades of Michael Moore's CANADIAN BACON!
7 - Tom Johnson
These were purchases of conventional weapons to protect against the impending invasion. What were they supposed to do, give up?
Uh, yes. That's exactly what they were supposed to do. And remember, it wasn't until 2002 that threats of an invasion began - how do you explain the previous two years worth of purchases? Regardless, Iraq was knowingly and happily violating the UN ban.
And is anyone else as tired as me of seeing Brian Flemming's childish, hyperactive flailings on the subject? God, dude, give it a rest. You destroy any credibility you might have with the way you present your "information." You just look paranoid and immature.
8 - Hal Pawluk
It's called a "red herring" argument, Eric, and has nothing to do with the issue of lies about the "imminent threat" and "Weapons of Mass Destruction", the PR name for what used to be "Chemical and Biological Weapons" (CBW) until the adminstration spin-masters got hold of it.
9 - Dirtgrain
Tom said: "And is anyone else as tired as me of seeing Brian Flemming's childish, hyperactive flailings on the subject? God, dude, give it a rest. You destroy any credibility you might have with the way you present your 'information.' You just look paranoid and immature."
Is this supposed to be a sophisticated way of dismissing Brian's point? What gives? We should attempt to avoid labeling, stereotyping and generalizing, and stick to logic.
10 - Michael
So, if Brian is not credible, how about me? Conventional weapons, even purchased illegally, do not pose an "imminent threat" to the US, the UK, and our allies.
And if the standard for US- led invasion is "knowingly and happily violating [a] UN ban" on something, boy do we have a lot of invasions ahead of us.
11 - Eric Olsen
I am actually cheered by the relative moderation of these comments, and in their own way they represent most of the range of opinion on the war - remarkable.
Mike L seems to have missed both the title of the post ("WMD? No, Bombshell Yes"), as well as the paragraph quoted from the LA Times story that reads, "Files from the Baghdad office of Al Bashair Trading Co., the largest of Iraq's military procurement offices, provide no new evidence about chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq. And not every contract for conventional weapons was filled."
I in no way implied that this has anything to do with WMD, including nuclear weapons, and in fact the title fairly explicitly states that, wouldn't you say?
Michael C. also mentions that the evidence at hand doesn't prove WMD, so perhaps I wasn't as explicit as I might have been, title notwithstanding.
My point is that with this level of deception, aggressive defiance of the UN ban, and apparent ease of obtaining banned weapons through an extensive international market, this greatly bolsters the case - long since made as far as I'm concerned anyway - that Saddam's regime was a severe danger to the people of Iraq, the region, and the world, and all of the above are much better off with it deposed. Was it worth the effort and cost? Utterly and without the slightest doubt. I don't see how anyone can argue otherwise.
I also note that this is not a question those commenters overtly against the war even adddress in their comments - they refer back to the matter of the administration's stated reasons for the war and whether or not any of these statements constituted "lies." It seems to me vastly more relevant to discuss whether or not the invasion was a) the right thing to do, b) was or was not successful, c) and if so, are the people of Iraq, the region, and the world better off than before the invasion, or than they would be if it had not occurred?
Since the answer to these questions is a resounding "yes," I imagine it is of more interest to those who don't like that answer to parse political semantics.
There were many excellent reasons for regime change in Iraq - this is not a weakness, this is a strength of the pro-war position. There has been no movement of goalposts, there has been no clutching at straws, there has been an accumulation of legitimate rationales that added up to the right decision. This study and many other bits of intelligence gathered since the war universally reinforce that point.
12 - Eric Olsen
And as Tom mentions, the sanctions were in place to assure the continuation of the end of the first Gulf War, which meant in effect Iraq was very explicitly supposed to "just give up" or more specifically, continue to give up.
13 - Brian Flemming
Hmm...I guess I was misled by these words of yours...
As for your question:
Hey, it would have been great to have had this debate before the war, but, as you may remember, despite the pro-warrior's typical haziness about that whole run-up-to-the-war period, this was not the case made at the time.
And it matters that it wasn't made or discussed then. The U.N. was not arguing about whether Saddam Hussein was a bad man. That was a given. (Only Dittohead types claimed that anyone made the case against the war based on Saddam's being a good person.) The arguments were about whether Saddam had WMD (pro-war position: of course he does, you traitorous idiot) and whether Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States (pro-war position: of course it is, you traitorous idiot).
But, hey, let's play the Moving the Goalposts game anyway. Let's pretend we did have a crystal ball back in Feb-March and we knew exactly what was going to happen, and instead of lying through our teeth about it, we actually made the real case to the American people, asking them to go to war based on the facts.
Hey, American People, check out this proposal!
PROPOSAL:
COST:
RESULT:
Are you in?
14 - mike
Comment #11:
"I in no way implied that this has anything to do with WMD, including nuclear weapons, and in fact the title fairly explicitly states that, wouldn't you say?"
But clearly it was your goal to imply WMD's are more likely in light of these revelations, as when you said: "And you are still positive Iraq neither had nor was developing weapons of mass destruction?" You used one to justify the other, and there is no logical leap.
As the United States is the biggest arms dealer in the world, the biggest violater of international agreements, and the biggest developer of WMD's, it is hypocritical for it to point fingers at others.
15 - Eric Olsen
#13: I'm in; #14, yes, I meant to imply that the more we find out about Iraqi deception and violations of sanctions and agreements, the more likely that they also had/have/were pursuing WMD.
16 - Craig Lyndall
I have made this point a few times in relation to the Saddam al Quaeda connection and I will make it again with arms procurement.
It seems like you want a paper trail or photo evidence. We will continue to try and find the weapons, which would reportedly only need to take up the physical space of a swimming pool assuming they haven't been dispersed and hidden in different spots, but until that time, why not look at the compelling paper trails we do have. If we find this, then you should extrapolate some opinion about the things they didn't account for. If their is proof to things outside of UN regulations, isn't it reasonable to assume that they were using other methods to gain other weapons?
Let's say you are driving down the road and you see that the guard rail is ripped to shreds. The trees on the way down the cliff are flattened and damaged. Unfortunately there is a deep bog at the bottom of the cliff and you can't find the car, or it will take some time to find it. Are you going to assume there was a crash or are you going to wait until you find that car in the bog to form that conclusion?
We have a paper trail for X and Y, so isn't it possible and even likely that they were trying to find Z?
17 - Dirtgrain
"If their is proof to things outside of UN regulations, isn't it reasonable to assume that they were using other methods to gain other weapons?"
"We have a paper trail for X and Y, so isn't it possible and even likely that they were trying to find Z?"
Don't make war decisions based on assumptions. Possible? Yes. More likely? No. There is no logical reason to assume it is more likely (at least not to any significant degree). Here is another analogy: your kid lied to you about sleeping over at Sherry's house, and instead your daughter went to a Megadeth concert. You find the ticket stub in her jacket the next day and discover the lie. At this point, can you assume, in light of her deception, that it is more likely that she had sex with Dave Mustaine? She was closer to him at the concert than she would have been at her friend's house, and it could be possible--but more likely?
Just because there was deception going on (keep in mind that all of the experts could have predicted this deception before the outbreak of the war--and I bet they were aware of some of it), it does not mean that Saddam had or was close to getting WMDs.
Know that there is such arms trading deception going on all over the world right now, and maybe we are complicit in some of it (remember Iran-Contra?). Or maybe you can say that, even though we did dirty arms trading in the past, it is not more likely that we are doing shady arms deals now. You would be right. We would need evidence of current shady arms deals in order to reach that conclusion. The assumption is worth nothing.
18 - Craig Lyndall
Your Megadeth example is funny, but not even close. We are talking about procurement of weapons and procurement of more weapons in the case of Iraq. If they were trying to procure these weapons on paper, it isn't a huge leap (or unreasonable) to assume they were attempting to procure other weapons.
Sex with Dave Mustaine is funny, but not applicable.
19 - HW Saxton Jr
The Megadeth analogy is pretty funny I gotta admit.In fact it brought to mind that WMD would make a great name for a
metal band.You know right up there with
D.R.I,S.O.D.,C.O.C,M.D.C. etc. WMD could
stand for Whitehot Metal Death or We're
Metal Demons, Whimpering Millions Dying
or in the case of this pathetic stab at
humor: We're Mentally Deficient.
20 - Dirtgrain
Again, though, you say "assume." We can argue forever about the relative hugeness of the leap. It doesn't really matter how much of a leap it is--it's still a leap. Either he had WMDs or he didn't--there is no middle ground (unless you want to start making assumptions about intentions, which is an even looser proposition, or about WMD-making materials, which is also tricky (e.g., aluminum tubes)). We don't make foreign policy decisions based on assumptions. It's absurd. We don't even rely on assumptions when we try to decide what kind of tea to give to the ambassador from the Fiji Islands when he or she visits.
21 - Hal Pawluk
#16: There is absolutely _no_ logic in your "logic."
22 - Eric Olsen
I would have to say yes, there is a middle ground in the case of something as serious and potentially cataclysmic as WMD in the hands of the former Iraqi regime: if he was actively pursuing them, or had obtained some but not all of the materials required to create them, then that is a very significant middle ground and clear justification for military action. I did not say reports like this constitute proof of WMD, but the accumulation of these kinds of reports - and this isn't the only one and surely not the last one - certainly lend creedence to the assumption that it was only a matter of time, and after 9/11 we have become, thankfully, unwilling to wait for "that time" to come. Appropriately reduced tolerance for such things is the appropriate "connection" between 9/11 and Saddam and others like him.
Does this leave open the question of, "if Saddam, then what about...?" - yes it does, but we invaded Iraq not that we might invade numerous others, but that we would, hopefully, not have to invade others. You have to start somewhere, and Iraq was an excellent place to start after Afghanistan.
It is beyond reasonable doubt that our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have already had significant "trickle down" effect all over the globe. This is all to the good.
23 - Craig Lyndall
To think that we don't make foreign policy decisions without assumptions is absurd. What has to happen in order to make a decision if you aren't willing to make logical assumptions based on findings? I maintain that assuming a greater scope of weapons procurement based on proof of smaller scope of weapons procurement is not a ridiculous leap.
You can tell me all day and night that it isn't logical Hal, but I can't agree. We can argue that maybe I am assuming too much and you are assuming too little, but to wait for the absolute proof is absurd when you have all these leading clues.
24 - Eric Olsen
Craig is right: assumptions are made all the time, it is very rare that we are blessed with uncontestable evidence of anything - it's all probability. And it's not as though we don't have a track record upon which to project Saddam's behavior.
25 - Dirtgrain
"What has to happen in order to make a decision if you aren't willing to make logical assumptions based on findings?"
You confuse assumptions with conclusions (and deductions/inductions?). I think that they are quite different. To me, conclusions are decisions based logically and directly on facts (premises). Assumptions are decisions that go beyond the facts--more like guessing based on things you don't know for sure. We are entering into a debate about semantic wordplay, though.
"Projecting" future behavior of world leaders? We should only condemn them for what we know they have done and are doing. In light of our previous support of Saddam (sorry to bring it up again)--while he was using these weapons of mass destruction--should then some other country project what we might do in the future and attack us? If every country practiced preemption based on assumptions, then the whole world would be left bloody (it's bloody enough already). This is the danger of the relativism that is opened up when one country decides to force its views and actions on the world without the consent of the majority. It must be a decision made by the majority of the world, and it must be based on past and current practices of the government in question--with significant corroborating evidence. The majority of the world should have been allowed to sift through the evidence of WMDs and determine if Iraq should have been invaded (again, sorry to bring up things that we have already quarreled over).