Useful Idiots
Hey, it's amazing! I found someone who thinks that Doug Feith's new book is actually worth reading! that is, for a purpose other than a warning to future voters on how not to trust "national security" Republican neocons. Michael Barone of US News and World Report (and Faux News commentator) thinks that poor Dougie has been beaten up too much.
One such narrative is "Bush lied, people died." The claim is that "neocons," including Feith, politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have already concluded. Every intelligence agency believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the post-invasion Duelfer report concluded that he maintained the capability to produce them on short notice. There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Given Saddam's hostility to the United States and his stonewalling of the United Nations, American leaders had every reason to believe he posed a grave threat. Removing him removed that threat.
Unfortunately—and here Feith is critical of his ultimate boss, George W. Bush—the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren't found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem, rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others. The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam Hussein had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was.
Yes, the "liberal fallacy" that guns kill people is an excellent analogy to nations that develop weapons of mass destruction. If only that damnable President Richard Nixon hadn't decided to unilaterally stop the US offensive biological warfare program, and if only that cursed President George H.W. Bush had not worked so hard to stop the US offensive chemical weapons program!! Because it's not the good nations who own WMDs that you have to worry about... It amazes me that there are people like Barone who still want to defend the Iraq WMD issue.
And as for Dougie's hang-up about the Bush administration "allowing" its critics to frame the issue around WMDs, well, let's jump into the magic time machine. Five years ago, what did Mr. Feith say?
Although stability operations are ongoing across post-Saddam Iraq, "much work remains to be done before the coalition's military victory can be confirmed as a strategic victory," Feith acknowledged.
Feith said U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq continue to experience "attacks from scattered, small elements that remain loyal to the former regime."
Yet, former regime leaders on the "most-wanted list" are being rounded up "more or less daily," he pointed out, while the hunt for weapons of mass destruction continues.
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Regarding the search for WMDs in Iraq, U.S. and coalition forces have only checked about 20 percent of 600 suspected sites, Feith noted."We're learning about new sites every day," Feith said. He asserted his confidence "that we will eventually be able to piece together a fairly complete account of Iraq's WMD programs, but the process will take months, and perhaps, years."
Yes, it wasn't the critics framing the issue as much as the Bush administration who kept throwing it up in the news. It only took about eighteen months for the Iraq Survey Group to determine that there were no WMDs to police up, and its leader said "we were all wrong." But hey, I'm sure that Doug Feith is very pleased that there are useful idiots such as Michael Barone willing to make excuses for him.










Former Russian President 


