On evidence and judgement

[unixronin]

I'd like to make a few comments concerning the whole issue of US intelligence regarding Iraqi WMD, and of the level of faith the administration placed in it as compared to that level which was warranted and justifiable.

To begin with, it seems the core of this whole issue is one of certainty vs. uncertainty, or evidentiary strength.  There is an established and known principle that "Absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence."  In other words, just because you cannot find any evidence for something does not mean, as a verifiable fact, that it does not exist.

However, look at the level of uncertainty involved in this.  It's saying that failure to find any evidence of something can make you 90%, or 99%, or 99.9% certain that it does not exist, but there's always that element of doubt, that 1% chance you were mistaken.

To put it simply, this 1% chance of error, this 1% chance that maybe Saddam DID have weapons of mass destruction after all, contrary to the complete lack of tangible evidence of such, is not sufficient justification for starting a war, and it's not a sufficiently strong rationalization to use as the public excuse for starting a war.  Governments must be held to a higher standard, especially when it comes to starting wars.  For months and months, George W. Bush trumpeted the threat of Iraqi WMD, and about half of America repeatedly asked, "Where's the beef?"  And it was never forthcoming.  Not one shred of convincing evidence could be shown.  We kept hearing, "We will reveal hard evidence next week," or "tomorrow," and tomorrow would come, and there would be a press conference at which nothing would happen but more hand-waving, more evasive generalizations, and more proof-by-allegation.

But we went to war on this rationale anyway.

Now, you can argue a couple of different ways on this.  You can say, "George Bush knowingly lied to the world and the American people in order to justify his war."  In that case, we should be impeaching him for starting a war under false pretences.  Let's face it, when you have that large of an intelligence effort devoted to digging up evidence for that long and you still can't find anything, it's pretty hard to continue convincingly pretending you didn't know that you didn't have anything.

You can say, "George Bush thinks that a 1% chance of a nation having WMD is justification to go to war."  In that case, who are we going to declare war on next?  India?  Brazil?  South Africa?  Japan?  We have, after all, strong satellite evidence that South Africa has tested nuclear weapons, and there are organizations known to operate in South Africa that are officially considered terrorist.  Heck, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in connection with terrorism.

Or you can say that the Bush administration made an incredibly stupid error in trying to justify the war, both to America and to the world, solely on the grounds of "Well, all our intelligence to the contrary, we cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Iraq may have WMD," instead of "This man is a butcher who is oppressing and slaughtering his own people, who has committed atrocities against his own country's ethnic minorities with chemical weapons, whom we believe is a threat to the entire region, and in addition we know he had WMD programs, we know he has attempted to procure weapons of mass destruction in the past, and we cannot be certain that he does not actually possess them now."  On an issue this important and this major, how stunningly stupid is it to knowingly and voluntarily weaken your case?

Whichever way you look at it, though, whichever viewpoint you take, there is one conclusion that cannot be avoided:  No matter which specific error you select, and irrespective of the question of the actual merit of the war in Iraq and the twelve-years-overdue removal from power of Saddam Hussein, it cannot be denied that George Bush made gross errors of judgement at the highest level and in the most crucial arena of government, that of taking the nation to war, and that he continued and perpetuated those errors throughout the course of said war.

It is my opinion that those errors are undeniable signs of gross unfitness to continue to lead this nation.

Comments

Re: A few sites.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Ignoring who is to blame for the incorrect information for a moment, the thing I would like to know is what really did happen to them. Given that there was a point when the UN inspectors were able to prove the WMDs existed (before '98 when the UN pulled its inspectors out) and the Iraqis went out of their way to not coopoerate with Blix's inspectors (according to his reports to the UN) to show what happened to those weapons and the fact that they're clearly not there now (according to Davis Kaye), what did happen to them? Kaye's speculation is that they were moved to Syria, but he doesn't really know.

This is, indeed, an excellent question. Were the previously known weapons destroyed? Were they shipped out of the country for storage elsewhere? And if there had been weapons which were now gone, why did Saddam balk at allowing UN weapons inspectors to verify that there were in fact no weapons there? Was it just a macho play, or was it a ploy to keep his neighbors in doubt as to whether he actually had chemical or nuclear weapons? If so, it seems it backfired on him badly.

Now, we go on from this to the next point. I think we can take it as a given that the alleged presence of Iraqi WMD wasn't the reason for the war, it was just a pretext for executing a policy which had already been decided upon. Suppose for a moment that Saddam had not made his macho play, and had simply allowed UN inspectors full access to anything they asked to see, and said, "Look, no bombs, no bugs, no nerve gas, no long-range missiles. Now leave us alone." With Iraqi WMD the sole claim for justification for war, this would have left Bush basically without a leg to stand on -- he'd have to choose between abandoning the war, coming up with a new justification, or insisting that the UN inspectors had missed vital evidence and there really were WMD that they hadn't found. (Hmm, wait a minute....)

This risk wouldn't have arisen, and Bush (and Tony Blair) would not be facing nearly as much controversy now, if the decision had not been made to present absolute certainty of the presence of Iraqi WMD, and incontrovertible "smoking gun" evidence of same that somehow never materialized, as the sole justification for war. (Whether the idiocy of the decision to do so is confined solely to the Bush administration is another of those questions we'll probably never know the answers to.)

Re: A few sites.

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

First off, recall that WMDs weren't the only reason stated for going to war. Maureen Dowd had a column last January specifically about how the Bush admin couldn't even settle on a single reason and seemed like they were trying to think of anything even remotely plausible. She spent a lot of time specifically ridiculing Bush's claim that an Arab democracy in the Middle East would foster democratic sentiment in the rest of the region as Bush claimed. There was also that minor dust up over Wolfowitz, iirc, say that WMDs was the rationale everyone could agree upon. At the time, anti-war people tried to make the claim that WMDs were a fabricated reason because of this statement, but what he actually said was that everyone in the administration had different reasons for wanting this war, but WMDs were the only reason that they could all agree on, so that is where they decided to put their focus.

I think this issue gets away from what really happened versus what the marketing if it all was. That reasoning it was sold on was different from the real reasons doesn't seem like a very interesting revelation. It's seems likely the the Admin believed there was some WMDs in Iraq (even tho it seemed as if the nuclear claims were being overstated even at the time) and that Hussein had ties to terroist groups (although nothing was clear about link to al queada. Bush, of course spun, all this rather well by confusing the issue by referring to 'links to al queada-like groups' pretty regularly. Hussein's links to Hamas and Abu Abbas aren't disputed), but the Real Reasons I think had more to do with getting out of Saudia Arabia, slapping down a long time thorn in our side and establishing a better base in the region. Libya's recent capitulation shows, I think, that a serious show of strength wasn't completely useless in affecting the regions politics. I really want to read Perle-Frum's new book, having seen David Frum on The Daily Show last week.

Somewhat this gets back to something I wrote about a few weeks ago. There is no way the administration could have done anything but present a completely sure statement of fact. Any hedging of their bets would've been immediately seized on as 'See? they can't even state it as a certainty. They know it isn't true and just want to give themselve an out when it is all over' Both sides did it (and do it all the time) and that is how we talk about political issues on the national stage. The people, for instance, who said that Iraq had nothing had no better evidence of this statement at the time, but often stated it just as much certainty.

I keep trying to think back on debates on other things from WayBackWhen trying to remember the debates on other topics. I don't know if this is how we've always talked about these kinds of things, or if we've gotten so polarized that things really are worse now then when I was a kid. Things certainly seem worse now, but I don't know if this is a product of more, broader media coverage and my paying better attention now or something real. Clearly, this didn't start in 2000 and many of the Clinton years were pretty divisive, but the polarity now seems worse even than 5-6 years ago.