But they WERE there, I insist. . .
By Trying to make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear, Hitch is insisting once again that we’ve found WMD in Iraq. Well, maybe not WMD, but machinery, equipment, and buildings that, if used properly by skilled people, might be able to fashion something roughly akin to WMD. This sort of thinking gets Andrew Sullivan really hot.
The appropriate response to this kind of garbage is mockery. But, just for kicks, let’s go through it all one more time:
1. Lots of equipment useful for producing weapons and civilian goods is also useful for producing WMD. Finding that equipment in Iraq is no more surprising than finding it in Tacoma.
2. The Iraqi potential for WMD production mirrored that of any moderately industrialized state. In spite of this, Iraq produced no weapons for the twelve years prior to the previous war, and destroyed all existing stockpiles.
3. What this means is that, contra Andrew Sullivan, the war not necessary to the disarmament of Saddam Hussein. He disarmed himself, and there’s not the faintest indication he was preparing to re-arm himself.
4. Thus, the war and the failure to secure sites which held sensitive equipment and explosives took that equipment out of the hands of a man who we KNOW wasn’t using them, and placed them in the hands of individuals who may well want to use them.
5. This is bad.
Matt has more.