I think we can make some guesses, including the biggest mistake of all over Iraq's WMD status. Can anyone really doubt that Saddam would have eventually gotten nuclear weapons. I can't. And neither can Henninger:
The definitive account of Saddam's WMD ambitions is the Duelfer Report, issued by the Iraq Survey Group in 2005. Yes, the Duelfer Report concluded that Saddam didn't have active WMD. But at numerous points in the 1,000-page document, it asserted (with quotes from Iraqi politicians and scientists) that Saddam's goal was to free himself of U.N. sanctions and restart his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and other WMD.
The report: "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability. . . . Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability." The Survey Group described Iraqi plans to develop three long-range ballistic missiles.
Saddam was obsessed with Iran. Imagine the effect on the jolly Iraqi's thinking come 2005 and the rise to stardom of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, publicly mocking the West's efforts to shut his nuclear program and threatening enemies with annihilation. That year Ahmadinejad broke the U.N. seals at the Isfahan uranium enrichment plant. In North Korea, Kim Jong Il was flouting the civilized world, conducting nuclear-weapon tests and test-firing missiles into the Sea of Japan. In such a world, Saddam would have aspired to play in the same league as Iran and NoKo. Would we have "contained" him?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Saddam Hussein in Iraq simultaneously would have incentivized Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Sudan to enter the nuclear marketplace. Pakistan and India would be increasing their nuke-tinged tensions, not trying as now to ease them.
We ought to be a lot prouder of our troops coming home from Iraq than we are showing this week. They deserve a monument. That war wasn't just about helping Iraq. It was about us. The march across the nuclear threshold by lunatic regimes is a clear and present danger. The sacrifice made by the United States in Iraq took one of these nuclear-obsessed madmen off the table and gave the world more margin to deal with the threat that remains, if the world's leadership is up to it. A big if.
As I wrote long ago, in regard to chemical weapons, if Saddam was bluffing to deter Iran, how long would Iraq have taken to cover that bluff?
Further, I still don't rule out that Saddam had a small stockpile of chemical weapons to cover a gap between an Iranian attack and Iraqi production of chemical weapons from his stockpiles of raw materials and retained expertise. I still think that the conventional wisdom on Iraq's WMD has another step to take.
So Iraq's path absent the elimination of the Saddam regime was clear enough. He endured over a decade of sanctions because he refused to prove he had disarmed from all WMD. Remember, under the Persian Gulf War ceasefire, he was obligated to prove he had no more capacity to make WMD. Too many here say we didn't prove Iraq had WMD, when the obligations were exactly the opposite.
And we can see a potential path today that is much better--from the French (!) ambassador to Iraq:
Iraq is true laboratory of democracy in the Arab world today. It is there that the future of democracy in the region will play itself out. Iraq could potentially become a political model for its neighbors. And, whether one likes it or not, all this has come about thanks to the American intervention of 2003.
Thank you, ambassador. It is a sad day in our country's history when a French diplomat makes a better case for what we've achieved in Iraq than our own purportedly gifted president.
But it will take work to make that laboratory work and set an enduring example in the region. That is why we need to stay in Iraq to give them the help they need to prosper and entrench rule of law.
And by all means, get on that monument thing.
