Oh good grief (tip to email from Eric):
The US defence department knew that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction but kept Britain in the dark, according to an explosive new claim from Gordon Brown.
In an extraordinary allegation, the former prime minister states that a secret US intelligence report into Iraq’s military capabilities was never passed to Britain and could have changed the course of events. The revelation leads Brown to conclude that the “war could not be justified as a last resort and invasion cannot now be seen as a proportionate response”.
Virtually everybody including Saddam's own generals believed Saddam had WMD in working condition. I'm not convinced he didn't given the long telegraphing of the invasion (there was no "rush to war") and the long period when WMD facilities were bizarrely not secured after Saddam's overthow. Regardless of that question, Saddam had the intent along with the skills, personnel, organization, and some of the raw materials to resume chemical weapons production given the time.
As Eric writes, the Department of Defense could only say that we hadn't found WMD--not that they didn't exist. And we knew that fact. We just thought it was because Saddam's deception and refusal to cooperate had worked. That's why anti-war types said we had to keep looking.
And regardless of those issues, Brown gets it completely backwards by failing to note that the Gulf War ceasefire required Saddam to prove he had disarmed of all WMD and potential to make WMD. So more to the point:
In the operative context of the OIF decision, Iraq's guilt of proscribed armament was established fact by UNSCOM and IAEA in the UNSCR 687 disarmament process and presumed until Iraq proved it disarmed in accordance with the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441). The mandated question of Saddam's WMD was never for the US, UK, and UN to answer. Iraq was obligated to answer the question in accordance with UNSCR 687. The intelligence was weighed in the operative context of the established fact of Saddam's WMD with the burden on Iraq to prove the mandated compliance and disarmament.
That's it. Failure to cooperate with proving disarmament was the "material breach" of the ceasefire as I noted with the last UN effort led by Hans Blix to get Saddam to comply with the ceasefire provisions and so prevent war:
Blix exceeded my expectations in his report. Yes, he wants more time and has a ridiculous faith that inspections can work, but he did document the fact that Iraq has not cooperated. That conclusion added on to the non-disclosure adds up to 'material breach.'
Later, as idiots continued to insist that Bush 43 "lied" us into war, I quoted Blix to demonstrate the point.
Indeed, we found 5,000 (admittedly old and so useful only for terror and not the battlefield) chemical shells that prove Saddam failed to account for all of his chemical weapons produced.
And who can doubt Saddam would have gotten WMD?
Do we not have the example of Syria to show us the perils of letting a Baathist minority-run government from continuing? Assad denied having chemical weapons; then admitted he had them to "give them up;" then continued to use them while denying he was doing anything (while Russia ran diplomatic interference in the UN Security Council). And the Assad regime lives on.
And recall that the Obama Syria deal included raw materials as part of the chemical weapons we took from Syria. Yet Saddam's possession of raw materials didn't count as chemical weapons in order to condemn Bush 43, oddly enough.
Instead, the fantasy that we were required to find WMD while Saddam hid them and impeded inspectors in some type of bizarre game of hide and seek is put forward. That is the reverse of what was required and Saddam flouted his obligation, sure that he could succeed just as Assad is succeeding in remaining in power and having WMD.
Oh, and let me remind you of one more thing. We had a lot of reasons to overthrow Saddam and not just the WMD reason that everyone believed. And even though everyone believed Saddam had WMD, including Democrats with ties to the Clinton administration that believed Saddam had chemical weapons, the hard left still opposed the war even believing Saddam had WMD.
Face it, we are better off without Saddam (or his evil spawn) in charge of an oil- and terror-exporting Iraq armed with chemical weapons and abusing its own people and threatening to invade neighbors.
And recall too that even the Obama administration boasted of the developing allied and democratic Iraq as it left Iraq following the battlefield victory; validating the war by their decision to re-engage in 2014 with Iraq War 2.0.
Brown is just trying to sell his book, don't buy his book or the nonsense he is peddling.
