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Friday, October 29, 2004

Al Qa Qaa Hypotheticals

It is now clear that at least some of the HMX and RDX were present in al Qa Qaa when US forces arrived. Thus the Bush administrations "defence" that they couldn't have been secured is false.

It is also irrelevant for several reasons. Assume for the sake of argument that the explosives were dispersed by the Iraqi army before the US army arrived. It would probably still have been possible to prevent dispersion of the explosives by detonating them with smart bombs. This would not have been pleasant for the unfortunate Iraqi soldiers in the vicinity but, when one decides to go to war, one has to be willing to kill enemy soldiers.

For the sake of further argument, assume that this was not possible. This would mean that invading Iraq to secure weapons (the stated reason to invade) was a grossly stupid strategic mistake. If it was not possible to secure explosives whose location was known, it was certainly not possible to secure chemical and biological weapons of unknown location. The Bush administrations line is roughly equivalent to asserting that, if there had been WMD in Iraq, they would now be in the hands of terrorists.

Now I think this was obvious to begin with.

Also Qa Qaa was definitely not secured as soon as US forces arrived. They were too few soldiers to do so and also secure Baghdad. Furthermore the very clear warnings from the IAEA to the Bush administration were not effectively communicated down the chain of command. The interest in weapons was interest in finding WMD for propaganda, not in preventing them from falling into the wrong hands.

The Bush administrations defence is based on false claims which have been refuted within days.
The false claim is also irrelevant.


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