The problem is that by the time any fissile material obtained on the black market would have been in Saddam's hands, it may very well have been to late to do anything about it.
The criticism of the administration's advocacy of the potential for Saddam getting nuclear weapon as a justification for the war ignores Saddam's intentions, his history, and the enormous danger created if he had gotten a couple of nukes.
I obviously don't know how easy it might be to get fissile material on the black market and I doubt that anyone has any real idea. This uncertainty, along with other considerations, made Saddam terribly dangerous.
For a very good report on the problem, see the article linked below. It's a bit long and I have not read all of it yet, but it does document that there is weapons grade fissile material missing from at least one former Soviet site in Georgia, Sukhumi. Are there others? Quite possibly. The genie is definitely out of the bottle on that score.
ceip.org
Was the justification for the war oversold? Yes. Are we and the Iraqis better off now that Saddam is gone? Yes. Does the overselling of the war justify the presumably salutary good result? I think so, but this is a judgment people have to make for themselves.
If I was deceived, I'm happy to be a willing victim.
I suspect that the political calculation was made that it would have been impossible to rally enough domestic and international support for the operation if the justification for it would have been as pristine in its presentation as we would have liked it to be.
This is one of the very few times I think I can agree with the proposition that the ends justified the means, though I respect anyone who holds a contrary opinion. It's that close, in my view. A matter of trust, in the final analysis. |
