RUMSFELD WAS RIGHT
Cornfield Commentary
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
In response to my post on the Des Moines Register’s editorial criticizing Don Rumsfeld, Harry at Slyblog, posted the a comment that included this testimony from the Secretary of Defense:
[N]o terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
…
He’s amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including Anthrax, botulism, toxins and possibly Smallpox.
He’s amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, Sarin and mustard gas.
His regime has an active program to acquire nuclear weapons.
Harry concludes:
As far as I can tell, a 155 mm shell and some ineffective mustard gas didn’t and doesn’t pose an urgent threat to the U.S. And it certainly doesn’t come close to the assertion Secretary Rumsfeld presented to Congress.
Any one in their right mind would still believe Rumsfeld got it badly wrong on WMDs.
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First off, it seems that we have some moving of the goalposts here. Yet not so long ago the rally cry from the left was “No WMDs”—in fact, Harry himself made this criticism a few times. Now that weapons have been found, the standard suddenly becomes “stockpiles” of weapons and “the most immediate threat.”
Despite the shifting standards, it is imperative that we hold our public officials like Rumsfeld to their public pronouncements. Yet the fact that we have only found a small amount of Sarin and Mustard Gas lends a lot more support to Rummy’s remarks than Harry (and probably many other anti-war folks) thinks that it does.
First off, if these weapons were found in artillery shells, what is the probability that these are the only two such shells in Iraq? Last time I checked, these things are massed produced, as they were at one point under Hussein’s thuggish regime. Thus, it is highly likely that they are part of stockpiles. Once more of these weapons are discovered, we can expect that the next tactic the anti-war crowd will debate the meaning of the word “stockpile.” It would sure be nice if we could nail them down on a definition now. 20? 50? 100? Alas, you can whatever amount of WMDs are eventually found, it will be insufficient, in their minds, to constitute a stockpile.
Finally, Rumsfeld’s warning of a threat seems all the more prescient now that we know these weapons were rigged as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), although Hussein may not have been a threat in the way that Rumfeld meant. Consider: If some sawed-off, half-assed remnant of Hussein’s army has access to these things now, who exactly had access to them when Hussein was in power? It certainly doesn’t seem that it would have been too difficult for some corrupt (were there any other kind?) Iraqi military official to sell some of this stuff to a terrorist, who could then turn it into an IED for use in an American subway.
I’ll just conclude that maybe it is time to stop worrying about what Rumsfeld said about threats and stockpiles, and focus our attention a bit more on where these weapons are now. <font size=3>
posted by David Hogberg 8:15 AM Comments?
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