Much of More Muchness
Even the Neolibertarian Jon Henke is getting a mild case of Iraqi document fever. He links to five documents purveyed by Captain’s Quarters which are supposed to be, per Jon, “at a minimum, good evidence that Iraq was deeply interested in WMDs and determined to resurrect such programs in the future.”
But they’re not.
The first document, headlined by CQ as “Iraqi Rosters In 2002 Show Interesting Department Names,” indicates that in 2002, three guys on the night shift at the Iraqi Intelligence Service worked for departments called “Nuclear,” “Biology,” and “Chemical.” Captain Ed writes
One has to wonder why they worked three shifts and paid bonuses for programs that people still insist did not exist.
The error here is obvious: inferring a particular program from a bureaucratic designation. It doesn’t occur to Captain Ed that, the IIS being a foreign intelligence service, it might have departments charged with monitoring other countries’ nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. It’s like learning that Valerie Plame “worked on weapons of mass destruction” and taking that as proof that the US manufactures biological weapons. (We gave that up. Right? Right?) Captain Ed also assumes that no bureaucracy in a crypto-socialist hellhole would have inaccurate or outmoded department names.
Look, it may be that “Safaa Katai Nuclear dept.” was smashing atoms on top of his file cabinet. But a professional intelligence operation would start from this memo, not end with it. It would try to find out more about this Safaa Katai fellow, and about this “Nuclear dept.” If it were so fortunate as to militarily occupy his country and have a massive enterprise dedicated to the task, it would try to find Mr. (Dr.) Katai and ask him what he was up to. It would find as many Safaa Katais as it could, interview them, crosscheck their statements, validate what they had to say against documents and so on. If it were even more fortunate, and didn’t occupy his country militarily, it would apply standard operations tradecraft and analysis to the task. What it wouldn’t do is assume that the memo meant anything definitive.
The second memo is a very brief excerpt of a longer memo in which “we order Dr. Hazem Anwar Alnasery, assigned to the Health Department Center, and Dr Mothny Abas, president of the Central Health Testing Department, to be members of the Anthrax Operation Room.” Who is we? According to the header Captain Ed reproduces, Zohir Saeed Abd Elsalam of the “CENTER OF MANAGEMENT AND LAW.”
Uh, Center of Management and Law? What’s that? Like I said a paragraph above, department names are hardly definitive. But, what was the Center of Management and Law? What ministry was it in? How come, when you finally track down the PDF, nobody has translated the material that obviously comes before the first translated phrase:
For that, we order . . .
For what we order? Just why does our anonymous translator not bother to give us the whole document, including the appurtenances? Headers, footers, stenographic notes. All the stuff that, if you were doing intelligence analysis and wanted to – and here I must invoke an abstruse concept – get at the truth of the matter, you would for sure want to know.
I have no idea what the “Anthrax Operation Room” was, assuming that’s an accurate translation. I might be willing to take a guess if I knew what the “Center of Management and Law” did? I might be willing to take a guess if I knew whether Drs. Alnasary and Abas specialized in bovine diseases, or whether Iraq had an outbreak of anthrax wherever its ranch country is in 2002. I might even be willing to hazard a guess if I knew what the parts of the memo the freelance translator is hiding from me (”for that”) actually said.
As a coda, Captain Ed embarrasses himself by moving the Fall 2001 anthrax attacks forward two years. When he has to correct himself, instead of stopping to think, “Gosh, maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about here!” he simply shifts his dark speculation backward. It reminds me of the Best Peanuts Cartoon Ever:
Lucy notices something on the ground and declares, “Well, look here! A big yellow butterfly.” She adds that it’s rare to find one this time of year and states that it probably flew up from Brazil. Linus looks closely and announces, “This is no butterfly…this is a potato chip!” Lucy gets on her hands and knees and says, “Well, I’ll be! So it is! I wonder how a potato chip got all the way up here from Brazil?”
Next comes a document from the infamous “Doctor Germ!” – Rehab Rasheed Taha. The document PDF is titled “The Biological Committee Decision.” According to Captain’s Quarters, it’s “an analysis in 2002 of how to spread biological weapons material using an aircraft as the medium, and how far they had advanced on the application.”
But it’s not.
Read the thing. It’s ponderously bureaucratic and as turgid as most translations of official Arabic, but I think the meaning of it is clear. The biological committee is reviewing the latest UN guidelines on what kinds of equipment Iraq is and is not allowed to import and export. The report dates from the sanctions days, when technology transfers into and out of Iraq were subject to shifting bureaucratic guidelines set by the UN. “GRL” in the document stands for “Goods Review List.”
Read without fever, the memo is clearly nothing but an expert analysis of the latest changes to the GRL, from the perspective of biological research. In her spare time Doctor Taha may have been injecting dissidents with cow fetus serum and spraying them out of cropduster nozzles on pro-Israel Kurdish cultural festivals, but the memo itself provides no basis for thinking so.
This item also contains an embarrassing “update.” In this case Captain Ed’s problems are with space rather than time. Like Alan Jackson, he can’t tell the difference between Iraq and Iran.
Captain Ed’s reaction to the next memo perfectly exemplifies the “bedwetter Right” in all its strategic panic. I don’t want to shock you, but . . .
Iraqi Intelligence sometimes sat around thinking up new ways to kill people.
Yeah, thank god we took care of that threat. I wonder if any other countries have intelligence services that sometimes sit around thinking up new ways to kill people? Because if so, we’d better launch trillion-dollar conquests and “reconstructions” of those countries too. Because we can’t let the world’s worst leaders get ahold of the world’s worst weapons, which, in this case, would be exploding briefcases.
The last document Captain Ed headlines “Iraqi Documents: UNMOVIC Knew Of Renewed WMD Efforts.” He is so proud of this one that it is “(Updated And Bumped).” In brief:
UNMOVIC learned that Iraq had reopened a castor-bean processing plant in Fallujah. Castor-oil is a dual-use component. It has plenty of legitimate uses. It can also be used to make Ricin, perhaps the lamest weapon of “mass” destruction there is. The US and Canada concluded during World War II that weaponized Ricin was no more lethal than phosgene. You could kill more people at one time with Eric Klebold than you could with Ricin, and that’s dead Eric Klebold. Spot me Dead Dylan Harris too, and I’ll kick your puny ricin-using butt. Ricin has only ever been successfully used to kill one or a handful of people at a time. If you want to kill more people, get a truck bomb.
Still, rules are rules, and Iraq, per the memo, was not allowed to make weaponized ricin. So, the memo states
UNMOVIC inspections and Iraqi declarations confirm that Iraq continues working with organisms that could be used as BW agent stimulates. The documents display after each section the actions that Iraq could take to help in resolving the issue and convincing the UN inspection teams that the activity have stopped or were fruitless and so on.
The bolding is by Captain’s Quarters. Nice of him to bold that word “could.”
This is our old weasel friend, “dual use technology.” It is impossible for a nation to forebear “dual use technology” if it is to be a modern, industrialized nation. The plain text of the translated excerpt indicates that UNMOVIC flagged the castor-oil plant for attention and appended, in parts of the document the freelancers don’t find worth showing us, steps it wanted Iraq to take to clear the flag.
What it isn’t is what Captain Ed claims it is “confirmation that Iraq continued to work on WMD, and that the new UNMOVIC inspections verified that.”
Again, no. It’s confirmation that UNMOVIC discovered a questionable site and flagged it for follow-up. We don’t know the specific outcome because either the translator couldn’t be bothered to research it or Captain Ed couldn’t be bothered. Truth to tell, I can’t be bothered either, but there’s a reason for that. You may have noticed a big story about the functioning Iraqi ricin manufacturing plant NOT appearing all over the TV and newspapers these last couple of years. Why do you suppose that is?
Truth is, the Captain Eds of the world spent late 2002 and early 2003 lampooning UNMOVIC and the IAEA and Hans Blix and Mohamed el-Baradei as buffoons for failing to find the “weapons of mass destruction” all over Iraq. Truth is, the objects of their scorn were far more right than they were. The sandstorm of funny paper they’re whipping up now is just an attempt to hide the shame and the waste. Should the whirlwind settle, even they will see what the rest of the country has discerned: the lone and level sands stretching from here to there.
Comment by Nell —
July 10, 2006 @ 10:02 pm
Should the whirlwind settle, even they will see what the rest of the country has discerned: the lone and level sands stretching from here to there.
Man, you can write.
On the substance: do you really think they will see? Or will they just whip up another manufactured storm?
Comment by jlw —
July 10, 2006 @ 10:28 pm
This shit will never go away. Never.
I once thumbed through my mom’s copy of None Dare Call It Treason, one of many books directed to the paranoid right of the 1960s that laid out the case that Eisenhower and JFK were both communist agents. It was like entering an Escher print, with all the points of reference familiar but askew and all the arguments maddeningly circular. We have to kill the Reds. What’s holding us back? The Reds have taken over the government. So what’s the answer? We have to kill the Reds.
The ”secret stash of Iraqi WMD docs” is just part of one dimension of the parallel universe of the paranoid right, circa 2012. We coulda strangled Islamofascism in the cradle, they’ll be able to say–say? No, prove!–except that Judy Miller and Joe Biden were undermining the Bush administration’s case for WMDs from Day One. Stabbed in the back, we was.
Seriously. The truth is not a valid form of argument anymore.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
July 10, 2006 @ 10:56 pm
Hey, people are still coming up with ”new” ”documents” for the purpose of Holocaust denial. So the last we-found-WMD-in-Iraq document should come out oh, a century or two from now.
Comment by Nell —
July 10, 2006 @ 11:02 pm
Take me now, Lord.
Comment by 123 —
July 10, 2006 @ 11:06 pm
Thanks, Jim, for slogging through this shit.
Comment by Johnathan Pearce —
July 11, 2006 @ 4:01 am
Have to agree with Jim’s dusty assessment. Even folk like me who thought that Saddam’s deviousness over many years suggested he had big stuff to hide is getting a bit tired of all this ”we found it at last” material. Yes, Iraq probably did have the bare bones of a WMD infrastructure and given certain conditions, such as a porous sanctions regime, such a programme could have gotten going. It didn’t. Maybe we were just lucky, or maybe the sanctions regime worked better than some like me thought. Or maybe everthing of value is now in Syria, etc.
Of course, anti-war folk — if not Jim — were sometimes saying that one should not invade Iraq because Saddam might use WMDs, that, er, ahem, did not exist. This debate will go around in circles for ever, I fear.
Comment by wade —
July 11, 2006 @ 4:08 am
on my one and only visit to new york, i had the ”nuclear” sauce with a bowl of ”atomic” hot wings…. now that really was a weapon of ass destruction…
Comment by Jon Henke —
July 11, 2006 @ 5:41 am
I think you make excellent points, Jim, and I’ll add a link to your comments on my post. For whatever its worth, I’ve long accepted the absence of WMDs or WMD programs in Iraq. Those who want to believe in them are engaging in faith-based intelligence activity; it’s WMD theism.
For the record, I did cite numerous potentially exculpatory explanations like ”the documents could be (1) fraudulent, (2) in reference to legal chemical/biological programs (i.e., medical research, agricultural development, etc), (3) produced to deceive the bureaucracy and Saddam about the extent of operations.”
I think my observation that Iraq was interested in, and determined to resurrect, WMD programs is a robust one, though. That was a conclusion of the Duelfer report. (which is not to say that the war was necessarily the optimal response to that interest)
Comment by Ray —
July 11, 2006 @ 7:29 am
”anti-war folk — if not Jim — were sometimes saying that one should not invade Iraq because Saddam might use WMDs, that, er, ahem, did not exist.”
It’s not an unreasonable argument to say i) I don’t believe Saddam has WMDs, but ii) if he does, then invading Iraq makes him _more_ likely to use them.
Comment by mark m —
July 11, 2006 @ 7:36 am
Well, written Jim. Your comment on the first document should be required reading for all the ”We found WMDs” crowd. Why on Earth wouldnt professional intelligence agencies look at this ? The wingnuts pushing these theories look as loony as the leftists still claiming that the Rather memos are genuine.
The one part that I’m still slightly skeptical about is the Dr. Germ memo. It may indicate something moer than what you say, maybe some intention to carry out research.
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 11, 2006 @ 7:44 am
Hi Jon: Good to see you. First, thanks for gathering the CQ links in one handy place. Second, I certainly note your caveats. I was mostly just adding some I thought you missed. It may be true that Saddam’s Iraq hoped to restart WMD programs at the earliest opportunity. But I don’t think the CQ links are evidence even of that. The Duelfer Report is moreso, though the bureaucratic imperative on Duelfer was to make the strongest case he could.
Hi Jonathan: In addition to what Ray says, I think it’s important not to blur the timelines here. Take me a an example: my antiwar arguments through most of 2002 assumed that the Administration’s claims about Iraqi WMD were largely correct, AND no reason to go to war, and I said so. As 2002 turned into 2003, though, facts in the world began to change. We had inspectors on the ground going to sites that US DOD told them to inspect and finding nothing. We had Administration officials making provably false statements at the UN and elsewhere. We saw more and more how the WMD case rested entirely on the word of exiles. At that point I began to doubt the Administration’s word even on the existence of robust ”WMD” programs.
It turns out I gave the Administration way too much credit all along. I don’t know how much I regret that. In 2002 I was still trying to convince what I conceived as the ”reachable Right” of the folly of the massive government program, speculative war. I thought the case against speculative war in Iraq was strong even if Saddam were armed to the teeth with gas and germs. I basically ceded the argument on the existence of the weapons to concentrate on refuting the hawks’ strongest, rather than weakest, case.
Now I wasn’t unique in any of this. I was just – if you can remember back that far – more polite about it. (Yes, those days are long gone.)
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 11, 2006 @ 7:47 am
Postscript: My recollection is that along about February 2003, I wrote something to the effect that the Administration’s record was making me doubt their claim that someone named ”Saddam Hussein” was running a country called ”Iraq.”
October 2002 was not March 2003, or even January.
Comment by Noumenon —
July 11, 2006 @ 8:06 am
This is a great post, because of the snark. You have moved up to my list of daily reads, promoted from my ”most often checked” blogroll.
Comment by Barry —
July 11, 2006 @ 9:14 am
Jim, I’d like to disagree with the classification of ’Captain’ Ed as a neolibertarian. People who don’t consider war to be a last resort, who trust a proven lying government which has eagerly used war for domestic political benefit, are not libertarians, neo- or otherwise. Just because he favors some reduction of certain regulatory powers of the federal government (you know, the one which has the power to disappear anybody, and the one for which all criticism is treason), doesn’t make him a libertarian. He’s just a Republican who figures that judicious use of the free market will help make the trains run on pareto-optimal time.
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 11, 2006 @ 9:17 am
Hi Barry: Jon Henke’s the neolibertarian. Captain Ed is a garden-variety Republican. I’m pretty sure I only designate Jon as a neolib in the entry text.
Also, since it’s a vexed term, I feel constrained to point out that Jon is a self-described neolibertarian.
Comment by Jason Kuznicki —
July 11, 2006 @ 9:18 am
And the potato chip, I’ll have to remember that one. Excellent job.
Comment by Nell —
July 11, 2006 @ 9:47 am
Jonathan Pearce: Of course, anti-war folk — if not Jim — were sometimes saying that one should not invade Iraq because Saddam might use WMDs, that, er, ahem, did not exist.
You’ll have to locate those references for me, Jonathan. I was saying that the obvious determination to invade, from summer 2002 on, made it clear that there were no ”WMD” of consequence.
Comment by Davebo —
July 11, 2006 @ 6:18 pm
Nell,
I took your view at the time as well. The reason Iraq had to be invaded was initially the WMD and terror threat. But after several months of unhindered inspections it became obvious that we had to invade Iraq because they didn’t have WMD’s.
We had little hope of maintaining the sanctions and Int’l support if Saddam was certified WMD free by the UN.
Still a lousy reason though.
Comment by Barry —
July 12, 2006 @ 7:46 am
Sorry, Jim. I was confusing Jon Henke and ’Captain’ Ed.
Comment by Brian C.B. —
July 12, 2006 @ 11:59 am
One aspect of the ”Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Departments” that is under-observed is that, of course, Iraq was a command economy wedded to patron-client relationships. Resources were siphoned away into quasi-criminal graft shoring up tribal, political, and personal relationships. (Thank god we’ve put a stop to that practice, over there. Not to mention in the GOP, here.) Big, self-import project and bureau titles that seem to justify continued funding is of a piece with an Iraqi military apparatus that sported many, many of thousands of general officers, most of whom drew a paycheck based on performing the key duty of not causing trouble. I am only slightly surprised that Saddam didn’t have a ”manned mission to Mars” or ”ballistic missile defense” program. Those things seem the new rage for full-employment for partisans, these days. But, a bunch of Iraqis got oil money passed to them for make-work or no-work, and in the absence of actual product, i.e., fissile uranium, machinery for generating same, exploding briefcases that shielded the bearer, etc., I have to think that the three guys probably showed up on payday and not more often.
Comment by Jay C —
July 12, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
Jim: while I really love your blog: and can always stand to read your takedowns of full-of-themselves warbloggers and their hyperventilating ”revelations” incorrectly gleaned from Iraqi documents – couldn’t your whole post have been summed up in its own last paragraph?
The Iraqi Document Cache will still be serving as a bottomless well of ”justifications” and ”vindications” for the Iraq War long into the foreseeable future – and the ”conclusions” reached from them will be just as bogus or fantastical as they are today.
Comment by Johnathan Pearce —
July 13, 2006 @ 10:57 am
Jim, thanks for the response. As far as I can tell, the core of your position from pretty much the day after 9/11 was that Saddam and the others were deterrable, so even if SH had been armed to the teeth, he was rational, if evil, and could therefore be persuaded not to do anything Really Stupid. My worry then, which perhaps was misplaced, was that Saddam had demonstrated a fairly major history of reckless behaviour over more than 20 years. He had a reputation, which I think has to go into the mix in deciding the balance of risks after 9/11 and beyond.