The Grumpy Forester

YES, WE HAVE NO WMD'S

...so we know that Gee Dub declared that Saddam had maintained virtually up until the invasion - in a priceless turn of phrase - "weapons of mass destruction program activities", and we know that Dick "Veep" Cheney, whose undisclosed location is apparently bereft of of TV, radio, newspaper, or internet, said on NPR that 'he's got 'em and we'll find 'em.' Now arrives on the scene David Kay, he who until moments ago was the head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) charged with tracking down all of these vile weapons. What does Mr. Kay have to contribute to this discussion? Nothing much, except that he doesn't think there were any weapons stockpiles.


In a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which says its invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of illicit arms, Kay told Reuters in a telephone interview he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found.
"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties," he said.

Yes, memories can become cloudy at times; it's perfectly understandable. I myself have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast on the day of that first occasion of Gee Dub announcing that Iraq's WMD posed a dire and direct threat to the safety of the US. On the other hand, I distinctly remember that weapons themselves, not "program activities" were the immediate threat that required, in the view of this administration, a preemptive invasion of Iraq. Other "reasons" were thrown in, such as stabilizing the Middle East and liberating the downtrodden freedom-hungering people of Iraq, but these were filler material. WMD's were the "why" of the invasion.

So where are the weapons? Mr. Kay doesn't believe they will ever be found because they didn't exist. Aside from the fact that I believe that this is merely buttressing to the argument that "heck, YES, Gee Dub can be beaten" (artful use of these constant maddening 'drip, drip, drip' revelations can only serve to weaken the perception that Gee Dub is the man we need to keep us safe), there seems to be a larger - or at least different - point to chew at the back of my brain: Given that the Clinton administration was also relying on intelligence estimates informing it that Iraq had WMD stockpiles, could it just possibly be that Ahmed Chalabi and his merry little gang of Iraqi exile pranksters were the major source of the intelligence through their alleged contacts on the inside? Could it just possibly be that these fellas couldn't get the Clinton folks to take the whole hook but did finally manage to put one over on all those eager but half-bright PNAC frat-boys so that they thought that there was a sufficiently credible likelihood of WMD existence to make that available as the most marketable reason for a preemptive strike? It would be interesting to explore whether Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress folks found willing dupes in the Cheney/PNAC crowd and basically used them like your brother-in-law's car to accomplish their own goals and just how surprised those dupes are at the lack of WMD and how things have turned out. But not right now....

THE FIRST DAY

...so what happened was, a couple of weeks ago I decided to see if my minimal skills in the world of blogging and html and all that magic would be sufficient to actually create a blog that - were I to type an address into the address block - would actually pop up on the screen. I laughed out loud when it actually worked and found myself filled with that same sort of self-serving pride you get when your kid nails all his lines in the 3rd grade fall pagent.

Ok, so it's not that big a deal and I shouldn't let that warm "I found a cure for the common cold" feeling of self worth wash over me. It's a blog, an empty blog with a goofy name that accurately describes neither me nor my beliefs nor my politics...

...but the hell with that; let's take this baby out for a spin and see what it'll do...