Chicago Tribune Editorial: Weapons and War (and my response)

[Martin Eden]

My local paper, the Chicago Tribune, has consistently spun their arguments to support the war in Iraq, and yesterday they ran a lengthy editorial to reaffirm their support in spite of the absence WMD.

I'm beginning to suspect they get their technique from Rumsfeld and Cheney, cherry-picking every conceivable argument to support their claims while discarding anything that doesn't. There were so many jaw-dropping assertions in this editorial that I could have written a response twice as long refuting it, but of course that would have no chance of being published.

Here's the Tribune editorial:
Weapons and War
January 30, 2004

<snip>
Kay's disclosures transform the debate over weapons to differences based on orders of magnitude. If Kay is correct, Iraq wasn't maintaining weapons stockpiles--but was actively improving its capability to rebuild them. At some point, of course, an improving capability negates the need for a stockpile. The fact that no stores have been unearthed doesn't, by itself, prove what level of threat Iraq did or didn't pose--particularly if it was left undisturbed.

David Kay's Iraq differs quantitatively--but not at all qualitatively--from the Iraq of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac. It was Clinton who warned in 1998 that if Hussein went unchallenged, "He will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal." As recently as last February, it was Chirac who told Time magazine: "There is a problem--the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is ... right in having decided Iraq should be disarmed." Not contained, "disarmed." Chirac didn't dispute the existence of illicit arms, only how to render them inert.

Bush and his top aides, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, did raise the bidding. They implied that the threat posed by Iraq was imminent--although it appears none of them ever used that incendiary word. Bush explicitly rejected proof of imminence as a test in his State of the Union speech one year ago. "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent," he said. "Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"

It was through that prism that a risk-averse administration viewed the incoming intelligence from Iraq. But intel wasn't the only consideration: During the 1980s, Hussein freely used toxic weapons against Iraqi Kurds and during the Iran-Iraq war. During the 1990s, United Nations inspectors uncovered enormous stores of illicit weapons. Most important, intelligence reports offered the only fresh information available. Why? Because Hussein refused to obey 17 UN Security Council resolutions--including unequivocal orders to disclose the details of his weapons programs. But instead of cooperating fully with UN inspectors in 2002--a move that likely would have averted war--he subjected them to games of hide-and-seek even as U.S. and British forces massed on his border.
<snip>

Link the entire editorial:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0401300261jan30,1,5381796.story

my LTTE (not yet published):
The Real Imminent Threat

The Tribune editorial (Weapons and War, Jan. 30) pulls out all the stops in trying to justify the war in Iraq despite the absence of weapons of mass destruction. But no matter how you try to spin it Iraq was not an imminent threat, especially while UN inspectors were scouring the country. This premature invasion diverted vital resources from Afghanistan, where the Taliban and al Qaeda (who attacked us on 9/11) have since been able to regroup. Now we find ourselves entangled in two costly nation-building operations, with no guarantee that any government we install will long survive our departure.

The Bush administration hyped the Iraqi threat beyond credibility, chased the inspectors out of Iraq, and started a second war before the first was finished. Bush defenders emphatically point out he never said the threat was "imminent", so why was it necessary to launch an invasion before the inspectors finished their task? Perhaps the real imminent threat was the one posed by the UN inspectors, who were close to confirming that Iraq's illegal weapons had indeed been destroyed - and with it, the prospects for the "preemptive" war that had been this administration's goal from the day they took office.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Well done!

[DrBB]

2. Spot on, and publication-ready

...with the slight exception of that comma outside the close-quotation mark. But hey, they'll fix that. :)

This is nice and succinct, and certainly could be run (unlike a lot of the screeds I've seen around here). I say this with some experience, having had a number of LTTEs in the NYTimes, as well as WPost and Boston Globe. Hope it gets in.

[dae]

3. Way to kick em in the a$$!

:kick:

[Cocoa]

4. excellent!

I try to read the letters every day, I hope to see yours.

The Tribune editorial board is thoroughly dishonest. They found a way to endorse George Ryan for governor, and smear the people making accusations against him that turned out to be true. :puke:

[Martin Eden]

5. Thanks all, for the compliments

I send an LTTE to the Trib every other week or so, but haven't got one published in several months. They're fairly balanced with their guest commentaries, but the editorial board sounds like they get their talking points from the RNC. Their defense of that slime George Ryan is typical.

I think this is the best one I've sent in quite some time, and I've also become convinced the allegation I made is correct -- that they rushed to invade because they knew or at least suspected the UN team under Hans Blix would have found the same number of bio-chem stockpiles that David Kay's group found -- zero.

They simply couldn't afford to have that result, so they invaded while they still had enough political cover and support in the US. It fits with their modus operandi, and with all the other circumstances. There was no imminent threat, except the one that threatened the implementation of their doctrine of "preemption" and their grand design for Pax Americana.

These people do have their delusions, but I sincerely doubt they believed the hysteria they were spreading about "mushroom clouds" and an al Qarda-Saddam nexus. Nobody with any real information believed it. They were doing what they do best -- propaganda, spin, and focus on their long term goals.