The Individual Vs. The State, An Unusual Case

[ErickTheRed]

I think this summary is missing the context that while Iraq had been destroying some WMD Saddam Hussein was also bluffing that he still had some.

Saddam wasn't bluffing he had some*. He just tried to get rid of the arms inspectors. And in this particular case he actually had a point. I know how Bush would have reacted on the UN demanding access to all his arms facilities to have a look, he would say no, and all americans would have supported him in that.

*That would not make sense because the US and UK knew exactly what he had.


At the time of this war quite a few of us already could see that lies were being told. Now after several years, with all the information we have know and the statements that have been made by people involved I just cannot understand that there are still people defending this WMD story.

On the contrary it should have made people think not to believe all the things some TV stations and newspapers report.

I still think you are trying to oversimplify things and see history in black and white terms. Saddam wasn't trying to bluff us that he still had WMD, but he was trying to appear strong regionally. Weapons inspections had stopped and he was interfering with them. Presumably he didn't believe we would actually invade. On the surface it was plausible that there still were some weapons remaining. From there a lot of things went wrong, from within the intelligence community, a wing of the republican party, the press, and the government.

There was another big lie being told at the time as well - that the war would be over quickly and *maybe* cost as much as $60 billion. At the time, that seemed an awful lot less plausible than the WMD arguments. A lot of people were complicit in that. At some point propaganda machines start to believe themselves.

For what it's worth, I didn't support that war at the time, mostly because I didn't believe the financial projections, which is another way of saying that I didn't believe it would leave a situation which could easily be cleaned up. I was skeptical of the WMD, but to some extent trusted the media.

I think it's a stretch to lay all the blame on the WMD lie and say Bush and Blair should be brought to trial. On the other hand, it is unlikely that I will forgive the Republican party in my lifetime. Also, whenever people say that it is a terrible thing that the decline of traditional media is leading to the end of true investigative journalism, I remember that when it really mattered to me they weren't any better than a random blogger.