Last week in class someone referred to the US administration’s belief, before the invasion, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It may well be true that the administration believed that Iraq posed a threat to the US at that time. However, there were reasons for skepticism about the danger of the Iraqi weapons program even then. Hans Blix, the executive director of the UN inspection commission (UNMOVIC), reported that Iraq was increasingly complying with inspectors, who would need some months further to complete their work. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter also argued that Iraq’s weapons were unlikely to pose a threat.
In addition, the administration would have had more reasons that did the public at large for skepticism about Iraq’s possession of WMDs. Joseph C. Wilson reported, before the war to the administration, as well as after the war to the public, that it was “highly doubtful” that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq. The subsequently leaked Downing Street memo has suggested to some that the US administration was not interested in exploring counter-evidence; the statement that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” has been read as indicating that intelligence and facts were being read selectively to achive the desired conclusions.
Anyway, as with the varieties of socialism, things may be more complex than they might seem.
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Her face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, she sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of her feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm . . . . irresistibly propels her into the future to which her back is turned, while the pile of debris before her grows skyward. (Walter Benjamin, revised)
