The tireless Daniel Pipes has solved the mystery of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Mr. Pipes argues that the reason we failed to find Iraq’s WMD is that they were moved just before the war. The answer was so simple – it was right there in front of us. Thank heaven that Daniel Pipes was on the case even when the last man from the Iraq Survey Group had packed his bags.
Daniel Pipes writes in his latest column:
The great mystery of the 2003 war in Iraq – "What about the WMD?" has finally been resolved. The short answer is: Saddam Hussein’s persistent record of lying meant no one believed him when he at the last moment actually removed the weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Pipes does not tell us where the WMD were removed to – he leaves that as an exercise for his cerebral readers. He offers this explanation as an update to his column:
I have received many questions about the disposal of the WMD – Syria? Belarus? – and wish to clarify that I purposefully did not deal with this question in the above article (just as the Iraqi Perspectives Project did not). The topic here is exclusively the functioning of the Saddam Hussein regime in relation to the WMD mystery. Any thesis of what was done with the WMD is compatible with the above background explanation.
Mr. Pipes has "solved" the mystery of the WMD by stating that since they were not found they must have been removed. The more obvious explanation that perhaps Iraq possessed no WMD does not seem to resonate with Mr. Pipes. Mr. Pipes is a glass-is-half-full kind of thinker. He posits that if the bottom half of a glass contains no water that must mean that the top half of the glass contains water that is suspended in mid air. Who am I to argue with logic as powerful as that.
Daniel Pipes cites (without any hint of irony) the Iraqi Perspectives Project report to show how Saddam Hussein’s Government was disconnected from reality. Saddam Hussein demanded only good news and this led to a lot of misinformation being propagated throughout the Iraqi regime. Pipes claims that the confusion extended to WMD as well. Perhaps even Saddam was not sure if WMD existed or not. This is Mr. Pipes’ fallback argument. If the WMD were there they were moved. However, if they were not there then even Saddam thought they were there and therefore it was tantamount to Saddam actually having WMD. Either way the WMD, fictional or not, were removed by Saddam Hussein. Daniel Pipes thus ties his circular argument with a nice tidy bow:
The same situation extended to the military-industrial infrastructure. First, the report states, for Saddam, "the mere issuing of a decree was sufficient to make the plan work." Second, fearful for their lives, everyone involved provided glowing progress bulletins. In particular, "scientists always reported the next wonder weapon was right around the corner." In such an environment, who knew the actual state of the WMD? Even for Saddam, "when it came to WMD there was always some element of doubt about the truth."
So, it appears that Mr. Pipes has embarked on a two-pronged defense of this Administration – one prong using the fantasy argument, the other prong using the delusion argument. Using equal doses of fantasy and delusion Mr. Pipes has "solved" the WMD mystery. I am sure his followers will now tout this as "evidence" that Saddam had (real or imagined) WMD and the (real or imagined) WMD was removed prior to the war. Now all Mr. Pipes has to do to complete the circle is "find" the WMD. I will wait anxiously for the day when Daniel Pipes "finds" Saddam’s lost Weapons of Mass Destruction.
This is par for the course: how many times – prewar – were WeaponsOfMassDestruction mentioned where the specific nature of such weapons not mentioned? Pipes is so deja vue.
I find it interesting that Pipes sites the IPP in which Hussain is shown to be disconected from reality and disinformation results. Sound familiar?
Heh, love the article. Daniel Pipes is the American version of Melanie Phillips here in the UK – rhetoric fitting around prejudice. Facts are not needed.
Sunny, just checked out Melanie Phillips’s web site. Clearly this illness has afflicted a few on your side of the pond also. I wonder if this is connected somehow to Mad Cow Disease. 😕
Daniel Pipes would be funny except that this Administration takes him seriously.
TedB, Pipes is oblivious to the irony in citing Hussein as being disconnected from reality. These guys need to form their own club.
see, u’ll have it wrong. these wmd’s, they do exists.
called the white house briefing room, faux network (read all murdoch media) most of what u see in most of the media..
the are infact, weapons of mass delusions…
and they work!
PS: seriously, an edit button would be like, like, brilliant… and these math problems are getting harder, almost didnt get the last one…
I am working on a fix for the SPAM CHECK. It should be up sometime this evening. Do you prefer one of those CAPTCHA images?~X(
I can allow edits if I allow registration. If you guys are interested, I can set up an optional registration. So, if you are logged in, you do not have to do the spam check and can edit.
okie, i was taking the mickey about the spam check.
i dont mind at all, its like college senior yr all over again in remidial math…
hee hee…ur good to hear our complaints…
:”>
#:-s
Saves me some work!
Most intriguing. Perhaps Pipes is correct after all. This would provide further evidence of the dereliction and negligence that have characterized the Bush administration: if Iraq was so imminently treacherous to our security, as Bush et al repeteadly claimed in building their case for war, then, I wonder, why didn’t they order the deployment of our high-tech survelliance & satellite equipment to the area to monitor Saddam’s belligerent moves?
Of course, Pipes’ top-half-of-the-glass- contains-water-that-is-suspended-in mid-air logic (great metaphor, Mash!) would argue that Saddam’s stockpile of WMDs could’ve been moved invisibly and undetectably.
Alfredo, Klingon cloaking technology?!? Saddam was more advanced than previously thought!
Sunny wrote: “fitting around prejudice. Facts are not needed.”
These words exactly describe the experience I had today at work. I’m still shaken by it.
In general, I try to avoid discussing politics at the office. But today I found myself inadvertently breaking my principle.
A few minutes after arriving at the office this morning, one of my officemates started complaining to me about the media, blaming it for relentlessly pursuing irrelevant stories, for misinforming the public and for outright distorting the facts. “You can no longer tell what’s true anymore,” she told me.
I asked her: “What news programs are you thinking of?”
“All of them, CNN, CBS, ABC; all of them,” she said, impatiently.
“How about Fox News?” I asked. She did not reply. Then I said: “Well, yes; it seems to me that the mainstream media has been focusing on the wrong stories for quite sometime.”
We exchanged a few more commonplace comments after which, all of a sudden, she asked me: “What do you think of Rumsfeld?”
I paused at first – not because I am one who is timidly shy of expressing his opinions, but rather because I felt the setting was improper for discussing politics – but then I mistakenly proceeded to give her my answer.
“I think he is incompetent. And I think he is incompetent for the following three reasons.” I stated them. I then returned the favor of the question: “What do you think?”
“Well, I disagree. I think he is doing just fine. For God’s sake, it takes time. It took Germany over 30 years to re-build!”
I saw a window of opportunity to wrap up the exchange amicably. So I said:
“Yes, I agree. It will take years to re-build Iraq. I think most Americans acknowledge that. It is a shame, though, that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had suggested otherwise – Mission Accomplished; “the insurgency is on its last throes” – all that propaganda.”
“No; they never said that! They never said that!” She argued, dead serious.
There you’ve got it! One more true-life example of the “fitting-around-prejudice-facts are-not-needed” reasoning favored by Bush loyalists.
see, like i said, weapons of mass delusion.
there is a name for people who say one thing when the overwhelming reality.facts say something different. anyone know what that is.