the blue revolution: On Duelfer

Friday, October 08, 2004

On Duelfer

I haven't any plans to read the 964 pages or so of the Duelfer Report, although I am going through the abridged summary. From what I've read so far, as well as articles from the NYT and USA Today, it appears that the following can be said:

If there was only one entity with a need to remove Saddam Hussein, the United Nations might be it and not the United States. The UN's credibility was being bashed more often than a Whack-A-Mole being played by a schizo on uppers.
Expanding on that point, sanctions and inspections appear to be nearly worthless in the long run. In the short run such policies may seriously handicap proliferation efforts, but time will eventually wear them down.
It was only a matter of time before Saddam began reconsituting a WMD program. The "time" might not have been March 2003, but it wasn't that far off. If Iran scares Saddam, then nuclear Iran will make him soil his pants and probably compel him to either to quick build a nuke or buy one on the black market. Not exactly very comforting scenarios.

At the end of the day, I'm willing to concede that the WMD issue alone would be insufficient in justifying an invasion of Iraq at the time of OIF; resource may have been better used in an invasion of North Korea or Iran instead. Nonetheless, Iraq was undeniably a state sponsor of terrorism with possible links to Al-Qaeda; a confrontation was only a matter of time.

I feel that I have to say this at some point: it doesn't seem so much that the war naysayers correctly assessed the situation, as it was that wishful thinking actually worked out for once. You can say I'm delusional, but that's my gut feeling on this.

Andrew Coyne says essentially the same thing, although he's more forceful than I am on the issue.

# posted by Kelvin : 10:52 p.m.. Comments: 0