Iraq and WMD: Quick, go back and check the spider hole!

The Iraq Survey Group--the organization searching for the WMD in Iraq--has issued its supposedly final report. The report opens with this paragraph:

ISG formed a working group to investigate the possibility of the evacuation of WMD-related material from Iraq prior to the 2003 war. This group spent several months examining documents, interviewing former Iraqi officials, examining previous intelligence reports, and conducting some site investigations. The declining security situation limited and finally halted this investigation. The results remain inconclusive, but further investigation may be undertaken when circumstances on the ground improve.

As an aside, perhaps more troops on the ground, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the major combat operations, would have enabled the ISG to complete its investigation and provide more than inconclusive results.

The report's second paragraph says the following:

The investigation centered on the possibility that WMD materials were moved to Syria...Whether Syria received military items from Iraq for safekeeping or other reasons has yet to be determined. There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation. ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war. It should be noted that no information from debriefing of Iraqis in custody supports this possibility. ISG found no senior policy, program, or intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of such movement of WMD. Indeed, they uniformly denied any knowledge of residual WMD that could have been secreted to Syria.

(emphasis added). As for WMD being moved to Syria before the war, the report concludes that

Based on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials.

(emphasis added). So, the official conclusion is that it is unlikely that Iraq shipped out WMD to Syria, but we cannot rule out the chance that there was "unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials." That was surely worth going to war, huh?

That's what the Bush administration is saying. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told the Washington Post that "Duelfer provides plenty of rationale for why this country went to war in Iraq." What a shame the Bush administration could not provide that rationale.

The Bushies have gone from declaring that without any doubt Iraq had WMD stockpiles, the capacity to produce more, and the ability to use them against the U.S. (see Franks on the absence of WMD, The NIE, generally speaking, The Air Force's position on Iraq's UAVs, and The DIA and chemical weapons) to "we cannot rule out the chance that there was 'unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials.'" And, as I said in my recent post about The Minuteman Project, "We know Iraq had no WMD or viable (to put it mildly) WMD programs--AND, as I have explained in numerous posts, we pretty much knew that before the war and could have definitively known that if the weapons inspections had continued."

And we also know that getting rid of Saddam's WMD was the major (by a long shot) reason given for the necessity of the war. As I wrote in Franks on the absence of WMD, Tommy Franks said that "that “We went to war to remove these weapons" (in his book) and WMD were “the reason we went to war” (in Parade)[.]" The night the war started, the President his own self said

Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly -- yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.

The same day, then press secretary Ari Fleischer said

The President also believes that there is a gathering threat from Iraq, that with the failure by Saddam Hussein to disarm of his weapons of mass destruction presents a threat to the security of the United States. And therefore, he has come to the conclusion that after exhausting the diplomacy, that military force must be used if Saddam Hussein does not get out of the country.

That summarizes it for him.

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And so I think you're going to find the historians, legal scholars will have differing conclusions about these matters. But the conclusion the President reaches is that Iraq's failure to disarm presents a threat to the people of the United States and, therefore, he is prepared to use force.

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The President made very plain to the American people that as a result of Saddam Hussein's failure to disarm, and his possession of weapons of mass destruction, he has come to the determination that the only way to enforce the United Nations resolutions now is through the use of force. He gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq in order to avoid military conflict.

The following day, Fleischer put it more succinctly:

This is a war to disarm the Iraqi regime from its weapons of mass destruction.

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The President's expectation of all actions military will be to pursue the disarmament of the Iraqi regime. That's what this is about. The reason war has been brought upon us is because Saddam Hussein refused to disarm.

Now the best the Bush administration can do is tell us that we cannot "rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials."

And Bryan Whitman of the Pentagon has the temerity to say that the ISG's report "provides plenty of rationale for why this country went to war in Iraq."

What a putz.