Colin Powell was "absolutely sure." Ari Fleischer professed to "know for a fact." Donald Rumsfeld announced: "We know where they are." George Tenet proclaimed it a "slam dunk." George W. Bush and Dick Cheney both said there was "no doubt." It turns out all of these wise men holding the reins of government were wrong.

Nearly two years after invading Iraq, the U.S. government announced that it was calling off its search for Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. In case you haven't been paying attention, they couldn't find them.

It doesn't seem improbable that these men truly thought Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons. But thinking something is a lot different from knowing something. There's a wide gap between suspicion and "slam dunk," "no doubt," "absolutely sure," "know for a fact," etc. Now we know the Bush administration didn't have a single human intelligence source on the ground in Iraq, let alone one telling us that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of WMD. Bush, Cheney, Powell, and the others had no business speaking with such certainty.

The president's defenders are left theorizing that the WMD lay hidden somewhere, making ex post facto arguments downplaying the centrality of WMD in the justification for war, and insisting that the president didn't lie. The first point is unsupported and the second ridiculous, but on the last point: fair enough. The president made a mistake. But isn't the mistake bad enough? Sure, he didn't lie, but his miscalculation has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, international credibility, and 1,300 American lives. The partisan debate featuring the president's enemies attacking him for being a liar and his supporters defending him for being mistaken obscures the salient point: couldn't we have done better than a choice between dishonesty and incompetence?

"But thinking something is a lot different from knowing something." Fair enough. Only recognize that this criticism concedes the rationale for the war, and merely objects to the truth of a premise, viz., that the administration possessed "knowledge" of WMD.

A simple version of the rationale: If Iraq has WMD, the U.S. should take whatever steps necessary to remove them; Iraq has WMD; therefore, the U.S. should take whatever steps necessary to remove them.

Your criticism amounts to a ex post facto argument against the second premise. Now I'm no intelligence expert, but if I'm a president who believes the first premise, and my Director of Central Intelligence and Secretary of Defense tell me that the second premise is true, the conclusion is not far to follow.

I suspect that you do not accept the first premise, but then why all this about the veracity of U.S. intelligence?

Brad, typical Brad. Even if one were to grant the truth of your first premise (which I don't), we need to reach a certain *degree of certainty* to act justly on this premise, that is, to justify our attacking, invading, and occupying another country. So your second premise should not be "Iraq has WMD," but something like "We suspect Iraq has WMD," or "We are certain that Iraq has WMD." Even granted your first premise, very different policies should following depending on what verb we use in the second premise. Suspecting is not enough.

The point: the insider hawks (from dishonesty and/or incompetence) falsely presented their degree of certaintly, and that is screwed up.

"...the insider hawks (from dishonesty and/or incompetence) falsely presented their degree of certainty...."

To make such a claim, a person would need to have a high degree of intelligence expertise and complete knowledge of the administration's intentions. I'm quite sure that you have neither (neither do I, of course).

Suppose the second premise were something like "it is probable, given established intelligence methods, that Iraq has WMD." And who is a better judge of established intelligence methods than the Director of Central intelligence? Let's assume that the Director of the CIA is an expert on intelligence and that he is not a neo-con hawk (two probable assumptions). Are we to blame the president for following the expert judgment of his advisors?

No, Brad, you are right. The buck doesn't stop with the president. He should just blame his underlings and not take responsibility for the numerous intelligence failures on his watch. We should overlook his rewarding Tenet's incompetence by giving him the Medal of Freedom a few weeks back, and ignore the fact that he refused to fire any of the major players involved in the WMD debacle. We should do all this because he's a Republican and we're Republicans, and we all know that having an "R" next to your name absolves you of all sin.

The moment I knew WMD was all flim flam was when Colin Powell went to UN and showed off water color paintings of what things may look like. All the spy satellites we have and secret agents, and the best we can do are paintings?

Short concludes that "insider hawks" "falsely presented their degree of certainty," yet Short must logically have less confidence in that statement than the "insider hawks" likely had about the statements at issue that they made.

That there is now no evidence of WMD is only circumstantial evidence about the state of the world at the time the statements were made and, more on point, even weaker circumstantial evidence about the state of their beliefs about the world at the time the statements were made.

Like Short today, perhaps the "insider hawks" brought strongly held, usually true, but not infallible, assumptions about the way the world works, combined those assumptions with circumstantial evidence and, as a result, were firmly convinced of their statements. It is a logical possibility.

No, Brad, you are right. The buck doesn't stop with the president. He should just blame his underlings and not take responsibility for the numerous intelligence failures on his watch. We should overlook his rewarding Tenet's incompetence by giving him the Medal of Freedom a few weeks back, and ignore the fact that he refused to fire any of the major players involved in the WMD debacle. We should do all this because he's a Republican and we're Republicans, and we all know that having an "R" next to your name absolves you of all sin.

Talk of the Medal of Freedom and post hoc hirings and firings only serves to muddy the water here. The question is quite narrow: if a policy decesion depends on information that can only be discovered (whether approximately or exactly) by experts, and the President is not an expert in the field (whether bioethics, intelligence, etc.), is it reasonable for the President to rely on the judgment of others, the experts? The answer is an obvious "Yes."

I would agree that the President is ultimately responsible for selecting good advisors. But this is a difficult task. For the most part, it takes one to know one. To select, for example, a good intelligence advisor requires a high level of expertise in intelligence. Again, the President must rely on the advice of advisors to select his advisors. It's a complicated world; a division of labor is necessary.

Once again, Dan Flynn hits the nail on the head.

If the President were as "disappointed" about not finding WMD as his rhetoric in press supports suggests he would distance himself from and discipline those people who are either grossly incompetent or deliberately misled him. They should not be promoted or given a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Brad asks, "Are we to blame the president for following the expert judgment of his advisors?" The buck has to stop with the President in this case. Particularly because Congress unconstitutionally delegated to Bush the authority to make the momentus decision to take this nation to war.

Over 1,300 American soldiers have lost their lives in a war supposedly being fought to protect America from the "threat" of a third-world nation crippled by a decade of sanctions. As I write this our young men and women execute one of the ambitious, unconstitutional, and unconservative acts of social engineering in this nation's history with no end in sight.

DocMcG and Brad are both making the mistake that Dan criticizes in his post: Republicans defending the president from the accusation of lying because the president (and other insider hawks) THOUGHT there WERE WMDs. Again, he's your man and he starting a darn war under what turned out to be false pretenses, and all you can say to defend him is that he wasn't lying; no, he was just dead wrong.

And Brad: I don't need national intelligence expertise to judge confidently and responsibly that "the insider hawks (from dishonesty and/or incompetence) falsely presented their degree of certaintly." All I need to do is see: 1) that they claimed to have insider knowledge that made them absolutely certain about WMD, knowing that it was a life and death matter for thousands of people; 2) they were *as a matter of FACT* dead wrong.

Say a doctor told you he was absolutely certain that you had a brain tumor and had to undergo a very dangerous surgery. Would your widow be consoled that, after he cut open you brain and found nothing (except a badly working substrate of a mind), the doctor hadn't lied. No, he was just dead wrong. Would your widow need expertise in brain medicine to say that the guy was either dishonest or incompetent? Would your widow vote for him again?

Short, you are missing my point. The question I am interested in is "Was the decision to go to war made by the President epistemically justified." This question is completely independent of later discoveries.

I admit that there are no WMD in Iraq, and therefore, that the prewar intelligence turned out to be false. These admissions are irrelevant to the above question.

Given the rationale for the war (see above), was the President's decision to invade justified? Based on the information provided to the president by his expert advisors, I believe that it was.

Short, this is ridiculous. The widow's comfort is irrelevant. And yes she would need expertise to judge whether the doctor was incompetent or dishonest (as if these were the only alternatives). Because humans are not omniscient, an honest expert can with limited information (again, because the expert is finite) can be in error. Are we really arguing about this?

The question is not whether an error in judgment by an expert is possible -- the question is whether the claim of ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY could be made by a competent and responsible expert about something that turns out to be 100% false. These false and irresponsible experts, quick to throw around credentials and with a mammoth and deadly mistake under their belts, are dangerous and should be purged.

Apparently Saddam has managed to trick the entire world. This has to be among the most clever con jobs in history. This man hated America. All the more reason to remove him. After all, if he can trick everyone, and we know he hates America it would have been only a matter of time before he would have launched an attack on America. Pretty much everyone believed he had WMD prior to the war. Apparently 30+ nations who are assisting in Iraq, or who have assisted, reached the same conclusion the United States did. We know he had them at one time. He has used them. Yet only George W. Bush made any miscalculations. Actually WMD was only one of the reasons for the war. It is simply the one the media has chosen to harp on. Anyone who looks beyond the main stream media will notice this. Due to his numerous connections to terrorists and his insatiable hatred of America,and the fact that the whole world thought he had WMD we had no other reasonable choice but to remove him. The decision to remove Saddam was the correct one. Perhaps instead of saying it was "absolutely sure" or "a slam dunk", they should have said to the American people, "Saddam probably has WMD." After all, he certainly made it look like he had WMD. What were they supposed to say? Given the destructive power of WMD, their is no way the government could risk leaving Saddam in power. Again the decision to remove Saddam was the correct one. There is no way to defeat this enemy by leaving Saddam in power. As the terrorists are focused on Iraq, this has made America much safer. It truly is a sad state of affairs that much of the world has chosen to side with a ruthless dictator against the greatest and most free nation in the world. By the way Saddam's WMD were probably moved to Syria. At a minimum, this needs to be investigated. "Did Saddam have WMD" is the wrong question. The question we should be asking is "where did they go?"

Actually the only reason that seems logical to me to oppose the operation to remove Saddam is that this operation may have caused us to loose focus on more dangerous enemies, such as Russia and China.

It was, without question, a horrible mistake to have used WMD as the primary reason for going to war.

However, the 1300 brave and noble individuals did not die in vain. I think it is reprehensible to suggest this. The war on terror is more than a criminal investigation where we find Osama Bin Laden and then stop. Don't get me wrong, I hope to God we find that evil man and kill him. But when we do, all will not be well. We have to come up with a way to defeat Islamo-fascist terror permanently. I believe Bush's way -- the democratization of the Middle East -- is, indeed, the best solution. As Dick Cheney said, "Freedom is the antidote to terrorism."

I've mentioned it before, but, again, please check out Natan Sharansky's "The Case for Democracy".

Here's an interesting site, revealing an Iraqi point-of-view that is largely absent from mainstream media coverage...

http://www.iraqthemodel.com

This battle is not hopeless. I truly believe good will prevail.

-ben

"However, the 1300 brave and noble individuals did not die in vain. I think it is reprehensible to suggest this."

No, what is reprehensible is that President Bush led this nation to war under false pretenses. His administration either lied us into war or it is completely incompetent.

But heck, at least we're "democratizing" the Middle East and making Israel safer at the same time.

"making Israel safer"

IT'S THE DIRTY JEWS' FAULT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ben: A little touchy today?

Gee, no one can disagree with you without you either (1) accusing him of antisemitism, or (2) making this reprehensible statement, indirectly slurring all dissenters: "The 1300 brave and noble individuals did not die in vain. I think it is reprehensible to suggest this." Who suggested that?

I can't fault the Administration for not finding the WMD's. They all said they were certain because, before our attack on Iraq, there was every reason to believe that Hussein had the weapons; he himself threatened to use them on any foreign force attacking Iraq. There was also no way to find out we were wrong about the WMD (along with much of the rest of the world) unless we went there to find out, and that was obviously going to require force, considering how long Hussein had been playing Hunt the Slipper with the weapons inspectors before kicking them out entirely.

This sort of thing required enough time for Hussein to junk whatever he'd stockpiled. Think - if you had a crystal meth lab in the basement and the cops told you they were going to be raiding you in April, wouldn't you use January, February, and March to dismantle it and rid yourself of the evidence?

I for one am relieved we didn't find anything; it means that we stopped a credible threat from materializing. The alternative is obvious when you look at Iran's proximity to nuclear capability.

(To anticipate the reaction to this, I'd say that the answer to "Why Iraq and not Iran/NK?" is that it's like a test - you answer everything easy first, and then work on the hard problems. You don't want to miss questions you could have solved, and you definitely can't say "The hard task is more important so I should do NONE of the tasks at all.")

So to my mind the follow-up question is, why was our intelligence wrong? Why aren't people getting sacked over this? Do we want to be wrong with far worse results?

"Who suggested that?"

Many have suggested it, from the likes of Michael Moore to paleo-conservatives. I think it is wrong to say it -- that it slanders the name of the soldiers. (Notice that I didn't get at all up in arms about the anti-Bush comments.) Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but to say that their lives have been wasted is simply incorrect. At the *absolute least*, they died liberating 25 million people from tyranny. And that is nothing to scoff at.

"no one can disagree with you without you either (1) accusing him of antisemitism"

Blatantly false. I responded to a very specific, conspiratorial anti-Israel comment.

Yours truly,
Ben

One more thing -- I completely agree that some in the administration f*cked up. I really hoped, going into his second term, that Bush would've replaced Rumsfeld.

Why sack Rummy now Ben? Sounds like scapegoating to me. (I do think he should have resigned after Abu Ghraib, however).

Rob and your comments are perfect examples of the neocon position and manner of thinking. Thanks for offering them up for our perusal.

Obi Juan, funny comment, I had forgotten about Powell's paintings.