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Good Signs in Iraq
09/21/2003
Well, I'll wait to hear more along these lines before I lower my skepticism, but it's great if true:
SADDAM Hussein has been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, we can reveal.
The Iraqi dictator is demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus. In exchange, he has vowed to provide information on weapons of mass destruction and disclose bank accounts where he siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in plundered cash.
The reconstruction effort could use the additional funds, to be sure, and tips on WMDs would be welcome. I wonder if the full-speed-backwards tone of the Western media around WMDs helped lead Saddam to believe evidence of them to be a marketable promise.
Of those media "reports," I particularly like the idiotic headline of an MSNBC/AP piece: "U.S. team finds no smallpox in Iraq." How does one "find no"? Maybe by finding evidence that there is no smallpox, but I don't think "not finding evidence of smallpox" is quite the same as "finding no smallpox." As habitual, the reporter places all of the information that might help to define this distinction toward the end:
Those involved described missed opportunities caused by bureaucratic obstacles hampering the search effort.
In several instances, the team couldn't follow up tips because of transportation problems. The violence plaguing Iraq means such teams can operate only under military guidelines and travel only with military escort. So their mobility is dictated by the military's schedule and availability to move from them from one location to another.
Some Iraqi scientists interviewed clearly had the know-how and expertise to produce smallpox, honed through years of work with similar viruses.
But none of the Iraqi scientists — many questioned at their offices at Iraqi universities — said they had done work on smallpox or other viruses that could be used in biological weapons programs.
U.N. inspectors suspected Iraq could have been working on smallpox or already had it. There was an outbreak of smallpox in the country in 1972, and Iraq admitted it had been producing the vaccine into the 1980s.
"From the onset the evidence was strictly circumstantial," said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. inspector and the author of a recent book on smallpox. "There was a lot of smoke but not much fire there."
Tests on Iraqi soldiers captured during the 1991 Gulf War found that some had been vaccinated for smallpox.
And Iraq admitted to U.N. inspectors in the 1990s that its biological weapons scientists worked with camelpox, a close relative of the smallpox virus. Working with camelpox would give Iraq a way to perfect techniques for making smallpox without endangering the researchers.
It seems a bit premature to place smallpox firmly in the "no" pile. Former weapons inspector chief Richard Butler would probably agree:
"Don't believe those who say they aren't there just because we haven't found them. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," Butler told the crowd. "Iraq certainly did have weapons of mass destruction. Trust me. I held some in my own hands."
But then, considering the lack of coverage of Butler's suggestion, I'd say he's beat Saddam to discovering just how unmarketable suggestions that there might actually be WMDs to find are in the West.
Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:50 PM EST
2 comments
"Maybe by finding evidence that there is no smallpox, but I don't think "not finding evidence of smallpox" is quite the same as "finding no smallpox." "
First off, not even finding evidence is more damning. First you would find evidence, then you would find weapons. We haven't even made the first step.
""Don't believe those who say they aren't there just because we haven't found them. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," Butler told the crowd. "Iraq certainly did have weapons of mass destruction. Trust me. I held some in my own hands.""
Operative word, 'had'. That's past tense. Nobody is denying that. The question now is that when the operative words are 'has', and 'is aiming then', and 'at us', and whether or not those statements are misleading.
wah @ 09/22/2003 04:16 PM EST
wah,
I think you missed the linguistic point: if you don't find evidence of something, that does not constitute evidence that the something does not exist — that you've found some sort of negative evidence.
As for Butler's statement, again we've got a problem with language. Butler says "Saddam Hussein had." Considering that the dictator is either dead or on the run, the past tense is appropriate when speaking about his reign right up until the end, which is what Butler is saying.
Admittedly, it is very unlikely that Hussein has (now, at this moment) WMDs aimed at us, but I think it's time to update your tenses from your pre-war arguments.
Justin Katz @ 09/22/2003 04:24 PM EST