Robert wrote:

"On the one hand you argue that we had solid intelligence about Iraqi WMD, to the level of knowing that it was being moved between facilities in Iraq to avoid UN inspectors...but on the other hand you blithely claim it could have been smuggled completely out of the country without our knowing about it, in a period when Iraq was under intense surveillance and surrounded by our forces as we prepared for war"


tom replied

"Saddam Hussein, his sons, and many of their allies also managed to disappear without a trace despite the surveillance conditions you are talking about."


Davin comments:
So then it would seem to argue that our intelligence in that area is not perfect, and WMD may not have existed?

Tom wrote:

"Remember, in the case of biologicals and nerve agents, we are often talking materials and facilities that could fit in a garage, or a large U-Haul."


my reply:
Yes, and we have put massive amounts of funds to detect them in minute quantities (like parts per several-billion), and most agents have a sufficiently long half-life that we would be able to detect them for years. Why is it that not only have no searched sites yielded caches of WMD, but our sensitive detection equipment does not even pick up enough remaining materials for us to cliaim that WMD were there within the immediate past? Remember, we are not acting with a very high bar for evidence- as is demonstrated by the Niger and Trailor episodes.

Are we to therefore factually claim that the Iraqis as a theorem deduced from the fact that no trace quantities have been found have a technology that 'eliminates' trace amounts of WMD- something beyond our own Military? Or are we to instead deduce as a theorem that we just ahve not looked hard enough, despite searching most of the same sites we told the UN were suspected WMD sites? If either of those two deductions seem valid and strong to you, then you are using anomalist logic.

Look, I don't know about you, but my experience and training in empirical science demands that I not choose hypothesies that require extra and implausible assumptions. My experience in logic demands that I not try to derive truth from absurd (contradictory) premisies.

Tom wrote:

"Fifty tons of a liquid is about 200 60-gallon drums. People sometimes talk about finding these things as though we were looking for the Great Pyramids. America's first working nuclear reactor was hidden in a squash court under a sports stadium."


my reply:
All of this is true, but it has no bearing on if WMD did or did not exist in Iraq at a level sufficient to justify a pre-emptive war followed by indefinite occupation. As Robert pointed out, the plausibility of a proposition is not support for that proposition being true.

It is plausible that life exists or once did exist on Mars. That plausibility of that assertion does not make that assertion true.

tom wrote:

"Some people talk as though Saddam Hussein, who had demonstrated again and again his ambition to develop WMD, his production of same, his use of them on both his own people and those of other nations, and his restarting their development after having it squelched by Israel and the U.N., suddenly just decided to toss it all in just before the war in Iraq and gave up the idea.

Do you see any logical flaws in THAT position? "


my reply:
So basically, we made a character judgement, that Saddam was stubborn, into a cause for pre-emptive war predicated on the "Known Fact" that Saddam had WMD. And your position then is that this was not dishonest or inept?

Davin L.