Iraqi diplomat gave U.S. prewar WMD details

[Balta1701]

Saddam's defiance supported our WMD claims.

I'm going to bounce back to this post and just point out that Saddam's "Defiance" consisted of not having WMD's, destroying a bunch of his missiles under the watch of UNMOVIC ("These are not toothpicks, this is real disarmament - Hans Blix) and allowing the UN teams unfettered access to every single one of the facilities they wanted in 02-03.

[Balta1701]

I would like to see those rates, and I am also curious as to how they were arrived at before and after the regime change.  Would incidences have been reported more or less often under the old regime?  I would tend to think that there is more freedom to report (and someone to report to) things that are happening within their country.

There would almost certainly have been less reporting during the previous regime, because given the nature of the regime it was simply impossible to do any sort of reporting in most areas about the actual nature of the people. The only thing we really can do to get a good comparison is to talk to the people who have jobs at the morgue and ask them whether the amount of bodies they've seen has gone up or down since the war, and in at least Baghdad's case they've gone up dramatically.

 

But then again, that doesn't cut it by any standard, because someone who's killed in one of Saddam's torture chambers and then thrown in a mass grave doesn't wind up in the morgue, just like someone who's blown apart by a U.S. bomb.

 

And even beyond that, Iraqi society is such that the local communities/clans are often some of the strongest organs in the society, so even if there was a death, it's possible it wouldn't be reported under either case, and the family would just deal with it. And beyond that, even before the U.S., all of the casualties in Iraq weren't due solely to Saddam...the U.N. sanctions killed a ton before the oil for food program was instituted (despite the corruption it saved a TON of lives), and then there was almost constant U.S. and British bombing on top of that.

 

The best bit of data we have since the war, the one which is actually done in the way most conflict casualties are estimated, was the Lancet study in late 2004, which gave you an estimate of about 100,000 additional deaths due to war or violence between the launch of the U.S. invasion and the time of that survey. Other numbers, like the numbers from the Baghdad Morgue, are at least in rough agreement with what those numbers would project to these days.

 

Beyond that, there really is no way to do a good comparison. All we can really say with certainty is that a lot of people died under Saddam, a lot of people are dying now, and in both cases, it's a terrible thing.

[samclemens]

I'm going to bounce back to this post and just point out that Saddam's "Defiance" consisted of not having WMD's, destroying a bunch of his missiles under the watch of UNMOVIC ("These are not toothpicks, this is real disarmament - Hans Blix) and allowing the UN teams unfettered access to every single one of the facilities they wanted in 02-03.

 

wait- are you seriously contending that saddam complied with UN inspectors?! huh??! i refer you to my post on the pipes blog. saddam did MUCH more than what you are saying. you are leaving out a ton of s***. im not even going to give you a link to anything to back my claim up. just google "saddam" and let me know what comes up.

[Balta1701]

wait- are you seriously contending that saddam complied with UN inspectors?! huh??! i refer you to my post on the pipes blog. saddam did MUCH more than what you are saying. you are leaving out a ton of s***. im not even going to give you a link to anything to back my claim up. just google "saddam" and let me know what comes up.

With the UNSCOM team, Saddam was not only trying to give the impression that he was hiding things, prior to Operation Desert Fox, he certainly was trying to hide things. The Pipes blog you link to in fact was written before the UNMOVIC team even was created. It was written before Resolution 1441, and before the U.S. declared Iraq to be in non-compliance with 1441.

 

It is also very worth noting that several of the claims in that Pipes blog have been proven to be the exact falsehoods which were the problem. Specifically, he cites information from defectors which say that Iraq had WMD. Well, the problem is, as we've all seen in reports since the invasion, the defectors that he and the administration were building their case on were absolute garbage (Curveball), and this was known by the CIA, but ignored by people higher up the chain of command.

[NorthSideSox72]

It is also very worth noting that several of the claims in that Pipes blog have been proven to be the exact falsehoods which were the problem.  Specifically, he cites information from defectors which say that Iraq had WMD.  Well, the problem is, as we've all seen in reports since the invasion, the defectors that he and the administration were building their case on were absolute garbage (Curveball), and this was known by the CIA, but ignored by people higher up the chain of command.

 

This was the point I was trying to make about the defectors.

[samclemens]

well, essentially, we just disagree. i respect what you are saying, both about pipes and the defector believability. believe me that i am no pipes connousieur, but i saw that he was published and that he wasnt considered a fraud by the news community hence my conclusion that his is respected and trustworthy.

 

i dont believe that our sources and intel were garbage. i go back to my "you telling me you are going to shoot me" analogy. at this nexus, me and some here part ways. i enjoy the discussion on this type of stuff. i know i get inflammatory on occasion (understatement) but if something i say seriously offends someone let me know, i dont mean to do that stuff here.

 

respectfully disagree with you all.