At Captain’s Quarters, they’re touting ABC’s release of government tapes of Saddam’s meetings in the 90s. Captain Ed concludes:

These tapes do not necessarily provide the “smoking gun” that some have speculated, at least not from ABC’s initial report or the analysis provided by Charles Duelfer. The recordings show that Saddam and his henchmen actively hid their WMD programs from UN inspectors, and also show that he had no intention of getting rid of them if he could help it. Duelfer notes that the tapes demonstrate Saddam’s commitment to retaining or rebuilding his capacity to strike with the world’s deadliest weapons, which makes the containment strategy something of a band-aid even without the extensive cheating proven from Syria, Germany, France, and Russia that had rendered it a sham.

No-one I know has argued that Saddam didn’t actively conceal WMD programs from inspectors, in the mid-90s. But unlike the Captain, I did argue that containment had limited Saddam’s ability to do much with WMDs, even after the UN pulled its inspectors. A nuclear footprint is very difficult to hide.

I also argued that the ‘missing’ chemical weapons stockpile would be unstable and unusable due to the normal degradation of the chemicals involved. And that lumping chemical, bio and nuclear weapons together under the WMD banner was misleading propaganda. Until someone demonstrates otherwise, nukes remain far and away the only true WMD. The others require very specific conditions to have any potential to kill hundreds or perhaps a few thousand. And if that’s a WMD, then so is one passenger jet, as 9-11 demonstrated.

Captain Ed states “the tapes demonstrate Saddam’s commitment to retaining or rebuilding his capacity to strike with the world’s deadliest weapons, which makes the containment strategy something of a band-aid…” And again, I know no-one who argued that Saddam was uninterested in rebuilding his weapons arsenal. He wanted the power to control his country’s fate and wanted to be a principal in the Middle East power balance, perhaps ‘the’ principal.

But the Captain misleads by referring to Saddam’s ‘capacity to strike’ as it leaves the impression he wanted the weapons for offensive purposes, when it’s not clear, after all the containment he endured, whether he just wanted them for defensive purposes. After all, the US, Israel, Egypt and Iran - and possibly Saudi Arabia - had developed miltary power superior to Saddam’s. Regaining the power to counter those superior forces would grant Saddam job security and the capacity to act autonomously. Which would be an understandable penchant for any nation’s leader.

And containment was no mere band-aid. Despite its flaws and loopholes, it had the desired effect of limiting Hussein’s capacities. If it didn’t, exactly what was it that had Saddam so weak in 2003? Luck?

And I’m neither psychic, nor a great military analyst. So how did my estimates prove so right compared to Bush administration estimates, which regularly proved wrong? Simple. I listened to what more objective scientists, experienced generals, UN inspectors and foreign policy experts had to say. I was least likely to attribute objectivity to politicians with a prior record of arguing for the military overthrow of Iraq, because their analysis was skewed to support their desires.

It only took a modicum of logic to distinguish between objective analysis and political propaganda. Sure, there was lots of speculation about what Saddam might have done after the UN inspectors were pulled. But no-one produced any evidence at all to support that speculation, after promising to do so in the Fall of 2002, when they lobbied for Congressional approval of Bush’s military motivations.

They never delivered, and the objective analysts never failed. It wasn’t rocket science to see that. It only required active observation.

The Captain chooses to put the focus on the already known fact that Saddam was dishonest and deceptive. I find it more noteworthy that Saddam astutely saw where organized terror groups were heading and warned our government leaders to be on guard against that.

Saddam was once treated with dignity by US leaders and I sense he wanted to be restored to that level, which he lost with his invasion of Kuwait. But once fallen from favor, he found the way back locked. And despite his understandable anger and frustration with that, he never threatened to attack the US. Not that I think he was motivated by ethical concerns. Saddam was a pragmatist more than anything, and he’d consider it suicidal to attack us.

Thus Saddam joins the Hart-Rudman Commission and numerous intel reports among those who warned of a pending terrorist-caused catastrophe. That’s the only thing new I see in the ABC report. It’s too bad some prefer to maintain their partisan blinders to all that’s happened, because that way has only yielded grave and costly errors.