not finding WMD in Iraq; were we wrong?

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 14:56:24 -0400
> From: Gerry Faulhaber <gerry-faulhaber () mchsi com>
>
> Dave [for IP, if you wish]--
>
> We have recently seen reports in the press (and on IP; e.g.,
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39211-2003May25.html) that
> the failure of the US to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq shows that
> Hussein really didn't have any such things, and the predicate of the recent
> war was entirely bogus.
>
> Whether or not the predicate was bogus (and I'm prepared to believe it was),
> the failure to find WMD says *nothing* about whether or not Hussein had them
> and has hid them.  The linkage of failure-to-find with there-never-were-any
> ignores some basic facts about looking for physical evidence when the
> originator doesn't want you to find it.
>
> Let's look at a simple, familiar analogy: the US government, state and local
> police, and most citizens are adamantly opposed to the production,
> distribution and consumption of illegal drugs, and go to great lengths to
> find production labs, processing operations, and warehouses here in the US.
> We know that there are thousands of such facilities, in every US community.
> Even worse, they often have large stocks of illegal weapons (such as
> automatic weapons) that we would also like to find.  We devote lots of
> effort to finding these facilities.  These are not in a strange country;
> they are in the US, among us all.  And yet law enforcement is not even close
> to knowing where they are, despite strenuous efforts to find them.  Do we
> thus conclude that they really don't exist in the US?  Of course not.  If we
> can't find these illegal drug operations in our own country after years of
> searching, what makes us think it is easy to find WMD in a strange country
> after a month of searching?  Do we thus conclude that the WMD really don't
> exist in Iraq?  Of course not.
>
> Ultimately, law enforcement finds these illegal items when somebody rats 'em
> out; it's human intelligence.  The same is true in Iraq; we need good
> intelligence from Iraqis in the know in order to find this stuff.  Until we
> get good intelligence, no amount of searching is going to turn up the
> chemical factories.
>
> Was Hussein engaged in the production of WMD?  Given his great reluctance to
> let UN inspectors in the country, and his reluctance to let them talk with
> Iraqi scientists, my best guess is he was hiding his production of WMD; it's
> difficult to explain his behavior under any other hypothesis (other than
> stupidity).  I feel relatively confident that someday evidence of WMD will
> turn up in Iraq, but probably not for another 2-3 years.  Meanwhile, be
> cautious about what we can deduce from the failure to find a "smoking gun"
> in the short term.  We simply cannot conclude, based on coming up empty in
> the short term, conclude that Hussein was not producing WMD.  Remember how
> hard it is to find drug stashes in this country, let alone WMD in Iraq.
>
> Prof. Gerald Faulhaber
> Business and Public Policy Dept.
> Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
> Philadelphia, PA 19104


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