Weapons of Mass Destruction -- The Theatrical Release

Aug 1 04:06 UTC 2003

I was just listening to the radio talk about elections and Iraq and WMD, 
and suddenly I realized how Karl Rove plans to win the 2004 presidential 
election for his protege, GW Bush.

After an extended period of apparently failing to discover all those WMDs 
Bush assured us were really there, his poll number really don't seem to 
have suffered very much.  Taking into account this fact, combined with 
the long campaign season we're soon going to enter, it seems to me that 
the most effective way for Bush to counter strong Democratic claims of 
failures in Iraq -- especially claims of the absolute fallacy of Iraqi 
WMD which some Dems seem wont to make -- would be to allow those claims 
to build up momentum to the point at which they form a significantly 
large part of the Democratic campain rhetoric, and then, suddenly, to 
"find" the claimed proof of WMD just when the timing will have the 
greatest effect in disarming that rhetoric.

In other words, if any hard evidence of WMD is found between now and the 
optimal time close to the election, so long as the poll numbers don't 
drop too low, it would be a brilliant stroke of political mastery to keep 
it under wraps until it is most damaging to the Democratic presidential 
campaign of whomever wins the primary.

I'm sure that if WMD turn up in Iraq within a month or two of the 
election next year, pundits will be raging, left and right.  On the 
right, that it was there all along and the windbag Dems were just too 
dumb to know it, and on the left, that the whole thing was orchestrated 
for maximum electoral impact.

If it happens, remember:  You heard it here first!

response 2 of 49:

Aug 1 07:19 UTC 2003

        Considering  how easy it would be  to fabricate
        or manufacture some evidence of wmd,  this would
        explain why that hasn't happened already.

response 4 of 49:

Aug 1 13:03 UTC 2003

I'm sick of liberal whining about WMD. So is the rest of America. Only
far-left liberals with thier obsessive agenda really talk about it.

response 6 of 49:

Aug 1 13:41 UTC 2003

(People knew about the Iran-Contra arms sales, too, but they didn't talk
about it.  It's -easy- to keep a secret; just classify it.)

response 8 of 49:

Aug 1 14:23 UTC 2003

Last think I heard GW say on this was that he expected that evidence would
be forthcoming for what he knew all along:  "Iraq had a weapons program."

Um, hello, we didn't go to war because Iraq had a weapons program.  Of course
Iraq had a weapons program.  Everyone has a weapons program.  The claim made
was that Iraq was an imminent threat to the US.  That's going to be a wee bit
harder to prove.

response 10 of 49:

Aug 1 15:41 UTC 2003

If the US was going to plant evidence of WMD, the time to do it would 
have been right as we were entering Baghdad.  There was a lot of 
confusion going on then, and the military had pretty tight and 
unsupervised control of a lot of Iraq.

I don't think it'd be so easy now.

I don't think the president is withholding evidence of WMD.  His 
credibility has taken big hits in recent weeks.  He needs the 
announcement of a discovery *now*, which is why we've had announcements 
over the last couple of days that a discovery is imminent.

If there isn't a discovery of some very significant WMD (some nuclear 
weapons, or a big stockpile of chemical and/or biological weapons), 
then the president is in a lot of trouble for the 2004 election.  This 
isn't swapping some arms for hostages, or drugs for arms, or whatever.  
That's an "oops", comparatively.  If the president invaded another 
country on an incorrect basis, it's a big deal, and I think people will 
treat it as a big deal.  

response 12 of 49:

Aug 1 16:38 UTC 2003

QED

response 16 of 49:

Aug 2 01:29 UTC 2003

Re #5:  Are you kidding, Bruce?  It would be *trivial* to introduce
WMD into Iraq along with the other military and relief supplies going
there.  Do you think our spooks have no idea how to *smuggle* things?
Do you really think that more than a few people would have to know
what was in the packages?

That said, making the evidence convincing would be a whole lot harder.
Laboratories can pick out very fine differences between products, and
US-manufactured VX can probably be identified as such.  An Iraqi weapon
would come with manufacturing and storage facilities somewhere; lack
of those would be very suspicious.  It would take more than just one
smuggled weapon or batch of agent to convincingly frame Iraq.

response 18 of 49:

Aug 2 20:34 UTC 2003

I wouldn't goto the extent of saying that elections in any of the large 
democracies are rigged but the problem is lack of choice. Politicians 
nowhere as good ennough to be elected. And all care about only money 
for themselves.

Its surprising to see that people in the US can't see through GWB's 
designs despite the large amount of evidence out there.

response 20 of 49:

Aug 2 23:00 UTC 2003

It's not that most people here *can't* see, it's merely that they choose 
not to see.  People tend to discount any "evidence" which comes from a 
source they don't already accept as legitimate, and our means of 
information distribution have proven themselves so flawed, so repeatedly, 
that now people are just believing whatever sources they want to unless 
they're motivated enough to seek out legitimate unbiased information 
(which is getting harder and harder to do).

response 22 of 49:

Aug 3 13:28 UTC 2003

Re 4: So you're sick of bleeding heart liberals, eh? I'll take that as a
compliment. We must be doing *something* right.

response 24 of 49:

Aug 3 22:55 UTC 2003

Perhaps medicine in the form of "faith based" decision making. Damn the facts
and the opinions of other informed parties. As long as the US has an enemy
in one form or another this type of politics will continue to grow.
Unfortunately, the US has a brilliant track record for creating enemies both
domestically as well as abroad. Usually just in the nick of time. Remember
public opinion and the beginnings of scandal regarding GW's performance in
office until 9/11..?