The tireless Daniel Pipes has solved the mystery of Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Mr. Pipes argues that the reason we failed to find Iraq's WMD is that they were moved just before the war. The answer was so simple - it was right there in front of us. Thank heaven that Daniel Pipes was on the case even when the last man from the Iraq Survey Group had packed his bags.
Daniel Pipes writes in his latest column:
The great mystery of the 2003 war in Iraq - "What about the WMD?" has finally been resolved. The short answer is: Saddam Hussein's persistent record of lying meant no one believed him when he at the last moment actually removed the weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Pipes does not tell us where the WMD were removed to - he leaves that as an exercise for his cerebral readers. He offers this explanation as an update to his column:
I have received many questions about the disposal of the WMD - Syria? Belarus? - and wish to clarify that I purposefully did not deal with this question in the above article (just as the Iraqi Perspectives Project did not). The topic here is exclusively the functioning of the Saddam Hussein regime in relation to the WMD mystery. Any thesis of what was done with the WMD is compatible with the above background explanation.
Mr. Pipes has "solved" the mystery of the WMD by stating that since they were not found they must have been removed. The more obvious explanation that perhaps Iraq possessed no WMD does not seem to resonate with Mr. Pipes. Mr. Pipes is a glass-is-half-full kind of thinker. He posits that if the bottom half of a glass contains no water that must mean that the top half of the glass contains water that is suspended in mid air. Who am I to argue with logic as powerful as that.
Daniel Pipes cites (without any hint of irony) the Iraqi Perspectives Project report to show how Saddam Hussein's Government was disconnected from reality. Saddam Hussein demanded only good news and this led to a lot of misinformation being propagated throughout the Iraqi regime. Pipes claims that the confusion extended to WMD as well. Perhaps even Saddam was not sure if WMD existed or not. This is Mr. Pipes' fallback argument. If the WMD were there they were moved. However, if they were not there then even Saddam thought they were there and therefore it was tantamount to Saddam actually having WMD. Either way the WMD, fictional or not, were removed by Saddam Hussein. Daniel Pipes thus ties his circular argument with a nice tidy bow:
The same situation extended to the military-industrial infrastructure. First, the report states, for Saddam, "the mere issuing of a decree was sufficient to make the plan work." Second, fearful for their lives, everyone involved provided glowing progress bulletins. In particular, "scientists always reported the next wonder weapon was right around the corner." In such an environment, who knew the actual state of the WMD? Even for Saddam, "when it came to WMD there was always some element of doubt about the truth."
So, it appears that Mr. Pipes has embarked on a two-pronged defense of this Administration - one prong using the fantasy argument, the other prong using the delusion argument. Using equal doses of fantasy and delusion Mr. Pipes has "solved" the WMD mystery. I am sure his followers will now tout this as "evidence" that Saddam had (real or imagined) WMD and the (real or imagined) WMD was removed prior to the war. Now all Mr. Pipes has to do to complete the circle is "find" the WMD. I will wait anxiously for the day when Daniel Pipes "finds" Saddam's lost Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Also posted at my web site.
