In today’s Guardian, there’s a column by William Shawcross which asserts that Iraq’s WMD programs posed a threat to, well, he doesn’t really say to whom, but they Posed A Threat nonetheless. He quotes the Butler report, which stated, in paragraph 499, that “statements on Iraqi attempts to buy Uranium from Africa in the government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House Of Commons, were well founded.”

It’s interesting to note, however, the paragraph which followed this statement, paragraph 500 in the Butler report: “We also note that, because the intelligence evidence was inconclusive, neither the government’s dossier nor the Prime Minister went on to say that a deal between the governments of Iraq and Niger for the supply had been signed, or uranium shipped.”

He also quotes Charles Duelfer, the Director of Central Intelligence Special Advisor for Strategy regarding Iraqi WMD Programs, who asked “Were weapons hidden that were not readily available? Was there a plan for a break-out production capacity?” What he doesn’t quote is another bit of Duelfer’s testimony to Congress, on March 30 2004: “Let me state at the outset that I do not believe we have sufficient information and insight to make final judgments with confidence at this time.”

Despite pre-war intelligence, says Shawcross, it may be the case that at the time of the invasion, Saddam Hussein did not have reserves of WMD. However, he goes on to assert that, this being the case, it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an Iraqi threat from WMD (that would “trivialise” the issue, he says, though exactly what he means by this is unclear: does he mean that the current lack of WMD is not proof that no WMD exist, or does he mean that any attempt to discuss Iraq’s real or imagined WMD is trivial, and therefore misses the point that Saddam Hussein is a very bad man, which undoubtedly he is?)

Shawcross’s assertion that the lack of WMD at the time of invasion isn’t proof that WMD didn’t exist at all is decent enough logic, as it goes. But when he then says that “intelligence has to look to form” he’s really falling into a logical trap, which assumes that because Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire WMD in the past means that he was still trying to do so in 2003, despite being under surveillance from a multitude of international bodies. “During the Gulf War [i.e. the first Gulf War] he fired 39 missiles into Israel. They had conventional warheads, but they might not have done,” [my emphasis] he says. Yes, and the water balloons that I lobbed into my neighbours’ garden could have been toxic but, y’know, they were just filled with water since I couldn’t get hold of any anthrax.

Shawcross says that “Saddam may not have been an immediate threat” - ignoring the fact that the immediacy of Saddam Hussein’s threat is supposedly why we went to war in the first place - “but he was an inevitable one.”
If Saddam Hussein’s threat was an inevitable one, it’s not a threat which Colin Powell believed in. Talking about the Iraqi threat in 2001, he said that sanctions against Iraq exist “not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein’s ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”

Meanwhile, David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group when he gave the following testimony to the CIA in October 2003, said that “Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW [Chemical Weapons] program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq’s large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced - if not entirely destroyed - during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections.

“We have also acquired information related to Iraq’s CW doctrine and Iraq’s war plans for OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom], but we have not yet found evidence to confirm pre-war reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW against Coalition forces. Our efforts to collect and exploit intelligence on Iraq’s chemical weapons program have thus far yielded little reliable information on post-1991 CW stocks and CW agent production, although we continue to receive and follow leads related to such stocks. We have multiple reports that Iraq retained CW munitions made prior to 1991, possibly including mustard - a long-lasting chemical agent - but we have to date been unable to locate any such munitions”

So. Saddam Hussein was constrained, his weapons programs were all but destroyed, the supposed WMD he was developing were not an immediate threat. Yet Shawcross says that, “Given all we knew of Saddam by 2003, the conclusion had to be that he still possessed a residual WMD capability.” Those for the war will hope that Shawcross is right. Those against the war will see Shawcross’s supposed evidence as further proof that this war was nothing to do with liberation and everything to do with securing strategic interests.

Tipped off by an American student, Sutherland reveals that two bills to resurrect the draft in the US are currently en route to becoming law:

There is pending legislation in the American House of Representatives and Senate in the form of twin bills - S89 and HR163. These measures (currently approved and sitting in the committee for armed services) project legislation for spring 2005, with the draft to become operational as early as June 15.

The Pentagon is discreetly recruiting for 10,350 draft board officers and 11,070 appeals board members nationwide.

And, before American readers reach for the ‘phone to book their one-way ticket to lovely Canada:

Draft-dodging will be harder than in the 1960s. In December 2001, Canada and the US signed a “smart border declaration”, which, among other things, will prevent conscientious objectors (and cowards) from finding sanctuary across the northern border.

Unsurprisingly, despite the fact that a press release on the subject has been available at Congress.org for some time, the news that the draft is to return next year hasn’t made it to the front pages and television screens of the US news media.

Presumably, they are much too busy self-flagellating over their failures in the run up to the invasion of Iraq (see the New York Times), or carrying on their fine tradition of unquestioning support for government (see Fox, et al).

I hope to goodness that this news does break, and soon; not only because I know a fair few Americans of drafting age, but also because it might just be the kick up the arse the US electorate needs to oust Bush.

(An aside: Many weblogs have picked up the story - whatever happened to the much-touted power of independent publishing on the web to prod the traditional media into action?)

Not, of course, that the draft story will have a fighting chance to influence the US electorate: the word, from reliable, national newspaper sources, is that an ‘October Surprise’ is in the offing. We’ve already seen the opening salvo - that scaremongering warning of imminent terrorist action on US soil - to soften folk up in advance of Bush using a terrorist attack (foiled or successful) as an excuse to declare a state of emergency prior to the forthcoming Presidential election, delaying the poll indefinitely.

George W. Bush’s response was to say, ‘That’s not the way we do things in America.’

Come on. That’s exactly how they do things in America, whether mistreating prisoners of war in shadowy outposts like Guantanamo Bay, or in terms of police brutality and human rights abuses, or the fact that Bush himself has long had an unhealthy enthusiasm for executing his own citizens.

Of course, I’m not one of the daft lefties who see the US as analagous to a regime like Saddam Hussein’s, but pointing out the irony of these war crimes taking place in a facility used by Hussein to carry out similar atrocities is unavoidable, and one more example of regime change making life worse for the Iraqi people. Not that it’s much of a regime change, what with former Ba’athist generals being brought in to control Fallujah.

Update:

Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.:

Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.

The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.

See also: Rape Rooms: A Chronology - What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded.