10/08/2004 06:57:27 AM|||Toni|||From Greyhawk as he's flying into Baghdad


How many times has this happened to you:

You're flying into Baghdad on a C130 along with a lot of other GIs and some members of the Iraq Survey Group whose report will soon be released and while waiting for the plane engines to fire up (after which point conversation becomes impossible) you say: "So what's the bottom line?"

And one responds: "He didn't have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but he could have reconstituted his programs in a matter of months."
Which is exactly what I've thought for quite a while (ahem) please see my April 6 2003 post here. Really, it's short, go read, and note that the Thunder Run was ongoing at that time, but the media spin had already begun. But given the myriad reasons why the time was right for ending the Hussein regime it's an issue of only minor importance to me - more significant as political strategy than military - but what do I know?

I did know on hearing that ISG response that many in the media would ignore the second part entirely, and miss only the "stockpiles" part of the first half. Such is life. Sitting here with my feet in the sands of Iraq the question seems of little importance. I feel about as disappointed as I did when the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union was revealed to be not as advanced as we once thought - was the cold war therefore a waste of time?

So now you have available to you the Iraq Survey Groups full response, or the one-sentence condensed version above. What's new? Well, Oil-for-Food tie-ins and some other things that NY Times readers will certainly not be confronted with any time soon. It's a worthwhile read, and for your entry port into it I'd recomend this post from LGF.

|||109723664769914269|||Iraq Survey Group