OxBlog

Front page
XML Feed

Read Our

"Love your site" -- Dan Savage

"A great read" -- Fareed Zakaria

"I enjoy OxBlog very much" -- Michael Barone

OxBlog: Trying to live up to the hype since April 23, 2002!

David Adesnik, a research analyst in Washington DC, received his doctorate in international relations from Oxford.

Email David

[Powered by Blogger]

The Media:
NYT
WaPo
OpinionJournal
TNR
Weekly Standard
NRO
Slate
Commentary
BBC

Other Blogs We Like:

George Washington:
InstaPundit

James Wilson:
Brett Marston
Volokh Conspiracy

Alexis de Tocqueville:
American Scene
Crescat Sententia
Crooked Timber
Galley Slaves
Eve Tushnet
Christopher Hitchens

Theodore Roosevelt:
Amygdala
Belgravia Dispatch
Phil Carter
Joyful Christian
Joe Gandelman
Adrianne Truett
Winds of Change
Pejman Yousefzadeh
Global Guerrillas

Calvin Coolidge:
ScrappleFace

Winston Churchill:
Sasha Castel
Innocents Abroad
Andrew Sullivan
Tim Blair

Franklin Roosevelt:
Kevin Drum
Josh Marshall
Matt Yglesias
Democracy Arsenal
Dan Nexon

David Ben Gurion:
GedankenPundit
Kesher Talk

Friedrich Hayek:
Jane Galt
Virginia Postrel
Natalie Solent
VodkaPundit
Matt Welch

Ronald Reagan:
Power Line
RealClearPolitics
Worldwide Standard
RedState
Liz Mair

Daniel Patrick Moynihan:
Daniel Drezner
How Appealing

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

# Posted 11:33 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WISHFUL THINKING: According to a Pentagon report, top Iraqi officials amazingly persuaded themselves that George Bush was not serious about going to war. If only they had listened to Chirac and Schroeder...

Also, I didn't know that
Dr. [David] Kay, the former chief C.I.A. weapons inspector, has said that his team learned that no Special Republican Guard units had chemical or biological weapons — but that all of the officers believed that some other Special Republican Guard unit had them. He said it appeared that the Iraqi officers were the victims of a disinformation campaign by Mr. Hussein.
It makes you wonder. Were all of Saddam's efforts to deceive UN arms inspectors just part of an effort to persuade his own government that such weapons existed? After all, if Saddam believed that Bush wasn't serious about going to war, then he had no reason to be concerned about committing the sort of material breach that would have been picked up by US intelligence agencies.

What I still want to know was whether Saddam thought the US wouldn't attack despite believing Iraq had WMD or whether he assumed that we wouldn't attack because we knew that the WMD were a fabrication designed to fool Saddam's own henchmen.
(0) opinions -- Add your opinion
Comments: Post a Comment


Home