Saddam’s Bar of Soap
Still catching up on my blog reading. Mickey Kaus had a great point here:
If a man says he has a gun, acts like he has a gun, and convinces everyone around him he has a gun, and starts waving it around and behaving recklessly, the police are justified in shooting him (even if it turns out later he just had a black bar of soap). Similarly, according to the Duelfer report, Saddam seems to have intentionally convinced other countries, and his own generals, that he had WMDs. He also convinced much of the U.S. government. If we reacted accordingly and he turns out not to have had WMDs, whose fault is that?
Well put.
I seem to recall a telephone book-sized report from Iraq which said “IT’S JUST A [deleted] BAR OF SOAP! PLEASE DON’T SHOOT [deleted]!” and an open invitation to UN Inspectors to search Saddam’s pockets before we rolled the M-1 Abrams across the border. Other than that, it’s a great point.
[Since my observations are out of touch with reality, and I can't refrain from using profanity, I am adding nothing to the discussion, and consequently will not be making any more comments using this IP address.]
[UPDATE: As should hopefully be obvious, the previous bracketed paragraph was from me and not Alex. -- P]
Comment by Alex — 10/15/2004 @ 5:45 pm
You don’t have much of a memory. Goodbye.
Comment by Patterico — 10/15/2004 @ 8:34 pm
Didn’t Saddam allow his “gun” to be examined to see if it was real or just soap?
We know Iran has WMD in developement, North Korea too. Mickey Mousey metaphor.
Comment by Hugo — 10/16/2004 @ 9:41 pm
The problem is this wasn’t a split-second decision like a cop would have to make. That renders this analogy a bit useless.
Even if Saddam was able to convince others that he had a gun, whether he did indeed have a gun or a bar of soap should have been ascertained to the greatest extent possible before making such a grave decision.
And, when you say that one of the reasons for shooting someone was that he had a gun and an aluminum knife, and it turns out you lied about the aluminum knife part, what happens?
Comment by The Lonewacko Blog — 10/17/2004 @ 2:03 pm
Lightweight Local Blogger offended by Reality, curse words
LA intellectual-featherweight blogger Patterico cribbed Mickey Kaus’s asinine argument that Saddam’s WMD bluff was akin to robber using a fake gun, and somehow absolved George Bush from any blame f…
Trackback by Martini Republic — 10/18/2004 @ 9:52 am
Alex makes an incredible point (http://martinirepublic.com/item/lightweight-local-blogger-offended-by-reality-curse-words).
Shouldn’t we as the world’s greatest super power also be held to a level of responsibility to check this out before putting our soldiers and innocent civilians in harms way? We made our minds up based on the selective information they decided to look at while completely ignoring actual factual information given to the not so secret UN. Sad that you don’t see this and can actually attempt to defend it with this very weak analogy.
Comment by Chad Ryan — 10/18/2004 @ 1:32 pm
Everyone here who thinks Saddam was cooperating should remember that Saddam coddler Hans Blix said he wasn’t. Kinda messes up your argument a little. I’ll agree that Alex’s point is “incredible” — in the sense of lacking credibility.
Btw, I don’t always get offended by profanity. I was annoyed by Alex’s here, because it was so pointless, and came in a comment so off-base. By now I’ve had experience with people who add nothing to the discussion and can spot them more easily. He’s one of them.
Comment by Patterico — 10/18/2004 @ 2:04 pm
Speaking of lacking credibility, he quotes Hans Blix approvingly as saying that the U.S. and Great Britain relied on forged documents concerning Iraq’s attempt to purchase uranium in Niger. In fact, neither country relied on those documents.
Comment by Xrlq — 10/18/2004 @ 2:57 pm
Hey, did Alex get GBFed by the chronic barflunker?
I guess it works just like RogerLSimon’s blog. If you run out of argument or smarts, you just hit the ban button.
Comment by joseph — 10/18/2004 @ 4:25 pm
“Chronic barflunker”? Who is the chronic barflunker, Joseph? What does that mean?
Comment by Patterico — 10/18/2004 @ 4:54 pm
I actually don’t know what Joseph is saying, but it sounds an awfully lot like an attempt to insinuate something that is not true. But we’ll give him a chance to explain what he means. If it’s what I thought — an implied falsehood about me — then he’s gone too. Spirited debate is welcome. Thoughtless, content-free profanity may not be welcome. And lies definitely get you banned.
So, what did you mean, Joseph?
Comment by Patterico — 10/18/2004 @ 5:19 pm