Let's start off with the obligatory proviso, when discussing Saddam's weapons programs, that even if Saddam had maintained WMD stocks, facilities, and programs up until the Spring of 2003--which the Bush Administration knew full well, before the invasion, was not the case--it would not have justified the Administration's brutally barbaric attack upon the country's population and infrastructure (including with its own banned weapons--Depleted Uranium, Cluster Bombs, and Napalm).

That out of the way, we can get down to cases.

About a year ago, we were afforded a hearty chortle when, in an attempt at explaining away the dearth of WMD in Iraq, we were told that Saddam had "put in place a double-deception program aimed at convincing the world and his own people that he was more of a threat than he actually was."

The point of the "double-deception," we were told, was to deter an attack from the United States. The "bluff" was so elaborate, we were told, that Saddam had even issued "pre-war...communications collected by US intelligence agencies indicating that Iraqi commanders...were given the authority to launch weapons of mass destruction against US troops as they advanced north from Kuwait."

Saddam, we were told, "may have misled the world", and "is thought to have...made ambiguous statements about his WMD program as an elaborate bluff that backfired." [Emphases added.] No examples of these misleading and/or ambiguous statements were offered.

Fast-forward to last week, and the release of the final status report acknowledging once and for all what Iraqi defectors and UN Inspectors had been telling us for some years: Saddam abandoned his WMD programs in the early '90s.

But, what about Colin Powell's fabulous presentation? What about the absolute certainty--not only of the weapons' existence, but of their quantities and locations--of the Bush Administration? Never mind that.

As he was a year ago, sneaky Saddam is to blame--for pulling the wool over the world's eyes, "deceiving" us into "believing" that he was sitting on his massive pile of WMD. But now we are told that his deceptions weren't in attempt to deter a US invasion, but rather to deter an Iranian invasion. (Either way, notice how we're now told that his supposed weapons would have only been used for deterrence?) And instead of intercepted communications, we now have knowledge of Saddam's "deceptions" thanks to interrogations of Saddam and his top commanders.

While "the report does not state explicitly whether Saddam himself has acknowledged that he engaged in a deception operation about these weapons before the war," we are now told (by the New York Times and Los Angeles Times respectively) that Saddam "hid behind ambiguities and evasions about whether Iraq possessed unconventional weapons," and that, "Although Saddam often denied US assertions that he possessed WMD in defiance of UN resolutions, for years he also persisted in making cryptic public statements to perpetuate the myth that he possessed the banned weapons."

Alas, just like last year, no examples are given. So here's a request to everybody out there in readerland: If you know of any examples of Saddam's "double-deceptions" and "bluffing" (including especially any cited in the 918 page Duelfer report), could you pretty please with sugar on top pass them along to ETS! headquarters? Would also like to see some evidence--or even any speculation, prior to last week--that Saddam was in any way worried about an Iranian invasion.

This smells as ratty now as it did last year.

Speaking of stinking, the LA Times asks, unironically: "If Saddam understood he had no stockpiles of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons; why did he limit the activities of the United Nations inside Iraq, violate UN Security Council resolutions, and defy the outside world?" Surely the LA Times (as well as its mainstream media kinfolk) are by now well aware that, as Glen Rangwala put it in 2002:

In its October 1997 report, UNSCOM stated that "the majority of [weapons] inspections were conducted in Iraq without let or hindrance." (Annex I, para. 33.) Even up to its final inspection report on 15 December 1998, UNSCOM was recording how "the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's cooperation." Noncooperation was recorded in only five out of 427 inspections before inspectors were withdrawn on the request of the US; those five instances resulted in minor delays, not inspection refusals.

So enough of the "Saddam wouldn't let us in" crap, okay? And, you know, given that it's now been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that Saddam's WMD were destroyed shortly after the first Gulf War, enough of the "he repeatedly violated Security Council Resolutions ordering him to disarm" crap, too. Okay?

Similarly, we are solemnly told that:

On the one hand, Duelfer says, Saddam recognized the need to disarm to achieve relief from UN sanctions. On the other, he felt the need to retain such weapons as a deterrent.

"The regime never resolved the contradiction inherent in this approach," Duelfer says.

Uh, he "never resolved" the "contradiction"? How about, he abandoned his WMD programs in the early '90s, and never attempted to restart them--even though "relief from UN sanctions" was not forthcoming? Even after the United States was caught using UNSCOM to help spy on the regime. Even after the Americans ordered inspectors withdrawn and started bombing. Looks pretty "resolute" from this angle.

Moving on to His Highness. Dubya's reaction to the report is as follows:

The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the UN oil for food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions. He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.

Is this the best you can do, George? We're supposed to believe that, even if the sanctions (which would have been lifted in 1998 had the Clinton Administration not chosen to play political games with Iraqis' lives) had collapsed as the French and the Russians salivated over securing business in Iraq's oil sector, the world would have "looked away"? That the United States would not have maintained its illegal, unilateral "no-fly zones" and several-times-weekly bombing runs? That periodic inspections--and the spectre of renewed sanctions--could not have been continued indefinitely? (Not saying that the shrill attention paid to Saddam's supposed WMD arsenal while ignoring all others' wasn't supremely hypocritical. Just that Saddam's "systematic gaming" of "the system" could easily have been subverted, even had sanctions been lifted.)

Saddam has plenty of crimes to be held answerable for. But these do not include maintaining his WMD programs after the first Gulf War; nor, finally, restricting access in violation of Security Council Resolutions; nor making attempts at various sorts of "deceptions," "double-deceptions," and "bluffs."

UN inspectors, Iraqi defectors, and Saddam himself told us many times over that the weapons were long gone. The deceivers are those who, armed with this knowledge, chose to lie about it.

These deceivers have plenty of crimes to answer for as well, and it's long past time the mainstream media began making this case.

What you can do: Find examples of Saddam's "ambiguous" and "cryptic" statements regarding his WMD programmes! If none can be found, e-mail the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, demanding that they either provide examples of such statements from their archives, or issue retractions of their ass-kissing regurgitations of State Propaganda.

Citations available at http://feedthefish.org/blog/archives/000435.html.