Just knocked-out the last of three term papers that were due within a week of each other. Also, I recently started a new job and the holidays happen to be the busy season, so I'm picking up a ton of extra hours. I'd say that over the past two weeks, I've spent 95% of my time either at school, work, the library, or bed.

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Six days until Thanksgiving, and this morning I stepped out of the house wearing blue board shorts, a short-sleeved white tee shirt, and sandals. God, I love Southern California.

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Originally posted on October 7, 2004, this breakdown of the Duelfer Report quickly became the most-viewed post in the history of Pearly Gates, thanks to my first (and only) Instalanche. If memory serves, it also led to one of the longest and most satisfying comment threads, which, sadly, has been lost.

I don't have the time or patience to read the entire 1000+ page Duelfer report, but here are the key points gathered by the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

• Saddam wanted nothing more than to escape sanctions.

  Saddam's primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections - to gain support for lifting sanctions - with his intention to preserve Iraq's intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime, as the starting of any WMD program, conspicuous or otherwise, risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring.

• Indeed, the UN's Oil for Food program gave him his escape route.

  The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad's economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.

  "[A]cquire foreign exchange... to further undermine sanctions..." So you need foreign support to help undermine global security and regional stability in exchange for oil. Who do you turn to? Sounds like a job for the French to me: (via Puppy Blender)

  Saddam Hussein believed he could avoid the Iraq war with a bribery strategy targeting Jacques Chirac, the President of France, according to devastating documents released last night.
  
  Memos from Iraqi intelligence officials, recovered by American and British inspectors, show the dictator was told as early as May 2002 that France - having been granted oil contracts - would veto any American plans for war.
  
  [snip]
  
  Saddam was convinced that the UN sanctions - which stopped him acquiring weapons - were on the brink of collapse and he bankrolled several foreign activists who were campaigning for their abolition. He personally approved every one.
  
  To keep America at bay, he focusing on Russia, France and China - three of the five UN Security Council members with the power to veto war. Politicians, journalists and diplomats were all given lavish gifts and oil-for-food vouchers.
  
  Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told the ISG that the "primary motive for French co-operation" was to secure lucrative oil deals when UN sanctions were lifted. Total, the French oil giant, had been promised exploration rights.
  
  Iraqi intelligence officials then "targeted a number of French individuals that Iraq thought had a close relationship to French President Chirac," it said, including two of his "counsellors" and spokesman for his re-election campaign.
  
  They even assessed the chances for "supporting one of the candidates in an upcoming French presidential election." Chirac is not mentioned by name.

  Are you listening Mr. Kerry? This is the real world. These are our "allies".
  
  
• While his WMD programs had been dismantled after the first Gulf War and had not been reconstituted, Saddam intended to produce WMD when sanctions (which were rapidly deteriorating) disappeared.

  Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability - which was essentially destroyed in 1991 - after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability - in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks - but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.
  
  [snip]
  
  Iraq Survey Group (ISG) judges that events in the 1980s and early 1990s shaped Saddam's belief in the value of WMD. In Saddam's view, WMD helped to save the Regime multiple times. He believed that during the Iran-Iraq war chemical weapons had halted Iranian ground offensives and that ballistic missile attacks on Tehran had broken its political will. Similarly, during Desert Storm, Saddam believed WMD had deterred Coalition Forces from pressing their attack beyond the goal of freeing Kuwait. WMD had even played a role in crushing the Shi'a revolt in the south following the 1991 cease-fire.

• Saddam continued to actively seek and preserve the intellectual ability to produce nuclear weapons.

  Starting around 1992, in a bid to retain the intellectual core of the former weapons program, Baghdad transferred many nuclear scientists to related jobs in the Military Industrial Commission (MIC). The work undertaken by these scientists at the MIC helped them maintain their weapons knowledge base. As with other WMD areas, Saddam's ambitions in the nuclear area were secondary to his prime objective of ending UN sanctions.
  
  [snip]
  
  Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years. Nevertheless, after 1991, Saddam did express his intent to retain the intellectual capital developed during the Iraqi Nuclear Program. Senior Iraqis - several of them from the Regime's inner circle - told ISG they assumed Saddam would restart a nuclear program once UN sanctions ended.
  
  [snip]
  
  Initially, Saddam chose to conceal his nuclear program in its entirety, as he did with Iraq's BW (biological warfare) program. Aggressive UN inspections after Desert Storm forced Saddam to admit the existence of the program and destroy or surrender components of the program. In the wake of Desert Storm, Iraq took steps to conceal key elements of its program and to preserve what it could of the professional capabilities of its nuclear scientific community.
  
  [snip]
  
  Baghdad undertook a variety of measures to conceal key elements of its nuclear program from successive UN inspectors, including specific direction by Saddam Husayn to hide and preserve documentation associated with Iraq's nuclear program.

• Saddam continued to actively seek an preserve both the intellectual and material ability to produce chemical weapons, which he intended to do once sanctions were lifted.

  Saddam and many Iraqis regarded CW as a proven weapon against an enemy's superior numerical strength, a weapon that had saved the nation at least once already - during the Iran-Iraq war - and contributed to deterring the Coalition in 1991 from advancing to Baghdad.
  
  [snip]
  
  Iraq's acceptance of the Oil-for-Food (OFF) program was the foundation of Iraq's economic recovery and sparked a flow of illicitly diverted funds that could be applied to projects for Iraq's chemical industry. The way Iraq organized its chemical industry after the mid-1990s allowed it to conserve the knowledge-base needed to restart a CW program, conduct a modest amount of dual-use research, and partially recover from the decline of its production capability caused by the effects of the Gulf war and UN-sponsored destruction and sanctions. Iraq implemented a rigorous and formalized system of nationwide research and production of chemicals, but ISG will not be able to resolve whether Iraq intended the system to underpin any CW related efforts.
  
  [snip]
  
  The Regime employed a cadre of trained and experienced researchers, production managers, and weaponization experts from the former CW program.
  
  [snip]
  
  ISG did not discover chemical process or production units configured to produce key precursors or CW agents. However, site visits and debriefs revealed that Iraq maintained its ability for reconfiguring and "making-do" with available equipment as substitutes for sanctioned items.
  
  [snip]
  
  ISG judges, based on available chemicals, infrastructure, and scientist debriefings, that Iraq at OIF probably had a capability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard within three to six months.
  
  [snip]
  
  A former nerve agent expert indicated that Iraq retained the capability to produce nerve agent in significant quantities within two years, given the import of required phosphorous precursors.
  
  [snip]
  
  Uday - head of the Fedayeen Saddam - attempted to obtain chemical weapons for use during OIF, according to reporting, but ISG found no evidence that Iraq ever came into possession of any CW weapons. ISG uncovered information that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons, primarily for intelligence operations. The network of laboratories could have provided an ideal, compartmented platform from which to continue CW agent R&D or small-scale production efforts, but we have no indications this was planned.
  
  [snip]
  
  The existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories were never declared to the UN.

Does this sound eerily similar to the scenario put forward by John McCain in his RNC speech to anyone else?

Say what you want about the original justification for war- this report shows that Saddam was a grave and gathering danger who fully intended to create, and had no qualms about using, WMD. It fully justifies the war in my mind, even if you exclude Saddam's well-documented links to terror. Too bad the American media has shown no intention of covering this outside of the "no WMD stockpiles" angle. (What bias in media?)

Oh, and thank you to our French and Russian allies, who did everything they could to further his ambitions. If there were justice in this world Paris would be next on the United States' shit-list.

UPDATE: Some will still question whether the ability and intention of Saddam to create WMD necessarily made him an eminent threat. Consider the following:

• Saddam could have produced mustard gas within six months of sanctions being lifted.
  
  
• He would have produced deadly nerve agent within two years of sanctions being lifted.
  
  
• Much of Saddam's biological warfare infrastructure was still in place at the time of the US-led invasion, which could have been up and running "within a few weeks to a few months of a decision to so".

  Iraq would have faced great diffi culty in re-establishing an effective BW agent production capability. Nevertheless, after 1996 Iraq still had a significant dual-use capability, some declared readily useful for BW if the Regime chose to use it to pursue a BW program. Moreover, Iraq still possessed its most important BW asset, the scientific know-how of its BW cadre.
  
  [snip]
  
  In spite of the difficulties noted above, a BW capability is technically the easiest WMD to attain. Although equipment and facilities were destroyed under UN supervision in 1996, Iraq retained technical BW knowhow through the scientists that were involved in the former program. ISG has also identified civilian facilities and equipment in Iraq that have dual-use application that could be used for the production of agent.

• Those facts, coupled with his continuing quest to acquire the ability to produce nuclear weapons, show that Saddam had the ability to create WMD within months of sanctions being lifted. Not only did he have the ability to create those weapons, he had the express intention of creating them according to interviews conducted by the Iraq Survey Group. And as we all know, he had no apprehension about using such weapons, as he had proven several times in the past.
  
  The ability to create, the intention to create, and the will to use.
  
  
• So all that was missing was a delivery system. Or not:

  While other WMD programs were strictly prohibited, the UN permitted Iraq to develop and possess delivery systems provided their range did not exceed 150 km. This freedom allowed Iraq to keep its scientists and technicians employed and to keep its infrastructure and manufacturing base largely intact by pursuing programs nominally in compliance with the UN limitations. This positioned Iraq for a potential breakout capability.
  
  [snip]
  
  By 1991, Iraq had successfully demonstrated its ability to modify some of its delivery systems to increase their range and to develop WMD dissemination option...
  
  [snip]
  
  Iraq's decisions in 1996 to accept the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) and later in 1998 to cease cooperation with UNSCOM and IAEA spurred a period of increased activity in delivery systems development. The pace of ongoing missile programs accelerated, and the Regime authorized its scientists to design missiles with ranges in excess of 150 km that, if developed, would have been clear violations of UNSCR 687.
  
  [snip]
  
  ISG uncovered Iraqi plans or designs for three long-range ballistic missiles with ranges from 400 to 1,000 km and for a 1,000-km-range cruise missile, although none of these systems progressed to production and only one reportedly passed the design phase. ISG assesses that these plans demonstrate Saddam's continuing desire - up to the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) - for a long-range delivery capability.
  
  [snip]
  
  Given Iraq's investments in technology and infrastructure improvements, an effective procurement network, skilled scientists, and designs already on the books for longer range missiles, ISG assesses that Saddam clearly intended to reconstitute long-range delivery systems and that the systems potentially were for WMD.

So now Saddam has a clear ability to produce not only the weapons, but delivery systems capable of hitting Israel and US interests in the region as well. That's not even to mention the possibility of Saddam passing WMD to one of the several terrorist organizations to which he was linked- perhaps the most devastating delivery system of all, and the one most likely to be used against US interests.

Perhaps some would be comfortable with that knowledge. I am not one of them.

UPDATE: Instalanche. Sweeeeet.

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Oh, the humanity!

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Walking political almanac Michael Barone discusses the outcome of yesterday's elections with Bush fetishist Hugh Hewitt:

HH: I think when you look at turnout out here, though, Michael, you'll see, for example, in Orange County, it's below 40%. It's like 38%. So Arnold failed to get anything going in his traditional conservative base, and my question is, can you possibly win in California without motivating the conservatives?

MB: No. I think you have to motivate your base. Obviously in California, you've got to win more than your base, these days, in order to win, if you're on a Republican side. You've got to motivate the base. I think the turnout, as I've looked at it, is bad for both...the bad news again for both parties in California. We didn't see a surge of turnout as compared to the October, '03 recall election. Turnout was down 26%. It was down in Southern California, outside L.A. County, by 26%, and in the San Francisco Bay area by 27%. So in other words, the hard left did not get out a big vote in the Bay area. The hard right did not get out a big vote in Orange County. Both sides failed to produce the kind of votes they wanted form their reservoir of voters who came out in great numbers in 2004.

HH: Thirty seconds, Michael Barone. Any message here for 2006, that favors one party over the other?

MB: I think the message is that we have not seen, despite Bush's low job ratings, a major shift in the close balance between the two parties. Having said that, a minor shift in that balance can have important political consequences, either helping or hurting Republicans.

Interesting stuff. Barone promises more on California happenings on his blog in the coming the days. Perhaps he will discuss why conservatives in the Central Valley seemingly abandoned the Governor.

I can't get my head around why heavily Republican Kern County, with a solid turn-out (41%), would support 'parental notification' by a huge margin (64.6% 'yes' - the third highest in the state), yet emphatically reject half the Governors' agenda, and give only luke-warm support for the other half. It's a puzzling pattern that would repeat itself throughout the Valley (Kings, Tulare, Fresno...) and one that pokes holes in the "suppressed turnout" theory that most (including myself) have talked-up today, I would think.

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Orange County: afloat on a sea of idiots.


That would be the map for Prop. 76 (budget reform), which, as expected, has been easily defeated.

A single reform initiative is still breathing - Prop. 75 (union dues), which is just barely passing at 50.3% 'yes'. But that's with only 8.4% of Los Angeles reporting. Orange and San Bernardino are still relatively early in their counts, but I doubt they'll make up the difference (especially not with the Bay-Area counties of Contra Costa and Alameda still counting).

On the bright side, California voters surprised me by emphatically rejecting the return of full energy industry regulation, and putting aside their communist sympathies for one night in deciding to not outlaw profit motive.

But none of that changes the fact that with each passing election, Nevada and Arizona keep looking like nicer places to live.

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With a measly 2.8 reporting:

    YES    NO
73  52.8  47.2
74  53.8  46.2
75  58.5  41.5
76  46.3  53.7
77  48.7  51.3
78  43.5  56.5
79  38.9  61.1
80  36.5  63.5

Once again, I would assume these are mostly absentee voters.

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The first returns (absentee, I would assume) show Measure D failing by a 26.2% to 73.8% count. All the Prop. 170 172 reallocation measures are failing by impressive totals.

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Tim Cavanaugh points to something that I should have seen last week - the Californian Libertarian Party's official position on the special election propositions.

I'm a little surprised to learn that I voted on a party line (though the LPoC sidesteps 73 - not surprising, considering the problem it posed for the growing number of Pro-Life Libertarians such as myself).

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Unfortunately, the latest polls don't look good for the Governor's agenda. Of course, the polls have been inconsistent at best, and could very well be wrong. But even the best-case scenario at this point is two of the four passing, which, with the help the media feeding low expectations, could be spun into something of a victory. Or at least not too crippling a defeat.

For my part, I think we get there, with 75 and 77 sneaking through, 76 going down in flames, and 74 failing by high-single digits. Sure, 75 and 77 are the two "less important" initiatives, but they are also the two that will have the most positive effect for Republicans in future elections. So maybe the state goes to hell for the next five years under Warren Beatty. But some of us refuse to quit, and we'll get this state sorted out at some point, having laid the foundation in this election.

Predictions:

PROP   YES  NO
73     45   55
74     46   54
75     53   47
76     33   67
77     56   44
78     63   37
79     48   52
80     38   62

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Statewide results can be found here, starting at 8:00.

OC-specific results will be here, with a new, uber-nifty ballot tracking system here.

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And for those of you interested, once in the booth I revised my position on 78, voting no.

As for the turnout, I took it as a bad sign that one of the poll workers recognized my last name from a family member who had voted four hours previously. Though I suppose it is a fairly distinctive name.

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I've never considered Jim Gilchrist a serious politician, but holy shit, this guy wants to be a US Congressman?

"I was elated that people were going standing up against the World Trade Organization, and I don't know that much about it except it's part of that big monster that wants to dominate the world and it goes back to that movie Rollerball made in 1974 where become nations of economies rather than sovereignties. The nation of IBM, the nation of Exxon Mobile, the nation of Wal-Mart...uhh there are no borders anymore, we are all slaves to these gigantic global enterprises and it's disgusting."

The entire Gilchrist campaign has been a train wreck, especially post-primary. It's been really fun to watch.

OCBlog, of course, has more...

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Here's a javascript that makes the table layout for any webpage visable (drag this link to your toolbar, so you always have it). It's a neat little toy that I've been using for a couple years now. I find it can be invaluable when I'm looking for fresh ideas and tricks in web design, or when I find a site I really like.

Note that I didn't create this. I just found it, and I can't remember where, as it was so long ago.

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