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JGWeissman comments on Vote Qualifications, Not Issues - Less Wrong
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You seem to be working under the assumption that contentious policy issues represent questions of fact, that smarter, more rational people are likely to get right. What if they represent questions of value?
I assume you meant:
Yes, edited.
If a policy question is a question of fact, it never becomes a talking point; it's just silently resolved and forgotten. I think questions of this sort greatly outnumber the controversial ones that dominate the discourse.
So, if I understand you, questions like abortion, drug laws, and gay marriage are controversial questions of values and dominate political debate, but are really unimportant. But issues like gun control are questions of fact. So, we should choose politicians who pledge to listen to the experts on this kind of question?
I can understand the desire for an appeal to technocracy on technical questions, but I recall the last time I decided to simply trust the people with the best information rather than trusting my own instincts. It was on the existence of a WMD threat in Iraq.
To be honest, I have to consider myself better as a judge of technical issues like AGW, taxation, and military spending than as a judge of the intelligence, integrity, and rationality of politicians.
There were WMD in Iraq; we've found them. It's just that it was never really reported on due to the overall left-wing bias in the entertainment and media industries, and due to the fact that the vast majority of them were sent to Syria to be hidden before the war started, and therefore there was a fairly long period where we couldn't find any.
Assertions like this need hyperlinks.
It's old news; from Google I find the following on the first page for "Saddam syria wmd": http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=25309 http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/2/18/233023.shtml http://www.nysun.com/foreign/saddams-wmd-moved-to-syria-an-israeli-says/24480/ http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/05/obama-dni-choice-believes-syrians-have-saddams-wmd/ Et cetera. There was apparently a report saying that they weren't (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501554.html), but there's still obviously a good chunk of high-up people who disagree.
As for us finding WMD, we found about 500 in the three years between the invasion in 2003 and this statement in 2006: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=15918
The existence of articles on Google which contain the keywords "Saddam syria wmd" isn't enough to establish that Saddam gave all his WMD to Syria.
The articles you Googled are from WorldNetDaily (a news source with a "US conservative perspective"), a New York tabloid, a news aggregator, and a right wing blog. Of course, it would be wrong to dismiss them based on my assumptions about the possible bias of the sources, but on reading them they don't provide much evidence for what you are asserting.
The first three state that various people (a Syrian defector, some US military officials and an Israeli general) claim that it happened (based on ambiguous evidence including sightings of convoys going into Syria). It's not hard to see that a defector and a general from a country that was about to attack the Syrian nuclear programme might have been strongly motivated to make Syria look bad.
The Hot Air article (the only one published after 2006) quotes a Washington Times reporter quoting a 2004 Washington Times interview with a general saying that Iraq dispersed "documentation and materials". It then concludes this must refer to WMD, although it could refer to research programmes rather than viable weapons.
You then link to a report that actual WMD investigators hadn't found any evidence that it happened, but say that "obviously a good chunk of high-up people ... disagree". I don't think you've provided evidence that it's a "good chunk" of people, and even if it did, their disagreement might be feigned or mistaken. Even the high-up people who authorised the war and were embarrassed by the lack of WMD haven't cited the Syria explanation.
The last link says that US found 500 degraded chemical artillery shells from the 1980s which were too corroded to be used but might still have some toxicity. They don't sound like something that could actually be used to cause mass destruction.
So, even based on the evidence you present, it's not a very convincing case. That's without bringing any consideration of whether the rest of the known facts are consistent with the assertions. Why would Saddam Hussein, a megalomaniacal dictator, be more concerned about hiding his WMD than his own personal survival? Why would he plan to hide the WMD rather than using them to fight a superior army? Presumably to embarrass the US from beyond the grave? There is also primary evidence that Saddam announced to his generals early in the war that he didn't have any WMD, although most of them assumed he did and were amazed (see the book Cobra II http://www.amazon.com/Cobra-II-Inside-Invasion-Occupation/dp/0375422625 ). And why didn't the Syrians provide WMD back to the insurgents (many of whom were initially Ba'athists from the old regime) once the occupation phase began?
I'm not writing this with much hope of changing your mind - I just don't want anyone else to have to waste time assessing the quality of the evidence you present. I also think it's ironic that you have written the above comment on a rationality site.
"The last link says that US found 500 degraded chemical artillery shells from the 1980s which were too corroded to be used but might still have some toxicity. They don't sound like something that could actually be used to cause mass destruction."
So just because it doesn't seem to cause mass destruction according to you, it therefore ISN'T a WMD?
WMDs has nothing to do with mass destruction. According to the US government and international law, WMD (mosly) means: "nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons." That's it. This weapon is classified as a chemical weapon under the Chemical Weapons Convention, so by that definition, Saddam had WMDs.
Source: http://www.nti.org/f_wmd411/f1a1.html
EDIT: Though for the most part, I was called to attention that "WMDs" may have no definiton at all, and instead people use the words NCB instead, for clarification . Also, the source points out that there are new types of WMDs such as conventional weapons and radiological weapons.
Which really has absolutely nothing to do with my original implicit complaint, which was that my national leaders misled me.
They didn't say "We need to invade Iraq because the Iraqis have not properly decommissioned tactical chemical weapons left over from the War with Iran. It is our duty to the environmental safety of the Iraqi public to go in there and make sure that those corroding artillery shells are safely destroyed."
I thought it was that they didn't have better information than you after all.
In which case I was going to ask whether you really thought your own instincts could do systematically better on such questions than intelligence agencies.
But now it appears you believe they did have better information, but were dishonest in their reporting. If I may ask, how carefully have you considered the hypothesis that they were honestly mistaken, and that your instincts just happened to be correct in this case, more or less by accident? (Many people were skeptical simply because they didn't like the party in power at the time, which seems dubious as a general recipe for accurately judging, well, anything, but especially questions of foreign intelligence.)
Before I reply, let's just look at the phrase "WMDs has nothing to do with mass destruction" and think for a while. Maybe we should taboo the phrase "WMD".
Was it supposed to be bad for Saddam to have certain objects merely because they were regulated under the Chemical Weapons Convention, or because of their actual potential for harm?
The justification for the war was that Iraq could give dangerous things to terrorists. Or possibly fire them into Israel. It was the actual potential for harm that was the problem.
Rusty shells with traces of sarin degradation products on them might legally be regulated as chemical weapons, but if they have no practical potential to be used to cause harm, they are hardly relevant to the discussion. Especially because they were left over from the 80s, when it is already well known that Iraq had chemical weapons.
Saddam: Hi Osama, in order that you might meet our common objectives, I'm gifting you with several tonnes of scrap metal I dug up. It might have some sarin or related breakdown products, in unknown amounts. All you have to do is smuggle it into the US, find a way to extract the toxic stuff, and disperse it evenly into the subway! Just like the Aum Shin Ryku attack. Except, this time, maybe you will be able to disperse it effectively enough that some people actually die.
Osama: WTF dude?
I know this discussion is off-topic, but I hope people won't mark it down too much, as it is a salutary example of the massively degrading effect of political topics on quality of discussion.
I don't think that's enough for clear communication on this issue. People have different views about which kinds of weapons are bad, and for what reason, and what the implications of this badness are.
So, the most constructive thing to do at this point would be for each participant to spell out exactly which weapon production methods (be specific!) you would classify as a "WMD". Explain its functionality, the difficult parts in making them, and how a terrorist or government would go abount procuring those parts.
Once you've explained exactly how these so-called "WMDs" are produced can we come to any agreement about who's correct regarding Saddam Hussein and the Iraq War.
I do not believe you.
Is that true? I've seen plenty of vicious political battles (with policy implications) fought over questions of fact (even easy questions), and plenty of incorrect "facts" linger as talking points long after the right answer has become evident.