Conjecture 1: Terrorism has lowered the nuclear threshold.

Summary: The nuclear threshold — the point in which we attack (or counter-attack) with nuclear weapons — is crossed when an enemy has both the capability and the intent to use nuclear weapons against us. During the Cold War, the Soviets obviously had the capability to destroy America, but not the intent (in the face of certain retaliation). September 11 has shown that the Islamists have the intent, but they don’t yet have the capability. This has lowered the nuclear threshold, since if the Islamists get their hands on nuclear weapons, they fully intend to use them against us, and we’ll be forced to respond.

Conjecture 2: Obtaining WMDs will destroy Islam

Summary: As long as their capability remained, the Islamists would continue to attack America, even in the face of retaliation. Further, even if we wanted to negotiate a peace or surrender, there is no central Islamic authority we could even talk to. Such a scenario would eventually require us to annihilate the entire Muslim world. Wretchard: “The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure guarantee uncontrollable escalation once the nuclear threshold is crossed.” And even if every non-Muslim were dead, they would then turn on each other with their new-found weaponry.

Conjecture 3: The War on Terror is the ‘Golden Hour’ — the final chance

Summary: The fate of the Muslim world very much depends on destroying the Islamists before they achieve nuclear capability. It is ironic that an American victory in the Global War on Terror is the best hope the Muslim world has.

Then there’s the the Postscript to the Three Conjectures, and the follow-on Fourth Conjecture. And of course there’s Den Beste’s response and disagreement with Conjecture 2. Wretchard then responds to Den Beste.

Yet even stipulating–which I do only for the sake of argument–that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Mr. Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Mr. Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.

How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was “a slam dunk.” This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Mr. Tenet had the backing of all 15 agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with “high confidence” was that “Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.”

The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel and–yes–France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix–who headed the U.N. team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past–lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:

The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km [105 miles] southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.

More…

But the consensus on which Mr. Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Bill Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program.

Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:

Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.

Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:

He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.

Finally, Mr. Clinton’s secretary of defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained “absolutely convinced” of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.

And more…

Even more striking were the sentiments of Bush’s opponents in his two campaigns for the presidency. Thus Al Gore in September 2002:

We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

And here is Mr. Gore again, in that same year:

Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

Now to John Kerry, also speaking in 2002:

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force–if necessary–to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

Perhaps most startling of all, given the rhetoric that they would later employ against Mr. Bush after the invasion of Iraq, are statements made by Sens. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, also in 2002:

Kennedy: “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”

Byrd: “The last U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons.”

Read the whole thing.

The “Bush lied” meme has become quite entrenched in anti-war thinking. However, this article quite convincingly shows that “Bush lied” is itself the great lie.

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Despite the expected anti-Bush spin, this pretty much destroys the “Bush Lied” meme, doesn’t it?

It’s pretty obvious that if Saddam had been left alone, the sanctions and controls imposed on him after the Gulf War would have come to an end. (They were already falling apart by 2003, thanks in no small part to certain European powers.) Once sanctions were gone, he would then have been free to restart his weapons programs — or sell his knowledge to interested third parties, such as Al-Qaida.

(Click for full size.)

The caption reads: “A panoramic aerial view of the city three weeks after the U.S. air raid”

I’m not exactly an expert here, but this appears to be the result of a conventional daylight air raid: the landscape is littered with impact craters of the type left behind by conventional high-explosive bombs dropped by many planes. Also notice the buildings in the lower-left corner appear to be standing. An atomic bomb air burst would have flattened those structures (along with everything else), but not left multiple impact craters.

My conclusion: this area was hit by a force of conventional bombers — not the Enola Gay.

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.