If it's just CYA, why didn't they just fabricate stuff from day one, i.e. plant evidence?Quote from msfe:
PRESIDENT RELEASES NEWLY RECOVERED WARZONE DOCUMENTS OFFERING INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF OF IRAQI ACQUISITION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Statement by the President
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today, I'm taking just a few minutes off from scarfing down pork rinds at my daddy's 79th birthday party to bring glorious news to the American people. After months and months of fruitlessly scouring the charred carcass of Iraq for some shred of evidence to justify my killing more innocent civilians than died on 9/11, I'm pleased to say that documents newly recovered from Saddam bin Hussein's safe prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this nefarious evildoer was actively scheming with rogue regimes to acquire vast quantities of WMDs. And while I have not had an opportunity to examine the papers myself, I have the utmost faith in the competence of those persons in the Central Intelligence Agency to whom I delegated the task of covering my ass. Therefore, I have ordered these documents to be released immediately. I trust that they will appease the crybaby liberal news media, and effectively debunk any absurd speculation about my Administration and the DoD's Constitutionally suspect Intelligence Office having bullied Georgie Peorgie Tenet and his chubby office jockeys into falsifying reports of Iraqi WMDs just so I could settle a family score. Thank you.
EXHIBIT A
EXHIBIT B
http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2003/061303.asp
I don't think they planted evidence to begin with because, given the intelligence they had, they genuinely expected to find huge vaults of the stuff. At this late stage, after having over a year to interview and search, and thousands of our sharpest people scouring the country and finding little/nothing, if anything is produced two things will inevitably happen:
I've thought about that alot and the only thing I can come up with is what I'll call "Sovereign Pride". Given that we had been bombing Iraq for over a decade since the first Gulf War (the so-called No-Fly zones) and seemed perfectly content doing that, and that the U.S. had never preemptively invaded another country, I honestly think that he never really believed -- even to the last second -- that we would actually do it. I suppose in his mind he had given the UN inspectors plenty of access and the fact that they hadn't found anything would keep the UN from ever supporting an invasion (he was right in that regard). But like you said, he ultimately gambled and lost.
Quote from Pabst:
The first time I've agreed with you recently Magna.
However I don't understand why Saddam was so reluctant in giving the U.N. inspectors a more comprehensive tour of WMDless Iraq. You'd think he'd have been "look, look!! No WMD's anywhere!!" Instead he played cat and mouse. He lost a fatal game of chicken.
