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What happened to Hussein’s bunkers?
Before the war, articles appeared in the media detailing Hussein’s network of deep underground bunkers where he would be invulnerable to U.S. attack. One bunker was said to be immune even to an indirect hit by a nuclear bomb, and could provide Hussein and his family and his lieutenants comfortable living conditions for an entire year. There were diagrams and photos of these extraordinary facilities, as well as copies of the specifications from the French company that had built them. Yet, since last April, I have not seen a single mention of these bunkers in the media. What happened to them? And why has nothing been said about them? How is it that Hussein, instead of being holed up in a multi billion dollar luxury hideaway, was holed up in a hole in the ground? Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 15, 2003 01:20 PM | Send Comments
And the White House, I believe, used them as a one reason to do more research on “bunker-buster” nukes. We desperately need to look into overhauling our intelligence apparatus, as well as to look at how the executive branch is handling the intelligence information it receives from various sources. Part of the answer, I believe, will have to be more openness in handling certain types of information to allow more eyes for analysis. There needs to be an emphasis on keeping only the secrets that are necessary to keep. I don’t think that there are any magic bullet solutions to this, but I believe that there have been avoidable intelligence failures that do not have to be made in the future. Remember all the stories about the enormous bunkers and underground cities in Afghanistan? The runaway enthusiasm of the media for the idea of impregnable fortresses probably resulted from the hope that any exercise of US power in its national interests would prove to be disastrous. Posted by: thucydides on December 15, 2003 6:05 PMInteresting how the Sophist and the Historian give opposite interpretations of the same story. Thrasymachus suggests that the stories of impregnable bunkers were hyped by the administration in order to help promote a new type of weapon. Thucydides says that the stories of impregnable bunkers were hyped by _opponents_ of the administration in order to make any invasion of Iraq seem hopeless. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on December 15, 2003 6:23 PMI am not claiming a case of hype by the administration. Thucydides’ point about the media is spot on. Instead, I am saying that Bush got bad intelligence and made the best decisions that he could from that. Bush would have preferred to have avoided the political battle over new nuke research if he could have, I am sure. But he thought that it was necessary. Posted by: Thrasymachus on December 15, 2003 7:49 PMI think Mr. Auster is misreading Thrasymachus’ claim. T.argues that poor intelligence led the administration to propose bunker-buster weapons that were not, perhaps, needed, and that this is an example of how bad intelligence leads us to misallocate resources. On the other hand, if Mr. Auster is correctly reading T’s claim, than I think it is an odd one. Why would the administration seek to develop unnecessary weapons? Posted by: Agricola on December 15, 2003 7:50 PMThrasy and Agricola are right. Thrasymachus did not indicate administration hyping, and I’m sorry about my misreading. He did say however that the administration “used” the notion of deep bunkers to push for more powerful weapons, which he evidently disapproves of. My point was not the idea of hype, but the fact that Thrasymachus and Thucydides (all these classical pen names!) took opposite spins, anti-administration and pro-administration, on the same story. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on December 15, 2003 7:58 PMTrue enough, Mr. Auster. I suppose that I am disposed to see a failure of will or wisdom on the part of the powerful when events go wrong. My pen name may reflect that sort of thinking. On the other hand there is a Zeitgeist that carries us all along, and recognizing that is related to the more ‘historical’ mode of analysis. Still, Saddam’s capture is great news. The manner of how it unfolded does tell us a lot, I think. Saddam had tried to melt away. With just a few people willing to keep the secret, perhaps he could have lived out the rest of his life like that. It has happened often enough in the past. But Saddam was betrayed. There was no one who would protect him and hide him. This marks him as a true tyrant; in the end he was a man universally hated by all of his people, including those closest to him. I don’t believe that the massive underground bunkers dissappeared at all. WE simply found and serached those we could find. |