[jandrewrogers]

Hybrid warfare, along with gray zone, has been escalating sharply in recent years. It is a major topic of discussion in international national security circles. There is a general sense that the absence of material consequences for engaging in this activity has encouraged it.

[tw1231273]

Security circles are not known for honesty, see e.g. the Iraq "WMD".

[Paradigma11]

Security circles were very critical of the WMD story. It was the administration that steamrolled over their objections.

[glenstein]

A great and underappreciated point. I think at the time the important thing to understand was the inaccuracy of the story itself, on its face value and how it steamrolled over objections from the national security state at least at it had existed before the Bush admin.

I think retrospectively however, the important thing to understand is how that example is cynically leveraged in the present environment of misinformation. And how it emerged in the first place, as part of an administration attempting to steamroll over existing institutional guard rails intended to keep us in touch with reality.

[oneshtein]

Iraq had WMD. :-/

[card_zero]

I looked this up recently (because I remembered a news report from after the war which casually mentioned "and some stockpiled chemical weapons were found and destroyed", but nobody seemed to pick up on that). They had leftover chemical WMDs that were in the process of being destroyed, since before the war, but were actually still in stockpiles because destroying chemical weapons is hard and they didn't wanna.

[oneshtein]

Former Iraq general Georges Sada said in his book "Saddam's Secrets." that chemical WMD transferred to Syria few months prior to invasion.

Quote:

> Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence observed large truck convoys leaving Iraq and entering Syria in the weeks and months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, told a private conference of former weapons inspectors and intelligence experts held in Arlington, Va., in 2006.

> According to Shaw, ex-Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, went to Iraq in December 2002 and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

> Anticipating the invasion, his job was to supervise the removal of such weapons and erase as much evidence of Russian involvement as possible.

> The Russian-assisted "cleanup" operation was entrusted to a combination of GRU and Spetsnaz troops and Russian military and civilian personnel in Iraq "under the command of two experienced ex-Soviet generals, Colonel-General Vladislav Achalov and Colonel-General Igor Maltsev, both retired and posing as civilian commercial consultants."

[glenstein]

Shaw’s claims were never corroborated by primary intelligence agencies, and Primakov’s involvement remains speculative. And perhaps more tellingly, the U.S. intelligence apparatus couldn't verify these claimes despite having every incentive to do so. If such an elaborate Russian operation occurred, why did it leave behind no satellite imagery, no intercepted communications, no credible human intelligence? Nothing.

The "moved to Syria" argument is essentially the Loch Ness Monster of the WMD debate, which is to say it's constantly discussed but never conclusively proven. And given the catastrophic consequences of the war, clinging to this narrative feels less like a genuine search for truth and more like a desperate attempt to avoid accountability.

[card_zero]

Oh OK, potentially having gas shells stored outside of Iraq, sounds plausible.