Old subject....Saddam and WMD.

[Alex]

My view is that it is much easier now to pick out the contrarian voices that always exist and say "why didn't you listen to Bob?" Hindsight is 20/20 and clarifies a lot, and in any organization large enough you can always find people on any side of an issue.

I do think that there was selection bias in that once it was believed that Saddam Hussein had or was seriously persuing WMD it was more difficult for contrary evidence to be taken seriously. The same selection bias is now taking place in the opposite direction. Now that we know he either didn't have them, wasn't persuing them, or successfully hid them, it is increasingly difficult to give credence to any valid evidence that existed beforehand to the contrary. Obviously report X shouldn't have been given weight since it was wrong.

Personally, I think the war was justified in the face of any doubt about Saddam's nuclear ambitions and is only unjustified if it was known with certainty that Saddam did not have them and would not have them anytime soon.

Selection bias is a powerful force of self-deception, but it isn't often a sign of intentional fraud.