Dr. Gwynne Dyer

I was googling around this morning, looking for interviews with Dr. Gwynne Dyer. He said, before the Iraq invasion, that there were no WMD. He said that the world intelligence community were silent because nobody wanted to call the president of the United States a liar.

At the time, he was promoting his book Ignorant Armies: Sliding into War in Iraq. I have yet to read the book, having little time and less money these days (maybe I'll drop by Chapters later and see if they have a copy), but Dyer's comments and the reviews the book has received speak volumes.

I've written about Dyer before. He's no peacenik. His position is not that of an automatic gainsayer of US foreign policy. Instead, he is an altogether more valuable sort: a frank commentator on things relating to war, something he is qualified to speak on.

I was looking because both David Kay and Kenneth Pollack maintained in recent days that 'almost everyone' (both used the same term) that Iraq had WMD. And yet I distinctly remember Dyer saying before the war (and he is a man whose opinion on these matters I value) that 'almost everyone' agreed that the Iraq was not an imminent threat.

Is not the fact that Russia, Germany, France, and Canada (particularly Canada) were unconvinced an indicator of something?

I am unsure how to resolve this contradiction.