Would that be Bush’s biggest PR victory yet? Would that be reason enough to expect Sean Penn to shut up and go back to acting?
In addition to embarassing Sean Penn, such a development would embarass certain anti-war Democrats and the leaders of France and Germany.
Unfortunately, the posited scenario will probably not be so joyous for anyone; if Saddam does indeed have WMD, then it will most likely be used in the event of an assault on Baghdad. Either on us, or in any last ditch attack on Israel to widen the scope of the action. The possibility of his having any remaining WMD whatsoever should be a deterrence to our just marching in there; what is the most likely scenario - he tells his personnel, hell, the gig’s up, just leave it – or he comes out and says use everything we have to repel the infidel? Considering our record for finding his launchers last time, there is an extremely high chance both that missiles will be launched, and they will get somewhat close to their target; unfortunately, if they are now carrying chemical or biological payloads, the damage could be horrendous. Why are we willing to take that chance?
I personally think embarassment would be much preferred, but am afraid it won’t make it to that point.
greco please correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you say in this thread that Condoleeza Rice was overexaggerating and “constructing paranoia” by suggesting that Saddam could fill a larger missile than the 12 found by UN inspectors last week with some chemical agent and kill millions of people? But in this thread, you use almost the same exact argument to make your point against invading Iraq to remove Saddam. You said above that there is an extremely high chance that Saddam would use these weapons as retaliation and that the damage would be horrendous, so… “why are we willing to take a chance?” But according to your other post, saying that Saddam might use some chemical WMD in some larger missile to kill millions is just “the same old party line, with some misleading facts thrown in to scare the average Joe.” Have you been fooled by these “misleading facts” from the GOP and forgot?
But I guess there is a chance that I could have misunderstood your two posts.
Oops wrong link…it was THIS THREAD.
Hola!
What is a WMD?
SENOR
…to put word’s in Greco’s mouth, he’s responding to the posted scenerio, which assumes that WMD have been found…
Weapon of Mass Destruction, senor.
It would be a colossal embarassment all around, and the Democrats in particular would suffer, which would actually be a bad thing since then there wouldn’t be any balance whatsoever on Bush.
come on!..you’re forgetting about all those thousands of anti-war demonstrators from last Saturday. They’ll still oppose Bush! 
Actually, I think his biggest PR victory would be if Saddam gave up the goods and/or stepped down without a war commencing. Disarm the bastard without firing a shot. That would be something.
Thanks Banquet Bear, for the clarification: in the current thread, I am indeed responding to the OP. In the indicated thread, my point was that Ms. Rice had used what was found (the 12 empty warheads) to create a sense of impending doom (the death of “up to 1 million” people) based on pure supposition and non-existent evidence.
And thanks, Jeel for keeping me honest…
As far as the whole embarassment thing goes (since I came in, might as well take off the shoes and stay a bit…): there aren’t that many out there that say categorically that Iraq has no WMD, period, on either side of the argument. There are many that say that the administration is overstating the threat of WMD for its own purposes of justifying a war. The really significant event would be for us to run into WMD in the course of a military campaign; if it is last-ditch missiles loaded with Sarin or VX aiming for Israel, the consequences could be pretty horrendous. A barrage of rockets containing similar agents against a force of combatants on the ground would be serious, but obviously military personnel are much better prepared than citizens with gas masks. Either way, I think embarassment would still be the least of our worries…
No, I’m not forgetting them. They would end up looking like a bunch of flaming partisan jackasses, discredited and humbled.
Now THAT I would like to see. 
I don’t think there’s anything that could shut up Sean Penn and Co. The Hollywood liberals would either claim that the weapons were planted there by US troops/UN inspectors/the boogeyman, or state that weapons or not, it wasn’t justification for invading a sovereign nation that wasn’t a threat to anyone, because really, Saddam is just a big ol’ cuddly teddy bear who wouldn’t hurt anyone. And still, we mustn’t forget that the real threat in this world is Bushitler, who was selected not elected, and wants to expand his imperalist/racist/homophobic/whatever vision throughout the world. And please go see my upcoming movie!
Jeff
A lot depends on whether the WMD that are found are nukes, half a ton of weaponized anthrax, rockets that have a range that’s a few miles over the legal limit, empty shell casings, or old leaky barrels of mustard gas discovered buried in muck at the bottom of a godforsaken bombed out wadi near a military installation that hasn’t seen use since the Iran/Iraq war.
Bush has claimed Iraq poses a current and direct threat to the US. That’s the standard any WMD discoveries must be judged by.
If anyone is being partisan and, well, petty, I don’t think it’s the protestors; certainly not any more than what is being displayed here. I mean, come on, if indeed WMD are found, and it requires a war to get them, what happens? The death of Iraqis, military and civilian, and the death of US soldiers and airmen will be required to bring this all about; and you guys are sitting here gloating about the possibility of partisan embarassment?
From what I remember, the protesters are protesting the war (hence the term “anti-war protesters”); it isn’t whether Saddam has WMD or not. Christ, NK has WMD most likely, as does Pakistan, India, Israel, and, after the Soviet collapse, who knows who else? Whether Saddam has WMD is not really the point: the most effective way of dealing with Saddam is the point, and the administration has pretty much eschewed all other routes but war.
Embarassment? Hell, you don’t have to look very far for that here, obviously…
Assuming the only WMD he has is old an unable to reach the us in a rocket. How do you counter the arguements that:
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Saddam Hussien has a propensity to use wmd and other nefarious tools against his enemies. Iran and the kurds, as well as the missiles fired at Israel in the Gulf War. And the US is his greatest enemy today.
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He supports and has connections to terrorists. Palestinian “martyrs”.
What if he thinks that he’s about had enough sanctions and “US Imperialism” and thinking he could go unnoticed passes some "leaky barrels of mustard gas " to some terrorist friends of his and tells them to forget where they got it and more will follow. Is it not your governments duty to protect you from such a contigency? If they let a barrel or two go for the sake of peace, how would you ever be able to depend on your government to protect you family if you or your countrymen was attacked with the weapons that your government suspected they had and did not do whatever they could to stop them?
I am not asserting that that will happen. But, if you assume 1 and 2 are correct, then it is more possible than just pro-war rhetoric.
All that would depend in large part upon what form the WMDs take. Perhaps Saddam has the delivery system, but not the stuff to deliver (but is working on it). Or perhaps he has the stuff, but no method of delivering it (short of a U-Haul), but - again - is working on it. Or perhaps he has neither, and is working on both. Or maybe - just maybe - he has a bunch of Anthrax sitting in the warheads of a small fleet of SCUDs pointed at Tel-Aviv, and is just waiting for the right moment.
Now, I predict that we will find one of the former three options - basically, Saddam doesn’t have the capacity to launch a serious WMD attack just yet, but he’s working on it, and he’s close. If we invade and this is what we find, then there will be no WMD-related catastrophe. People will die, but likely not in huge numbers. It will be a triumph, the war supporters will be vindicated (in the eyes of those that matter, anyway), Iraqis will be better off, and we can celebrate.
I further predict that if - and I think this is a sizeable “if” - Saddam does have the whole system ready and waiting, we will find out about it before we ever fire a shot. The main benefit to Saddam of having these weapons is deterrence - so that he can say, “Don’t mess with me, or I’ll nuke Israel.” If he has this capacity, why would he let us lay waste to part of his nation before he keys us in? If Saddam let us know that he had WMDs capable of serious destruction, he knows that we would not attack. We would be forced to treat him as we treat NK. He would be free to do as he pleased.
Saddam is a crazy mo-fo, but he’s not stupid.
Jeff
Look. I have no problem with protest, under most circumstances. But we’ve had a casus belli for years to go after Saddam, and now that Bush is acting on it, they say they want proof. Like the missiles shot at my fellow Airmen for the last 12 years isn’t enough proof. Like the WMDs Saddam used against Iran and the massacres of the Kurds isn’t enough proof that Saddam is a douchebag. He’s violated every one of the UN resolutions multiple times. There’s plenty of proof of that.
The only thing I’m sorry about is that it’s taken this long. I think that in this case the protesters are wrong, and I won’t apologize for that.
What if GWB turns out to a cross-dresser? How embarrasing would that be? What if monkeys flew out of my butt? How cool would that be?
As long as we’re talking about fantasy scenarios, how about this one-- what if we go over there and bomb and burn and kill everybody and we *don’t] find WMD’s? What then?
Then your dreams come true after six weeks of proceedings in the House and Senate when Bush is impeached.
You DID say fantasy, right?