A side note/question: In a heated discussion here at work between a Texan and a New Yorker, the WMD was one point and some terrorist training camp somewhere was the second. Is there strong evidence to support the existence of a terrorist training camp or was this another item that existed and was then discredited?
There were claims of a compound near the village of Sargat (not Khurmal as stated in the article) that the US knew of for some time and were leaving intact as a pretext to invade rather than take out. Article in the LA Times
According to my geography, Khurmal is near the Iranian border, in Kurdish territory and under the no-fly zone .
So if it was an Iraqi sponsored Al Quaeda camp, it wasn’t sited in a very secure location. You could mount an argument that it could validly be an Iranian, or Al Quaeda taking advantage of a “blind spot”. Tarriq Azziz claimed it was a Kurdish run camp.
The following article appeared in the New York Times after Powell included the “Khurmal” camp in his address to the UN on Feb 6th. (apologies, it’s a subscription site). The indications are that it was at least mis-identified, the location may actually be in PUK territory and some reporters who claimed to visit the camp found nothing.
I’m not yet gonna put my balls on the block (like the OP did) and say that Iraq doesn’t have these WoMD.
But what follows if these weapons don’t exist is fairly obvious. The administration lied to us. They told us that Iraq presented a very real threat to us, and it was a lie. Not some stupid blowjob lie, which was bad enough. It was a lie used as an excuse to start a war.
Will that turn out to be the case? I don’t know. But as each day goes by, as each claim of “We found the weapons!” turns out to be false, I get more and more cynical about this whole situation. Previously I thought my cynicism had reached its limit, but no, it’s reaching new peaks (or valleys) that I had never dreamt of.
I know a bit of patience is in order, but there are lingering questions that are nagging me more and more with each cry of wolf. Where is the evidence that the administration had before the war started? The information can’t possibly be “too sensitive” to reveal to us anymore, so where is it? The way they’d been talking, you would’ve thought we could drive right up to a building in Iraq, open the doors, pull out the equipment and go, “Well, I’ll be… Those are some nasty weapons.” But the proof hasn’t appeared, and the weapons haven’t been found, and the talk of the administration has turned to Syria instead of Iraq.
There’s still some time, yes, but it is running out. Bush and Company must prove that this stuff exists, or there will be hell to pay.
Remember that the evidence also pointed out that to leave it even one more month could have been disastrous. This was all regime change and a show of force to others nothing more. Regime change without provocation is illegal so up popped the WOMD.
Immediate danger my bollocks. The Iraqi’s weren’t even much of a danger in their own country.
Welp, we’ve not found weapons.
We have found buried movable labs with over a million dollars worth of gear inside. With half a ton of documents. Reported not by an embedded reporter, but by a Brig. Gen.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/14/sprj.irq.labs/index.html
This one, I think we can believe.
yes but
and the band plays on…
I said we’ve not found the weapons. However, the key here is that this is the first reported through proper chain of command bit of information. Which happens to substantiate claims made by Powell. They buried these, Tars. Under sand.
I think it’s still too soon to make a decision, but things are going to start popping up in the next two weeks as proper procedures are followed.
I bow before no poster in my disdain for Fearless Misleader, Stricker but in all fairness there is another explanation: that the information was false, but the Bushista’s bought it because they already believed it. “Intelligence” tends to be that which affirms your prejudices.
Consider the “uranium” fiasco. Any Tom Clancy fan would have seen through that precious bit of hokum in about two seconds flat. As of yet, we have no clear explanation as to where this intelligence regarding Saddam’s dreadful WMD’s derived, it might well be the same source. Just to cast a wholly unjustified aspersion, Mr. Chulabi, the Pentagon’s darling to run Iraq, has been long credited with haveing extensive anti-Saddam contacts within Iraq, and providing “intelligence”. Or perhaps Mossad cooked it up (we’re their best friend, I’m not sure they’re ours). Or perhaps Iran, they most likely didn’t shorten all the SAVAK personnel. But I digress…
But they believed it. At least partly because they wanted to, but, nonetheless, they believed it. Possibly at some point they got some conflicting info, but it was too late, they clung to thier certainty, as most men do.
When challenged to submit intel to the inspectors, they did. And the inspectors came back complainng about the chase of the grosse canard. Now, if I’m right, the Bushistas were probably stunned! They thought they had solid gold and released it with grave reluctance only to find out…t’was l’merde.
So what to do but Nixon it out? They claim certain proof, but can’t show it even to the inspectors, they circle the wagons, they tough it out. Because they know, and constantly reassure each other, that of course! Saddams got WMD’s, he’s an evil old bugger so he must have them. Once we get in, we’ll find them, because for sure he’s got them, and then we say “Yeah, that’s where they were, all right. We knew that. Couldn’t tell the Democrats, you know how they are.”
Do you use chemical weapons against an enemy that is prepared to defend against them in a war you’re sure to lose? I’m not convinced that the answer is yes. Those things are far more useful against unprepared civilians or poorly equipped troops.
I also have to consider Saddam’s actions, he was elusive and uncooperative with the inspectors, even though invasion was imminent over the issue. If he had nothing, would he not open himself to avoid the war?
On the flip side, if you have no evidence of WMD, and use that as an excuse to invade, wouldn’t you look massively stupid when you don’t find them in the aftermath? I mean EVERYBODY is waiting to see what they have, the administration has beaten that drum over and over. You would think that a corrupt admin (as has been suggested here) would make sure to have WMD planted early in this process to justify the action.
Instead, we have continuing searches, with false alarms, amounting to nothing. I feel that considering the facts, WMD are probably there somewhere, and we just haven’t found them yet.
Here’s the real story. When Uday Hussain was 7 years old, he developed an interest in science, so Mrs. Hussein bought him a toy chemistry set. Being very rich, she used this 20-foot square underground facility for little Uday and his friends.
Uday’s best friend, little eBay, just happened to have borrowed a thousand pounds of documents on chemical and biological weapons from the Baghdad Public Library. He accidentally left the documents in little Uday’s toy chemistry lab when they were playing together. Unfortunately, neither of them remembered to return the documents to the library. 
If december’s adorable fable appears in a future White House briefing, would anyone be surprised?
I had a thought tonight. (Rare occcurance, I know.) Saddam feels he’s the spiritual heir, if not the direct reincarnation of Nebechanezzar, right? We know that Saddam had to figure there was no way he could win this war, so what if his plan wasn’t to do any more than offer token resistance, while doing his damnedest to destroy/hide any WMD he might have. Reason being, that once the war was over, the US’s credibility on the world stage would be so totally shot, that anything the US said, would automatically be thrown out. If Saddam was then able to remain hidden until after world opinion had decided that the US was full of shit, Saddam then, could come out of hiding, claim superiority over the US, and have the Arab world unite behind him (which is what he wants) he can then walk back into Iraq, reclaim his power, and proceed to ensure that the entire Arab world remains subjugated to him. (Hope that makes sense, I’m dead tired at the moment.)
Fæcetious tone or not, that’s the first I’ve heard about any documentation of chemical weapons associated with these labs.
Mobile labs are not, in-and-of-themselves, sinister. Everybody’s got 'em. If they turn out to be analytical labs, it shouldn’t be surprising that there are 20 cases of documents with them. If the documents were obviously related to chemical weapons production, we’d have already heard the “Gotcha-ya!” by now. Hell, they could be soil analysis data for their agriculture department.
That they are buried certainly sounds suspicious, but we still don’t know how, why, or when they came to be buried. If, as E-Sabbath has emphasised, they were buried “under sand,” I’d extend the benefit-of-the-doubt a tiny bit further, since, after all, it is that lovely sand-storm time-of-year, and those blighters have been known to bury houses. That being said, I haven’t heard anyone else claim that they were buried in sand, and it’s possible that this is just another case of someone filling in the blanks of a nearly information-free newsitem with their own assumptions.
Based on the information that we have so far, it certainly looks suspicious, but still, I think it’s sensible to wait for a little more info. We’ve heard more confident assertions of smoking-gun finds that have subsequently turned out to be so much moonshine.
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That’s just because the U.S. government and war supporters have so litte concrete basis for their arguments they have to rely on the Big Lie Theory of their real founding father, Goebbels, to continually justify their war.
To have a stance is one thing. To have justification for your stance is another. So I’d like a cite for the above please.
You’re right, of course, elucidator. That is another possible explanation, if no WoMD are found.
I suppose I was leaning toward the position of “the administration is evil” instead of “the administration is evil and stupid”. My apologies on that one.
My last comment still stands, though. The proof of these weapons had better turn up, or the shit will hit the fan, big time.
You know, I’d like to thank Larry Mudd for making me go back and look.
Buried in the ground, not in sand. My mistake.
Thanks for that link, E-Sabbath– It has more details than the the various articles I was looking at, and sounds more definitely like the sort of thing that requires earth-movers, and an intent to conceal.
I note that in the story from the link posted by E-Sabbath, the “things” are described as “vans,” and I have seen other speculation that these are like the things Powell referred to in his UN speech that could be driven around the highways indefinitely. But these things are 20 feet by 20 feet. I would hardly call something more than twice the width of a semi trailer a “van.”
I also wonder about the focus on “1,000 pounds” of documents and $1 million in equipment. Over 11 units, that is less than 100 pounds of documents (a backpacks worth for some schoolchildren!) and $50,000 in equipment. Having some familiarity with research efforts, I regard $50,000 as a relatively small value for any scientific effort. Perhaps very little is needed for the type of work these things were conducting, but the effort to impress with the volume of documents and monetary cost of equipment falls a bit short.
Vans is a britishism. Short for Caravan. America, we’d call them ‘double wides’, I think. Yes, they can be loaded on a trailer or on a railroad car, and driven around indefinately.