# No WMD in Iraq? Guess again. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 16, 2005, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819 "2005-03-16T15:18:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/1 "2005-03-16T15:18:44Z")
[This March 13th article in the New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/international/middleeast/13loot.html?pagewanted=1) details the systematic looting of weapons sites in Iraq. > [@](#): > > As examples of the most important sites that were looted, Dr. Araji cited the Nida Factory, the Badr General Establishment, Al Ameer, Al Radwan, Al Hatteen, Al Qadisiya and Al Qaqaa. Al Radwan, for example, was a manufacturing plant for the uranium enrichment program, with enormous machine tools for making highly specialized parts, according to the Wisconsin Project. The Nida Factory was implicated in both the nuclear program and the manufacture of Scud missiles. > > Al Qaqaa, with some 1,100 structures, manufactured powerful explosives that could be used for conventional missile warheads and for setting off a nuclear detonation. Last fall, Iraqi government officials warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that some 377 tons of those explosives were missing after the invasion. But Al Qaqaa also contained a wide variety of weapons manufacturing machinery, including 800 pieces of chemical equipment. > > The kinds of machinery at the various sites included equipment that could be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essential for enriching uranium for atom bombs. [Christopher Hitchens](http://slate.msn.com/id/2114820) doesn’t believe this was looting at all, but a planned campaign to conceal the program further. He also takes to task those who were in denial over the scope of the Iraqi WMD program: > [@](#): > > It was eye-rubbing to read of the scale of this potential new nightmare. There in cold print was the Al Hatteen “munitions production plant that international inspectors called a complete potential nuclear weapons laboratory.” And what of the Al Adwan facility, which “produced equipment used for uranium enrichment, necessary to make some kinds of nuclear weapons”? The overall pattern of the plundered sites was summarized thus, by reporters James Glanz and William J. Broad: > > “The kinds of machinery at the various sites included equipment that could be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essential for enriching uranium for atom bombs.” > > My first question is this: How can it be that, on every page of every other edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categorically that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? And there can hardly be a comedy-club third-rater or [MoveOn.org](http://MoveOn.org) activist in the entire country who hasn’t stated with sarcastic certainty that the whole WMD fuss was a way of lying the American people into war. So now what? Maybe we should have taken Saddam’s propaganda seriously, when his newspaper proudly described Iraq’s physicists as “our nuclear mujahideen.” We have some comedy-club third-raters and MoveOn activists on this board who’ve said the same thing, along with people of good will who may not know of this information. All I want to know is, given the scope of this revelation, shouldn’t we all admit that Bush wasn’t lying, or at least tone down the rhetoric in this area? I don’t take anyone to task over their antiwar stance, but I do think said stance should be grounded in the facts at hand. You know, so we can all be part of the reality-based community. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/2 "2005-03-16T15:31:24Z")
There’s an awful lot of words like “may”, “possible” and “could” in that article but very few words such as “did”. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/3 "2005-03-16T15:33:52Z")
And there’s only one guy listed as a source for this information - which, if it were on the scale he says, just maybe should be corroboratable independently? By _somebody_? ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/4 "2005-03-16T15:35:47Z")
There’s no mention of weapons (other than the explosives which apparently aren’t any big deal- otherwise we’d’ve secured them, right?). There’s only a mention of equipment that could be used to make more equipment. When the admin said that it read things that didn’t exist and claimed certainty where there was none, used intel that was known to be faulty and ignored/downplayed the reports of the most qualified experts in particular fields who disagreed with the Admin’s dire assessments in favor of experts who were less qualified but agreed with the sales pitch (aluminum tubes, UAVs, etc), I’m not sure how to see such conduct as candid, forthright or honest. I refer you to the ISG’s report for further comment. Good day ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/5 "2005-03-16T15:40:59Z")
LALALALALA! I can’t hear you! H@ll!burt0n!!!11!eleven! Bush Lied! [Democracy tried!](http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/16/iraq.main/index.html) Uh, wait. That’s not it. Bush Lied! [Elections eyed!](http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02/26/egypt.ap/index.html) No, that’s not it either. I can never remember this part. Bush lied! [Occupation decried!](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/international/middleeast/15lebanon.html?) Crap. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/6 "2005-03-16T15:45:26Z")
That source, just so we’re on the same page here, is the deputy minister of industry for the government of Iraq. I don’t think he should be dismissed so lightly. Also, the article in the NYT says that the UN data confirms much of what he says. ---
**Author:** ![Orbifold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/779978/32.png) [@Orbifold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orbifold)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/7 "2005-03-16T15:46:25Z")
You want an anti-war stance grounded in facts? Alrighty then. From the article you’re so hyped up about: > [@](#): > > In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein’s most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government’s first extensive comments on the looting. > > […] > > Dr. Araji said equipment capable of making parts for missiles as well as chemical, biological and nuclear arms was missing from 8 or 10 sites that were the heart of Iraq’s dormant program on unconventional weapons. After the invasion, occupation forces found no unconventional arms, and C.I.A. inspectors concluded that the effort had been largely abandoned after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. > > […] > > Starting in 1991, the United Nations began destroying Iraq’s unconventional arms and setting up a vast effort to monitor the country’s industrial infrastructure to make sure that Baghdad lived up to its disarmament promises. The International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, was put in charge of nuclear sites, and Unmovic, based in New York, was given responsibility for chemical and biological plants as well as factories that made rockets and missiles. > > […] > > Before the invasion, the United Nations was monitoring those kinds of sites. Two senior officials of the monitoring commission said in an interview that their agency’s analysis of satellite reconnaissance photos of Iraq showed visible looting and destruction at five of the seven sites that had been cited by Dr. Araji. So, assuming everything in the article is true: [ul] [li]The programs were dormant before the war. Some of these factories had materials potentially related to WMD, and some were capable of fabricating equipment that could be used to produce WMD, but there’s no mention of actual toxins or fissile materials.[/li][li]We knew where these factories were before the invasion, and they were being monitored by the United Nations.[/li][li]Then the inspectors left because the U.S. and its allies invaded.[/li][li]In the weeks following the invasion, the sites were systematically looted.[/li][li]Now no one knows where, for example, all those explosives from Al Qaqaa are.[/li][li]So the invasion, which was ostensibly to keep Saddam from distributing WMD to God knows who, has had the effect of allowing God knows who to loot all the materials and equipment that Saddam might have used to make WMD in the future.[/li][/ul] Seems like a fact-based anti-war argument to me. ---
**Author:** ![Donovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ea666f/32.png) [@Donovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donovan)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/8 "2005-03-16T15:47:13Z")
> [@manhattan](#): > > LALALALALA! I can’t hear you! H@ll!burt0n!!!11!eleven! > > Bush Lied! > [Democracy tried!](http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/16/iraq.main/index.html) > > Uh, wait. That’s not it. > > Bush Lied! > [Elections eyed!](http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02/26/egypt.ap/index.html) > > No, that’s not it either. I can never remember this part. > > Bush lied! > [Occupation decried!](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/international/middleeast/15lebanon.html?) > > Crap. I don’t get it, which one of those talks about the WMDs? Or is this just a liberal baiting thread? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/9 "2005-03-16T15:48:58Z")
There is nothing in the article about WMD. I have no idea what **Manhattan** thinks he’s proving. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/10 "2005-03-16T15:51:24Z")
> [@Mr. Moto](#): > > That source, just so we’re on the same page here, is the deputy minister of industry for the government of Iraq. I don’t think he should be dismissed so lightly. > > Also, the article in the NYT says that the UN data confirms much of what he says. Where’s the part where they say Iraq had WMDs? I can’t seem to find it. ---
**Author:** ![scule](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4af34b/32.png) [@scule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scule)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/11 "2005-03-16T15:51:53Z")
> [@manhattan](#): > > LALALALALA! I can’t hear you! H@ll!burt0n!!!11!eleven! > > Bush Lied! > [Democracy tried!](http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/16/iraq.main/index.html) > > Uh, wait. That’s not it. > > Bush Lied! > [Elections eyed!](http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02/26/egypt.ap/index.html) > > No, that’s not it either. I can never remember this part. > > Bush lied! > [Occupation decried!](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/international/middleeast/15lebanon.html?) > > Crap. What’s the point of this post? **Grey** , **ElvisL1ves** , and **PatriotX** make very, very salient points. As a neutral outside observer with no political ties to anything American, I read the OP and then their points and see reason to doubt the full authority and/or weight of the story. Is it impossible for anyone in these goddamned debates to be anything but partisan? I think this highlights something seriously wrong with this board (go ahead, flame on). Every single day there are new debates, always pitting Republicans vs Democrats. When the fuck did parties ever become necessary in American politics? Why do they exist at all? Shouldn’t every idea be debated on its own merits, rather than its left or right stance? I know there are people who claim to be “conservative” rather than Republican or “liberal” rather than Democrat, but it still seems to boil down to one party or the other in these debates all the time. I have things I’m conservative about, like violent crime. I have some things I’m liberal about, like health care. Why does it have to be one or the other? Can’t people remove the blinders and just look at an issue without a predisposed attitude? Of course, I’ll probably get ignored but I still wanted to say this, because I like reading these debates, even if I don’t get into them quickly enough to add anything that hasn’t been already said (I’m just not on enough). But it seems like it’s a right/left war half the time here, which really helps nothing. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/12 "2005-03-16T15:53:14Z")
Always good to see ol’ Chris sober up long enough to find his keyboard. And, in these troubled times, it is heartening to know there is still full employment available for kneepad journalists. But isn’t this a bit outdated? After all, we now know that WMD were not the _real_ reason, not the really important reason, just one of many, many impelling and urgent reasons why Iraq had to be invaded immediatly, can’t want, emergency! So…what have we here? What we have here is the _means_ to produce nasty stuff. The sort of means to produce nasty stuff that just about every country in the world has. Precision equipment, all that sort of stuff that is very desireable for that band of hearty entreprenuers that our invasion has empowered. We already knew Saddam could produce nasty stuff, we also know Belgium can, as well as Upper Volta and Chad. We also know that he most likely didn’t, or at least, not in any recent and relevent time frame. Was that alarming quote about “vast stockpiles” truncated? Did he really mean to say “vast stockpiles of stuff that could be used to make stuff”? Our Tighty Righty brethren are sore wrought over the word “lie”. We have expended vast amounts of semantic ammunition struggling over that single tawdry verb. What he said was true was not true, what he said he was certain about didn’t exist, when he said we had no option but immediate attack to protect ourselves, untruthfullness was issuing from his verbal orifice. OK, he didn’t “lie”, we need a new verb to keep our TR brethren mollified. He “bushed”. Happy now? Perhaps we could all learn a lesson in tolerance from this, if we buy a used car with a tranny held together with Silly Putty and scotch tape, we could say the salesman “bushed” when he said the car was in top-notch shape. Some men occaisionally “bush” a prospective seducee, with temporary exaggerations about the extent of one’s affectionate devotion. “Yeah, baby, I said I loved you forever and ever, but I was bushing. Not lying, bushing…” (Certain small problems arise in translation to the Japanese, where the verb “busharu” means to upchuck on a prime minister…) Why stop there? Perhaps the uncounted thousands of Iraqis sacrificed in our adventure in global democracy are not “dead”, _per se_, but “quiescent”. The billions of dollars squandered were “impulsively invested”. But they’re still dead, and the money is pissed away, and our standing on the global stage stinks to high heaven. And now we find out that, yes, indeed, Iraq was a modern industrial nation, with all kinds of expensive equipment that might well be looted, if no one is watching. Which, apparently, it was. What a bombshell. Excuse, “shrapnel delivery device.” Ah, better. ---
**Author:** ![Optihut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/edb3f5/32.png) [@Optihut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Optihut)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/13 "2005-03-16T15:54:16Z")
Ok, so with enriched uranium they could build a bomb. But wouldn’t it also be possible to build a bomb with plutonium, which could be taken from a reactor running with non-enriched uranium? Any kind of peaceful nuclear program could be used for the purpose of building a bomb, but that’s a long shot away from being an assembled bomb. I’m not here to gauge whether Bush is a bigger liar than Saddam, they are both people I dislike. Oh and by the way, anything found after kicking out international observers is meaningless anyway, irrespective of whether Bush or Saddam is the one hindering their work. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/14 "2005-03-16T15:54:52Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > There is nothing in the article about WMD. > > I have no idea what **Manhattan** thinks he’s proving. Oh it’s not that hard. He’s saying that the invasion has triggered a sea change in the Middle East that has the potential to benefit millions. While that’s arguably true, it’s doesn’t have anything to do with the _justification_ for the invasion which was primarily the possession of WMD by Iraq. ---
**Author:** ![scule](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4af34b/32.png) [@scule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scule)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/15 "2005-03-16T15:54:57Z")
And of course **Orbifold** and **Dio** make equally valid points while I’m writing. I type too slowly. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/16 "2005-03-16T15:55:43Z")
> [@Mr. Moto](#): > > That source, just so we’re on the same page here, is the deputy minister of industry for the government of Iraq. I don’t think he should be dismissed so lightly. > > Also, the article in the NYT says that the UN data confirms much of what he says. Where’s the part where they say Iraq had WMDs? I can’t seem to find it. And just for the record, even if we were to suddenly discover a bunch of WMDs in Iraq, it would not retroactively justify the war. Just so you know. It would be legally irrelevant. Even if we could have proven the existence of WMDs _before_ the war, it would not have justified an invasion unless it could be proven that Iraq had the ability and the intention to harm the US with them. So this is a non-story on at least three different levels. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/17 "2005-03-16T15:59:31Z")
I’m sure that there’s a very erudite point relevant to the OP in **manny** ’s lalala post. ---
**Author:** ![yanceylebeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yanceylebeef/32/12290_2.png) [@yanceylebeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yanceylebeef)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/18 "2005-03-16T15:59:42Z")
Media Matters covers a little of this story [here](http://mediamatters.org/items/200503150009) . Again, the mechanisms to create the WMD were there, but had been unused for over ten years, since the last Gulf War. I can’t believe that the administration is using the fact that they didn’t properly secure facilities as an excuse. Using one failure to make excuses for another is delusional. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/19 "2005-03-16T16:03:34Z")
> [@scule](#): > > When the fuck did parties ever become necessary in American politics? Why do they exist at all? Once people realized that there was serious power and money involved in running the country. > [@](#): > > I have some things I’m liberal about, like health care. Why does it have to be one or the other? Can’t people remove the blinders and just look at an issue without a predisposed attitude? This is another whole Great Debate. To me, the reason there is kind of confusing. For a long time, the two parties had radically different ideas as to how to do things, and the political choices were to figure out what you wanted done, and how. Then we started electing people based on the kind of people they were rather than whether or not they’d get the job done. Now they’re realizing that their past indiscretions don’t stand up to full scrutiny so they’re trying a two-pronged approach: (1) to point out that the _other_ guy is a bum; since they’re both succeeding at this pretty well, it’s kind of self-defeating, and (2) to wrench the peoples’ focus back to these things called “issues,” but they can’t try to solve the issues the same way as the other side, because once the people realize that _either_ side will solve the issue, they’ll go back to making their decision based on whether or not they _like_ the candidate… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819/20 "2005-03-16T16:06:22Z")
> [@PatriotX](#): > > I’m sure that there’s a very erudite point relevant to the OP in **manny** ’s lalala post. I believe he referring to the bold and visionary campaign to democratize the Middle East by destabilizing all the distasteful, undemocratic governments (with certain discreet exemptions offered to military dictatorships who prove thier committment to democracy…), in the certain knowledge that when it all settles down, everything will be peachy. I might also pretend that I can toss a pack of cards into a wind-tunnel, and they will assemble themselves into an intricate cathedral, with flying buttresses, gargoyles, and an ugly little man whose name I can’t remember, but whose face rings a bell. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-wmd-in-iraq-guess-again/294819.md?page=2)