then why did ex-inspectors think he had them?
http://news.ozarksnow.com/terrorism/iraq/un090802.html
Did you actually read your cite, Boo?
Here’s the part you left out:
"Despite its denials, Iraq probably possesses large stockpiles of nerve agents, mustard gas and anthrax, former U.N. inspectors say.
While Saddam Hussein probably does not have a nuclear bomb, the Iraqi president does have the designs, equipment and expertise to build one quickly if he can obtain enough weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, the former inspectors and other experts say.
Members of the U.N. teams that investigated Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction from 1991 to 1998 say Saddam probably also has at least nine long-range Scud missiles, and has or easily could make chemical and biological weapons to arm those missiles.
“That’s what I’d worry about — they could reconstitute these weapons fairly soon, and they actually have stuff on hand that could be used for terrorist and military purposes,” said former U.N. inspector Raymond Zilinskas, head of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.""
Here’s more:
“Any reasonable assessment of where they are now would say they probably regenerated stocks of both mustard (gas) and nerve agents,” said Gallucci, now the dean of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
“Botulinum toxin and anthrax — that is not speculation, they have produced both. One would expect that over the past four years they would have produced them again.”
“After seven years of inspections, weapons destruction and clashes with Iraqi authorities — who shot at inspectors and held them at gunpoint various times — UNSCOM pulled out of Iraq in 1998 when Saddam refused to allow inspectors into presidential sites.”
"Satellite photos show new construction at several sites linked to Saddam’s past nuclear efforts, the head of a U.N. atomic weapons inspection team said Friday.
Satellite images also show that Iraq has rebuilt several facilities that in the past were involved in Saddam’s banned weapons programs.
They include portions of biological and chemical weapons sites at Daura, Taji and Falluja and a uranium production facility at al-Qaim, said Iraq expert Kelly Motz of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.
Former inspectors and U.S. officials say Saddam has kept his nuclear weapons teams together, which they say shows Iraq still has nuclear ambitions and capabilities."
No, to summarize, Saddam was not, in fact, behind 9/11, nor was there any solid reason to believe so. Bush, however, made the case in the public eye that he was. Meanwhile, Osama is still on the loose. Why?
Sam, consciously or not, you’re using the fallback position that Saddam only had to have something he shouldn’t to justify an invasion. The fallback position from that, one your colleage december has already resorted to, is that he simply wanted to.
No, my friend, that doesn’t wash. Perhaps our memories are just better, or less self-serving, than yours. The justification for war was that he represented an immediate, real threat to the security of the US. To much of the anti-war contingent, it was certainly possible there was something laying around overlooked, but that wouldn’t have done it - but we were wrong about that.
Saddam didn’t represent such a threat. We know that for sure now. Bush had to have known, or should have known, that, but didn’t. To absolve him from the charge of lying, you have to accuse him of gross dereliction of duty instead.
Bricker, kudos here as well.
Boo, your article is from Sept. 8, 2002, two months before the inspectors returned to Iraq in November of that year. The article is basically a bunch of speculation that Iraq had reconsitituted these weapons after 1998:
In other words, the weapons were 99% destroyed by 1998, but may have been rebuilt, according to all those scary quotes.
But at that time, nobody knew:
Apparently, this may be what really happened:
I guess they were telling the truth. Sneaky bastards.
The thing is, Boo, the people that were in charge, Blix and Ritter, didn’t think so. The rest of it is conjecture on the part of more junior people, and it’s also interspersed with comments from people who weren’t inspectors, about what sattelite images might mean, what might be possible, etc.
I’m not sure how an oppressive regime counts as “political instability,” especially when that regime is… what, 25? 30 years old? In addition, this statement of yours subtly seems to continue the conflation started by the Bush Adminstration, the mixing up of Al-Q and Iraq.
**
There’s that “sponsor of terror” thing again. I’m afraid that the standards of truth on the SDMB are a bit more rigorous than what Ari Fleischer has to follow. You’ll have to come up with some concrete evidence to back that up. In other words – cite?
**
Do you honestly believe that we’re not going to maintain large bases in Iraq? Isn’t that just moving our military next door? Also, could you explain the logic of the parallel universe where conquering a Muslim nation does not inflame anti-Americanism? I’m just curious because in this current universe, anti-Americanism is a huge problem, and not just in the Muslim world.
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So, you’re telling me that those in the Congo, or Rwanda, Liberia, North Korea, Cuba (you get my point) are sitting there, chopping off limbs and burning babies, all the while pointing at Iraq and saying, “At least we’re not Saddam”? I find that conjecture a little difficult to swallow. Moreover, if we don’t like dictatorships so much, when are we going after the House of Saud? Or Ashcroft? 
**
It’s possible. But who knows? We’re not going to allow Iraq to elect someone we dislike. But, if they elect someone we like initially, but then really start to dislike, I’m sure we’ll have no problem poisoning the catalytic cycle and putting in a pro-America dictator. It’s happened before.
**
That’s an impressive stretch of logic there. I can only wrap my mind around the last bit – I don’t know how Iraq flouting the U.N. (a debatable prospect in and of itself – see squeege’s posts) directly influences the U.S. That’d be like Chile attacking Paraguay because Paraguay violated a treaty with Argentina, against Argentina’s urgings (to throw out a hypothetical example). The only reason Chile would act thusly is clearly self-interest.
I take it you’d agree an attack on the United States would be amply justified due to their own open defiance of the United Nations. You know, that whole “we’re going into Iraq to enforce UN resolutions while we completely ignore the UN ourselves”
The double-standards used to “justify” this war of choice are simply appalling.
That’s a given. The US acted in its own self-interest and tried (and failed) to get the UN to support the action in the UN’s own interests. But the two are not interchangable. If Chile and Paraguay had a war, a cease-fire in effect, and Paraguay violates that cease-fire agreement, Chile will probably assume the fight has resumed. Why wouldn’t it.
If the U.S. acted in its own interests, why isn’t this mentioned by the Bush Administration? Why is it always “We did this for the Iraqi people”?
**
You misunderstood my analogy, but it’s irrelevant. We needn’t change the players, further confusing the matter. The real situation – the Iraq violated agreements with the U.N., the U.N. opposed military action, but the U.S. went along with the war ostensibly in the name of the U.N. – is bizarre enough.
And, to nobody’s great surprise, GOP snubs democratic call for Iraq probe.
Nevermind that there were Republicans also calling for a probe, and that the White House “welcomes the review.”
I doubt it is always “we did this for the Iraqis.” But I’m not interested in what spin Bush wants to put on it today either. That’s separate. Saddam was our enemy, regime change was our policy, reasons abound. If Saddam had stepped down, fled, whatever - even shown signs of co-operating on the terrorism issue and being something other than his normal stupid self for a while - there’d have been no war in Iraq.
Bizarre is right. That doesn’t make much sense, does it. See above - we were going after Saddam with or without the UN. It would have been nice to have the backing, but we didn’t. This did not change US plans.
So, you consider al Qaeda more reliable than the White House? Your privilege.
But, how about this refutation
That quote is from…
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– Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002
It’s not my fault Bush has shown himself to be a lying weasel before the entire world.
Whoopie-frickin’-doo, december. If Hillary was the one who refused to give Hans Blix time to do the job, avocated bypassing the United Nations, and supported unilaterally invading Iraq as soon as possible, then you might have a point.
But since she didn’t, you don’t. Again.
Re credibility: I look for incentives whenever someone in power says something. I don’t see an incentive for the AQ captives to be lying about not having a link to Saddam, especially not when they have an incentive to tell their questioners the opposite. I do see an incentive (several) for Bush to be lying, although it’s possibly massive self-delusion instead.
Re the Hillary reference, gleefully trotted out as if the magic name serves as a trump card for all political discussions in the absence of any facts: You might have actually read the quote before using it, since it also undermines whatever the hell point you’re trying to make. She said (1) There’s no evidence of a Saddam-9/11 link, and (2) Saddam wants to be powerful and to have weapons, and if he gets them he’ll be dangerous, but not yet. Or is this a roundabout way of admitting you now accept those statements as truth?
how’s this for a theory on what happened?:
Saddam obviously had them pre GW1 as the use of them them against Iranians and Kurds proves. After GW1, the inspectors came in and destroyed a large amount of them. Obviously, we targetted the known facilities and stock piles during GW1 thus degrading his WMD ability. Since we don’t know how many he had to begin with, I question the 99% destroyed number…
Having his military seriously degraded, Saddam still needed a threat to hold back possible internal uprisings and potential attacks from Iran and Israel. His threat would be the existence of WMD if he had them or not. It was the threat of him using them that would keep him safe…whether he had them is irrelevant as long as the world beleived he had them. (For those that don’t remember, in the early 80’s Israel bombed his nuclear plant in an effort to keep him from developing a nuke…so he took Israel as a threat and his ability to counter attack with WMD would keep Israel from attacking him again…I’m sure everyone is aware of his war with Iran.)
Saddam therefore implemented a strategy to keep as many WMD he had left as possible hence his uncooperation with the inspectors. His goal was to make the world think he had a lot WMD even though he had very few left. He was successful, every country with a half way decent intelligence agency beleived he had WMD pre GW2…including the French, Germans, and Russians. After the inspectors were kicked out, Clinton ordered a major air and cruise missile strike which all but ended his ability to produce WMD and destroyed the few remaining he had stockpiled. However, since there were no inspectors, there was no way to prove everything was destroyed.
The Bush administration then wants gets inspectors back in and back them up with guns. The inspectors come in and find “left over” type equipment but no smoking gun. However, the world is now convinced via several intelligence agencies and Iraqi defectors that the WMD program is now more secretive but still exists. Saddam can’t turn over, destroy on his own, or give to the inspectors to destroy any WMD because he doesn’t have any left and since there were so many intelligence agencies saying he had them, no one beleived him when he said he didn’t have any.
Nitpick: The UN inspectors weren’t kicked out. They left voluntarily after Iraq complained about (and proved the presence of) Israeli and American spies hiding among the inspectors.
I remember something about Clinton ordering them out before the airstrikes. Saddam probably was resistant to the inspectors because of spying, the inspectors were complaining about not being able to work, and then Clinton ordered them out anyway. Fair enough?
re: Al-Queda - The following link is an interview, but there is much corroborating evdence, referring to a plane fuselage at Salman Pak, Iraq, where hijackers were taught how to use small knives to take over large airplanes.
WMD’s were there, even Blix reported. What remains to be seen is whether we find them in place, find out where they are stored NOW, or whether we find out about them the hard way…
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/khodada.html