So here we are, controlling almost all of Iraq worth knowing about. And we still haven’t found anything. Seems like the Bushistas are emphasizing the “liberate Iraq” selling point. Fact is, can’t think of having heard anything about those dreaded WMD’s in days. Of course, no news is no news.
Now, to be clear: I always rather assumed he might very well have them. Also thought he very well may not, they aren’t very useful weapons, make better bluffing. Never really thought it was worth going to war over, anyway.
But God forbid it should turn out that a vile pustule like Saddam was telling the truth. Please, Lord, anything but that. That would be the worst possible outcome for this war short of actually losing.
Would he store them all in Baghdad? In the center of his most important, most populated city? Seems unlikely.
As recent events have shown, intelligence (if that is the word) as regards Iraq has been…faulty. Fearless Misleader swears he knows that Saddam’s got 'em, but can’t seem to tell the inspectors where to look. How does someone know something exists, and not know where they are? I know the library exists, I can take you there. Know my butt exists, its in this chair. Is our fixation on WMD’s based on the same level of quality intelligence as our certainty that Saddam bin Laden was making an A-Bomb?
Has anyone seen any credible intelligence? Or is this entire thing predicated on the fact that Saddam is an Evil Old Bugger?
And why hasn’t this question been asked and answered?
It would be far too inconvenient for such questions to arise now. In fact, someone who asked them would obviously be trying to undermine the morale of this great nation, reducing the fighting effectiveness of our brave soldiers and thus offering aid and comfort to the enemy, committing treason.
Mmmm…As far as using them goes, the wind’s blowing in their faces. WMD’s would be much more effective in a city, anyway. Also, the gas masks/suits may indicate (though indicate only) that they have BCNs but the armed forces haven’t found them yet.
Well, he’s an Evil Old Bugger with a history of using chemical weapons against his enemies, and of accumulating chem and bio weapons as fast as he can get his evil old mitts on them. So I think his established propensity is as much a predication for the assumption as the observation that he’s eeeeevil.
It’s probably a safe presumption that he has stores of chemical weapons, and that he has at least a few means of delivering them. It’s probably less sure that his biological weapons are in any effective form, but prudence would require that we assume he can deliver a few. And we can pretty much discount Iraqi nukes as extremely unlikely.
In another thread, you put forth the theory that Saddam’s “waiting for summer”, with the strategy that he can lob a few empty drums at US forces and have all of them sweltering for hours in full chemical gear. That seems a likely tactic to me, but I think we’d be extremely foolish if we disregarded the likelihood that he’s going to throw some real chemical artillery or rockets at our forces at some point. All it would take is one time, and he could force the sweat suits on our troops for the rest of the war.
(BTW, you should email a mod if you want the thread title changed.)
If Saddam is really thinking ahead (and I doubt he can manage it), he’d be destroying all of his WMD right about now.
He may hope to survive this war, but when things start getting really bad, it may occur to him that the best way to hurt the US is to not have biological and chemical weapons. It’d be a subtle vengeance, but effective.
Fwiw, I never thought he had any viable WOMD and I still (just) supported the narrow goal of removing Saddo.
It was a pretext, I thought we (mostly) understood that. Otherwise the UN Inspectors wouldn’t have spent their time charging around finding nothing but would have, instead, headed for the honey pots.
But here’s the thing. Saddo might live another 20-30 years and history tells us;
a) He’s a raving nutter, and
b) He likes to acquire naughty toys.
Thus, my reasoning has been, that in this 20-30 year time period, the US is likely to be the only ‘body’ capable of removing him and this, right now, is also likely to be the only time in that 20-30 years when a US president has the balls / motivation / is stupid enough / whatever to go get the bad guy.
So there are no WOMD (IMHO) but, somewhere down the road, there might be and he might still be alive and he might be tempted to try, say, a little blackmail. Or worse, use ‘em – cos he does that, he doesn’t just acquire WOMD, he uses them as well. Or even give the technology to people who would use them …
So, yeah, until proven otherwise, I think Ritter was right, yet, ultimately, it didn’t matter … Sorry my tree hugging friends …
We haven’t won the war yet. After the war is over and inspectors supposedly will have unrestricted access to scientists or inspection points then more concrete evidence may turn up. Right now the only evidence is circumstantial & the testimony of defectors. nothing concrete.
Didn’t you know you could wave a magic wand and make mustard gas and other agents vanish?
You mean you can’t make it vanish…you have to put it somewhere like a bunker or buried in a vault?
Oh, well then why doesn’t someone just point to a bunker where it’s buried? That’s the problem. When the Iraqis had the weapons, they never denied having them, and it was no big secret.
When they agreed to disarm, they also happened to kick out anyone who was there to document what they were doing with the stuff.
You can’t just toss the stuff in the trash, or run it down a garbage disposal, so then they should be able to point to a series of bunker or something!
Just think fo the effort in burying nuclear waste, as an example. Now imagine if the USA agreed to get rid of all it’s nuclear reactor waste, right now. Then, we toss out anyone supervising the disposal of the waste. Then, seven years later, the inspectors come back and say “Hey, where’d you put all the waste?” and we answer “We destroyed it”.
Um…no. That doesn’t cut it.
You don’t get rid of an arsenal of chemical/bio weapons and just claim you don’t have it.
I’m expecting we’ll turn up some chemical weapons, somewhere. How much or how little, who knows.
But London Calling, I find your notion that this is an acceptable pretext for taking out Saddam, simply because he might be a genuine danger sometime in the next 20-30 years, is genuinely scary. If that’s reasonable, then we should really take out Russia right now, while they’re flat on their back, rather than waiting around for them to have another crack at becoming a Great Power.
Heck, to imagine who might be a threat to us 30 years down the road, recall the world as it was 30 years ago, when oil was $2 a barrel, and the Arab nations were a negligible force in international politics.
London: *"But here?s the thing. Saddo might live another 20-30 years and history tells us;
a) He?s a raving nutter, and
b) He likes to acquire naughty toys.
Thus, my reasoning has been, that in this 20-30 year time period, the US is likely to be the only ?body? capable of removing him and this, right now, is also likely to be the only time in that 20-30 years when a US president has the balls / motivation / is stupid enough / whatever to go get the bad guy.
"*
This logic might make sense if these events could happen in a vaccuum. But they don’t.
(And how raving a nutter has Saddam really been these last years from a geopolitical perspective? WMDs aside, I actually find the humanitarian argument more persuasive than “the preemptive act against a known nutter hypothesis.” Especially when it’s seen to justify a unilateral, um, “coalition” war.)
Anyway, I only pose this response in this thread to you London because I know you will respond with a level head and I might actually get a clue. OTOH, you don’t actually have to answer at all.
My underlying point though: I just don’t get this kind of realpolitik analysis unless–as I think is true of some of the hawks–one believes that the only foreign policy advisible in the current world is an ongoing regime of aggressive neo-imperial domination by the United States–with a little help from whatever friends in Europe and elsewhere are willing to sign on.
It sounds like, no matter what, the Bush fans are never going to believe that the WMDs don’t exist. If we get to Baghdad and search for weeks or months and don’t find anything, well then, they’re in Syria (a fat lot of good they’re doing Hussein in Syria, btw). They’re buried in the desert. They’re hidden somewhere else and we’ll find them eventually. After a few more months or a couple of years, everyone will forget all about them and it will be considered churlish to dredge the subject up in polite conversation.
Give the troops a few months before jumping to conclusions. The Iraqis have had 12 yrs to establish clandestine depots. You chided everyone for not giving the inspectors more time, and they’ve had YEARS to work this issue. So: GIVE THE TROOPS SOME MORE TIME. I think they have their hands full right now with certain other matters.
We knew they had proscribed missiles before the war began.
“The experts concluded that, based on the data provided by Iraq, the two declared variants of the Al Samoud 2 missile wer capable of exceeding 150 kilometers in range. This missile system is therefore proscribed for Iraq.” - Hans Blix, reported in the Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2003.
Powell mentioned that the biological agent production facilities were mobile, and I imagine the Iraqis are eager not to allow them to fall into allied hands.
The agreement of the cease-fire was that Iraq would destroy the WMD, and prove that this had been done. They refused to do the latter, and there is no reason to believe they did the former.
