Back in 2003 troops found jets buried in the desert. Obviously, these were not the WMDs we were sent over there to find and destroy but it makes me wonder: If we found WMDs now that proved the initial intelligence was correct (you know: buried nuke processing plants, bunkers full of bio and chemical weapons, plans for their use against the US and allies) would people still feel that invasion of Iraq was a mistake? Or would the people currently opposed to the war accept that Iraq was a threat that needed to be stopped?
My opinion is that most of the recent converts (most of the Congressional Democrats) would suddenly start singing the praises of the invasion in typical political waffling manner. I’m not saying that this is the reserved behavior of Democrats. The political animal can easily be identified because it is able to talk out of both sides of its mouth simultaneously while burying its head in the sand and at the same time covering its ass. The Republicans who have gone over to the “dark side” would shift into reverse so fast that their transmissions will fall out.
I don’t think the die-hard anti-war opponents would ever support the invasion even if we found a fully functional nuke with delivery instructions and a date for detonation.
So, how do you think Americans would respond to the discovery of WMDs in Iraq?
The WMD boat has sailed. Iraq is in a civil war and that is all that matters now. I think the discovery of buried WMD would have zero effect on anything.
Maybe it wouldn’t have any immediate effect on day to day life in Baghdad, but surely you’re joking that such a find “would have zero effect on anything.”
I think it’s fascinating that the OP has taken the non-existence of WMDs in Iraq and constructed an argument to bash Democrats.
If weapons of mass destruction were discovered now in Iraq…
Republicans would say the war, and everything arising from it, are justified.
Democrats would ask why it took four years to find them.
Conspiracy theorists would say the missing reconstruction money has been used to build this facility so that it could be “discovered” to bolster the administration’s position.
Your confusing the intelligence, which implied that the actual WMD threat was minimal to non-existent, with the faith-based bullshit used as the justification for invasion.
Suppose caches of actual, long-range tactical nukes or bio- or chemo-tipped missiles were discovered. At this stage of the game, they would be highly suspect. If they were in fact there before the US invaded, the eternal question remains: Why weren’t they used?
There would be no satisfactory answer to this question, which would raise the idea that these weapons had been cached while the US was occupying the country. Charges of incompetence would ring even louder.
Indeed. Finding WMDs at this point would probably just serve to further divide public and political opinion.
One thing I still don’t understand is why Saddam gave the UN inspectors such a hard time if there was nothing to hide. Was it just based on principal, basically saying that the UN had no right to go poking around in Iraq regardless of what illicit activity may or may not have been going on?
That’s my view and I’m sticking to it. Half of Americans as of just a few months ago believe against facts that there were WMD in Iraq (an allegation that our own intelligence agencies has shot down) and yet that doesn’t mean that half of people support the war. People don’t support the war because it is a civil war. WMD buried in the desert won’t make people support the war because obviously abandoned WMD is not a threat to anyone, no more than the occasional discoveries of a few hundred artillery rounds that have been buried since 1991.
If you’d like to enlighten the class on your views on how things would change, have at it.
It’s now been well-covered that Saddam did not wish to portray weakness to Iran. Saddam did not believe that the US would mount a full-scale invasion over this issue, but he believed that showing weakness to Iran would cause serious problems for him. Ultimately, Saddam was more concerned about the threat from Iran than threatening the United States. The book "Cobra II’ by General Trainer covers this in detail.
. Both sides of the aisle are guilty of changing their views depending on which way the wind blows.
Hey, I never claimed that the reasons for the invasion were sound. I never even thought they were remotely rational. But a bill of goods was sold to the American people and the geniuses on Capital Hill went along with it. Dubya was doing his Charles Bronson impersonation by going vigilante on the Axis of Evil ™ starting with the Taliban, then Saddam. After that would have been Iran and North Korea followed by Venezuela, Syria and Rosie O’Donnell. Congress just blindly went along with the crap they were being told and, after Gulf War II turned into Operation Clusterfuck many of them said, “Oh, crap! I better start talking about how I never supported this in the first place, even though I did vote for it.”
Getting back to my original question, though, if the WMDs were independently verified (German, French and Russian intelligence confirm that these are Iraqi produced items, not US-made planted items) would that make the recent anti-war converts revert back to invasion supporters?
My first thought when no WMDs were discovered in Iraq was that they had been shifted over the Iranian border for safekeeping in much the same way that the Iraqi airforce was during Gulf W1.
Why else would Saddams regime have done everything in its power to stop the U.N. inspectors having unrestricted access?
My current thought is that they never existed in the first place.
Tony Blair stated that the justification for the UK supporting the US into Iraq was that Saddam had WMD’s ready to strike UK bases (presumably Cyprus) in 45 minutes from the order being given.
Given the rapid nature of the invasion, how were these WMD’s converted from war-readiness into being so well hidden we can’t find them after years of looking?
It may also be tricky to find the evidence that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 - another justification frequently referred to by senior Republicans…
No. They never cared before about the truth, why would they now ? Support for the war has fallen because the occupation has been a disaster, not because many people cared that we were lied to or cared that the invasion was unjustified.
So you’re saying Democrats are some kind of anthropomorphic ostrich-donkey-waffle hybrid, and Republicans are robots like in the Transformers cartoon? I’m not a betting man, but I really doubt birds of a feather would flock together if they were all such blasphemic abominations. Why would anyone join the breakfast pastry/weird animal hybrid party when there are stone-crushing robots that can also fly and drive at speeds up to 150 mph?
I do think there is an interesting parallel with John McCain as Starscream and George W Bush as Megatron (maybe Bush I as Megatron, Bush II as Galvatron?) but the similarities are superficial at best. Cheney as Soundwave (maybe Rove?) makes a lot of sense though. Libby could easily be Rumble, Condi - Laserbeak, both emerging from his chest when he is too slow to battle for himself.