Caveat: this post is in response to the hypothetical posed by the OP. Does not imply that I think that Iraq necessarily had combat-ready WMDs.
I apologize for the lack of cite, but I read that Iraq was poised to use WMD’s in the first Gulf War but hesitated due to their fear of nuclear retaliation.
While it’s unlikely that the US would use nukes under any circumstances in Iraq (it’s totally unnecessary give the disparity in forces and capabilities), one can assume that a regime with Saddam’s disregard for human life would be asking themselves what they would do in a similar situation.
This would answer the “why have WMDs in the first place if you aren’t going to use them” question. WMDs work as a deterrent against adversaries who only have conventional weapons, but are chancy things to use against an enemy who has the capability to wipe out your capital city in five minutes.
In other words, assuming they had WMDs, they might not have used them for the same reason you don’t shoot a polar bear with a handgun – it doesn’t help and it just pisses them off.
/aside I REALLY hate when this board eats my posts. This is the second time today. Sigh
Now back to the regulary scheduled rant…
From minty green
In a nutshell, this has been answered here by Minty. I can’t remember when the last time I’ve agreed with something Minty has said, but he hit it right on the head here. I think some of you are being deliberately stupid to be honest, as you’ve see this over and over again.
One more time: Why didn’t they use them against us and the British? Easy answer…because they would have been of very limited use against us and the British, as our troops would have been protected, thats why. They might have been uncomfortable (anyone who has ever had to put on one, even in relatively moderate temperture conditions would tell you so), and he might have killed a few soldiers, but it would have had no real effect on the wars outcome, and would have damaged his ‘image’, such as it was. Why go to war over them, then? Because they would have been of substantial use against an unprotected or civilian population (like say the Kurds in the early '90s, the comidy that was the Iranian army in the '80’s, or say New York in the 2000’s). So, that answers the OP…thats a plausable reason they weren’t used against us.
Personally, I think that they didn’t have them TOO use, as I’ve said in other posts. I think that he DID get rid of them in the post GWI era, but that he continued to give the impression that he DID have them to cow his neighbors. To him, that would be the best of both worlds…don’t have the expense of maintaining them, don’t have the worry about having them, yet still have the THREAT of having them hanging over his neighbors heads…as well as the proven record of not flinching (maybe even enjoying) from using them. I think that the reason he didn’t have all his records in place to just give the UN inspectors is that he was keeping the distruction of the weapons a close secret…and thats why EVERYONE KNEW that he still had them…even if he didn’t.
Thats (my theory that he didn’t have them at all) is just my opinion, based on some convincing arguements from other threads. The chem weapons thing though IS a valid reason why they weren’t used (assuming he had them at all). I’m sorry to say, those of you with an agenda, that you can’t use the fact that they weren’t used against us in GWII as a complete arguement that he never had them…try again.
Well- at one time (after Gulf War I) he certainly had them. They DID exist. No doubt about THAT. He didn’t use them. And we have found only a few labs, but no significant weapons.
So- what happened to them? Pick one:
SH destroyed them post GWB ultimatum.
SH moved them to Syria.
He hid them really well.
He destroyed them Pre-GWB ultimatum, Pre-Blix.
Not an option- “he never had them”. The UN Inspectors right after GWarI saw them, and confirmed them.
If “1”- there should be more traces- and then the question is “why then?” To embarrass GWB?
2 & 3 : This is what I think happened.
Although Xtisme’s theory above has some thought & is possible- the sanctions were costing him too damn much, IMHO. Besides, he would have kept records of the destruction, and he should have shown thses records to Blix. Note that Blix thought that this was fishy himself- Blix knew there WERE WMD’s there AT ONE TIME- and was suspicious that SH could not show evidence they were destroyed. Yes, I agree that Blix did say that at the time of the second round of inspections only traces could be found.
Well, I’d say the sanctions weren’t really hurting HIM, or his family. He seemed to have a fairly well developed disreguard for his own people, so I don’t see that keeping him up at night. I also think that he was using a demonstratable ‘outside threat’ to keep his people in line. Hard to rebel if you think that your world could come crashing down on you, especially if things weren’t TOO bad. Also, I don’t think you are taking in the whole ‘face saving’ aspect which is pretty important in the Arab world (though I know that Iraqis weren’t fully arab…they still moved in the Arabic/Islamic world, though again they were secular). Saddam gained a LOT of face in that part of the world for ‘standing up to the US’…face he would have lost if he was shown to be bowing to the UN/USA and destroying his WMD. Not to mention that he would have been letting his neighbors know he DIDN’T have them now…
I think that its entirely plausable that he destroyed the weapons, while keeping said destruction secret, even with the sanctions still in effect. I think that, in his mind, that this whole situation was only temporary…that eventually we’d get tired and go home. Well, he was half right…he didn’t figure on that mad man Bush coming to office, or on 9/11 pissing off the Americans.
However, I DO conceed, DrDeth, that my ‘theory’ has some gaping holes, and if you use Occams Razor you could slash it to shreds. It just best fits (for me) the known facts as of right now. Hell, who knows…maybe some day they WILL find some barrels of WMD crap under someones rose garden.
Thanks. However, I will also concede you are the first person to come up with a possible story of why SH would have destroyed the WMD Pre-Blix. Everyone else either simply claims “they were never there” :rolleyes:, or ridicules my ideas, or refuses to come up with anything. The “face saving” aspect lends credance- but still- why no records?
And the inspectors in Iraq during the 1990s destroyed them, as they were supposed to. What’s your point?
How about “they expired”? Like medication and milk, chemical and biological weapons have expiration dates. As for the question of why Iraq didn’t just admit they didn’t have any WMDs, it’s because it’s to Saddam’s advantage if his enemies believed he had 'em. Makes the rebels less likely to rebel, and the hostile neighbors less likely to invade, y’know?
And the OP is silly. It’s the political equivalent of asking, “Okay, suppose Elvis was kidnapped by space aliens, why hasn’t he escaped and returned to Earth yet?” Saddam doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that the American invasion was do-or-die time for him; the idea that he held back WMDs (or gave them away) is implausible beyond belief.
DrDeth: Like you, I was pro-inspection and anti-invasion. To me at least, the only plausible explanation for the failure to turn up WMDs is that there wasn’t anything substantial left that escaped the inspectors. I was quite surprised when none turned up, I had expected that Hussein actually had some left. It might not be that odd that there aren’t complete records of their destruction. After all, it isn’t as if the US kept thorough records of it’s own chemical/biological programs: Cleanup in Maryland
This is similar to our policy of “strategic ambiguity” in regards to Taiwan. We won’t come out and say “If you mess with Taiwan, we’ll come after you.” to the Chinese, but we don’t say otherwise either. Not knowing what we would do adds another variable into their equations. That could be what Iraq was trying to do with Israel and Iran. Plus, it was their belief, which IIRC was to some extent corroborated, that some or all of the inspectors were CIA.
It is also possible to distinguish between WMD capability–meaning labs, technical specs, engineers, money, and motivation–and weaponized agents. You can have vats of VX gas lying around, Dr Mengele style scientists ready to churn out more stuff, but not have actual VX artillery shells ready to fire and delivered to front line units.
It seems to me that WMD agents would be subject to the strictest command and control by Saddam. He isn’t just going to issue the stuff to front line troops and tell them to wait for the signal. Or in any case, he certainly didn’t do any such thing in actuality. IF he had weaponized WMD agents, they were never deployed in the war.
So perhaps there are bunkers filled with VX artillery shells, but no one ordered them delivered, for various reasons. Or maybe there were bunkers with VX in barrels, but not in shells. Or maybe there were bunkers with plans and precursors and engineers and equipment, but no agent actually produced. Or maybe all those things existed, but not all in one place at one bunker. Or maybe all that had been destroyed (including the scientists) before Hans Blix arrived.
But I think the OP is asking about the first scenario. Saddam has bunkers full of weaponized agents, why not use them? OK, this could be contrary to fact…he didn’t have bunkers of weaponized agent, so he couldn’t use them. But say he did. Why not use them? Remember, we know that WMD agents were never deployed to front-line troops, or we would have found them. So any scenario has to take that into account.
They would be ineffective against US troops, and only useful against civilians, irregulars, and poorly-equiped conscript armies. So Saddam didn’t bother, since WMDs would only cause more causalties among his troops than US troops.
Command and control was destroyed more quickly than Saddam expected. This would include such things as Saddam himself and his top aides being dead. So the order to get the stuff out of the bunkers was never given or never recieved.
Transport was impossible, given US air superiority and mobility. If the things are in secure facilities in the desert, you have to send trucks to go get them and transport them to the units who will be issued them. This could be impossible, since any truck convoy would be destroyed by Coalition bombing before reaching the WMD sites.
Saddam thought he would win, and WMD strikes would harm his image. Yes, this seems incredible to us. But remember, Saddam is the dictator of a totalitarian state. It seems as though someone in that position would have the best possible intelligence and information. But in such a country, everyone must lie constantly to protect themselves. If Saddam says to do such-and-such, you say that such-and-such happened. Perhaps he will find out you lied and will kill you. But he is certain to kill you if you fail. Who is going to tell Saddam that the troops are ill-equiped and ill-led conscripts who will surrender as soon as possible? Who is going to tell him that Americans won’t run at the first sign of casualties? No, you keep telling him that Iraq is invincible and the US impotent, and he believes it. Sometimes a dictator is the most uninformed person in the whole country, since he hears nothing but lies generated by fear.
Saddam knew he would lose, so his plan from the beginning was to take a couple billion in cash and go into hiding…underground in Iraq, or in exile in Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Turkmenistan, France or wherever. If you are planning on leaving, why bother delivering WMDs? Why not embarass your ememies one last time?
But again, the most likely thing is that he didn’t have deployable weaponized WMDs in the first place, although we know for certain from Hans Blix that Iraq had WMD development programs, and at one time had weaponized WMD agents.
Because having them confers more power than using them. Once your opponent accepts the possibility of devastating casualties, calls your bluff and attacks in face of your WMD’s, you have lost any power they may have had. Once you use them, the world turns against you, and your cause is lost. Look at it this way; how many countries have nuclear weapons, and how many have used them? That’s the only reason we haven’t invaded North Korea; Bush has not accepted the consequences. Once he does, and launches a military operation, the value of North Korea’s nukes is lost. They will be much better off accepting the outcome of a conventional war, than the wrath of the entire world which would follow if they took out Tokyo with a nuke.
Forgive me if I’m putting words in your mouth, but would you thus agree with me that there was little threat that Saddam Hussein would actually use NBC weapons against the United States?
My view is that WMDs are useful as a fear weapon but not much else, at least on the battlefield environment. It’s chic, en vogue etc. to have them but like so many of the newest fasions they don’t do much more than make you look baaad.
Huh?!> The UN Inspectors did no such thing, when the left, they left tonnes of undestroyed WMD behaind. I’d like to see a cite that quotes the UN Inspectors as saying that they “desproyed them all before they left”>
If they were all destroyed by “the inspectors during the 1990’s” how could they “expire”?:rolleyes: Sure, CB weapons lose potency, but they are still very dangerous decades after- French farmers were still being hurt by WWI gas shells thet they turned up over half a century later. Still, AFAIK, these weapons don’t have a expiration date of under a decade- I’d like to see a cite for that , too- please. But even if they had lost potency- what happned to them? They have to be disposed of in a very careful way- and SH could not show any such evidence or documentation to Blix.
Please note there is a difference between physical suicide and political suicide. Yes, Saddam was going to lose power whether he used WMD’s against us or not. But if he refrained from using them then people would say “hey, the US lied about the WMD’s and just attacked for oil!” (or something to that extent, and for a cite, merely turn on the TV). Using WMD’s would have been political suicide. The only reason for using WMD’s against us would have been the rather immature and unwise logic of “taking a few of them with me.” Again, I don’t think Saddam is a moron.
The bottom line: If he used WMD’s he would have proven us right. If he didn’t use them, we would look like liars and aggressors. Either way he was going to lose power. Thus, not using WMD’s doesn’t seem like that hard a decision to make.
-CIA from GWI. There hasn’t been much in the way of concrete evidence that they ever fixed their stability problems. Plenty of accusations, but mostly stuff that struggles to rise to the level of hearsay.
I still fail to understand how Saddam’s current situation represents political life. It seems to me that Saddam committed political suicide either way.
In any event, surely an Iraqi government that cared as much about world opinion as the one you describe would have been loathe to use NBC weapons in an unprovoked attack against the United States.
Nor do I. That is why I believe that he could have been held in place by twin US policies of containment and deterrence for an indefinite period of time, as he was for twelve years after the First Gulf War.
Like I said- some DO lose potency. However, they still remain dangerous for decades after. I did not know that some had THAT short of life- but to quote Squick’s site right back at him “Iraq has a sizable CW stockpile, at least some of which can survive several years of storage. Iraq’s mustard, the CW agent most used in the war with Iran, is quite stable, much of it should remain stable for some time”. “CIA beleives that by now Iraq has either increased the shelf life of unitary SARIN or produced large quanities of binary munitions” “CIA holds that the stocks of SARIN may remain viable well beyond March. CIA analysts believe that the shelf life problem was only temporary…” CIA also believes that a substantial portion of Iraq’s nerve agent stockpile now consists of binary chemical weapons which would not be subject to degradation". They estimated 1000 “viable” tons. Not pounds. Tons.
Rjung- and to quote YOUR site back at you; “There was never any question that Iraq once had weapons of mass destruction”. And if you read down a bit “However- others have questioned Ritter’s veracity… as recently as 1998 he (Ritter) wrote… that Saddam may have successfully hidden everything from potent biological and chemical agents to his (Saddam’s) entire nuclear weapons infrastructure from UN inspectors. So, if you beleive Ritter (and you quoted him), then yes, many of the CW weapons have degraded- but that SH also hid significant weapons- including a 'nuclear weapon infrastructure”. You can’t accept half of what he says as gospel, and reject the other half.
Oh, and as for that “Muthanna State establishment” he talks about? Sure, it was destroyed. No doubt. But apparently AFTER the “material balance of CW production equiptment was removed” (This is from the UNSCOM cite given in the other thread, which I also linked to, Page 20, item51) and the UN really wanted to know what the fuck Saddam did will all that stuff, and he never gave them an adequate response.
The UN Inspectors did no such thing, when the left, they left tonnes of undestroyed WMD behaind. I’d like to see a cite that quotes the UN Inspectors as saying that they “desproyed them all before they left”>