I’m sorry but I must say I do not think the OP is silly. Don’t jump on me for posing a hypothetical (Saddam had WMD during GWII) when many people, including some who have responded in this thread believe that it is not hypothetical, but true.
I agree with you that the idea “he held back WMDs (or gave them away) is implausible beyond belief.” That is in fact, the point of the OP. I was in effect saying: “I don’t beleive Iraq had WMD during ‘Gulf War II’. To those of you who think Iraq DID have these weapons, why didn’t they use them?”
I thought this was pretty clear. Rjung, it seems your beef is not with me but with those who have suggested improbable reasons for Saddam having them, but not using them when his very existence was threatened.
Mr. Bush seemed to think they were quite a serious threat. After all, he started a war over them. Did he know that WMD are not effective on the battlefield and just use WMD as an excuse to start a war. Why would he do that?
We know for a fact that no troops were equipped with chemical weapons. Since no troops were equipped with chemical weapons, they couldn’t be used against our troops.
Did you read my post earlier, but ignore it? Since you aren’t asking out of curiosity, perhaps you could critique my list of reasons that weapons weren’t deployed, and perhaps give your own opinions (with just as much support as anyone else, ie none) about where Saddam’s provable stocks of chemical weapons went. Do you think he destroyed them before Hans Blix got to Iraq? If so, why? And why would he hamper the investigation? Why not show him Blix the evidence that they were destroyed? Did he lose them? Send them to Afghanistan? Bury them in a bunker in the middle of the desert and then shoot everyone who put them there, pirate treasure style?
Or do you believe that Saddam NEVER had chemical weapons? Everyone from Hans Blix to Scott Ritter to Bill Clinton to the Iranians to the Kurds to Karl Rove just framed the poor guy?
It matters little whether Saddam had NBC weapons. Before the war, most people on both sides of the debate accepted that he did. What matters is whether Saddam was prepared to use such weapons against the United States. The fact that he refused to use them against the US even when they offered one of his best chances for desperate survival, and when he had nothing left to lose, strongly suggests that he was not merely going to wake up one day and decide that Denver was in need some assisted urban redevelopment.
We know for a fact that Saddam possessed chemical and biological before, during, and for at least some period after the First Gulf War. Nevertheless, the last time he actually used such weapons was during the war with Iran - when he did so with, at the least, our quiet acquiesence. I firmly believe that Saddam lacked either the ability or the uninhibited inclination to strike with nonconventional weapons at the United States, and I believe the fact that we endured for twelve years after the end of the First Gulf War without suffering an NBC attack at the hands of Saddam - while Baghdad’s capabilities grew weaker all the time - supports this assessment.
Saddam could have built NBC weapons until the cows came home for all I care. He was, as Kalt has said, not a moron. He was not going to use those weapons against the United States knowing full well that to do so would cause us to respond with the greatest possible force. He was deterred. He was contained.
The same cannot be said for the forces unleashed by this war.