I’m really surprised that no WMD were found in Iraq. I figured that right after the first tanks rolled in, there would be trucks carrying everything needed to guarantee that whether Iraq had WMD or not, they would be found. Why didn’t they plant evidence? How hard would it have been? It seems like such an obvious option, all things considered.
My guess is that they assumed they would find them too, and when that didn’t happen, they simply didn’t have a contingency plan.
I’m reluctantly hedging my bets on a “surprise” find some time around September.
Yes, considering that the Bush administration is evil, the only possible explaination is that they feared getting caught. Is there any other explanation you can think of? Any at all? If one can’t accept that reason, then one might be forced to check one’s premises, and we wouldn’t want anyone to have to do that. 
Such artifice would be exceptionally risky. It would likely require the cooperation of numerous individuals, any one of which might sing out at any time. Plus, the tiniest detail could give the game away, such as some part of the genetic structure of a biological component matching those produced solely in US military labs.
What surprised me was that there aren’t even any siginificant biological precursors, let alone the actual weapons of which Bush said
First, it is my understanding that the different strains of WMDs that the United States already has are all registered with various international health and scientific institutions. That is, if someone tried to pull out some American anthrax in Iraq and pass it off as Saddam’s WMD program, the scientific community would be able to denounce it by saying that it was traced to strain 23428972346, registered at the University of West Virginia in 2002, or whatever.
Second, the scuttlebutt I’ve heard is that the American presence in Iraq is being very carefully watched by the intelligence agencies of the rest of the world, for fear that the US will try to plant some evidence (especially given how nothing has been found to date). Anyone thinking of planting stuff in Iraq now would have a damn hard time making it work.
As for a “September surprise,” if that was being planned, then wouldn’t the Kay report change its conclusions to play along? “We believe there remain some WMD in Iraq, and will be discovered soon…”
Of course, it could just be that the administration actually thought there WAS WMD in Iraq, and so never made any such plans. To me, with the resources of the US, I’m sure they could have cooked up something to plant had they a mind too…and the close scrutiny that rjung mentioned is (perhaps…no cite on that from him, but I’ll assume its correct as it seems reasonable) happening NOW…not during the actual conflict. How hard would it have been to have the CIA secretly move stuff into one of the various warehouses and then tip off some troops to ‘find’ it while the fighting was still going on??? Not very IMHO.
Chemical weapons certainly don’t have the ‘tags’ rjung is mentioning (not even sure all the bio weapons necessarily do either…and they could always make the case they come from common sources I suppose in any case. They have to come from SOMEWHERE after all), and I find it hard to believe that if the US DID want to plant stuff, that they couldn’t have done it…and done it convincingly with the technology and resources available to the US. So, my (I’m sure unreasonable to rjung) conclusion is that they in fact DID think they would find WMD in Iraq, and never had any plan or intention to ‘plant’ evidence.
-XT
WMDs that the US has/produces are also of a very different sort that might have been found in Iraq. High quality or refinement would give them away as planted material. Also finding a few kilos of stuff wouldn’t be enough…
The administration knew very well that they wouldn’t find much stuff if any at all. The embargo was pretty stiff and Saddam prefered to spend money with his palaces. I find it INCREDIBLE that the US spends so much money in Intelligence and Surveillance and didn’t know about the WMD in Iraq. I think its a clear case of the CIA giving the White House the info they wanted to see…
The cold war was the same thing... CIA and the Pentagon make big numbers of the Soviet threat... pork barrell rolls to the Military Industry... they then finance the elections of their chosen politicians... these same politicians then get beefed up security threat warnings and happily keep the machine grinding away US taxpayer money. Change USSR for Al Qaeda and Terrorism... rinse and repeat.Might be harder than you think. It’s one thing getting the damn things made, shipped and placed where they can be “found”, but let’s just assume that it’s doable with, say, less than 100 people in the loop. You do need a variety of skills, after all. Already, you have a liability.
The bigger problem is that the darn things don’t exist in a vacuum.
For the deception to be believeable, there’ll have to be at least signs of all the accoutrements that any army would surround a strategic resource like WMD with. A unit responsible for the weapons - with a history, personnel etc. Code books. Sealed orders. Really, really good communications. Crack guards. Fire missions. In effect, the WMD (and the fake unit responsible for them) would have to be inserted more or less seamlessly into the Iraqi C3 structure.
That’s the bigger task - and one that would involve many, many more people. After all, the NSA would insist on having the crypto and code gear. The Army would want to review the Iraqi doctrine for chemical warfare. The Army Signal Corps would ask itself why it didn’t intercept the communications and ask to see the comm equipment. Lots of smart and dedicated people would have a justified demand on intelligence from that coup. They’d either have to be deceived - not easy, because they are the experts - or brought in on the deception. It could have worked for a few weeks or months, but eventually too many would say “This just does not add up” and the cardhouse would come tumbling down.
Personally, I believe that the Gvt. expected to find at least something. Probably not a strategic threat, looking at the scarcity of hard intel, but some sort of battlefield/theatre weapon - a few dozen 122 mm artillery rockets with chemical warheads, for instance. Fox could spin that into a huge threat to the entire mainland USA in a splitsecond, and that would have been all it took.
I just commented on this topic here
I’m under the impression that it would be far from unassailable to plant a program like this into Iraq. There are however massive problems inherent in the very idea that you just voiced – namely “Well… the US probably just planted them, duh.”.
The whole world isn’t simply going to buy, hook line and sinker that this war was motivated by anything outside of personal greed on behalf of the administration and its collectively weathy supporters. The thing that the US has been leveraging for years now is this sense of democracy and press freedom, and the protection of liberty. How do you think you’d try to obscure the fact that people accept inequitable distribution of wealth, actually use it to maintain that inequitable distribution – that they can’t do it alone, and yet, promote this idea of individual freedom, liberty and non-conspiratorial transparency all in the same propoganda?