And yet another story about what happened to Saddam’s WMD:
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.
The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.
“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Mr. Sada said. “I am confident they were taken over.”
Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”
Personally, I am not buying any stories about WMD until I see them with my own lyin’ eyes.
Jorge
I’d much rather feel like an idiot for thinking there were no WMD’s in Iraq when they were in Syria than to keep on living knowing that an idiot is running the country.
The Other Steve
Apparently the publisher… Integrity Publisher, doesn’t have a whole lot of integrity.
Doing a google, I found numerous links like this…
http://www.edresearch.com/IntergrityShame.htm
Apparently they’re just another right-wing propaganda publisher like Regenery. So I suspect the claims are thinly sourced.
Ok, more research…
http://www.ambassadoragency.com/resources/01225/00002.pdf
This article is a bit conflicting, it claims sadas was told to join the Ba’ath party in 1986 but he refused and was forced to retire. It then claims he was head of the air force in 1991 and took a stand against Saddam and was thrown in prison.
I don’t get the impression this is a first person account, although that is the impression you are supposed to have.
jaime
There are quite a number of knuckleheads who believe this notion to be gospel truth. Never mind the administrations full court press before the war of knowing exactly where they were in Iraq. Every availiable spy asset was brought out prove that these WMD’s were in Iraq; from fuzzy Satellite photos to Special Ops boots on the ground hunting and marking these weapons for targeting. Apparently they missed the mass movement westward through the desert of thousands of truckloads of Chemical weapons and their delivery systems over the course of several months. That or the administration has known all along and continue to lie to us to this day.
Now which is it? Massive incompetence or baldfaced lying? Tough choice.
Darrell
Virtually every intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam had WMD’s. Iraq ADMITTED to having 4 tons of Vx and hundreds of tons of weaponized chems in 1998 when he ejected inspectors from Iraq which to this day are still unaccounted for. Why is it the left finds it so incomprehensible that Saddam would actually have WMDs?
Of course Saddam would never attempt to hide his weaponry or anything like that. It’s not in his character, as everyone knows what a straight shooter Saddam has always been
Mr.Ortiz
See, we need to invade another Middle Eastern nation in order to intimidate Iran. Also, Bush needs a brand new war to distract from all the Republican party’s recent bad press. Finally, if the Democrats take back the House and Senate in November, he’ll need something to accuse them of being unpatriotic about in case they get all uppity and start talking about impeachment. Finally, the tagline is just so darn catchy: Syria in September, a war to Remember!
jaime
Darrell, this proves the opposite of your assertions. Out of these “30 – 40” planes how many would have reasonably been functional? This was a half assed attempt to hide the planes if the 30-40 number is anywhere near true. The ones that were not protected by plastic would have been totally useless and the ones that were probably would not have been functional either.
Now if this is how the Iraqi’s managed to preserve their Air Force, are you telling me that they could have gotten away with moving massive amounts of WMD’s with extreme efficience and secrecy? Please. Besides the fact that this snopes article (or the Pentagon) doesn’t mention when these planes were buried and the best estimate Rumsfeld can give us is “It wasn’t one or two”
Steve
Richard Bottoms
Because the chemicals we sold him to make them… er strike that
Because we had AWACS surveillance over the entire region.
If 30 planes flew from Iraq to Syria, we’d kinnd know about it. Stop being a sucker.
jaime
Also, I didn’t realize the existence of planes were a violation of U.N. sanctions.
jg
No one on the left finds it hard to believe he would have wmd. The issue is he didn’t not whether or not he would have them. If given the opportunity no doubt he’d be back at it.
The deal is we were all told he DOES have them, there’s proof, their location is known. None of which turned out to be truth. Instead of seeing all these half baked excuses for the lack of wmd as evidence of dishonesty in the run up to the war, you choose to believe every single one of them. They’re still buried we just haven’t found them, they’re in Syria, he gave them to Al Qaeda, the war wasn’t even about wmd that was just a small part of it, the poor oppressed people need freedom. Look a missing white woman!
srv
Your blind faith in the French and Germans is telling.
So according to this guy, Saddam knew the Americans were really coming in 2002, so he sent his WMDs somewhere where he couldn’t use them.
This needs to be an SNL skit.
KC
This is so far fetched it’s impossible to believe. We have complete control of the air around Iraq before the war. We have satellites pouring over the country. How in the hell is it possible, even remotely, for some flights to take off and transfer weapons to Syria? Really, how likely? And don’t you think we’d be interested in any flights leaving the country right before the war? Let alone flights to Syria?
This guy is just a neocon grab-hand trying to make a buck. Or, at least the publishing company is.
chopper
1. WMDs have a shelf life. just because you had a jug of nerve agent once doesn’t mean that jug still contains viable nerve agent.
2. three words: Operation Desert Fox.
jg
They probably should’ve been turned over for destruction after the first Gulf War. What’s amazing is how little it takes to convince the right that this war was just. They have no evidence of him having or hiding wmd but they have evidence of him hiding something so therefore he hides his wmd too. Stephen Hayes is making a fortune off their gullibility.
They all believed him when he admitted it? Did facts come along to change their opinion because they certainly didn’t help us out in this thing and if Saddam did have what you think he had he would be a danger to everyone?
So far their have been two occasions where our global allies did not see the threat we saw or the need for intervention in a soveriegn nations affairs. The first time it turns out we did make a mistake and should have just minded our business since we didn’t accomplish anything anyway.
Why don’t we pay attention to our friends when they advise us we don’t need to be getting involved over there?
kenB
Anyway, sounds like what we’re talking about here is chemical weapons. Nasty, to be sure, but not on anywhere near the same level of threat as that mushroom cloud Ms. Rice worried us about. Would Americans have supported the invasion if they thought that Saddam just had chemical weapons?
Darrell
UNSCOM thought Iraq had even more
That’s what’s so incredible, is that the Europeans opposed toppling Saddam even though they believed him to have WMDs. And Saddam can be trusted, right?
LITBMueller
Why? Because the administration THEMSELVES said he didn’t have them! Charles Duelfer’s report concluded that Saddam’s ability to produce nuclear weapons had “progressively decayed” since 1991 and Saddam’s biological and chemical stockpiles had been destroyed and research stopped years before the invasion.
In addition, while Saddam would have loved to get his hands on WMDs and nukes after sanctions were lifted, Duelfer concluded “The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam” assigned to do it.
Duelfer’s botton line? “We were almost all wrong.”
And guess what? Deulfer also ruled out the possibility that the weapons were hidden or moved.
So, hey, who are we on the left to argue with Bush’s OWN GUY??!?!?!
jaime
Which is it Darrell? That the WMD WERE found in Iraq but not in the quantities they were portrayed as, or they were moved out of Iraq under our noses in these massive quantities?
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!
srv
A couple more words: Hans Blix
Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence. We saw plenty of claims and ridiculous evidence.
Darrell
Because they were knee deep in dirty business dealings with Saddam. Europe is Iran’s #1 trading partner. They also do big business in Sudan.. those mass murders of tens of thousands in Sudan are merely “domestic political disturbances”. At least, that’s what our European ‘friends’ say
jg
Whats so incredible is that you believe they thought he had wmd. The only people who thought he had an active wmd program was the US. Thats why Powell had to go to the UN to convince them action was nescessary, no one else thought he was a threat, just us. Obviously Powell was convincing since they voted it down and just before they voted it down again Bush said fuck them and went to war anyway. And found no wmd and a third rate dictator whose own army won’t fight for him. And now we own the fucked up mess of a country.
vinc
Geez, how could anyone believe this for a minute. WMD aren’t just spontaneously produced in the presence of evil. If Iraq had a significant program, it would have factories and labs and things. You can’t put a factory in a plane.
jg
‘wasn’t’
I’ll grant you thatt hat was a reason France wanted the sanctions lifted. They stood to gain. Same with Russia. But no fucking way do they lobby for lifting sanctions if they think he’s working on wmd.
Bush going in took away the economic gains the russians and French had been working on. Guess who would have got the oil field contracts. Not Haliburton.
Marcus Wellby
Riiiiight — aren’t those same European friends you dismiss from one side of your mouth the same European friends you claim also knew Saddam had WMD’s on the other?
The Other Steve
It may have something to do with us not finding any.
Pb
Straw poll: who’s next?
* Iran
* Syria
* North Korea
* Saudi Arabia
* Libya
* Pakistan
* India
* France
* Cuba
* Venezuela
* Mexico
* Germany
* Canada
* Palestine
* Israel
* Massachusetts
* Hollywood
* ???
The Other Steve
Oh like you give a shit about mass murderers.
The Other Steve
You forgot Poland!
Darrell
The intelligence agencies of UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Israel all believed Saddam to have WMDs and a WMD manufacturing program.
I wan’t aware that fact was in dispute except among the most ignorant
Zifnab
Canada’s off the table. They went through a volentary regme change. But Mexico keeps letting people willy-nilly across the border so they’re on the US shit list. Iran and N.Korea are off the table. They actually HAVE nuclear weapons. So it’s anyone’s guess.
jaime
Darrell, you were posed many questions as to how Iraq could have shuttled massive quantities of WMD to Syria undetected. You were also asked why all the rhetoric for WMD that there was no doubt about the existence of them INSIDE Iraq. You were also asked how hiding non-functioning planes figured into all this.
You were challenged on A, B, and C but instead you invented D to argue about. We’re not buying it.
Marcus Wellby
Iran — nah, big army
Syria — perhaps, small army
North Korea — nah, nukes!
Saudi Arabia — nah, Bush’s buds
Libya — Reagan already did that, not original
Pakistan — nah, got the real dirt on OBL, might get too chatty
India — nah, the IT lobby would be pissed
France — nah, might damage Richard Perle’s summer home
Cuba — nah, Castro is good for the FLorida GOP
Venezuela — perhaps
Mexico — nah, Walmart needs them workers
Germany — NO! They may be passifists now, but don’t piss off the Germans
Canada — perhaps, NHL lobby is week
Palestine — perhaps, would be a neo-con wet dream
Israel — NO! Would be such a conflict of interests neo-con heads would explode en masse
Massachusetts — Yes! Only the seat of liberty and all that. Not a traitorous state like South Carolina — painful issue for southern patriots
Hollywood — Nah, Christian Scientists would call in alien armies
???
Zifnab
See, that’s why we had the weapons inspectors. I mean, to be fair, if we didn’t think Saddam had the weapons, we wouldn’t be checking for them. But weapons inspectors just weren’t enough for some people. Nor was Operation Desert Fox. Nor was economic sanctions.
The Bush Administration acted childishly and foolishly. They risked it all on a gamble and lost. Now they just refuse to pony up and admit defeat. In some respects it actually works to their advantage. After we conquer Syria and don’t find any weapons, we can always point the finger over to Libya or Algeria or whatever country is next on our conquest list.
Darrell
Tell us genius, without boots on the ground, how could we or anyone else possibly verify the contents of any truck convoys going into Syria? Did that detail ever occur ti your walnut-size brain?
Marcus Wellby
Darrell, do you get all moist when you type “boots on the ground”? I am serious, I have an image of you posting from your basement wearing army surplus fatiques with The Ballad of the Green Beret playing softly in the background
jg
they believed it until the inspectors went back in and came out with nothing. Only the US was still convinced. Thats why the whole world voted against going to war in Iraq.
Are you saying that all these countries still believed he had an active wmd program even after the inspectors showed nothing and still voted against war? Do you realize that doesn’t make any sense?
Mac Buckets
You misspelled “Albright.” That fearmonger.
jg
Its acalled economic sanctions dumbass. Do you think the UN imposes sanctions on a country without having means of making sure they sanctions are enforced? Trucks didn’t travel freely in and out of Iraq. And even if they did they could only carry the product of a wmd factory, the bomb, they could tote the place the bomb and all the bomb materials were processes and assembled. its why the Niger claims, even if true, don’t amount to anything. He can have all the yellowcake he wants, he can’t out it to use.
jg
I always pictured him as a bowtied bible thumper. Sort of like Les Nessman.
jaime
The Special Ops boots on the ground were for pre-war spotting of potential targets to be destroyed in with Airstrikes and artillery. If these special ops were tracking trucks heading westward or ones gearing up to do so…or blocked all roads heading out of the country, wouldn’t we have caught them red handed? We must have got some of these trucks and trains, right?
Mac Buckets
Guess what? You’re wrong.
Why do you guys think you can just lie to make your points?
Richard Bottoms
That would be J-Stars I believe.
Tracks anything moving on the battlefield. That would be trucks or planes headed to Syria.
You think if we had video, real time of a convoy of big ass trucks headed to Syria right before the war started we wouldn’t have presented it to the UN already?
Complete bullshit fed to the willingly gullible.
Steve
So, we needed boots on the ground to detect these hollowed-out passenger planes? I’m so confused!
chopper
i think that the venusians were somehow involved.
Darrell
Given that the main purpose of inspections at that time was to determine if Iraq had complied with UNSC demands(ie. prove they destroyed known weapons supplies), show us where France, UK, Germany, etc “changed their mind” as to whether Iraq had WMDs. Show us
Jan 27, 2003, AFTER inspections, Hans Blix reported
Yeah, sounds like those inspections changed European opinion regarding Saddam’s WMDs, right kooks?
Marcus Wellby
They always are chopper, they always are
Darrell
Uh Richard, it appears you didn’t realize that those truck convoys would have travelled into Syria BEFORE Iraq became a battlefield. I hope this new information is helpful
jaime
So Darrell ignores getting owned about “boots on the ground” so he moves onto then 12 year old unaccounted for chemical munitions.
Did you know chemical weapons have a shelf life between a few weeks and a few years? Those phantom 6500 munitions were no good even if they were hidden. The simplest explanation was that they dumped them like they did the Migs, in a panic with no accaountability process. Unless you actually believe you can just bury jet fighters unprotected and then expect them to fly.
jg
What you linked to doesn’t in any way address what europe thought. In only shows that Blix speculated that something might mean something else. Even if true it still doesn’t reach the level of cassus belli. Sorry. I’m just not as paranoid as you are. Maybe having a couple thousand outdated and not all that efficient chemical rockets hidden doesn’t equate to an active wmd program that could produce a mushroom cloud.
If this didn’t change their minds, and they still thought he had this wmd program you so adamantly say they believed in, why did they vote against removing him from power? Why didn’t they see him as a threat? Remember these are our allies.
Darrell
Wait a minute. You made the claim that “only the US” believed Saddam had WMDs and a WMD program..that the Europeans changed their mind after inspections is what you also claimed. Both bullshit. I called you on it. Now be honest enough to admit you simply lied and pulled those claims out of your ass
ats
Aren’t we past believing this kind of convenient revelation?
But if he moved them to North Korea we’d never hear a peep.
chopper
so i guess hans blix=europe now?
personally, i think that there were many in europ and elsewhere who stupidly believed the WMD thing too. but quoting blix doesn’t prove that ‘the europeans’ believed he had WMDs, it only proves that blix wasn’t sure where some of em went.
jaime
Darrell gets so adamant about things…Why I remember this as if it were yesterday.
I guess his reply is “no comment”. BTW, not a big fan of walnuts. They make too much of a mess.
LITBMueller
Mac Buckets, guess what (again)? The ORIGINAL report ruled out the possibility “that biological weapons might have been hidden, or perhaps smuggled into another country, and it finds no evidence of secret biological laboratories or ongoing research that could be firmly linked to a weapons program.”
Please don’t call me a liar, and then fail to point out that the Washington Times article you link to:
1) Points out that the Syria conclusion was part of an addendum (Gee, I wonder who pressured him into adding it?)
2) Includes the fact that Duelfer himself pointed out that he had scant information, and was unable to pursue this avenue of investigation further because of the deteriorating security in Iraq.
3) Also includes this:
And, think about it: if the programs and stockpiles ended in the 1990’s….what was there to move?
But, hey, I’ll admit. I forgot about the addendum. Sorry about that. But, please don’t accuse people of lies, and then omit key parts of an article.
chopper
besides, all of this is tangential.
where did the WMD’s go? after all, hussein had them once. well, what few may have been left after clinton bombed the sh1t outta iraq in 98 ended up going past their freshness date. pretty simple, actually.
Darrell
Yes hair brain, your airtight logic and erudite arguments have caused me to change my mind immediately
srv
October 2002 deployments
That’s just the easy link. JStars have been deployed in the ME for a long time (early 2002 in Qatar). If memory serves correctly, they been deployed to the ME since the 90’s (Turkey I think).
Also, there were TR-1’s deployed in the ME with ground/vehicle tracking radar.
We were “softening up” Iraq back in 2002.
Richard Bottoms
Iraq hs been under surviellence since 1991.
I know putting faith in George Bush is such a dumb thing to do. But I am sure even he had sense enough toput Iraq under tigher scrutiny after 9/11.
And since he and the potato heads in his administration decided on war on 9/12/2001, JStars & AWACS were in place long, long before going through the charde at the UN.
The reason they were so certain that WMD would be found in Iraq was because they were sure nothing of consequence had been moved out of the coutnry as their sruvielence almost certainly verified.
tzs
Look, for those of you who believe that those “missing WMDs” got spirited out under the noses of all US intelligence (and if we can’t track that, why are we spending so much money on military gadgetry, hmmm?), can you please go down and sign up at the army recruiting offices? Oh, and volunteer all your income to be used as taxes to pay for this mess?
If you want to follow the bouncing ball, go ahead. You want it, it’s all yours. Just don’t ask the rest of us to pay for or fight for your little military fantasy.
jg
You called me on it by linking to a report that doesn’t contradict what I said? Huh? Then you ask me to be honest about my lying? That doesn’t even make sense.
I ASKED you if maybe the europeans changed their minds, I didn’t say they did. I asked because they voted against the war. Why would they do that if they STILL believed he had wmd?
Otto Man
Technically, I suppose that’s correct, since the area “east, west, south and north” of Baghdad and Tikrit includes all of Iraq, the Middle East, and the surface of the earth.
They could find WMDs in Saskatoon, and Rummy would find justification in that.
Richard Bottoms
One of the advantages of having served in the military is knowing a bit about how it works. If dickless-Cheney would like some hints he can drop me a line.
jaime
How is it logical Darrell to expose your massive amounts of WMD you wish to hide by sending them in easily detectable trucks, planes, and trains?
Also, why is it logical that Iraq gave WMD’s to Syria a country that was part of the first Gulf War coalition?
Also, why would Syria want to take them with the U.S. on the warpath?
Also what assurances did Iraq have that they would ever get them back?
Darrell
Let’s get this straight. Saddam has a history of manufacturing and using WMDs, and a long history of deceiving inspectors and lying his ass off in general. But you believe that Clinton was able to completely destroy Iraq’s WMD arsenals and WMD manufacturing capacity in 1998 which Saddam never rebuilt. That is the basis of your position?
jaime
No, Darrell, I know you habitually lie to yourself but nowhere in my comments did I say you changed your mind. I said you got owned so you conveniently refuse to address the arguments you were so hot for.
Unless you were never really arguing that Iraq was not under surveillance well before the war. But then, what are you left with?
jg
He needs materials and processing plants to do it. He couldn’t do that under sanction. Thats why the whole idea of him having wmd is so absurd. Its not possible. If he had something he managed to keep hidden it probably wouldn’t work anymore and he couldn’t make any new stuff. He was contained.
Its not about intent. We all agree he would if he could. The problem is he couldn’t. He wouldn’t be able to keep it hidden and the whole world would agree to disarm him if it were true.
Darrell
Many chemical weapons are created using commonly obtained materials and can be manufactured in an area the size of a garage. And in case you didn’t hear, the sanctions weren’t exactly airtight, so I don’t see how you arrive at the conclusion that sanctions would stop him
LITBMueller
Darrell, are you saying the Duelfer report is completely wrong, then?
jaime
Saddam’s history of manufacturing and using WMD’s practically ended after the first Gulf War and the imposition of sanctions. When was the last time he actually used them? And if he was so willing to use them then, why not when the Americans invaded?
Iraq was incapable of a massive, clandestine active WMD production program since it’s every move was being watched. Everything the inspectors found led them to believe that Iraq had not been producing WMD since they left. An operation that big could not exist under such heavy scrutiny.
When all is said and done, you Darell, are left with Weapons of Mass Destruction Program Related Activities and the word of a bunch of liars and incompetents. Where’s the beef, sir?
jg
He can bake all the chemicals he wants, he can’t deliver them using common household items, you need rockets. You need rockets that will deliver the chem without igniting it. His old rockets weren’t very good at delivery and he can’t take in shipments of the new kind under sanctions. Remeber the centrifuges supposedly used for making nukes? How do you think we knew he was getting
this stuff delivered? SANCTIONS!! He also can’t cook up nukes using common household items and those are the scary ones that make mushroom clouds. The only wmd that we were afraid of was nuke, chem/bio weps are not enough to go to war over.
Darrell
Saddam kicked inspectors out of Iraq back in 1998. Just thought you might want to know
jaime
How many garages were needed to equip an army with WMD. You need a few big production facilities (which are easily detected) or many small ones. How come one of these garages hasn’t been found?
Darrell
Did you read what Hans Blix said about Saddam’s missing chem weapon rockets? It’s cited above and bolded
LITBMueller
Watch out for those falling baking soda and vinegar bombs, jg! :)
I’ll ask again: Darrell, do you think the Duelfer report is wrong, then?
a guy called larry
Don’t forget about the drones he could attack the US with.
jg
So we stopped watching him? Is that your point? You think we somehow lost the ability to monitor what goes in and out of that country?
We don’t have UN access or no fly zones in Iran yet we know they’re building nukes. You think a country open to us like Iraq could hide it?
BTW the inspections that occurred after we were let back in showed he hadn’t restarted his program.
jaime
Inspectors came back 4 years later and scoured the country and found nothing like what the administration had claimed. I thought you might want to know.
Darrell
From the Duelfer Report, Regime Strategic Intent, Key Findings, p. 1
that, along with networks of ‘dual use’ manufacturing facilities
jg
Keep looking above and you;ll see numerous posts where the age old missiles were dealt with. His old missiles weren’t very good, they ignited more chemical than they released and had almost no range and wouldn’t cause a mushroom cloud. Also the point Bush was making wasn’t that he some old worthless rockets, its that he had a new active wmd program that included nuclear weapons.
moflicky
Uh, didn’t Sen Rockefeller tell the ba’athists in Syria in 2002 that Bush was determined to invade Iraq? that it was a done deal?
Nah, the Syrians wouldn’t have tipped him off, would they?
Darrell
Does it really need to be pointed out to you that even with inspectors, it would be impossible to “watch his every move”? Especially with toothless sanctions which Saddam was flouting.
Seriously, listen to how ridiculous you sound
jg
‘Wanted to’, ‘after sanctions were lifted’, ‘aspired to’. This is your proof? It contradicts everything you’ve said.
LITBMueller
So, Darrell, you agree then that Saddam didn’t have any WMDs before we went into Iraq, then, right? That’s what Duelfer found.
Don’t you feel cheated?
jg
If they were toothless why was he trying to get out from under them? Why did he need to make deals so he could sell some oil? The sanctions were toothless, just sell it why ask for permission?
moflicky
All this talk of saddam’s lack of reliable delivery systems is pretty lame.
wouldn’t a human delivery system do just fine in that regard?
they’ve got a ton of ’em. humans that is. plenty of willing human delivery systems.
The whole region is rotten with willing human delivery systems.
sheesh.
jaime
Right, the Syrians then, KNOWING that the U.S. was going to invade Iraq under the explanation of Iraqi WMD’s were prepared to accept and hide Saddam’s massive stockpile of illicit weaponry?
If you’re tipped that the cops were going to search your neighbors yard for drugs, would you agree to hide their 6 foor tall pot plants in your yard?
You see all the bending and twisting you have to do to accept this stupid notion?
jaime
What the fuck does that mean? Are you even trying to be logical?
jg
You mean strapping Abdul to a catapult?
The issue is we were told he had an active wmd program. Not that he might have some chemicals left over that he could give someone (frankly if he did he would have given it to someone by now, and we would have killed him ten times over, which is why he wouldn’t do it). The second parts not in dispute, its also not enough to got to war over. We (most of us) wouldn’t have bought that.
scs
The whole point of the war was that you can’t tell 100% one way or the other what Saddam was up to. That’s why it was invade now, or be sorry later.
Darrell
Yes, he had one. He had known unaccounted for WMDs when he kicked out inspectors in 1998. Every credible intelligence agency in the world believed he had WMDs. And as you said earlier, Saddam is the type who would rebuild and expand if given the chance.. Duelfer report said the same thing.
So you have sense enough not to trust Saddam, but you put your entire faith in the effectiveness of the sanctions. I’m sorry, but I find that position incredible
Darrell
Or give him a small amount of Vx.. just enough to kill 10 or 20 thousand
jg
The whole point of this war was that the UN was close to dropping sanctions which would give Russia the oil field contracts. We wanted them but most likely Saddam wouldn’t award them to us. What Saddam may or may not be up to was a red herring. We can’t just go to war with every country whose day to day operations aren’t 100% transparent to us.
scs
Yeah and once Saddam go the oil contracts, he’d probably order and get a little Soviet nuke tech to go with it. We stopped it while we could and it was for the best.
jaime
There is no efficient way to obtain, create a delivery system for, and spread enough VX nerve gas without a) alerting authorities to your presence and b) killing yourself in the process of figuring out how to do it.
VX is not something you strap to your chest with a timer and a backpack full of ball bearings.
BadTux
Let me get this straight. Two straight groups of arms inspectors — one under Hans Blix before the war, and one hand-picked by George W. Bush (the Duelfer group) after the war — independently reported that Saddam Hussein neither had weapons of mass destruction nor any credible program to produce such, yet right-wing tools *still* insist, despite the fact that experts actually *on the ground* found no such thing, that such weapons must exist?
Astounding. Simply astounding.
As for those who insist that we had no way of knowing in March 2003 whether Saddam had WMD or not, two words: Hans Blix. We had CIA assets embedded with Blix (and if you don’t believe that, you’re stupider than you look). These CIA assets were reporting the same thing that Blix was reporting — that Saddam had no WMD, and that they could find no credible program on Saddam’s part for producing such. Yet the CIA, Blix, and Duelfer, all of whom were actually on the ground in Iraq, all of whom inspected every square inch that could reasonably be used to hide weapons of mass destruction, all of whom inspected every facility that could possibly be used to produce weapons of mass destruction, are all wrong, and some right-wing publisher who’s never set foot in either Syria or Iraq is right. Astounding. Simply astounding. Some people’s ability to engage in self-delusion is simply beyond belief.
– BT
jg
HAD one. Before we destroyed it. But we were told he started a new one. Thats the one we supposedly went to war over. It didn’t exist. Only the US and Britain thought it did. The ispection showed that trusting or not trusting Saddam is irrelevant, he has nothing, he hasn’t restarted anything. A little chem or bio left over from decades ago is not what we went to war over. We went to war over NEW stuff.
The unnaccounted for wmd wasn’t nukes. At best it was small quantities of agents that have a short shelf life. Unaacounted for and no longer a concern. No war.
scs
Remember the sarin nerve gas in Tokyo’s subways? How is VX any different?
jg
Yeah maybe and probably and maybe again right? We can play this all day. For the best? How many billions spent and where are we? Playing whack a mole with the insurgency, watching a theocracy form and threatening the next door neighbor.
scs
Once again, the point was that he COULD get them in the future. I agree that whether he had some chem weapons or not was not the most important factor. Why doesn’t the left want to do a little strategic thinking here? Or should we have let the sanctions erode and then end up in the same position we are in now with Iran?
Richard Bottoms
The same way a pipe bomb is different from plastic explosive.
Darrell
Vx can be delivered through aerosol sprays, a technique Iraq used to spray Iranians and Kurds.
Richard Bottoms
That isn’t what we went to war over.
We went to war over Saddam has them right now.
Richard Bottoms
First you have to have some.
He didn’t.
We didn’t sell him the chemicals to make that one.
jg
Strategic thinking means you deal with the facts as they arte not as you want them. The sanctions wer in place. Thats all that matters. Him wanting them gone doesn’t make them gone. France wanting them gone doesn’t make them gone. And Iraq ain’t Iran.
You think strategic thinking got us here?
scs
With a lot of troops in Iraq, watching every move they make. At least there is a chance to do something different there. Better than letting Saddam and his sons sit on top of a billion dollar oil fortune while they order up Ruskie nukes.
Richard Bottoms
We did sell him the chemicals to make mustard gas though.
Does that help?
jg
Wow. Now thats the attitude Bush likes. ‘Well at least activity is taking place’. Is it a good move? Its not ‘NO’ move so at least its that.
Richard Bottoms
Didn’t go to war for that reason either.
Besides, Bush looked into Putin’s soul and didn’t find any nuke sellin’ there.
scs
In the case of potential nukes, any moves is better than no moves.
Steve
Kinda funny how Saddam stashed all these WMDs, and yet, the pro-Saddam insurgency has been completely unable to get their hands on any of them.
The Right still believes we would have won Vietnam if we had just toughed it out for 10 or 20 more years and the Left hadn’t been so traitorous. I suspect this is another one they will never, ever let go. Millennia from now, when the earth falls into the sun, Republicans will be claiming that Saddam’s WMDs are still out there on Uranus somewhere.
scs
The “technical” reason for the war was the violation of UN resolutions. All the other stuff the left quotes as being the “reason” is just hot air.
scs
Okay, I don’t know whether the guy had them for sure or not. But the problem with the left is, they are SO DARN SURE he didn’t have them. How do they know this for sure? Hans Blix? Did you ever hear of hide and seek? It’s a simple game that even toddlers learn how to play. Maybe Saddam was good at that too.
jaime
The Aum Shinrikyo attack was proof of the inefficiency of a chemical or biological terrorist attack seeing as they had failed 10 times before and less than a dozen people dies when they were successful.
Sure it spread fear and it did injure and kill many people, but could never have killed the 10-20,000 people projected by the Bush wet dream scenario.
Darrell
Yeah, funny that. We discovered tons of Iraqi WMDs and their delivery systems in ’91, but Saddam didn’t order them to be used on us.
Just because they don’t use WMDs doesn’t indicate their existence one way or another
Perry Como
First we hear about terrorists with blow torches trying to take down the Brooklyn Bridge, now we have to worry about terrorists with cans of Aqua Net filled with VX. Very evil and very clever. How will we ever stop such a crafty opponent?
Eural
Dare I raise another point on this matter? Yes, I dare.
At this point – regardless of where you stand on the pre-war intelligence concerning WMDs – we now know that there were none in Iraq when we invaded. Yet, the President has said that even with his current knowledge he would still have committed to the invasion. Who the hell hears that and still tries to support this administration?
scs
I do. It’s called strategic action.
Darrell
Here is why we went to war. There were over a dozen valid justifications. But don’t take my word for it
Richard Bottoms
John.
You know, that voting for them thing and all.
That’s kinda like supporting them, isn’t it?
Darrell
yeah, you might try reading Blix’s January 2003 report to the UN after inspections. It’s cited upthread. But Blix doesn’t say what you ignorantly claim he says
BadTux
Errm, just to remind folks, Saddam Hussein didn’t kick the inspectors out of Iraq in 1998. The Great Satan, Bill Clinton, did (inbetween afflicting America with genital warts, Blue Dresses Of Mass Destruction, the common cold, and Brittany Speares). After all, he had to Wag the Dog and lob a few cruise missiles up Saddam’s nostrils in order to blow up a few buildings in the middle of the night (as oopposed to wagging the entire freakin’ kennel like some other President recently did). The statement that “Saddam expelled the inspectors in 1998” is thus a lie. Saddam didn’t let them back in after the cruise missile strikes, but that’s not the same thing as expelling them. Blame Clinton for this (should be easy enough to do, after all, Republicans have enough practice blaming Clinton for everything else!).
And furthermore, inspectors who’ve been interviewed say they did not believe, at that time, that Saddam had any remaining weapons. They were pursuing his weapons program (i.e., weapons plans, materials, and facilities that could possibly be used to make future weapons), not his weapons.
Just thought I’d correct the historical record here, since people are throwing around blatant lies as if they were actual historical fact.
– BadTux the History Penguin
Darrell
It was well known fact during the Nov. 2004 election that no WMDs were in Iraq at the time of invasion. just thought you might want to know
Steve
It’s not that I am 100% convinced there were no WMDs. It’s that the burden is on the people who claim they exist, particularly when we were so sure they existed that we invaded a country, particularly because the administration claimed they knew EXACTLY WHERE THE WMDS were. The burden is on them and their supporters, at this point, to find the stuff. The burden is not on the Left to explain exactly what happened to each and every munition and prove that they couldn’t possibly be in Syria, Qatar, or Uranus.
It is the Right’s religious conviction that the WMDs simply have to be out there, somewhere, and at some point they will be found, that is perpetually amusing.
Bob In Pacifica
Darrell is a scaredy cat.
And, of course, that’s what the reactionaries want, a bunch of Darrells to go scurrying around at the next big scare story. That’s why they’re called reactionaries. They react, they don’t think.
As far as the entire world buying the U.S. scare stories leading up to the invasion of Iraq, you might want to look at the Downing Street Memo. Apparently, even the Brits knew how bogus the intelligence was and knew that Bush needed to “sex up” the intel.
No other major ally thought the evidence was strong enough to send in an invasion force. And they were right and you were wrong, Darrell.
So since even you know that that WMD in Syria story is bogus, let’s move on to a real news story. If George Bush is talking about the grave threat of Iran’s nuclear plan, and it is now clear that he was lying like tired dog prior to the last invasion, why should anyone trust Bush this time? What did Dubya say when he mangled the lyrics to that Who song?
BadTux
And, err, Darrel, you might want to try reading Blix’s *February* report…
As for the list of Democratic Congressmen who believed Republican lies, that’s why the Democrats lose elections — they’re a bunch of gullible chumps. As vs. Libertarians, who are an unorganized rabble. Sigh.
– BadTux the Libertarian Penguin
jaime
All the right is left with (no pun intended) is the fact that we can’t prove Iraq never had them when they say they never had them.
“Abcence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” is what Donald Rumsfelf said. So no matter the mountains of documents or reports or boots on the ground or logic that goes against them, the knucklehead right will use the fact that you can’t prove a negative to jusify their beliefs.
I believe that Darrell likes to sleep with sheep. Can you prove that you don’t sleep with sheep, Darrell? You could send me video and photos of you NOT sleeping with sheep. You could have your friends testify to the contrary. You could live nowhere NEAR sheep. That doesn’t prove you don’t. As long as sheep exist and you sleep, I will always believe you sleep with sheep.
Darrell
yeah, cause it’s not like Saddam had ever manufactured or used them before.
Darrell
way to go idiots
Stormy70
Hans Brix! Hee hee.
Pooh
We see the action, where’s the strategy? Is it a good one? From the trailers I’ve seen, the special effects are cool, but I’m not sure the plot holds together.
Steve
Exactly, Darrell. Exactly. He simply MUST still have them!
Keep the faith, dude.
demimondian
jaime, have you heard that the President has yet to comment on the reports that he ate a baby? At this point, we have very specific reports that he may have eaten six-month-old Jenifer McGillicuddy, the daughter of Spc. Hiram McGillicuddy, just three days after he returned from Iraq.
We have certainly got questions about specific details of this story, but we have yet to obtain conclusive evidence that the report is false.
Darrell
Did he retract any of his earlier findings regarding unaccounted for WMDs and delivery systems? No? Well then, you certainly have a ‘solid’ point there
Darrell
Steve, everyone knows Saddam had turned over a new leaf, right?
Darrell
Actually, they were there to confirm whether or not Saddam had complied with UNSC demands of which there is no doubt that he had not. But thanks for playing. You seem so ‘informed’
jaime
Here’s the rub, WHERE ARE THE FUCKING WEAPONS? And don’t say Syria unless you can logically how they magically escaped our surveillance.
When all is said and done, all you have are talking points and no weapons. Baaaa Baaaaa.
kb
Well as to what the europeans thought. As was said before the war :-
As putin said in october 2002.
“Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
As the french said in jan 2003
“Already we know for a fact that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything possible to strengthen this process.”
They didn’t think iraq had wmds. They thought that Iraq would like to get wmds. Which is why they supported the inspections.
The US & UK claimed they knew for a fact saddam had wmds. They were wrong. France and Chirac were right. Cost to the UK (which is what i care about)-98 dead so tony can grovel to the US congress and pick up a gold medal.
Now we have to listen to the same sources tell us that now it IRAN, not IRAQ that has WMDS……….
vinc
We had to destroy the UN in order to save it.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Oh, what the hell–these quotes never get old when the discussion is Saddam’s WMD:
moflicky
NO move was Clinton’s specialty.
Darrell
Saddam did in fact expel some inspectors in 1998 whom he claimed were ‘spies’. The rest were physically blocked from access to inspection sites and confined to their hotel rooms. Such an important distinction you make there
jaime
Clinton bombed Iraq and the right wing sang the peacenik chorus. Clinton bombed Kosovo and Sean Hannity sounded exactly like Michael Moore. Clinton went after Bin LAden and the outrage over the death of innocent civilians was deafening. Clinton botches George Bush’s Somalia escapade and the right (along with most of America) wanted to “cut and run” after black hawk down. Dubya’s plan for retaliating after the Cole bombing was exactly Clinton’s plan. Not much of anything.
But 9/11 changed everything including your acquired taste for bullshit.
jg
Would you agree then that there was no chance Saddam would survive a republican administration?
Ed
Dear Darrell:
In 1982, Saddam Hussein executed 137 people, including children, in Dujail, Iraq, and imprisoned and tortured 1,500 other from the city, following an asassination attempt on Hussein in Dujail.
The following year, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, on behalf of Ronald Reagan, went to Iraq, shook Saddam’s hand, and made a deal to switch American alliances from Iran to Iraq in the region, after the Iran-Iraq war. Apparently Ronald Reagan didn’t think Saddam was too bad to do business with.
Why do you sully Ronald Reagan and Donald Rumsfeld’s reputations with your skreeds about how bad Hussein is? Maybe you are just DougJ trying to dispoil the sainted Ronald Reagan, who belongs on Mt. Rushmore and the $100 bill. Shame! Shame on you!
Darrell
And the US allied itself with Stalin the mass murdering dictator during WWII to defeat Hitler. What’s your point genius?
The Disenfranchised Voter
Can you say “False analogy”, Darrell?
Iran did not pose anywhere near the level of threat that Hitler and his allies did. In fact, Iran wasn’t a threat to the US homeland at all.
Pooh
D.V. to be fair, it’s an “imperfect” rather than “false” analogy.
jaime
The same assholes who funded, armed, and supported this killer gained the support of zombies like you without even questioning them as to their motives. When you spit the utterly stupid statement like “it’s not like Saddam had ever manufactured or used them (WMD) before” you say this in full knowledge of the past with zero acknowledgement of why he was there in the first place.
When Bush says Hussein used weapons before, you nod and drool and repeat rather than objecting to having the same structure that once held him up (the EXACT same people) now responsible for tearing him down. Not once did Dubya ever even admit to what his daddy and his current administration had done in the past in regards to Hussein. And if you can’t admit the problem, why should I believe you can change it?
And I’m still waiting for proof you haven’t screwed around with Sheep, Darrell.
BadTux
In case someone wonders why I’m so sure that Saddam didn’t have WMD: It’s because I ignored all the talking head BS, and went to the math. Talking heads lie. The math doesn’t. The math says that it takes a certain amount of infrastructure, a certain amount of economic activity, to create chemical and nuclear weapons. The statistical data shows that Saddam’s Iraq, strangled by UN sanctions, did not have this. It took close to 20% of the GDP of the United States in 1944 to create two nuclear weapons. Iraq’s entire GDP was less than 1/10th of what was necessary to create nuclear weapons. It takes at least 1940’s technology to create nuclear weapons. Looking at the economic output of pre-war Iraq, it appears that Iraq was basically operating at a 1920’s level, barely capable of producing crude steel and concrete structures.
That said, before Blix launched inspections, I was with everybody else who said that Saddam probably had WMD. But once Blix visited every chemical plant in Iraq and verified that none of them had been modified to create chemical weapons (you can NOT produce useful amounts of chemical weapons in your basement, folks — it requires infrastructure, basically a pesticide factory that has been heavily modified), and once the IAEA had criss-crossed Iraq with sensitive radiation detection material that would have picked up any program that Iraq could create with the technology at their disposal (Iraq did NOT have the capability to produce seals capable of 100% stopping leakage of uranium hexaflouride gas, which is a critical step in producing nuclear weapons from uranium, and there was no nuclear reactor to produce plutonium for a plutonium-based bomb), it was clear that there simply was not sufficient infrastructure left in Iraq to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
My day job is as a manufacturing engineer with experience in the petrochemical industry, so perhaps I was looking at it from a different perspective compared to someone who has never been involved in the chemicals industry. When I was reading Blix’s reports, I was looking for infrastructure. Blix found no infrastructure. No infrastructure means no weapons. If I can reach these conclusions, the CIA certainly could — it just requires consulting with any credible chemicals engineer who knows anything about manufacturing petrochemicals (mustard agent) or pesticides (VX, Sarin, etc., which are all organophosphates). Heck, it doesn’t even require a chemical engineering degree. Any bright high school student who took AP Chemistry knows enough about reaction chains to do the math.
Politicians lie — *all* politicians, not just Republicans, Democrats do it too, regularly and often. But math doesn’t. Math says that Saddam had no real WMD program in the post-Gulf War era. It’s possible that there were some pre-war materials left over, but just as likely that they were destroyed with the rest during the initial round of UN inspections, and by this time they’d be so degraded as to be useless anyhow — long-chain organophosphates decompose under high temperatures, which defines any place in Iraq during the summertime, meaning that any VX or Sarin is long-since decomposed to uselessness. Mustard agent is more stable, in the dry heat of Iraq it could last a decade or more, but not useful as a terrorist weapon for reasons I’ll let you look up yourself (hint: it takes a *lot* of mustard agent to be dangerous, it was used in the Iran-Iraq war primarily as an area denial weapon where thousands of shells filled with mustard agent were dropped onto a 1 mile area of the front where the Iranians were attacking). As for the pre-war nuclear program, all its materials were under IAEA seal and none of them useful for producing a weapon.
In short, I ignored the professional liars (politicians and their mouthpieces in the media) and went straight to the infrastructure issue: what does it take to produce chemical weapons, and does Saddam have what it takes? I used science to see that there was no “there” there. I do not believe that there was any knowledgable chemicals engineer in America who read the Blix reports who would believe that Iraq in 2003 was in any way a credible danger to America and Americans. Unfortunately, nobody listens to us engineers when they’re buying stuff, they only listen to the marketing guys (i.e. the professional liars)… and the Bush Administration’s marketing guys are very, VERY good.
– Badtux the Engineer Penguin
The Disenfranchised Voter
Perhaps you are right, but imperfect is such a gross understatement in this case.
Comparing our participation in WWII to our participation in the Iraq-Iran war is borderline delerious.
Noone can honestly argue that our decision to get involved in the Iraq-Iran war was as jusitified as our decision to get involved in WWII.
Pooh
No argument here.
The Other Steve
Look. Saddam didn’t have WMDs. I don’t care how many times you claim he did… he didn’t have them. I don’t care how many times you claim someone else said he did, he didn’t have them. How do I know? BECAUSE WE HAVEN’T FUCKING FOUND ANY, OR ANY EVIDENCE OF EXISTENCE OF SUCH.
I can’t believe you’re still in that much fucking Denial that you can’t see the truth.
The Other Steve
The thing the moonbat conservatives seem to keep missing in these discussions, is that the people involved don’t always act like you think they should.
David Kay explained it thusly in a radio interview… Saddam was in a unique position. In order to keep the UN off his back, he had to have no weapons. In order to keep the Iraqi people under his thumb, he had to have a threat of weapons. And in order to keep Iran and his other neighbors from invading him, he had to really make them believe he had something up his sleeve.
So he played a game of poker. He bluffed when he had to, he folded when he had to. But his whole goal in life was to maintain power.
That’s why his behavior seemed irrational to you, because you didn’t see the big picture.
Or are obtusely ignoring the big picture, cause you’re trying to score cheap political points with your “But Clinton and France thought he had them” arguments.
I’ll trust David Kay over you morons, at least he’s been over there looking for the shit. You’ve just been sitting in your easy chair typing insults at Patriotic Americans while our soldiers are dying.
DougJ
It’s pretty clear what happened here: Joe Wilson helped Saddam transport the weapons to the Whitewater area of Arkansas, where the WMD are how sitting, waiting to be launched on us the minute the Patriot Act expires.
The Other Steve
Breaking News!
Franco is still dead.
WMDS have still not been found in Iraq.
MAX HATS
The mental gymnastics required to toe the republican party line are pretty impresive. Darrel, I can’t reasonably call you dumb. Just stubborn and wrong. Oh so obviously, overwhelmingly wrong.
It’s almost be admirable in its gusto if it wasn’t so. . .
wait. I just said I wouldn’t call you dumb.
Mac Buckets
Just some odds and ends:
The book coming out by ex-IraqiAir Force officer Georges Sada says it wasn’t that difficult to escape surveillance, so to me, that’s one of the smallest questions about this story.
Later, someone wrote:
Sorry, no. Clinton bombed Iraq without notifying Congress, without UN approval, without any proof of WMD, and without any plan to figure out whether the bombing was successful or not…and was largely applauded by Republicans. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (he of that “peacenik” right wing) said the strikes were an example of “the U.S. leading the world by exercising its military power in an appropriate way.” Doesn’t sound “peacenik” to me!
Incidentally, when the Democrats heard some Republicans talking “wag the dog,” their response was to blast the GOP as treasonous for not supporting the president in time of war. How times change — I guess dissent isn’t the greatest form of patriotism when a Democrat is president!
Forget for a second that this was a totally irrelevant response — the point was that we’ve often allied with much worse dudes than Saddam when they served our purposes (and then smacked them or their successors down when they didn’t), so the Rumsfeld handshake was certainly not unique in American history.
But I’m curious as to what exactly you think Hitler was going to do — march into Iowa, while holding down Russia and the rest of Europe?
The Disenfranchised Voter
It wasn’t a totally irrelevant response, or an irrelevant response at all.
The point was that the need to ally with Stalin was much greater than the need (rather the want) to ally with Saddam.
I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out.
On top of that, in WWII we were attacked by the Axis which caused us to ally with Stalin and the population concurred strongly with this relationship. Iran didn’t attack us–we merely made the choice to ally with Saddam because some ideologues in the government thought it was a smart idea. This wasn’t an idea concurred stongly by the population, and many of them didn’t even realize it was going on.
Zifnab
Do politicans shoot their mouths off? Of course. On a regular basis? You bet. However, I would hardly compare a few Democratic Congressmen shouting down their colleges on CSPAN with the full blown right-wing political treason labeling machine.
And if I remember correctly, Operation Desert Fox – along with the missle strike on an Al-Queda training camp – were received with lamanation over how Clinton was using foreign policy to pull the wool over that damn liberal media while a sex scandal was in full swing.
The Other Steve
Yeah, but… Can we trust Georges Sada? Is he giving a first hand account, or is this more fourth or fifth hand gossip mongering?
And why would Saddam send weapons to Syria instead of just using them?
Really? I don’t recall that. I remember the Republicans making a big stink about it, but I don’t recall much of a Democratic response.
Can you provide us with some links?
Regardless… there still are no Iraqi WMDs as of midnight tonight when I last checked.
searp
This is really hilarious. We finally get WMD confirmation.. 3 years after invading and occupying Iraq? By one source? How ’bout this experiment:
— offer a book deal and a visa to any former Saddamist who will produce a report of WMD in Iraq
— see what happens to the Rate of Unconfirmed Reporting (RUR)
— hypothesis: it will jump by a factor of a zillion
This is the kind of “intel” that we used to go to war in the first place.
Sirkowski
You would think if the White House had evidence of WMDs, they would publicly share it in the media, instead of looking like morons who don’t know what the hell they’re doing.
But guess what…
chopper
yeah, he’s a liar. lying aint proof of WMDs last time i checked.
jesus, did you even read my post? i said that what few were left after clinton was done dropping a sh!t-ton of bombs ended up going bad. so no, i don’t believe that clinton ‘completely destroyed’ iraqs WMDs. (he did most likely take out their manufacturing capability as he targeted pretty much anything).
that’s why full, complete weapons inspections were necessary in 2003; not to prove that hussein had weapons, but to prove that what little he had left in the end of 1998 never survived and were long gone.
it makes sense, as we were watching that country like a hawk since GWI. we knew they didn’t have any substantive means for recreating this stuff cause we destroyed pretty much all of it. you don’t develop chemical weapons factories overnight, especially with some tough sanctions over your head.
as an aside, i’m amazed at how someone who 1) has been consistently proven wrong and 2) consistently misreads posts and builds crappy strawmen as a result in this thread can continue to be so smarmy about his position. the amount of sheer denial from some people in this thread is astounding.
look, you were wrong about the WMDs. it happens. we’ve all been taken by the likes of george bush and hillary clinton before. just get over it already. sheesh.
muddy
A rightwing friend informed me, with great authority, mind you, that the WMD are “buried under the sands” – that’s why they can’t be found. In fact, not only barrels of chemicals but entire fighter jets and rockets as well. I said I didn’t think the “sands” (as though Iraq is the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia) would do a lot of good for either the chemicals or the equipment. So silly.
LITBMueller
C’mon….Everyone knows that it was Hillary who secreted the weapons out of Iraq. She started taking them out in the 90’s in 727’s converted into cargo planes. The planes were eventually operated by Hooters Airlines (you don’t think that big breasted girls were really serving chicken wings on those planes, do ya?). And that’s why Hillary became a NY Senator – so she could be closer to the base of operations – JFK Airport.
There’s a book coming out that exposes the whole plot. Its written by a former Hooters “stewardess,” named Bambie. She even discusses how Vince Foster discovered the evil plan, and was suicided for threatening to expose it. Likewise, Bill Clinton was kept in the dark, but evetually began to hear about the WMD plot. Monica was actually part of a big frame job, getting Bill tied up in a sex scandal so he’d be too busy to dig any deeper and learn more.
And what is Hillary’s plan for the WMD’s? She’s developing chemical and biological agents, delivery systems, and drugs that couteract them. After dispersing the WMDs in our water supply, the country will get very very sick. The timing will be perfect: right during the presidential campaing of 2007. She will be able to promise the American people that she can help them all with nationalized health care and guarantee herself the presidency!
It’s true!!! Read the book when it comes out!!!!
;)
The Disenfranchised Voter
Cool post LITBMueller.
Thanks for the laughs.
Cyrus
This is possibly true and it might be justification for invasion. Maybe. But you know what? It’s not what we were told.
This is true too, but it’s disingenuous at best. Because The Left (TM) didn’t exactly make up the stuff we quote. We’re, um, quoting it. So the hot air was coming from the advocates of the war – and you’re OK with this?
Let me quote something less contemporary, but even more relevant today than when it was written.
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946.
You want to go to war over breaking some UN sanctions? Fine, go for it. Have fun. There’s a legal case for it, and considering these particular circumstances, maybe almost a moral one. But that’s not what were told. We were told that Saddam had tons of the most lethal poison gasses known to man, that he and Osama bin Laden were two peas in a pod (even though the administration didn’t come right out and say that Saddam was behind 9/11), that no one could say for sure whether or not Saddam had honest-to-God nuclear weapons. Despite Darrell’s protests, it was known by the time of the invasion in March 2003 that none of this was true, but the Bush administration stuck to it anyway.
And you and Darrell and Stormy don’t mind. You dispute whether or not they were actually wrong about some of them, but even if not, the “real reasons” are obviously enough for you.
Call it lies, call it honest mistakes, even call it marketing and spin – you’re okay with a democratic government misleading its people so thoroughly about such an important matter? This reminds me of an argument I had with a College Republican a year ago. They were defending the invasion based on the flypaper theory, even though it wasn’t anywhere near the official reasons and would have made the war wildly unpopular if it had been. Why not just come right out and say “if our leaders think they know what’s best but it might not poll well, they should lie to make it sound better.”?
Among the many different reasons to oppose the war was the fact that, as Orwell put it, the invasion of Iraq “does not square with the professed aims” of the administration. Just because someone has a problem with that doesn’t mean they’re a crypto-Communist or they have “Bush Derangement Syndrome” or something.
EL
Badtux, thanks for a post filled with real information and reasoning. A pleasure to see much light with little heat, as opposed to the opposite!
It is sad how little science the general public knows, and sadder still that this administration won’t listen to those who are knowledgeable in the field. I suppose that’s the difference between faith-based and reality-based. Sigh.
Darrell
It’s sad how simpletons on the left are so easily impressed
EL
What is your scientific training? On what basis are you calling me a simpleton? You don’t know anything about my scientific training (a fair amount), or my knowledge of biological and chemical agents (a small part of my education, but there nonetheless.)
More importantly, based on your knowledge or reasoning, how are you refuting the information in Badtux’s post? It sounds like you just don’t like the conclusions, and have decided to call names instead. I’m willing to be proved wrong -mark of scientific training- so give facts, figures and rebuttals based on same. Otherwise it’s the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing “la-la-la”.
EL
Sorry, I didn’t realize the dashes would post as strikethrough. Should be ‘I’m willing to be proved wrong (mark of scientific training) so give facts, figures and rebuttals based on same.”
It is indeed the mark of the scientific approach that the observer is willing to consider alternate explanations.
Darrell
1. Many chemical weapons can be manufactured from easily obtainable materials
2. Duelfer and Kay both found networks of ‘dual use’ labs along with paper trail and cross-checked testimony of scientists saying Saddam was continuing to pursue WMD programs (surprise!)
With your extensive scientific knowledge and training EL, which parts of #1 and #2 are not absolutely 100% true?
Darrell
oh, and #3 (from Duelfer):
But with your ‘scientific background’, so you know better right?
Mac Buckets
It still doesn’t matter what you feel was more necessary. If you want to sneer at Reagan for allying with Saddam against the Iranian fundies, it is absolutely hypocritical to absolve FDR of allying with Stalin, who had already effectively murdered over three times as many people as the Nazis before we allied with him. Either we only deal with lily-white leaders, or we don’t, and we don’t. Everything else is rationalization, like…
And we didn’t send troops to Iran. Your point?
Mac Buckets
Of course, you wouldn’t compare them. You’re for one side, and against the other. And “full blown right-wing political treason labeling machine” is funny, but it’s only a figment of your imagination.
I’d imagine that if the GOP had been louder in denouncing Desert Fox, the Donks would’ve been louder in calling them traitors. With few idiotic exceptions, the GOP applauded the policy of the bombings (even while they questioned the highly questionable timing), like the Speaker Gingrich quote above shows.
BadTux
For the record, I’m a manufacturing engineer, not a scientist. I am concerned with how to manufacture things, not with how easy it is to obtain the materials to do so (well, I’m concerned about that too, but if you can’t manufacture them, having the materials doesn’t do anything for you). When I look at a situation where it is claimed that there is the ability to manufacture various chemicals, I look for the infrastructure, not for the materials. Saddam had no infrastructure. Blix and Duelfer visited every chemicals refinery in the country, every facility that could be used to manufacture chemicals in any realistic weapons quantity in the country, and found nothing — no infrastructure for making chemical weapons. None. They found labs, but a lab is not a manufacturing infrastructure.
And BTW, all labs are “dual use”, you can create mustard agent in any well-equipped chemistry lab in any high school, but you won’t create enough of it to be useful as a weapon. Creating Sarin or VX would be a little harder, especially in purities with a shelf life longer than hours, but is at least theoretically possible for any well-equipped high school chemistry lab, albeit again you won’t have something classifiable as a “Weapon of Mass Destruction” (more a “weapon of minor terrorism”, the most people ever killed by sarin produced in the equivalent of a high school chemistry lab was 12 people in the Tokyo subways, or about 1/200th of those killed by loaded jet planes on 9/11). Shall we classify every American high school as a Weapon of Mass Destruction lab?!
Furthermore, this doesn’t make sense. Syria has a perfect right to maintain stockpiles of chemical weapons. They have never signed onto any treaty which would prohibit them from having stockpiles of chemical weapons, and indeed are well known to have their own extensive stockpiles. If Saddam really had possessed stockpiles that went across the border to Syria, it’d be ice cubes to Eskimos time. Furthermore, once they’re in Syria under the control of the Syrian authorities, they’re no longer a real concern to anybody, because they’re just a few more munitions on top of the thousands of tons of chemical munitions that Syria already possesses and Syria has a right under international law to possess these things. Chemical weapons in the hands of terrorists would be a concern (albeit a minor one — the most deadly terror attack with chemical weapons killed 12 people, meanwhile tens of thousands of Iraqis have died due to the traditional terror weapons of truck bombs and suicide bombers, why would terrorists use chemical weapons when much-simpler truck bombs work better?), but Syria, run by a British-educated eye doctor, has never shown any signs of giving any of its stockpile to terrorists despite its support for well-known terrorist groups like Hamas.
In short, none of this makes sense. No manufacturing infrastructure means no weapons other than mustard agent shells left over from before the Gulf War (any organophosphates would have long since degraded to useless goo in the Iraqi heat), and sending them to Syria for safekeeping would be sending ice cubes to Eskimos, Syria has their own chemical weapons already. Frankly, at this point in time my conclusion is that this is yet another feeble attempt by right-wing mouthpieces to invent WMD out of whole cloth that did not exist in reality, along with an attempt to justify invading Syria (another thing that puzzles me — a British-educated eye doctor runs the place, a British-educated eye doctor who hates al Qaeda because they tried to assassinate his daddy, and they’ve even tortured suspected al Qaeda members for us, why invade the place?!). There simply is too much that does not add up for me to conclude that there is any “there” there.
-BT
Darrell
Emphasis mine. From Duelfer:
Why does the left have to lie in order to make their points? Of course, so many simpletons on the left are impressed because they don’t know any better. Doubt me? Re-read this thread
Mac Buckets
That’s the question, of course. My point was, whether or not it happened, it does seem like surveillance wouldn’t be that difficult to avoid with commercial passenger jets.
The thinking among some is that Saddam thought he’d outlast the Coalition’s will and return to full power. Allegedly, he’d done similar hiding of weapons in the past, and then brought them back once the danger was over.
The media made the big stink about it, coming as this did so soon after the release of “Wag the Dog,” but GOP reaction was limited to the timing (12 hours before impeachment hearings were supposed to start). No one demanded proof of WMD, no one marched with “What has Iraq done to us?” signs. Only a few, like Idiot Trent Lott, even remotely questioned the actual policy of bombing (but if Clinton said grass was green, Lott would say it was purple).
Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli called the GOP reaction “as close to a betrayal of the interests of the United States as I’ve ever witnessed in the United States Congress. It’s unforgivable and reprehensible.”
Mac Buckets
That’s a gross over-reading of Desert Fox. Not only were we working on largely-obsolete intel as to where manufacturing was taking place during Desert Fox (Scott Ritter indicated that the sites would’ve been cleaned out by the time we bombed), but we didn’t even target most of the suspected WMD-building sites. We didn’t want to bomb the “dual-use” facilities because of some PR issues in the past. Clinton admitted that we had no way of knowing what WMD we destroyed and what we didn’t, which is a big problem with the “clean-war” decision.
Darrell
As for it “not making sense” for Saddam to move weapons and equipment into Syria, Syria was an ally of Saddam’s who depended on Iraq for oil, which was pipelined to them by Saddam in violation of sanctions on Iraq. They owed Saddam favors. And in the first gulf war, Saddam hid MIG jets in Iran, which was a sworn enemy, so Saddam has a record of trying to hide weapons when cornered, even in irrational places
But you knew that already, right Badtux? ‘Reality based’ community my ass
Steve
I love how Darrell repeatedly calls everyone “simpletons,” but he can’t even understand why his searches for the word “infrastructure” are completely irrelevant to BT’s point. Not really surprising, since his entire position boils down to “either you believe those WMDs are still out there SOMEWHERE, or you must think Saddam was a saint who never lies!”
When virtually every one of your posts calls someone a name, it’s a good bet there’s not much heft to your argument.
LITBMueller
Was the Kool Aid cherry or grape?
Darrell
I see, Steve knows better than the Duelfer team in terms of Saddam’s chemical manufacturing infrastructure.
As always, Steve is a consistently dishonest partisan hack. If you doubt this, re-read his last post
Steve
EL
I did not claim “extensive scientific knowledge and training” but “a fair amount.” Putting words in another poster’s mouth is a cheap trick.
As for #1, you can maufacture ANFO from easily obtainable materials, too. That has little to do with whether you can make it in large enough quantity and deliver it adequately to cause large scale harm. (Obviously, Timothy McVeigh did)
From a Rand corporation book published in 2000, between the two Gulf wars:
Dissemination is difficult – how do you disseminate something so that it doesn’t dissipate with the first windy day? Most of the delivery systems listed are artillery shells and rockets. Those were a threat to Iraq’s neighbors, but not to us in the US.
Many of the agents are short term problems – once the wind blows, the agent is too dispersed to cause much harm. Many of the agents are better defensive weapons. Mustard agent for instance: “Operationally, mustard is usually a defensive agent, creating barriers against attacking forces and complicating their operations by requiring protective systems.” (From the Rand corp book mentioned above.)
I can’t see chemical weapons as the impetus for the US to feel threatened. Nuclear, biological, yes; but not chemical.
I am not an expert on infrastructure, nor did I claim to be. The key appears to be not what the Iraqis were doing to improve it, but how far they actually got. I do not doubt Hussein wanted weapons, I question whether he actually had or was close to having something that would threaten the US, which was the key point to most US citizens. So you can cite that he sought to enhance, but the key is what he actually had. Your own citations in #3 point out that he may wanted certain materials, but “that Iraq was not allowed to acquire [them] due to sanctions.”
Again, this isn’t my field, but can you cite evidence of theose scaled-up production processes? This seems like saying that working on a better fertilizer production system could enhance Iraq’s ability to produce nastier chemicals. True, but not sufficient to show that they were producing those nastier chemicals.
Darrell
I got that quote straight out of the Duelfer report which is linked upthread. Also in the report is mention that Saddam went to lengths to keep his bio and chem weapon scientists in place and maintained networks of dual use labs. I believe UNSCOM had also expressed concern over Saddam’s labs, as well as his unnaccounted for Vx and chem weapons. As you know, Saddam’s regime had successfully produced and weaponized chem and bio weapons in the past
Darrell
From EL’s Rand citation
No large plants (“infrastructure”) are required to produce most biological weapons. And from that citation, it appears the delivery options for Vx would be through commonly available munitions or sprayers:
ats
Is it unsufferably cheeky to suggest that we should set the bar a little higher this time? We can’t afford to boot out tinpot bad guys at $1.5Tr a pop.
BadTux
Darrel, any pesticide plant for creating organosphosphate pesticides can be modified to make organophosphate nerve agents. The difference between VX and, say, malathion, is one of degree, not of type. And as you point out, Iraq was dotted with pesticides plants, which is one of the reasons why, prior to the Blix inspections, I assumed (like most other reasonable people) that Saddam had mass quantities of organosphosphate nerve agents. He had the raw materials (petrochemicals), he had pesticide plants that could be modified to create organophosphate nerve agents, he had a history of producing these nerve agents, it seemed a reasonable assumption. I was still dubious about whether this in and of itself was enough to justify invading Iraq — why would terrorists try using Sarin or VX, when the most people ever killed by such an attack was 12 people and they’d killed 400 times that many people with simple low-tech box-cutters on 9/11? — but the point prior to inspections was, as you say, it appeared Saddam *did* have the infrastructure to produce organophosphate nerve agents.
However, these pesticide plants cannot be made to produce nerve agents without extensive and quite obvious modifications, modifications which cannot be hidden from expert examination and which cannot be easily un-done once done (and if un-done, it’s pretty obvious that the plant had at one time been heavily modified). Neither the Blix nor Duelfer reports ever found any sign that any of these pesticide plants had ever been modified with these extensive and easily-detected alterations. Furthermore, most of the pesticide plants were in a horrible state of repair, as you’d expect considering that Iraq was under sanctions and had a hard time getting spare parts. It seemed pretty clear that most of them had a hard time producing pesticides for use on Iraq’s crops, and even clearer that no nerve agents were ever made at any of these plants.
Reading the CIA reports on Iraq’s nerve agent program (they’re available at the FAS site in case you’re curious), it appears that Iraq’s organophosphate nerve agent program never worked particularly well. It produced very impure nerve agents that had a shelf life of only a few weeks before breaking down into harmless goo, and their attempts to produce binary nerve agents were laughably clumsy and ineffective. In fact, eventually Iraq abandoned using nerve agents against the Iranians and went back to good ole WWI-vintage mustard agent by 1984. And that was during the 1980’s, when Iraq had a modern infrastructure, monetary support from other Arab nations in addition to full revenue from their own oil, and full access to the world market due to not being under sanctions. Given that fact, it is not particularly surprising that they never bothered re-starting the program in the post-Gulf War era — their nerve agent program was never particularly effective in the first place. Still, given Iraq’s history, it certainly would be reasonable to assume, pre-inspections, that some of those pesticide plants had been modified to produce nerve agents. But they weren’t. Two different groups of inspectors verified that.
Remember, the first three letters of the word “assumption” are “ass”… that’s what assuming stuff does to us. But reality simply is, no matter what our assumptions going in were. And reality is that there were no nerve agents other than perhaps tiny amounts in an experimental lab somewhere (amounts useless even as a terror weapon) in Saddam’s Iraq in 2003.
As for mustard agent, that story was bit more mixed. Mustard agent requires ethylene, chlorine, and sulphur to produce, and must be produced in mass quantities to be useful. The infrastructure to produce mustard agent is fairly simple for any nation with access to the world market, but does not resemble that for producing nerve agents or other petrochemicals in any way, and thus would be easily detectable. The physical plant required is fairly large and fairly unique, and even with the holes in the sanctions regime it seemed rather unlikely that Saddam had reconstituted his ability to create mustard-agent munitions. Both the Blix and Duelfer reports confirmed that.
In short, the only thing Saddam could have even conceivably possessed as far as chemical weapons went were pre-Gulf-War supplies of mustard munitions. The UNESCO and Blix inspections both concluded that Saddam could have hidden away as much as 2,000 munitions loaded with mustard agent that were unaccounted for. These munitions, however, hardly qualify as “weapons of mass destruction”. They’re useless as terror devices because of the quantity of mustard agent required to have a toxic effect — basically, you’d have to haul a 200 pound bomb around with you in order to have a reasonable chance of killing anybody with the thing, and the result would be less deadly than simply blowing up 200 pounds of fertilizer and diesel fuel — and besides, we’re talking about 15-year-old munitions as likely to fizzle as to actually blow up. While it is possible that Saddam did send what few mustard munitions Blix didn’t account for across the border to Syria, these are hardly “weapons of mass destruction” in the first place, and in the second place Syria already has plenty of mustard munitions of its own and has a right to possess such munitions, so it’s not as if Saddam would have been giving Syria something they didn’t already have. So the notion that we have to invade Syria to retrieve Weapons of Mass Discomfort that Syria has a right to possess…. is just plain bizarre.
And insofar as a nuclear program goes, there was none. Period. As I mentioned, Iraq’s economy and industrial infrastructure simply wouldn’t support one. I didn’t need Blix and Duelfer to tell me that. You can’t hide a nuclear program. And before you say “what about Pakistan?!”, the moment Pakistan started building a heavy water plant for a supposed “civilian” nuclear program, I knew they were working on a bomb. Their bomb was no surprise to me. I have no idea why it was a surprise to anyone else. It was clear to anybody who knew anything about infrastructure that Pakistan was building a bomb. The fact that it surprised the CIA surprises me only in that it confirms that the CIA is useless, slanting its intelligence according to the way the political winds blow rather than towards reality. Unfortunately, real reform at the CIA in order to improve its ability to obtain real intelligence (rather than manufacture intelligence according to whatever its political overseers want to see) seems at least three years away, since the only “reform” that has happened lately is the granting of a Medal of Freedom to the guy who produced faulty pre-war intelligence on Iraq, then appointing another corrupt political crony to take his place.
So I’ll just repeat my refrain: Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. No infrastructure = no viable weapons program and no weapons other than mustard shells left over from Iran-Iraq War. And there was no infrastructure. So if Iraq did send anything over the border into Syria, it was a few 15-year-old mustard munitions — munitions Syria has a right to possess. Frankly, invading a country in order to destroy a few rusty old bombs and artillery shells of little military value sounds like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. Iraq had no right to possess those weapons, but Syria does, so even if Iraq did send them over the border, I fail to see what the big deal is, other than to demonstrate that Saddam was an idiot, which we already knew. In any event, it is today completely obvious that Iraq presented no threat to America even if Saddam had possessed a few rusty old mustard munitions, and that’s all I care about — protecting America and Americans. F*** the UN. If Saddam wasn’t a threat to America but was breaking UN resolutions, let the UN take him out. If Saddam was no threat to America but was a threat to his neighbors, let his neighbors take him out. If Iraqis wanted democracy and not Saddam, let them take him out. I pay my taxes to benefit America and Americans, not some foreigners overseas who, like, don’t even pay taxes to the US government. If the world wants the US as their policeman, the world needs to pay for it. Until then… f*** the UN, and f*** the Iraqis, and f*** the Saudis, and f*** the rest of the world.
— BT
BadTux
Oh, regarding biological weapons — Iraq never had anything more than experimental quantities of any biological agent, and their efforts to weaponize them were pretty laughable. The only successful terrorism using anthrax occurred on U.S. soil using anthrax stolen from U.S. military stocks (or not stolen, but, rather, deployed by rogue elements of the U.S. government, or, for the even more paranoid out there, by non-rogue elements of the U.S. government). This attack killed five people. What terrorist would want a weapon so pitiful in its power, when he could just load up a truck with fertilizer and diesel fuel and kill hundreds like Timothy McVeigh did?!
Unlike the case for organophosphate nerve agents, where we knew Saddam had possessed them in the past, where we knew Saddam’s Iraq at least theoretically had infrastructure to produce them, it never seemed reasonable to believe that Saddam had any biological weapons, and indeed neither Blix nor Duelfer found any, nor any facilities for their manufacture. No facilities. No infrastructure = no weapons. Sorry.
-BT
The Disenfranchised Voter
It’s not about what I feel was more necessary. The fact of the matter is OBJECTIVELY entering WWII was more necessary.
You can’t dispute that with any real argument.
Ridiculous. We were attack, and that is what got us into WWII. The decision to support Iraq over Iran was purely an ideological one. It wasn’t even a necessity. It was a political–not a national security–choice.
The Disenfranchised Voter
*attacked
And I’m not saying that FDR gets completely off the hook for that, just that an attack on the homeland and the threat that the Axis posed makes the situations extremely different.