Do you believe there are/were WMDs in Iraq?

[DigitalWarrior]

I am hoping to see what THR believes about WMD in Iraq? If you have evidence to back up your belief, please share it.

 

[Bear Gulch]

Yes I do. Either way, are you arguing that the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam?

I believe the WMDs are now in Syria and/or Iran.

 

[DigitalWarrior]

Bear, really what in the world indicated I believed that?

 

[scout26]

We know that he used them on his on people in the 1980's. We also found at least one 155mm artillery shell after the war with nasty stuff inside. You don't go throught trouble and expense to make just one.

I would have liked to choose both b & c. I believe that he was waiting for the UN sancations to collapse to restart his nuclear program. Most of his chem/bio stuff was either destroyed or exported when the war started.

I also think that Saddam was probably being BS'd to a certain extent by his own scientists.

SH: "So, Achmed, how goes my bio weapons program ??"
Scientist: "Just great boss, we're almost ready !!"
SH: "What do you mean 'almost' ??"
Scientist: "Did I say 'almost', I meant we've got the most potent bio stuff ready !!"


Having said that. He was a threat and needed to be removed. Notice how the pucker factor on the other evil dictators rose.

 

[DigitalWarrior]

To be clear I believe Bush Lied

Bush said the WMDs are there. Powell said he had PICTURES. They did not claim best evidence. They did not claim "a guess".

Bush said THEY ARE THERE.

Some might say that in order for it to be a lie, you have to be aware of it. I cannot believe that the President of the US is as dumb as the Democratic Underground does. I have to imagine he knows the difference between proof and best guess conjecture.

I am particularly pissed off about it because I supported him on the basis of SECRET evidence I couldn't see. I defended him in public and private. I feel very guilty about it. I trusted his word. He made a fool out of me.

I will never trust SECRET evidence in my life again.

 

[Rebar]

First off, Bush didn't lie, he was mistaken, which is a whole different thing.

I firmly believe the chemical/biological weapons were moved to Syria just before the war. Saddam also had every intention of making more of those, and restarting the nuclear program, after sanctions were lifted. Considering that just about everyone in the UN was being bribed through the oil-for-food fiasco, as were France, Germany, and Russia, sanctions would have been lifted sooner rather than later.

 

[scout26]

Then everyone lied. I did not hear anyone (Democrats, French, German or Russian) except the regime say that they did not have them.

There was no "secret evidence". Powell showed what we had to the UN. Not only that, but Saddam's son-in-law had defected and before he was lured back to Iraq and killed, told some interesting (tip of the iceberg) stories about the regime's WMD programs.

Check what the Democrats: Kerry, Gore, Clinton (both), et al. said about Saddam and WMD before the war. They had the same intel as Bush.

I just gald that he didn't use them in some type of Gotterdammerung play during/after the war.

I am concerned that they (they meaning not only completed weapons, but components, equipment and knowedge) got shipped to either Syria or Iran.

 

[bcbr]

reply

I did not vote and do not use the term wmd.
NBC is a more correct term in my limited understanding.
Yes ,some type of nbc weapons were there.Some are in syria and maybe iran.
China russia france germany all are in on the opereration during the so called embargo or whatever. Probably why they are so pizzed off at the USA.
I also believe some one loosed some BC weapon in the 1st GW.
Too many sick and dying vets.
Cannot for the life left in me figure it out. I also believe we are in for it sooner than later,not just the middle east but look around where the news aint,Colombia,Venuzuala,Panama,Mexico,and the big one China.
Maybe its chess and the USA wanted in there 1st.
The USA had a plane downed and siezed by the chicoms a couple or 3 yrs ago,continually rattling about Taiwan who we should have armed to thre teeth,those guys helped to down a 117 in the bosinian area spyiny and sendind info to the bad guys watching to see what happened,then the USA accidentally bombed the chicom embassy.
So yes some one sold or provided it to the iraqis and others.

 

[standingbear]

yeah...saddam used them on his own people,then woke up one glorious morning and decided to turn over a new leaf.I don't think so.


I think some were dumped in the river,some were shipped off and perhaps some even sold.THAT is a scary thought indeed.

 

[Wildalaska]

Im trying to figger out why this is even here

Wildarmedpolitesociety.comAlaska

 

[Zundfolge]

I voted They were exported/destroyed on the eve of invasion but it could just as easily be They are still there somewhere.

 

[XLMiguel]

Presto-change-o

There was an awful lot of interesting truck traffic goingfrom interesting places in Iraq into Syria just before TSHTF, per SRO. Syria is also a Baathist regime. Don't know fer sure what was on them, but I sure know how I'd bet.

 

[Hkmp5sd]

Yep.

 

[Jay Kominek]

My thinking is thus:

Iraq is 4,704,603,900,000 square feet in area. I lived in an apartment that was 1,000 square feet, at one point. I lost my keys. It took me half an hour to find them. Now say that my 49,999 closest friends and I decided to search Iraq, 24/7/365 for my car keys. It'd take us 5 years, 4 months at that rate.

Countries are Very Large Places when you're not looking at them on a map.

Certainly bombs are fairly large, but biological agents could very well be smaller than my car keys. Even so, my car keys weren't intentionally hidden, whereas any NBC materials were nicely hidden.

So, we know they were there years ago, and we definitely found one shell since we went in. Saddam is obviously the sort of fellow who wants them, and everybody thought he had them until it was cool to say or do anything to hurt Bush. Thus it seems pretty obvious to me that he had them, and they're either very well hidden (think: send a team of guys out to bury them, and shoot them all when they get back to base), or they got shipped out to some other country.

 

[Angus MacFuff]

I didn't think anyone remembered that the war was about the imminent threat from the WMD. Kind of refreshing that THR forum remembers the original lie.

I just wish Bush and Cheney didn't lie to the world, but just tell the truth. “We want Saddam out and we don't care what you think.â€

The whole WMD will be viewed in the future, as an embarrassing low point in US diplomacy.







Cogito, ergo doleo

 

[MikeIsaj]

Of course he had WMD. The president did not lie, I know this to be true because I have a long term memory. You have to shut that off to believe anything else. Consider the following;

In the Iran/Iraq war Saddam routinely used chemical weapons on Iranian troops, evidence that he had WMD. Where did they go?

At the end of the first Gulf War, we saw the WMD and Saddam admitted he had them. He agreed to destroy them. Why would he agree to destroy something he did not have? Where did these weapons that we have direct evidence of, go?

Saddam killed approx 40,000 kurds with what? If you said nerve agent, you must believe he had WMD. He demonstrated again that he had them. Where did they go?

When he got the boot from Kuwait in '91, he agreed to inspections. Then he stopped cooperating before they were all destroyed. Why? If he was destroying them all, why did he throw out the inspectors? If you don't think this makes sense, you must believe he had WMD.

We demanded repeatedly that he let us back in to inspect. If he had no more WMD, all he had to do was show us what he did with them and he might still be in power today. Why didn't he?

Saddam had large stockpiles of chemical agents, and probably biological agents and was working on nuclear. We have hard evidence that all this existed at the conclusion of Dessert Storm. Where did it all go?

It is inconceivable to me how anyone can look at the facts and say it was unreasonable to expect to find WMD. I also cannot understand how people can be comfortable knowing there is a whole *^#$load of Chemical weapons unaccounted for.

 

[Selfdfenz]

I thought we discover SH had significant NBC/WMD on our first visit and we took care of them back in the day. Having been caught with his pants down in version 1.0 of our intervention in Iraq, why is it so hard to believe he would not have taken measures to hide and move whatever he produced or acquired anew after we left.

He never expected us to come back for version 2.0 but I imagine he was smart enough to move what he had to higher ground and he had time to do it.

BTW, we haven't likely found much, let alone all, of his $$$ either.

If you are fully convinced SH had nothing and had been working on nothing by the second time we invaded, surely the N. Koreans and Iranians are being terribly misunderstood also.

Best,
S-

 

[Standing Wolf]

In exactly one short word: Syria.

 

[bogie]

Given that he used nerve gas on Iraqi citizens, not to mention a whole load of Iranians, anyone who says that he wasn't in possession of (a) the weapons, or (b) the technology to rapidly manufacture the weapons, is a damn fool.

 

[davec]

yeah, in 1990.

 

[coylh]

Fact stopped reading when Opinion ran into the room, a little breathless.

"Fact! Fact! It's Speculation--he's been in a terrible accident!" cried Opinion.

"What happened?" asked Fact.

"He was out walking when a herd of donkeys attacked and ate him up!"

"That's terrible" said Fact. "Now every ass in town will be full of Speculation."

 

[bogie]

Think of it this way...

You've got a meth manufacturer who has a dozen sten kits in his garage, along with a bunch of pipe. He's also got a drill press, a mill, and and assorted taps, etc...

He doesn't have any machineguns. Today.

 

[bosshoff]

Sound bite

Uday and Qusay! These guys were weapons of mass destruction themselves. Not my original thought, probably Conan O'Brien's line.

 

[jefnvk]

Didn't the US Soldiers walk around for months on top of hidden aircraft?

I don't know where they are. I do know that the European countries believed before the war that there were weapons in Iraq. If all the western countries were wrong, why isn't anyone saying all the western leaders should be removed from office.

We know there was at least one banned shell sticking around. I know many people wil say that one shell isn't a WMD, but if there is one, there are probably many lying around somewhere.

Personally, I think all the media attention is to avert attention from the Oil-For-Food scandal.

And to all the people saying that the US is simply killing innocent civilians by being there, I wonder how many fewer innocent citizens are being accidently killed by American forces opposed to actually targeted by Saddam.

 

[Ohen Cepel]

He had them.

It didn't get much press at the time. However, the 2 sarin gas rds that were popped off as IED's was total proof that he had them.