>
> Chuck0 wrote:
> >
> > Brian Siano wrote:
> > >
> > > Even antiwar activists were vocal on the point
> > > that much of Saddam's WMD armory was real,
> > > because we kept commenting on how we'd sold it to
> > > him in the first place, and all the U.S had to do
> > > to confirm the stockpiles was to check the sales
> > > receipts.
> >
> > Speak for yourself. Most of the anti-war activists
> > I know were pretty skeptical of all the bullshit
> > about Saddam's WMD.
>
> I'm with Chuck on this. We know he used to have them,
> but were skeptical that he had them recently.
For what it's worth (nothing), pre-invasion I assumed there were probably at least a few chemical warheads lying about in Iraq; people still occasionally dig up WWII weapons here and there today, and there were piles of chemical ordnance all over Iraq in the eighties, when Saddam was Reagan's, the elder Bush's, and Mr. Rumsfeld's good buddy. I'm surprised no one yet has unearthed a few rusting shells and started shouting "smoking gun! smoking gun!" Ritter and the U.N. disarmament gang must have been pretty thorough, huh? I also assumed Saddam had no biological weapons - though incredibly dangerous to work with, they suck as weapons - nor nukes - they were nearly impossible to hide in the vast Soviet Union in the fifties (e.g., by sampling airborne dust particles U.S. scientists were able to completely reverse-engineer Stalin's first A-bomb way back in 1949), how much harder for Iraq to hide in the high-tech nineties.
But even if Saddam had had "WMDs" - usable stockpiles of poison gas shells, or even anthrax bombs, or even a nuclear bomb or two, as unlikely as that last was - still, left unmolested, Iraq was no threat to the U.S.A., for the U.S.A. has the coordinates of Baghdad and every other town in Iraq, and five thousand instantly-deliverable nuclear bombs. The Soviet Union, with eight times as many citizens, twenty times as many scientists and engineers, a manufacturing infrastructure Iraq entirely lacked, and thousands upon thousands of nuclear bombs, possessed "WMDs" for decades but never used any against America. Deterrence works. No one who can be targeted will use "WMDs" against a nuclear power, with only two exceptions: first, a stateless criminal like Osama bin Laden who can't be found and retaliated against, and second, the government of a country which has been invaded and overrun.
In hindsight there's all the proof anyone needs regarding Saddam's "WMDs" - since he didn't use them when he was being overrun, then he didn't have them, period - but before the invasion neither did I know whether Iraq possessed "WMDs" nor did I care.
As Iraq was never any threat to us, Bush's unnecessary invasion and subsequent occupation was a murderous war crime against the people of Iraq; it undermined the international system of national sovereignty; not only was it a reckless distraction from our justified war of revenge against the perpetrators of 9/11 but for obvious reasons it was and continues to be terrifyingly counter-productive in that real war. Of course Bush Jr. lied about the Niger uranium and the aluminum tubes and all that; every time Bush Jr. says _anything_ about _any_ important public matter everyone knows he's lying, he's a less convincing liar than even Richard Nixon. Of course I resent being lied to. Of course I enjoy watching the mass media sticking it to the pinch-eyed frat boy and all those creepy freaks in his administration, even over a 16-word technicality. But I didn't think then or now that Bush's various lies to Americans were the problem; his action, the unjustified, thus criminal, invasion of a nation which, "WMDs" or none, posed zero threat to the U.S.A., that is the problem.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net