"I still want to reserve my position on whether anything will be found, but I did write before the war, and do state again (in my upcoming Slate/Penguin-Plume book) that obviously there couldn't have been very many weapons in Saddam's hands, nor can the coalition have believed there to be. You can't station tens of thousands of men and women in uniform on the immediate borders of Iraq for several months if you think that a mad dictator might be able to annihilate them with a pre-emptive strike."
<http://slate.msn.com/id/2083202/>
Ahem.
A casual glance at some of Hitch's columns before the war produced the below quotes:
1/16:
"You can get through any conversation or chat show by pulling a solemn face or adopting a serious tone and saying: 'Well, the government hasn't made its case on weapons of mass destruction and there's no clear link between Saddam and al-Qaeda and, anyway, we need another UN declaration.'
"Those who have been getting through the past month by saying this are in danger of looking foolish in the extreme a few weeks from now. But that's what often happens to people who allow their thinking to be done for them.
"On the weapons issue, for example, it is perfectly obvious that the Iraqi regime has something to hide . . .
". . . However, the United States and several Iraqi dissident groups have sources of their own on the whereabouts of some key sites, and the time is approaching when Blix and Saddam will be put to the test.
"If I were you, I would watch out for the discovery that Saddam Hussein has been using cellars and tunnels underneath mosques to hide his weaponry: a disclosure that might have its effect in the Muslim world and at the United Nations."
<http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12538542&method=full&siteid=50143>
1/16:
"Any 'peace movement' that even pretends to care for human rights will be very shaken by what will be uncovered when the regime of Saddam Hussein falls. Prisons, mass graves [no one I know doubted the first two], weapon sites . just you wait."
<http://opendemocracy.com/debates/article.jsp?id=6&debateId=33&articleId=896>
2/1:
"A further question arises. Does Mandela suppose that weapons of mass destruction are no matter?"
<http://slate.msn.com/id/2078003/>
Undated:
"There are several arguments for attacking Iraq . . . there's the threat of weapons of mass destruction."
<http://www.americasfuture.org/viewBrainwash.cfm?pubid=210>
That quote again:
"I still want to reserve my position on whether anything will be found, but I did write before the war, and do state again that obviously there couldn't have been very many weapons in Saddam's hands, nor can the coalition have believed there to be."
Where did he write that there "couldn't have been very many weapons in Saddam's hands"? Class?
DP
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