I still firmly believe that, in a country twice the size of France, the chances that Saddam hid the weapons in the desert (or his forces did so without his permission) are very great.

I also believe that it is not only practicle for him to have done so - but the evidence is such that he would have considered it as a viable option.

After all, he DID bury fighter planes that were only discovered a short while ago. I believe that were weapons to be buried into the sand of a desert, as opposed to the sand next to a busy international airport used by the allies, they could have gone undetected for this time and much longer still.

Yes, in a country the size of California that is predominantly desert there are undoubtedly many remote places to bury weapons, especially if you scatter them out. Also I have been under the belief for some time now that in the time of our "coalition building" and "exhausting diplomatic resources," Saddam had ample time to sell, or even give his weapons to other countries or even terrorist organizations. Good grief, we even gave him forty-eight hours after we had made our decision to declare war. What's up with that? Since when does a country have to tell every detail of their war plans before they even go to war. It doesn't make sense.

said...

It was a classic bait and switch by an administration that had planned to go to war in Iraq since BEFORE he was appointed to the Whouse...

Dubya and his gang of thugs are classic fear-mongers....

So bush lied.....and thousands died....Good thing it wasn't about a hummer from a chubby intern or he'd be in REAL trouble with the "liberal media" Right? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight....

This whole WMD discussion (not limited to this thread, but the bigger discussion) has been a classic example of the fubar state of American political discourse -be it in the media or on political message boards. In this sound-bite driven era we tend to focus on the simple minded minutiae rather than the geopolitical strategies being employed behind the scenes.

Rule #1: No one involved in a competition/conflict discusses their strategy publicly (except perhaps, afterwards for posterity).

WMD or no WMD, we were going to take out Saddam.

Here Truebrit will want to pipe up and say "So you admit they lied to us." No, nothing of the sort, TB. Way back when, I read a very good Newsweek article on the decision from a reporter who (IIRC) was in Condoleezza Rice's office when Present Bush walked in and said "F--- Saddam. We're taking him out."

With that decision taken, the talk amongst the administration officials turned to what the primary message would be. They had many angles to choose from:

• 12 UN Resolutions Ignored
  A broken Oil-for-Food program that was merely serving to line Saddam's pockets
  Past WMD use
  Two invasions of neighboring countries
  The harboring of known terrorists (see: Abul Abbas)
  Training of terrorists (see: Salman Pak)
  Support of terrorists (See: Hamas and public payments made to families of suicide bombers)
  Acceptance of Al Queda related groups within its borders (see: Ansar al-Islam)
  A brutal supression of Shiite and Kurdish rebellion culminating in hundreds of mass grave sites already discovered. (and whose blood has stained our hands)
  Brutal torture of Iraqi Olympic atheletes who dared not to win.
  Continuous firing of G2A missiles at our pilots patrolling the no fly zone.
  Brutal repression of political dissenters. Or, perhaps more accurately, those lacking the proper political assent.
  The attempted assassination of a U.S. president

Hey, pick out 1,2,3 of these and throw them out. But everyone agreed with at least one of these points. Saddam=bad. Really bad. No on to the soundbite media.....

According to the Newsweek article, the only thing everyone agreed on was that WMD posed a serious threat. So that's the angle they chose. It was also suitable in that it created the 'clear and present danger'.

Now, do/did they exist? Who knows. The notoriously unreliable (yet sometimes featured on NPR) debka.com suggested before the war that the WMD were moved to Syria before the war. Another report from a supposed bodyguard defector indicated that there was an elaborate machine that could bury itself itself in the desert along with all the WMD inside. This same source said that the palace grounds were paved in glass - under which sharks and other sea creatures lived in plain view of those walking above them.

Yeah, right. Now that we're in the palaces, we don't get any reports of those. I guess the bombs would've messed with the equilibrium a bit, but the resulting dead fish stench surely would've gotten some mention somewhere.

So, yeah. Maybe WMD, maybe no. Saddam was found in a hole only after great effort, and I bet that a buried chemical warhead has a lot more patience. But does it matter? No.

One only has to take a look at what has happened to realize how brilliantly this has been done.

Saddam's out. Every Jihadi in the middle east is trying to get themselves into Iraq or Afghanistan to blow themselves and their fellow Arabs to smithereens instead of on the streets of New York. Before, Afghanstan was the scourge of anyone with a conscience and now it's a hopeful, if a still unstable democracy. Same with Iraq. In Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince Abdulla is waging his own war on the terrorists who are now bombing his own subjects. India and Pakistan are talking peace. The Turks are finding that not helping us with troop movements are not protecting them from terrorist bombings. Iran now finds itself surrounded with U.S. allies (take a look at a map). Oh, and Ghadaffi. How big of a turnaround is that?

It ain't all good, but it is progress.

Don't forget that both the USA and Iraq have broken UN resolutions and rulings. The US attacked Iraq without warrant: the UN did not agree on attacking Iraq, there was no real evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and they have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction.

What is with the hatred of Liberals on this forum? How did Sadam bring it upon himself? He gave the UN full access to his country. I'm not siding with him though I think the attack on Iraq was wrong. It was unsanctioned and seems to have been only done for the purpose of obtaining oil. Sure Sadam is an evil man, but who gave him the power? The United States trained him, they made him. They gave him money and weapons. People make their own enemies. Sadam is clearly an example of this. But what right did the US have to invade Iraq? It costed people their lives both American and Iraqi.

The point is, I'll believe the Americans about the weapons of mass destruction when they find some. I still won't agree with them though. The war shouldn't have happened at all.

I don't think that Saddam really just abandoned his weapons projects like that after the Gulf War. They are probably (as andy mentioned) hidden somewhere, he had a quite nice amount of warning time to hide them...

That still doesn't excuse the Bush Administration from attacking Iraq without UN approval. The whole thing seemed too premeditated, the masses of Iraq rhetoric early in the Bush's presidency only hyping up to the war. We must attack Iraq to stop Saddam from nuking the US (how would that even be possible?), then Saddam had terrorist links, but the actual campaign was named Operation Iraqi Freedom...

Umm...Little too hard to swallow.

Saddam had to ousted, but after the due procedures. Why am I getting a League of Nations flashback?

"He gave the UN full access to his country."

If the US military can't find any trace of the weapons, how the heck do you suppose a few UN inspectors could of found any?

The UN only inspected the sites the Iraqis toke them to, and knowing Sad(*)(*)(*)(*) he probably hid them out in the middle of nowhere.

__________________
Walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything...

Show your kids you love them by buying them the No. 7 brand.

Good post L1P1. I don't agree with all of your implications, but they're interesting facts nonetheless.

This snippet reminds me of something my aunt told me a while back - regarding George W. saying something to the effect of "Nobody puts a hit out on my dad." shortly after he was elected. Wonderful foreshadowing. WMDs or not, it's a family vendetta that Bush is trying to settle, and 9/11 was the perfect excuse.

Many of the facts you cite, however, simply aren't grounds for invading a sovereign nation. The US shouldn't be in the business of invading countries and rebuilding them over corruption and isolated human rights violations. We even have a track record of placing corrupt regimes into power on the occasions that we do intervene - including Saddam.

The reality is Bush Sr. should have finished the job over a decade ago. We had the ethical grounds to go in and root him out because he invaded another sovereign nation and was busy gassing the Kurds. Since the end of that conflict, there had been no overt military actions from Iraq against another nation.

What most of us take issue with regarding the current Iraq war is that it sets a very ugly precident. We invaded a nation without direct, recent provocation and dismantled its government. This sets up a very ugly world view of the United States and will undoubtedly be fresh in the minds of future terrorists a decade or two from now when they inevitably blow themselves up on U.S. soil. It's grossly irresponsible without a clear and present threat, which Iraq did not pose.

I'm all for playing it strong and not being a nation of apologetic ninnies, but Bush should not have been so eager to throw diplomacy out the window in favor of putting our troops in harm's way. When there is no real danger of anyone immediately waging war on us, what harm would have been involved in giving diplomacy a bit longer to run its course?