Iraq and her WMDs?

Question

Do YOU think that Iraq had WMDs prior or during the recent invasion? Personally, I won't say my opinion yet (I don't want to influence other answers). Please be civil...

First to answer, Jane, do you remember when Saddam chemical weaponed his own people? When he hit Iran with chemical weapons? He had them, probably still does. Lot of desert to hide them under...

Answer 1

Of course he did. We KNOW he did because he used them to slaughter 180,000 Kurds in the eighties.

We didn't know if Saddam still had them in 2003, but we didn't know he didn't. What if we hadn't invaded, and he did have them, something that is still debateable. Time and again I hear the "if there were WMDs in Iraq, why didn't we find any?" argument. You can make a chemical or biological weapons factory in a reasonable sized garage. You can hide a nuclear weapon in a small van. Iraq is a country the same size as France.

Answer 2

Saddam had no nuclear program. He didn't even have the basic components for nukes. He didn't even appear to have a plan for nukes

Yes, he did have chemical WMD during the Iraq/Iran war. We helped supply them and operate them as we were arming Saddam then. The west seemed fine with Saddam back then.

Why are people so desperate to stick with the WMD story? It was based on a lie

The US intelligence about Saddams nuclear program was from a single source. He was a convicted fraudster and was paid a million dollars just to lie.

It's stupid to think he sent his WMD into Syria before the war. Who would hide his weapons before entering a war? Besides, Iraq can't have flown any weapons into Syria, because Iraq was under a strict no flight zone.

Look, the fact is that Iraq was a weak nation in 2003 that had UN no flight zones and sanctions placed on the civilians, killing over 1 million.

Saddam was a tyrant, for sure. But he was an unarmed old man. He posed no threat & was under constant watch.

Saddam was weak, Iraq was weak, there were no terrorists, there was no WMD. There were no radical warlords. It was secular, It was no threat at all.

It's very clear that the Iraqi people hate the west and the war has made us less safe.

But get this. What is the motto for leaving? It's "When they stand-up, we'll sit down"

That means we'll leave when Iraq has a well armed and trained fighting force

So we went into a weak, unarmed, harmless secular nation.

We'll leave when it's a strong, well armed, bitterly angry, radical religious, tribal nation.

Isn't that back-to-front? Invade a weak nation that has no problem with us, then make them hate us, arm them, train them, put radical anti-American warlords in power and go home.

655,000 people are dead and millions of Iraqi's mourn them in anger. Kids have lost parents, brothers lost sisters etc. Let's hope they don't seek revenge !!

Answer 3

After the first Gulf War Saddam signed a cease fire agreement promising to present evidence to the UN he had disarmed within about two months time.

He never did basically playing a game with UN investigators while his scientists kept his ego in check with bogus tales of new weapons developments and taking his money. Saddam wanted more WMD's he wanted them so bad we could all taste it. In the meantime various countries kept tabs on him noting he did not destroy or provide evidence he had disposed of the WMD's he was known to have used in the past.

During this time he had his intellegence agency attempt to assassinate US diplomats in the Phillipines and US sailors in the Persian Gulf and tried to sneak some agents into the US but the stupidity and incompetence of the Iraqi intellegence agency was the stuff of legend and all the attempts failed miserably.

Eventually President Bush announced in a roundabout way that he was tired of Saddam's stalling and was going to invade. Which wasn't the best idea because what WMD's he did have could be taken out of the country as some of Saddam's former accomplices now state happened.

The problem is due to Iraqi scientists lying to the former Iraq military about what was real and what wasn't we don't have any more knowledge now about how much and where when it comes to Iraq's WMDs. So they still remain a mystery and point of debate. Currently Iraqi intellegence agency documents ,several thousand in fact, are being translated so we may eventually know the truth someday should that investigation continue after the election.

Answer 4

He certainly had chemical weapons when he attacked Iran in 1979 which he used on the Iranian army and the Iraqi kurds.
The raw materials for these were supplied by the USA, France and Germany and there is a well known picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand at this time.
This is why the americans were so convinced that he still had them in 2003 because they still had the paperwork.
But they were destroyed under UN supervision after the war of 1991 and most people now acknowledge that they did not exist as a pretext for the present war

Answer 5

Iraq definitely had WMDs before the invasion.

But that was may be 5 years before, and the US knows about it. Guess who provided these weapons...

However, Saddam did destroy the weapons.

He might be a tyrant, but he isn't stupid; he knew he couldn't survive the crippling sanctions as leader for ever, so he had to do what he had to do, to try and get the sanctions lifted. He trusted that he could achieve that without revealing his weakness to Iran.

His trust was misplaced and he lost.

Saddam is a man who survived assisanation attempts, who ruled with an iron fist. Do you really think he would have hidden his weapons, trucked them somewhere else, so he could be a martyr?

Don't you think we wouldn't have witnessed another performance by Colin Powell showing the trucks going into neighbouring countries if that did really happen?

Saddam didn't use WMDs simply because at the time of the invasion, he had none left operational.

Answer 6

Yes he did have some but not to the level that was reported before the invasion. Saddam did not want to let on that he did not have them anymore because he wanted to keep the thought out there that he may have them so as to deter Iran from attacking Iraq. Saddam feared Iran more than the USA. His fears were misdirected and he made the wrong choice in not declaring that he had destroyed most of his WMD's. I believe that if he would have come clean to the UN, then the US would not have had the impetus to invade.

Answer 7

Yes. Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and used them on the Kurds in the north after the first Gulf War and he also used them on the Iranians back in the 80's during the Iran-Iraq war. He used Mustard gas on the Iranians and is said to have used VX gas on the Kurds.

Answer 8

No. The coalition were sure Iraq had WMDs, after all, they'd sold them a bunch for use against Iran and still had the sales orders.

We have to balance the "Dodgy Dossier", its proven false by reality 45 minutes claim, and the Downing Street Memos, with the finds of some bits of tubing that tests show may have previously contained bio or chemical weapons. Certainly, there was no massive stockpile to parade on TV. And no, the media isn't sitting on such a story - they were perfectly happy to broadcast the propaganda during the fall of Baghdad (cue really tight shots on celebrating crowds to give inflated impressions of numbers), and surely they wouldn't pass up a good chance to outscoop their rivals.

So, as the Magic Eight Ball says, signs point to no.

Answer 9

i believe he did because the reason the allies thought he had them is becuase they sold them to him back when sadaam used to and pseudo allie. that is why the leaders were so frustrated that they couldnt find them because they knew what he had and what quantity because they had the invoices from when he bought the wmd's from them.

but sadaam is smart enough that if they could not be found then on the world stage the invasion would be frowned upon. the best example of this came when they found a british made mobile chemical weapon manufacturing truck which was empty and looked un used for a long period of time.

Answer 10

YES and my opinion is that he and his cohorts had the WMDs trucked into Syria and then into the Bekka Valley in Lebanon and
there wer some munitions found in the desert region of Iraq.