Why do people still think we haven't found WMDs in Iraq?

Question

For those who don't feel like doing the leg work, click the links below.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120268,00.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50746
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040701203743.9i07uh3m.html

Jeff P
True some of these articals are quite old but one was reported in June 2006 BUT all were reported after the onset of the war. Bush waited 3 months to invade, for simplicity sake, if they had 100,000 containers of chemical weapons and 10,000 troops assigned to dump them they would only have to dump 10 each. That could have been done before lunch on anyone of those 90 days.

Answer 1

First, on an aside note, the entire world (including Hans Blix) believed WMD's existed and were under development in Iraq two weeks prior to the invasion. Funny how the politians have convinced us all to forget that fact for the upcoming elections....

To answer your question, we all believed, including Blix, that Iraq had an ongoing WMD development program. More than likely Saddam believed so too. Wether he in fact did, will be argued forever...

But, in all of our searches, we didn't find the development programs we expected to find. The WMD's we did find, those in your references, were not newly developed but part of a stash that was supposed to be destroyed under the gulf war surrendor terms. Notice they still existed?

Regardless, most experts agree today that Saddam did not have an active development program. Although I personally believe it would have a very prudent move for Saddam to send any development data and equipment out of Iraq prior to the invasion to disgrace the war efforts. In fact Saddam probably knew he would be captured and would need some way back into power. What better way then to say, "look you waged war on me for developing WMD's. I told you I wasn't. The only things you found were old chemical weapons that were inadvertantly not destroyed due to a clerical error. Get out and put me back in power." Brilliant plan. Gives us all something to argue about eh


update...

DA I've heard your argument before.... Prove to me that either bush is making money on Iraqi oil....

Of course, there are investigations into the French and German governments along with the united nations were getting kickbacks.

As your getting your Bush data together, how about telling us all about your petroleum consumption habits. Gas, plastics, oils etc......

Answer 2

The expectations of what was being stockpiled were raised too high by Saddam's posturing. The charge of possession was advanced by President George H. W. Bush and repeatedly amplified by Bill Clinton, only to be acted on by Bush 43. Everyone thought that Saddam had some massive hidden Bond-villain sized stockpile of WMD's. When only a small stockpile of relatively outdated WMD's were found, they failed to live up to the 15+ years of hype.

What was found was the systematic looting of the relatively impoverished country's treasury for palaces, the prisons that make Guantanimo seem like an all inclusive on Kauai, the rape rooms, as well as mass graves of disappeared Iraqi citizens all over the country, but that wasn't the reason given to justify the invasion. This played right into the hands of democrat political strategists, especially when passed to sycophants in the media who gleefully reported the supposed failure.

David "It's all about me" Gregory - Reporter Extraordinaire.





Darth Serious

Answer 3

Because the media tends to be swayed more liberal....It's all a ploy to make Bush look bad. Like we should just let these terrorist jihadist types just do as they please. Other than 9/11 the majority of Americans live in their own little world and think that what goes on in other parts of the world will never effect us. They think that the hateful extremists would never attempt to hurt anyone.

Whether or not Saddam had nukes, biological, chemical or any other weapon of mass destruction is beside the real point. He needed to be taken from power and dealt with by his own people just the way he was. I mean come on...do these people think that the deaths of all those Kurds was some plague that only affected the Kurds???? Also, everyone knows that Saddam was trying to build nukes for years prior to the first Gulf war....it was only a matter of time just like Iran and North Korea now.

Answer 4

I am willing to stipulate Iraq had chemical weapons and MAY have had biological weapons. We can state this as a pretty certain fact, since the US sold the means to make chemical weapons to him during Reagan's administration.

It wasn't until Bush wanted to invade Iraq that we heard the dreaded NUCLEAR word. "Saddam's looking for uranium, he's got rockets, yadda yadda yadda." THAT'S what we went to war for, I knew he was making a HUGE mistake by specifically saying Saddam had nukes, when just like 2 years earlier he and his whole head shed had testified to Congress, that Saddam had no nukes and no way to deliver any weapons he did have.

Yeah I knw WMD is Chem Bio and Nuke, but Bush said NUCLEAR, so now he's gotta pay the piper for the lie.

Answer 5

It's called WorldNutDaily for a reason.

Answer 6

I mentioned that before and got a dozen emails saying the weapons found were too old to matter, even though those weapons could still cause harm to our troops and could've easily been used on innocent iraqis if found by the wrong group of people.
Proving Bush wrong is all that matters now

Answer 7

Yes, Fox News and WorldNetDaily, because they are non-biased sources right? lol.

Yes, I have read the reports on the WMDs discovered, problem is, most of the weapons were built before and during the 1st Gulf War, and by 2006 most of them had degraded to the point that they were harmless. So yea, we found WMDs, but they were from the last war in Iraq.

Answer 8

There were many different WMDs in Iraq. There were the ones we gave Saddam in the 80s. There were ones created in the 90s. There were ones destroyed in the late 90s. There were ones Saddam was accused of building in the 2000s. The ones we went to war for (the ones he supposedly built in the 2000s) were never found.

Answer 9

Did you even read the fox news stuff? They're old shells from pre gulf war I or even gulf war I vintage. This is not new information. "WMD's" that supposedly were found are old vintage, next to useless weapons and not in large quantities.

Sorry, but a 155 mm howitzer shell does not qualify as a WMD.

These are not the WMD's that supposedly contributed to a "gathering and imminent threat".

If we had found the WMD's that they supposedly have, don't you think it would be all over the news for months and as justification for going to war?

Iraq was not a threat to the US. When are you people going to get that thru your skulls?

Answer 10

The pentagon and cia determined Santorum was off his rocker when he said that WMD's were found in Iraq. It was already determined none of those items you posted were WMD's or anything that would be an excuse for invading Iraq.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/21/santorum-wmd/

Also, condi Rice and Colin Powell both said and wrote back before 9/11 and in 2001, that Saddam had no WMD's since 1991.

So which is it? Who in the Administration is lying?
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm

And, Cheney finally admits to no WMD's in sept. of 2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14767199/