Contrary to the MSM and liberals ‘pooh-poohing’ the find, while old, with some corrosion, these WMD were capable of being used OR the contents could have been repacked into new casings. They were still lethal if used against unprotected people.

Schwarzkopf and then Franks believed they were there and Saddam would use them. It is interesting that he never used the weapons, even while being invaded. Maybe it was incompetence or fear of consequences.

As we all know, he did have WMD and used them, against the Kurds AND the Iranians.

He picked a fight with Iran that lasted 10 years. He expected a cakewalk and found he was riding a tiger instead. The war with Iran cost him.

Then, he claimed that the Kuwaitis went back on their financial support, so he invaded them.

Then, the US lead coalition litterly smashed his military and a good part of his infrastructure in 1991. His country is then placed on all sorts of embargo lists, especially concerning weapons.

12 years later, whatever WMDs he had left (and we’ve found at least 500 artillery rounds of Sarin, others are presumed to be in Syria) that we didn’t destroy in the caches we found in 1991, were past their “best use by” date, because we’re pretty sure now that he was unable to restart his NBC program.

So, in 2003, this was the situation:

The mullahs of Iran still hated him. And he knew it.

We were actively preventing him from attacking the Kurds in the north, effectively confiscating his northern oil fields and the pipeline through Turkey.

We were enforcing a “no-fly” zone and a sea-lane “oil exclusion zone.” Everytime he turned on a missile battery’s radar, we’d blow it up, adding to the weakening of his military.

He’s surrounded by “yes men” who are afraid (with good reason) to tell him news he doesn’t want to hear.

He HAS to believe that Iran would, sooner or later, want payback for the war that HE started. And he has to know that Iran had a nuclear weapons program — and he didn’t.

So what does a man, who desperately wants to hold on to power knowning that losing control would mean his death, do?

He lies and misleads the world into thinking he has WMD. He believes that “world opinion” would prevent an invasion. He pays Ramsey Clark to lead the opposition to any invasion (Clark was a registered lobbyist of Saddam’s government before the invasion).

He walks a tightrope…and falls off when we invade.

The fact he retained at least 500 Sarin rounds and at least 2 Mustard rounds that were used in IEDs against us, proves that he lied about his remaining WMD. Contrary to the MSM and liberals ‘pooh-poohing’ the find, while old, with some corrosion, these WMD were capable of being used OR the contents could have been repacked into new casings. They were still lethal if used against unprotected people.

This (his non-compliance with the cease fire terms to destroy them) as well as his retention of SCUDS and other long range missiles, was reason enough to invade him. The fact that he attempted to murder former President George H. W. Bush was another. And the fact that he was committing recognized “acts of war” by shooting at our aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone, was a third.

Saddam’s reign was filled with one strategic mistake after another. He was neither wise nor far-seeing. He killed off anyone would have the courage to tell him he was wrong. And like many men before him, he came to believe his own propaganda.

So thus, “The Glorious Leader, Direct Descendant of the Prophet, the Lion of Babylon, the Father of the Two Lion Cubs, the Anointed One, the Successor of Nebuchadnezzar, the Modern Saladin of Islam” came to meet his fate.

Also there is the little matter of the UNSCOM report on Saddam’s WMD’s. Now you can call me cynical if you want, but if the braindead UN can find WMD’s, well crikey, I guess they gotta be there.

The UNSCOM (sp?) report was pretty exhaustive. There is also a pretty large collection of chemical weapons recovered since the invasion….

FBI agent: Saddam lied about WMDs to fake out Iran

We’ve heard this theory before. A couple years ago actually. “He pretended for his own protection.” I still don’t buy it, intelligence all over the world said he had it, and not just because he was pretending he did while saying he didn’t.

Spoken like a true bureaucrat.

The military is a bureaucracy.

dedalus on November 12, 2007 at 12:53 PM

Spoken like a true bureaucrat.

You don’t fear stupid people?

Not at the moment. It is more a function of someone’s ability to project power. Was Hitler stupid? Were Stalin? Mao? Tojo? I guess you could make a case for saying “yes” or “no” for each. However, they all had differing capacities to project power, and anticipating how people like that might do so is a necessary part of prioritizing security spending.

The world knew that Saddam HAD wmd’s and used them.

Rumsfeld was in Iraq during their war with Iran and while they were using chemical weapons on a daily basis. He was influential within the Reagan administration of increasing U.S. aid to Iraq at that time.

The selling point for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was that Saddam was an imminent threat to the US, and that we didn’t want the “smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”. If Cheney and Rice had pushed a causus belli of “We want to clean up old chemical weapons” it wouldn’t have been as persuasive.

dedalus on November 12, 2007 at 12:20 PM

I don’t understand what you are saying. What does an animal have to do with stupidity?

You don’t fear stupid people? OK, to me a stupid person with a gun is someone to fear. With fear comes a strategy. When you see stupid people in power, you create a strategy different than if a rational person was in power. If Australia has the Atomic Bomb, I have no fear, therefore we I would not waste time in developing a strategy. If Iran has the bomb, then a stupid foolish person in in control, that I fear, and we should develop a strategy. That strategy is born out of the fear that they would mis-use it. Get it?

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WMD’S THAT HE HAD?

…crickets chirp…

Every body should fear stupid people

Fear isn’t a strategy. You can apply rational thought to hunting an animal, even though the animal does not have the ability to reason.

Now who’s to say another plan would have worked better, I dont know. Surely hindsight has been valuable here as it always is and mistakes were made. That all said lets not get on our soapboxes just yet and let a little air out of the heads of the “I knew it!” crowd.

You are getting hung up on the use of the informal word “plan”–having many plans not tied to a master plan or “strategy” is a problem. The invasion and occupation were overly costly in terms of lives and dollars due to a breakdown in communication between State and Defense, a reliance on intelligence that was thin and misleading, an overestimation in the effectiveness of Ahmed Chalabi, and lack of planning for the occupation.

and mistakes were made

Officials love using the passive voice when things go wrong. “Mistakes were made”. Heaven forbid that a person ever actually “makes a mistake”.

Lancer on November 12, 2007 at 9:19 AM

I guess I have to explain this to you, most would understand.
You can be brilliant, a great leader, and still make stupid mistakes and stupid decisions, in other words be stupid. Aggression does not equal intellect. You can rule by power and intimidation, and still be stupid when faced with decisions you have no control over. He may have been “gifted” in ruling and killing his people, but he was stupid in international politics. He may have struck fear because of some militiary and political moves, but he was stupid in trying to face down a world power.
In other words, he was stupid, making stupid decisions.
Your mistake is what gets us into trouble. You think these guys think rationally, that they are not stupid. Well they are, and we apply intellect to stupidity and we can’t understand why they do certain things.
You overestimate, just like any bureaucrat, that’s right you have the mindset of a bureaucrat. Don’t offend him by calling him stupid, he was a ruler, a killer and torturer for years, he can’t be stupid…see how stupid that sounds? Every body should fear stupid people, you can’t predict what they do.

Bush had the will. He just didn’t have a plan.

They had a lot of plans

Ok so now they had lots of plans. Just not any plan universally accepted by people you pick that disagreed with said plans. And of course, the people like Zinni had plans that everyone agreed was super fantastic, but decided to go the other route instead.

Now who’s to say another plan would have worked better, I dont know. Surely hindsight has been valuable here as it always is and mistakes were made. That all said lets not get on our soapboxes just yet and let a little air out of the heads of the “I knew it!” crowd.

On the other hand we have a major foothold next to Iran because of the war. I am personally on the side that WMD were in progress in that nation simply because anyone with a million dollars can get a startup biologics kit from ex-soviets. The anthrax on the 911 hijacker is a simple example.

These are good points. My position is that 1.) The opportunity cost of doing Iraq has been too high. 2.) If it could have been done well, Bush/Rumsfeld/Bremmer didn’t execute ably. 3.) Now that we are in, there are benefits and it is best for us to invest further rather than leave a bigger mess.

Was containment perpetually sustainable? No. Was there a problem with Saddam’s country crumbling and him falling in a coup to Sadr or other radicals? Yes. We effected the coup ourselves and hopefully we’ll be able to midwife the infrastructure for a liberal democracy–we won’t know for decades though.

Who told you this? No plan survives first contact. I’m not saying there is no room for second guessing but to say there was no plan is the realm of nonsense.

They had a lot of plans, but not a coherent strategy that was respected by analysts. Many have been critical of the quality of the planning and occupation–Anthony Zinni and Greg Newbold to name two of the many.

To imply that since “No plan survives first contact” then all plans are equally flawed doesn’t withstand historical scrutiny.

The FACT that saddamn HAD WMD’s is that, a fact. Hell, he used them on the Kurds.
We know he had huge stockpiles of WMD’s, thousands and thousands of them. (We found 500 old ones that saddamn lost, he had so many.) We just don’t know where they ARE NOW. If any of this story above were true, it would be a cover for Syria where the WMD’s most likely are still held today.
Between this and Richardson, I don’t think the Dems are getting any smarter.

Leaving Saddam in place as a counterbalance to Iran would have added leverage to our threats of military action against Iran’s nuclear program and saved us, ultimately, more than a trillion dollars. Probably oil prices would be lower today and the dollar stronger.

dedalus on November 12, 2007 at 10:24 AM

He might have been a counterbalance. Was he defanged? Or would he have been taken out by the Islamists if we had not done it first?

This I cannot guess. Saddam might have lived another 20 years but as he got older and weaker the islamists would have gotten bolder. Iraq was always the first target of Iran

We would have saved a lot of borrowed money.

On the other hand we have a major foothold next to Iran because of the war. I am personally on the side that WMD were in progress in that nation simply because anyone with a million dollars can get a startup biologics kit from ex-soviets. The anthrax on the 911 hijacker is a simple example

Saddam already had chems

Bush had the will. He just didn’t have a plan.

Who told you this? No plan survives first contact. I’m not saying there is no room for second guessing but to say there was no plan is the realm of nonsense.

It is interesting to play Niall Ferguson here with the counterfactuals. We learned post-invasion that Operation Desert Fox degraded Iraq severely and that containment had Saddam pinned in. Leaving Saddam in place as a counterbalance to Iran would have added leverage to our threats of military action against Iran’s nuclear program and saved us, ultimately, more than a trillion dollars. Probably oil prices would be lower today and the dollar stronger.

dedalus on November 12, 2007 at 10:24 AM

So your “plan” is to invade then leave Saddam in power. Had we only dont that then everything would be bubblegum and lollipops.

Only, we had already done just that in 1991 and it didnt quite get us anywhere other than pushing it off for a decade and having our jets shot at while patrolling the no-fly zone. Good plan.

Perhaps Saddam had too many Yes Men around him to know just what in the hell was real.

Granted, they said so in the context that Bush screwed up for publishing the documents… but they did say so.