That story indicated that when the officers asked Saddam if these weapons would be released to them, he would respond by telling commanders that the weapons would be assigned to other units. Saddam’s deception worked far too well for his own good. It’s no wonder every intelligence service in the world believed in WMDs, Saddam wanted his enemies to believe he had them in useful quantities.

Clearly it takes little effort to produce poison gas weapons, but my personal view is that Saddam would not want those to be produced in large quantities too far ahead of their intended use (such as against civilians). I don’t think he trusted his military enough to put such weapons in their hands. They too easily could have been turned against him.

Reason for War the Dems would have accepted:

The no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq had a humongous carbon footprint. And smog. The air quality of the Middle East was suffering. We had to bring those patrolling AF jets down.

silverfox on January 24, 2008 at 8:23 PM

I realize the satire here, but I have a serious similar thought. Given the way some of the large bombs were used in Afghanistan to utterly destroy caves and to burn the lungs of anyone in them, I think we should just say chemical warfare is ok and go back to doing it. With chemical weapons we could have burnt the lungs of anyone in the caves without so much environmental damage.

It’s too bad that so many otherwise ‘intelligent’ people cannot distinguish a lie from a bad decision

“Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away” NY Times 11/3/06

Enough of this who knew what and who didn’t know what regarding WMD’s. Bush’s biggest mistake was stating the invasion was to find and dismantle the WMD program nut job had going. All he had to do, by international law, was say that since the Butcher of Bagdad had failed to comply with umpteen (how many was it again?) UN (insert laugh track here) resolutions, and we the good old USA were the ones to bear the brunt of the initial invasion that led to these resolutions, we were obliged to invade and see justice done. That’s all that should have been/had to be said and then the whole Bush lied crowd would not have had anything to yell about. I see recently the UN decided to modify the current sanctions against Iran. Who will it be that enforces those restrictions as you damn well know they won’t be followed as directed by Ahmadamadingaling.

rayvet on January 24, 2008 at 6:25 PM

How about we read what Congress actually passed regarding the use of force in Iraq. Doesn’t anyone in our country have a memory longer than 90 days? It is out there for all the world to read, and still no one uses it to beat the Dhimmis with it every freakin’ time I hear this crap. No wonder our soldiers are tired of fighting while the Dhimmis mouths are moving.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/print/20021002-2.html

I hate Congress. I hate Dhimmicrats.

Subsunk

The no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq had a humongous carbon footprint. And smog. The air quality of the Middle East was suffering. We had to bring those patrolling AF jets down.

rayvet on January 24, 2008 at 6:25 PM

Resolution 1441 and the amount of times it was broken were one of the oral and written reasons for the invasion

So, because he so feared an Iranian invasion, he decided to keep mum about his meager weapons stockpile and hope that Bush would beg off after a week or two of sorties over Baghdad. Did he … not follow American media at the time? It was transparently clear that the goal was to dislodge him and that hundreds of thousands of troops were on their way to that end. I can understand the initial calculus of worrying more about Iran, but once you know that America’s coming, the calculus changes and you do and say whatever you can to prevent it.

Didn’t we learn years ago that the French (among our other “friends” at the UN) were promising Saddam that they wouldn’t allow us to wage the all out war that we did? What he told that FBI agent was what we knew he believed based on assurances from our “allies” at the UN, and this is old news. As for why he didn’t fess up when it was clear that war was coming… well for one, it was too late. Second, again, I believe he DID have them, and they were in the process of being moved when he had his last chance. And lastly, he knew he was screwed. He either had to take the chance he did, or just surrender his life anyway, because we were on the move and one way or another he would no longer be running that country when the dust settled.

Israelis I know tell me that the WMD’s or ingredients for them are in Syria. I tend to believe them, considering they were the ones who informed me what Arafat died off.

Beh, to Iran. Lying seems to be second nature to Papa Smurf in a Windbreaker so beh to this story.

mjk on January 24, 2008 at 6:48 PM

The Iraqi AF general who wrote Saddam’s Secrets said the WMDs were moved to Syria under cover of relief supplies for a dam break and flood that happened prior to the invasion.

Now what kind of facility was it that Israel obliterated ? ? ?

Hmmmm….

He’s the master of lies….

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21615320@N06/2091715592/

Texas Rainmaker on January 24, 2008 at 7:37 PM

I think this point is key. If the US appears weak through inaction for years, then when we rattle our saber no one pays attention. This is why it is important for the US to appear strong. Why didn’t Saddam do like Iran circa 1979, though? Play games with the weak democrat Pres. and then snap to when the strong Republican came into power.

The truth is, Saddam wasn’t rational and didn’t get accurate information from his advisors, as others have pointed out. So he can’t make smart decisions.

I’m just starting The Suicide of Reason, and Harris makes some good points in his introduction about leaders in the rational world trying to deal with leaders of a “tribal mentality”. I think that also applies here.

iurockhead on January 24, 2008 at 6:32 PM

Ah, you beat me to that punchline. I didn’t read all of the thread before I posted. We’ll just go with great minds think alike . . .

Did he … not follow American media at the time? It was transparently clear that the goal was to dislodge him and that hundreds of thousands of troops were on their way to that end. I can understand the initial calculus of worrying more about Iran, but once you know that America’s coming, the calculus changes and you do and say whatever you can to prevent it. An imminent U.S. invasion is a sure loss; a hypothetical Iranian invasion, less so.

But you have to remember, Saddam had just enjoyed 8 years of Clinton do-nothingness. So why should he have been worried. We’d shown under Clinton that we didn’t have the courage to follow through on our threats.

Who knows why any of those maniacs do anything?

Too bad Bush outfoxed them all. Hah.

It was of urgent concern for them to know

The 2002-2003 Bush narrative held that it was of urgent concern for us to know. And we sure didn’t. I think it’s plausible that Iran didn’t know. It’s also plausible that they knew, but kept their mouths shut and watched as we eliminated their major enemy and made them into a major regional player. Not sure any of this really matters. Even had Saddam opened up to inspectors, we might have invaded regardless. And if we didn’t, he’d still lose street credibility in the region and in the country for bowing to America. Maybe he honestly thought that Bush was bluffing.

What’s the impact for us here? (Sounds like you’re asking the same question.)

Subsunk on January 24, 2008 at 6:56 PM

…

I think Allah was providing what a new rationalization for the Moonbats could be. In other words, this won’t stop the “Bush Lied. People Died.” meme, because the Moonbats will simply alter the claim to one like Allah provided.

Not being a member of the nutroots I don’t believe BUSH LIED!, but it doesn’t follow that just because Saddam lied Bush didn’t. It could, theoretically, have been the case that BUSH KNEW! Saddam was lying and kept that secret.

–Allahpundit

So now you are a conspiracy theorist too? How about you just start believing that every word your government officially puts out has some modicum of Truth and validity in it, until someone actually has some proof otherwise. The government is made up of bureaucrats who feed facts to the leadership. Wrong facts or poorly written or understood point papers given to a Congresscritter or the President will still yield inaccuracies, but likely not serious lies. I’m sick and tired of hearing from folks who hate the government, whether it be bureaucrats or Dhimmicrats or Rethuglicans, because “they always lie”. Bullsh*t.

The US government is the most truthful entity in our history. They make mistakes, to be sure. But they have not, since the 80s, done so with the intent to cheat or lie to the American public about what their government is doing. National Secrets must remain secrets and there are cover stories for those. But automatically assuming there is some conspiracy in what our enemies say in public, as well as what our Leaders say in public, just makes us all appear to be a bunch of bed wetting pansies.

Grow a pair, Oh Omnipotent One. Stop with the conspiracy mongering on a site I have come to count on for facts, not handwringing.

Subsunk