At 07:54 PM 10/22/2003, Seth wrote:
>There's no evidence that he had weapons of mass destruction during
>the last few years before the war. None. Remember, the inspectors
>were there off and on for years before the war, and never found
>anything.
I'm not sure if this contradicts you or not, but the fact that they never
found anything is part of the problem. As Hans Blix noted in a recent
interview, we knew they had chemical weapons in the post-Gulf War period
that they said they destroyed but never offered any evidence to prove that
they had actually done so (and it would not have been terribly difficult
for Hussein to produce legitimate documentation of said destruction).
At this point it appears likely that Hussein did have all the chemi/bio
weapons destroyed which raises the odd question of why not just provide
what the inspectors needed and possibly have avoided war.
One possible answer is that, per your analysis, the war was inevitable
after 9/11. I'm not sure Iraq's military thinks that far ahead. The most
plausible explanation of this mystery I've run across is that -- as we all
found out -- Iraq's post-Gulf War military was a joke and that Iraq wanted
to maintain the illusion of having chem/bio weapons in order to deter an
attack from the Americans and/or opportunistic Middle Eastern states
(clearly the Pentagon took the chem/bio weapons possibility very seriously).
>Hussein was a bad guy, there's no doubt about that. Probably the
>worst in the region. The US had very good reasons for going into Iraq
>and deposing Hussein, but there's no evidence the WMDs were one of
>those reasons.
I think it was good to invade Iraq -- especially given the ease with which
it was accomplished -- for the reasons you outline, but I don't think the
WMD issue should be dismissed so easily. Iraq clearly had the means and the
motivation to supply terrorists with chem/bio weapons that might someday be
used against an American target.
I don't know how plausible that sort of scenario really is, but if you're
Bush you probably don't want to wake up 10 years from now and find some
chem weapons attack against an American city and then have all the second
guessing of "why didn't you deal with this threat when you had a chance"
that Clinton ha faced for not acting on opportunities to remove Osama bin
Laden as a threat.
