Saddam has not had WMDs since the mid-'90s ---- discuss

[Ignacio Upton]

While we know that Saddam did not have WMDs in 2003 (at least any new WMDs or an elaborate pile of them ready to destroy us and everyone we love) we do know that he did have an arsenal in the late-'80s and early-'90s. He gassed the Kurds in 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War (likely from nerve gas given to him by Reagan) and many believe that he used WMDs on U.S. soldiers in the 1991 Gulf War against Kuwait. However, from what we know from established sources, Saddam did not possess potential and usable supplies of WMD after after 1993-1996, at least according to people like David Kay and Charles Duelfer. The only WMDs that we discovered were old as well as useless sarin nerve shells from 1988, and I think we found some Mustard Gas from the late '80s as well (these are all discoveries made after 2003, U.N. Weapons Inspectors found things years before that were then mismanged by looters that we now missing.) What are your thoughts and observations about Hussein's weapons program? Why did he thumb his nose at U.N. Officials even though he did not possess anything.

[shraby]

1. He didn't dare let the neighboring countries

know he didn't have anything in case he didn't get invaded. They would know he was defenseless and might take advantage of the situation.

Besides, how do you prove a negative?

[Ignacio Upton]

4. Yeah but if he didn't want provoke the U.S. he wouldn't

have tried to argue with inspectors in '97 and '98, or maybe he honestly didn't believe we would do anything in the '90s. This led Clinton to believe that Saddam had or was developing WMDS actively again. However, he probably knew that Bush was eager ofr a war and in desperation brought back in the inspectors. I do believe that if he had them in 2003 he would have fired at us on while we were running to Baghdad

[saltpoint]

2. But he did have oil. It's not accident that Iraq is oil-rich and that

the neocon warmongers attacked Iraq. Those aren't unrelated facts.

Terrorism! Terrorism! Terrorism!

Oil. Oil. Oil.

[Ignacio Upton]

5. Oil was definately A reason for going in

I believe that WHIG wanted to go in because they want a regime in there that is friendly to their interests, politically and socially, and believed that they could use 9/11 as an excuse for military action and support. They wanted Iraq, because they hoped to use the WMD excuse, wehre with Iran and Syria there wasn't a history of argueing with the U.N. over inspectors, and Iran and Syria also had more powerful regimes and militaries.

[saltpoint]

6. Hi, Ignacio Upton. You've got a string of bingos there.

Hat's off to ya.

[Ignacio Upton]

7. Thank you

I would like to add that I wish Saddam hadn't thrown out weapons in spectors in 1998, because if they were still in there in 2003 he would not have been able to get the public to hop on board and support his war and decision to attack first

[saltpoint]

8. Another good point. Bush regarded the inspectors generally

about the same way he honors scientists generally.

He's dismissive, curt, and very narrow.

I find myself looking again and again at the calendar to see how many more years this little puke has in office!

[LynnTheDem]

16. Wish granted; HE DIDN'T. The UN withdrew the inspectors when Clinton

warned he was starting up Desert Fox bombing.

http://www.fair.org/activism/post-expulsions.html

Scott Ritter;
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/21/144258

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/07/17/saddam.ritter.cnna/

[geek tragedy]

3. He was a eunuch bragging about the size of his balls. eom

[Hello_Kitty]

13. Exactly! n/m

[sandnsea]

9. Maybe Clinton bombed it all in 1998

Scott Ritter didn't say he was disarmed in 1998 though, this is what he said on Sept 3, 1998:

"Iraq today is not disarmed, and remains an ugly threat to its neighbors and to world peace. Those American who think that this is important and that something should be done about it have to be deeply disappointed in our leadership."

"But what I can say is that we have clear evidence that Iraq is retaining prohibited weapons capabilities in the fields of chemical, biological and ballistic- missile delivery systems of a range of greater than 150 kilometers. And if Iraq has undertaken a concerted effort run at the highest levels inside Iraq to retain these capabilities, then I see no reason why they would not exercise the same sort of concealment efforts for their nuclear programs."

"Iraq has not disarmed, and they've lied across the board about not just VX, but once we get to the bottom of the VX issue, we'll find it exposes additional lies, which cause concern for a number weapons issues. When that issue became public in June of 1998, I believe that the administration was forced to endorse the findings that indeed there was weaponized VX in Iraq today"

"We must go forth and find these weapons that Iraq is hiding. And that could go on a very long time, especially given the level of Iraqi obstruction today."

"They're -- Iraq has positioned itself today that once effective inspection regimes have been terminated, Iraq will be able to reconstitute the entirety of its former nuclear, chemical and ballistic missile delivery system capabilities within a period of six months."

http://www.ceip.org/programs/npp/ritter.htm

[Ignacio Upton]

10. Question, didn't Scott Ritter support the war in 2002

I remember him going on several television shows in early 2002 and was asked about his thoughts on Saddam. This was around the time that the media started trumpeting the need to go into Iraq. Ritter basically said that the inspectors need to come in. I can't remember however, if he actually said he would oppose a war in Iraq

[sandnsea]

11. Opposed the war,

supported inspections. Somewhere along the line he has backtracked on almost everything he said in 1998, without ever really explaining it. I think he might have taken the view that by 2002, anything left in Iraq would be old and unusable. And like I said, I always considered the possiblity that Clinton bombed everything. But it just isn't true that anybody in a position of authority said unequivocally that there were NO WMD in Iraq in 2002. Nobody at all that I can think of. Of course, if we'd had ALL the intelligence and ONLY the intelligence at the time, most Americans would have pushed harder for continuing inspections.

[Hello_Kitty]

12. He's a megalomaniacal nutjob

What else do you need to know? Why does Chimpy thumb his nose at the rest of the world, despite the fact that everyone who has an IQ of 50 knows he and his neo-con cabal are a bunch of lying sacks of shit?

[punpirate]

14. Don't think he was thumbing his nose at anyone by late 2002...

... Bush was demanding he disarm, and he had nothing to disarm. Bush was pulling the "when did you stop beating your wife" routine on him. Remember that his--probably--truthful accounting of weapons was highly edited (by several thousand pages) by the U.S. before it was distributed to the UN Security Council. Those several thousand pages likely documented the actions taken jointly by UNSCOM and Iraq during the `90s. He'd allowed UNMOVIC back in the country, UNMOVIC hadn't found anything of consequence (apart from the missiles that exceeded allowable range by a dozen or so kilometers, which were then summarily destroyed). He wasn't thumbing his nose at anyone--he wasn't in a position to do so.

He may have been showing a bit of bravado at times, but I doubt that there was anyone who couldn't see through that at the time.

He didn't have huge capability in the early `90s, and no capability for real harm by the turn of the century. Most everyone following the matter knew that (even Powell and Rice acknowledged that fact in 2001 and said the same). Attempts to portray the situation as otherwise and that he was being belligerent about weapons and inspections were mostly not of his own making--they were statements made by the US government about him and his attitudes.

Cheers.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rfkrfk]

17. what about the Uranium?

my understanding is,
after the recent war,
500 tons of raw uranium {uranium yellowcake},
and three tons of slightky enriched uranium,
were foung in Bagdad, and later moved.

I'll post some links, if anyone is interested.

This story is not the same as,
the bogus looking story about Niger.

[LynnTheDem]

18. That's not quite it. Iraq had that yellowcake for years under UN seal

at Tuwaitha etc.

US troops broke the UN seals and left the area.

bush 3 times promised the IAEA he would order the sites secured. He did not do so until May.

By then, the sites had been looted.

bush finally allowed the IAEA back into Iraq with their inventory lists; the IAEA managed to round back up most the yellowcake and resecure it.

The USA then illegally removed the yellowcake & shipped it to the USA.

Every single grain of that yellowcake was KNOWN and under UN SEAL...UNTIL bush invaded.

EDIT: post #13 on this thread has the yellowcake timeline and links
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5128611&mesg_id=5132071

[rfkrfk]

19. thanks for that info, plus a comment

Yellowcake is not 'enriched', as the term is used
in the nuclear energy business.

Yellowcake is, refined and concentrated ore, as
it comes from the mine, suitable for shipment.

'enriched' means, putting uranium thru centrifuges,
which is very difficult. This 'enrichment', changes the
'percentages' of different isotopes, of the uranium.

Ciao