No military person in their right mind considered a Saddam Hussein attack on the US using stockpiles of WMDs to be a threat. He didn’t have the projection power and he didn’t have the delivery systems. He didn’t have the projection power to do so in his own region.
Why does everyone analyze this so incorrectly? It isn’t that he had stockpiles of WMDs (although he did). It is that he could (and did) produce lethal chemical and biological agents. Period. That’s it.
So What?
If you can put insecticide in a can of RAID and spray it on bugs, then you can do the same with humanicides and spray it in a crowd. The delivery system and projection system are the same: terrorists. One droplet of nerve agent will kill a human being.
One aerosol can of humanicide in a packed stadium or open air festival in the USA could kill hundreds/thousands and terrorize millions.
So, the bottom line: it was the PERSON of Saddam Hussein, supporter of terrorists, gassings, murders, and assassination plots that was the problem....or would have been for any reasonably intelligent president.
The WMD aspect of the argument in 2002 was not whether Sadaam would use it on us, but that he would give WMDs to terrorist organizations to use on us.
I’m reading an excellent book about Operation Paperclip at the moment, and it covers IG Farben’s invention of the chemical weapon called Tabun.
One drop on exposed skin, and you are done in seconds. That was back in the late 30’s to mid 40’s.
It was a big deal, and it wasn’t just us saying Saddam was manufacturing this kind of stuff. In fact, just about a couple of months ago, our forces found a stash of NBC stuff in a bunker somewhere. I read about it on this forum.
We kept Al Queda busy in Iraq and killed large numbers of them, which kept America safer.
I don't even have to take it that far:
It was going to be a whole lot easier to fight the coming war in a sandbox than in the unforgiving mountains of Afghanistan... So pick the nearest ***hole with a sandbox...
And I am ok with that.