The NY Slimes ran with the story in 2014 detailing the injuries to US servicemen who chanced across the caches of mustard agent and sarin. The Slimes later published the US intelligence report on the events, released under FOIA. It's even been noted on Wikipedia that "the total number of munitions discovered since 2003 had climbed to 4,990...."
The Daily Beast later reported that Bush administration insiders claimed that it was Carl Rove's idea to cover up having found the weapons for fear it would spark an Muhammadan terrorist scavenger hunt to find others the US might have overlooked.
If you want to argue that "4,990" isn't adequate to be real WMDs, now you're argument falls apart as just splitting hairs.
Thank you for posting that. It has always amazed me how easily everyone accepted the “no WMDs” propaganda without questioning it at all.
I have a bit of a different take. The chemical weapons you are referring to did exist and US soldiers encountered them. They were mainly leftover artillery shells from the 1980s, many of which were rusted and leaking and could not be fired. They were not an active, usable inventory of chemical weapons; there was no ongoing production of them or other WMD; and there was no WMD ready for use. This was addressed in the Robb-Silberman’s 2005 report, long before the Slimes’ 2014 report. Botton line is that there were 1980s leftovers all over the place but these were not the WMDs that the war was sold to the American public on the basis of. I do agree that Rove is terrible. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of him around the mid-terms. He’s probably doubling up on calories to carry him through spreading his RINO garbage.
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The war was sold on the basis of a fake nukes threat. Do you think people are stupid?
I was on an intelligence watch in the Belt Way when a significant report came in from the US Marine contingent. I was a civil servant, GG-13 with 8 military and civilians I was in charge of. I thought to myself it’d be all over the news the next week.
Nothing. The MSM buried it. And the Pentagon was muzzled too.
That is when I knew there was no interest in truth or winning. I left government service soon thereafter and concluded my entire military career was a waste of time.
I do recall hearing that weapons had been found, they were scattered. The fact that there weren’t just a few “large stockpiles” was distorted into “never had them”.
I never heard actual numbers. I did hear about servicemen that suffered illness due to finding them. It would make sense to quieten the truth - scavengers would definitely look for them.
It was a FACT that Saddam had them, they were under U.N. observation - until they weren’t. He never proved that he had disposed of them, so the only (reasonable default) conclusion can be that they still existed, he still had them.
History is messy, this is another example.
My memory is that they captured a plant producing nerve agent, whose plant manager was an Iraqi army General. The plant had not been previously disclosed to UN inspectors. Then three or four days later the news told us that whoops, turns out it was agricultural pesticide. Several times after that they found stockpiles of the stuff in army munitions storage and each time, after a day or two, they would come back and announce that, no, again, it’s agricultural pesticide.
So I always wondered who had the power to make WMD disappear just by redefining it, at a time when Bush’s presidency hung in the balance, and he desperately needed confirmation of Saddam’s WMDs.