Iraq's Weapons: No Dubya Doubts

New York Post ^ | June 10, 2003 | John Podhoretz

[FairOpinion]

June 10, 2003 -- THE president said yesterday he is "absolutely confident" that further investigation in Iraq will uncover that missing weapons-of-mass-destruction program. And you could tell when he said it that he meant it. Which is amazing, because to read the press and watch TV over the last month, you'd think the jig was up - that there never were any weapons of mass destruction, that the president and Tony Blair and their people all lied about it and that the entire war was a sham. This view has even made its way into the Democratic presidential race, with candidate Howard Dean describing the WMD problem as "worse than Watergate.

[FairOpinion]

This is an editorial from a few days ago, but didn't see it posted.

I liked it because it points out the much more plausible other scenarios, which could account for us not having found Iraq's WMD yet.

[South40]

A prediction:

With GWB pretty much guaranteeing they will be found, once they are, the dims will be claiming they were planted.

[AntiGuv]

Or: The Iraqi officials we've interviewed aren't about to offer up information because they fear they will be subject to war-crimes charges.

They aren't willing to offer up information - not a single one of them - and yet they're willing to turn themselves in?? [that's how we got most of them] Moreover, they're willing to turn themselves in presumably knowing that sooner or later the alleged information which will subject them to war-crimes charges will turn up, regardless?? Whatever..

[Mo1]

The media are impatient. They want the goods now because the 24-hour news cycle has made this seem like an endless exercise when it's only been going on for two months.

BINGO!!!

Plus the Dems are playing a political game for their OWN agenda

[steve50]

the dims will be claiming they were planted.

Won't just be the dims. Should have had independent inspectors in there with our guys long ago to verify. The world won't buy it now.

[AntiGuv]

An apparent copy editing error, BTW:

Or: U.S. forces have been searching ammunition dumps and other known sites, as they should, but some all of the weapons might be in locations our intelligence didn't pinpoint.

[AntiGuv]

In addition, the president knows better than anyone else that Saddam's conduct makes no conceivable sense unless he had weapons of mass destruction.

Could he have been bluffing? It would be a crazy bluff, and as a leader he wasn't crazy. (Evil, but not crazy.)

Really? He wasn't? How is it not crazy to invite overwhelming invasion and suicidal overthrow whether he had no WMD programs or simply had WMD programs that were utterly useless from a military perspective?? If the essence of the argument rests on the idea that Saddam & Co. weren't crazy, I'd recommend a second opinion..

[FairOpinion]

These Iraqis probably didn't want to get hunted down and possibly shot, but think they can outfox the US, because we don't interrogate them using some real torture methods.,

I keep saying that what we should do is to turn these high level Iraqi officials and scientists ( like Dr. Anthrax) over to the Mossad for a couple of weeks. We would know then exactly where all the WMD-s are.

[stevem99]

Bush and Rumsfeld and Powell have been telling us for months that they knew "exactly" where the WMD were located.

[stevem99]

Exactly. Saddam's actions don't make ANY sense to any rational person. Not leaving Kuwait when it was clear that the US and allies were going to kick them out. Frankly, I think Saddam believed his own lies and honestly thought Iraq would defeat the US if we invaded.