Iraqi scientists tell TIME the weapons were destroyed long before the war

TIME ^ | 10/06/03 | Mark Thompson and Timothy J. Burger

[nwrep]

Why don't we just fire David Kay and let Time go do the investigation instead? At least it won't be on taxpayer money.

[John Jorsett]

Even if Iraq did indeed destroy their weapons, then Saddam was monumentally stupid enough to act like he still had them. Good enough reason to take him out in my book. If I were a cop and some jerk pointed his finger in his coat pocket at me, I wouldn't be waiting around to see if he's bluffing.

[Uncle George]

Commie attempt to upstage Kays real, truthful detailing of FACTS ON PAPER descovered. The authors of that article have nothing but Bush haters heresay reports to twist into a myth to fit the Libs political dreams.

[geedee]

Okay, fine. I'm convinced.

Time, the well-known bastion of unbiased and fully-researched investigative reports, and a perverted little eunuch who purchased means and materials that were used to kill his fellow Iraqis by the thousands says the WMD's are gone. Let's bring our boys home.

Ain't much sense in wasting our time any longer.

Hey, why doesn't someone ask Time to check out the North Korean midget and see if he's gonna nuke the South Koreans or Japanese any time soon? Not much sense in us getting all worked up if Time doesn't agree.

[geedee]

. . . then Saddam was monumentally stupid enough to act like he still had them. Good enough reason to take him out in my book.

Damn good point. One we'll never see discussed much.

[Question_Assumptions]

that the shell games Saddam played with U.N. inspectors were designed to conceal his progress on conventional weapons systems--missiles, air defenses, radar--not biological or chemical programs;

If this is true, then Saddam really is more stupid than he looks.

[norton]

This entire arguement is merely a prop to the left in re-acquiring the white house as soon as possible.

Countries go to war for more than one reason and they do so based on the best currently available intelligence.

I seriously doubt that the pre-war intelligence has ever proven to be 100% accurate or even a small fraction of that number.

People sign up for credit cards based on what they know at the time, only later are you likely to learn of the added charges and rate increases that he bank knew about all the time.

It is a lot easier to not sign up for a card than to allow a perceived threat continue to grow and threaten to do worse damage in the future.

Weapons were ONE reason for going into Iraq, a small one at that, to grace the accuracy or non accuracy of intelligence at that time by joining into the democrat's "Bush lied.." rhetoric is an absurd surrender to their rules and their goals.

[piasa]

True- it wouldn't matter if Iraq had the stuff, it was still able to blackmail all the nations around it because of Iraq's known record of using chemical weapons, and because of all of its front groups and companies it had used to purchase items for its WMD programs. Not only was it able to influence the nations around it, it was able to host groups on its soil whose objectives were to overthrow other Arab governments, who wouldn't dare do anything about it because they were too afraid of Hussein.

To make things worse, even some factions in the governments of western nations, including ours, were ready to let Iraq have its way and cited Iraq's WMD capability as a reason to justify letting Hussein do what he wanted. It was "too risky," they said, to act against Hussein.

I'm still waiting for all those high tolerance, hideously expensive aluminum tubes to turn up as cheap disposable rockets. Blixie said they were for making rockets, not for centrifuges. Funny how we have not found all those "rockets" or at least the tubes.

The Iraqis had ordered and taken delivery of huge amounts of tubes, yet so far there's been no sign of them. (We only interecepted a fraction of those shipments by the time we got wind of what Iraq was doing.)

[calchey]

so, we are supposed to believe the very people who say they lied to Saddam? Give me a break. The weapons are there. I bet you one thing and that is if a Democrat wins the Presidency, all of a sudden all these naysayers will be singing a different tune. Nevermind that President Bush had more courage in his little finger than any of these wannabes, all he did will be forgotten except for an occasional we thank you, but you didnt know what you were doing and we do. I hate these people with a passion.

[jwalsh07]

"Trust me," he says, his eyes narrowed, as he sits in a back-alley teahouse in Tikrit, "if we had them, we would have used them, especially in the battle for the airport. We wanted them but didn't have any."

That still leaves unanswered why the Iraqis would have unilaterally destroyed their most potent arms. One theory, advanced by the U.N., is that the regime used these exercises as a cover for retaining a fraction of their stores. The idea is that they would destroy quantities of weapons (creating a disposal site and eyewitnesses, if not written records) and claim to have got rid of everything yet actually hold on to some of it. The Mukhabarat captain concedes that scientists kept small amounts of VX and mustard gas for future experiments. "I saw it myself, several times," he says.

The authors of this article don't realise it but these two paragraphs with Iraqi's being quoted is a causus belli for war regime change and the invasion of Iraq.

It demonstrates their willingness to use them and the fact that they had them by their own words. It is but a phone call away to transfer these "small quantities" to Ansar al Islam, an Al Qaeda subsidiary. From there it's on to America.

Those who bitch and moan about the invasion of Iraq should have their heads examined, twice.

[MegaSilver]

Ironically, it was an article in Time back in September 2002 that helped convince me once and for all that we should remove Sadaam while we still had the chance.

[Buzzcook]

Who cares?

Who cares if there never were WMD's and who cares if Bush just used them as his Gulf of Tonkin?

Who cares if there is or isn't a connection between Iraq, Al Queda and 9/11?

It just isn't important.

What is important is that the US now controls the vast majority of the worlds oil supply. This insures that we will remain the worlds sole super power for the rest of this century at least.

We have a large unstopable army in a wonderfully strategic location.

The cost of that occupation will strangle the new deal and great society right out of the federal government. And no matter how liberal wacko any future president or congress will be, they will never have the political capital to withdraw.

So I don't care if all the reasons given for going to Iraq were false. The result is what counts and making sure we are the biggest dog in town is a pretty good result.

Buzz

[Loyal Buckeye]

The murderer has a PROGRAM that had the ability to produce WMD at the drop of a hat. He USED WMD on his own people. Enuf said.

[Pubbie]

Uh huh, then why did Saddam throwout the UN inspectors in 1998, and refuse to cooperate fully with the inspectors in 2003???

[zencat]

I don't remember even France every saying that Saddam DID'T have WMD.

[twittle]

If I were a cop and some jerk pointed his finger in his coat pocket at me, I wouldn't be waiting around to see if he's bluffing.

Not the proper analogy. What if you were a cop and wanted to search someone's car for drugs. That person then told you that you had no right to search his car for drugs. Would you then arrest the person, take his car and forcibly conduct a search? What would your reaction be after no drugs were found?

[Pubbie]

The weapons are there.

If he didn't have them, then he would have let the Weapons inspectors search every inch of Iraq in order to avoid a US attack.

[Publius6961]

Iraqi scientists tell TIME the weapons were destroyed long before the war...

... but decided to not document any of it or say a word about it because they wanted their nation invaded and bombed to rubble.

Yup. Makes total sense to me. Seriously, these sandmaggot subhumans are genetically limited to IQs under 35.
Right?

Right?

[Publius6961]

Welcome to FR troll.
Second grade analogy.

That the "weapons were never found" still remains to be seen. Anyone who asserts otherwise is a mental deficient.

Let me hide a quarter in any 2 square miles of your choice and see how long it takes the MENSA graduate to find it...