Posted on 10/15/2014 4:49:02 AM PDT by xzins
The New York Times...details U.S. forces in Iraq finding thousands of chemical weapons during the Iraq war. "From 2004 to 2011...troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule," "In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
My guess is the agents are mariginally less effective than they were. But the containers are probably a lot less effective.
From the Bush Administration’s perspective, probably, the stories of old stockpile remnants were already out there. The press wasn’t covering them. If the Admin started pushing for coverage the story would have been that the Bush Admin was exaggerating old and unusable, pretty much lost and forgotten weapons into an actual usable combat capability.
Based upon my recollections, and perceptions from some of the more reasonable liberals I come into contact with...that seems to be exactly what was going on.
Nailed it.
I read the article. Yes, they look like chemical warfare weapons but it seems the NY Times is saying these weapons were made even before 1990. Saddam had chemical weapons, questionable that he had a program manufacturing the weapons.
He has not defended finding WMDs in Iraq.
You know the media line: “No WMDs in Iraq....Bush lied soldiers died”
He never said: “Yes we did. Here’s this picture, this picture, this picture.”
Ah didn’t remember that. Can those bio samples be considered to be bio WMDs?
I'm going to violate one of my own self-imposed rules for posting, and just not read the whole thread. So, I don't know whether anyone has mentioned this. If so, please ignore.
According to the NY Times article, the reason for the cover-up is that they claim that these chemical weapons were developed and produced with critical assistance from the west, and from the US government, and they didn't want to reveal their existence because it would put the US and the west in a bad light. As well, the NY Times claims that this does NOT vindicate the assertion by the Bush administration that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction because, well... Bush had asserted that Hussein had ACTIVE PROGRAMS of weapons of mass destruction, and these weapons had clearly been mothballed.
I personally don't remember that distinction. I remember us telling Hussein that he had to surrender ALL weapons of mass destruction, and that Bush's assertion was that he hadn't done that.
But I'm old. Maybe I misremember?
sitetest
I’m not arguing alphabet, or party, although parties have a platform, and on any particular day elected officials may stray from the platform, I think we are off in the weeds now.
People make a choice in an election and choices have consequences. I believe that is the argument. Justification of choice whether principle or conscience is where I told you I got bogged down on definition, just like defining liberal R vesus conservative. Pick a day pick a minute the definition can change.
Maybe it is simply a matter of attempting to blame someone for the pickle we are in. The bottom line is we better be able to unite before the other side, united on principle or lack of, unites us into oblivion.
Not sure if I hit all your questions, but I have to run help someone with a serious Social Security problem so I’ll check later.
Spot on.
In my view, they set up a system where with no political parties Americans elected electors, and they elected a president. That is called a republic.
We now have a system in which multiple parties put up their candidate, Americans elect that candidate, electors rubber stamp it. That’s almost a pure democracy.
I prefer voting in my portion of the state of Ohio for a known, extremely competent, patriotic elector who will join with others to choose a stellar person to be this nation’s chief executive.
We invaded Iraq for many reasons- primarily to enforce the 1991 cease fire which had been neglected. To recover or get an accounting for hundreds of captured prisoners Iraq had failed to return. To eliminate the chemical weapons program Zarqawi and Krekar and Baghdaddi was developing in northern Iraq with funding from the regime [and passage to and from Iran] and which was involved in the effort to poison mass transit in Europe; and which also was involved directly with the Milan cell which most certainly did know about the 9/11 attacks before the fact as the Italians recorded their chatter and boasting.
The USS Cole bombing and the earlier failed effort to bomb the USS The Sullivans was a joint Salafist-Shiite effort; in both cases the ships were on the way to enforce sanctions on Iraq, and Iran’s been smarting from sanctions too.
We also went into Iraq to eliminate the terrorist cells operating in Baghdad itself that the press kept insisting wasn’t al Qaeda because Zarqawi had not yet formally swore an oath to bin Laden and waited for that formality until after Saddam died. ISIS like this terrorist cell decapitated a nun there before our invasion, not to mention at the time Iraq was providing a house and a paycheck to one of the guys who bombed the world trade center in 1993, and ANO leader Abu Nidal was residing there as well, and terrorists were being trained in Iraq’s al Tuwaitha facility on an old jet there, and Iraq did support a bombing of a bar in the Philippines to take out a US special forces soldier by supporting the terrorist group that was also beheading people down there. Not to mention Iraq was caught in a plot to bomb our radio station in the Czech RFepublican. Wolfowitz said it most succinctly way back then - it was the growing nexus of WMD, Iraq and terrorism that necessitated war.
My memory agrees with your memory.
Additonally, they found recipes for making wmds, so I assume Saddam knew how to make them.
I’d have to look at the Kay report, I think it is in there. If it was legitimate stuff they would not have had to hide it in the guy’s fridge.
First? Like pretty much everyone but Clinton, and after a delay, Carter?
See post 122.
A realistic view of how the media was/is bound and determined to twist every statement uttered by Bush. No matter what.
There is blame to be placed isn’t there? Someone is responsible for putting the RINOs in office who sided with Obama to keep the borders open and import the diseased illegals. The RNIOs themselves did in fact side with Obama to keep the borders open and facilitate the importation of those diseased illegals didn’t they?
The base screamed loudly they did not want the open borders that resulted in this. They were ignored by the pols and the sycophants made a million excuses as to why we HAD to elect more of those very people because ‘winning’ was everything and the ‘winner’ had to have an R attached regardless of what they stood for.
That happened. It can be read across the net in tens of thousands of articles and millions of blog/forum posts.
Is not the entire concept of justice/right/wrong to place blame, assign consequences and prevent the problem from reoccurring?
Until we put blame where it belongs, we will keep mistaking ourselves into Soviet Russia.
You don’t misremember- the Bush admin explanation for going to war was that sanctions were failing, and if the “axis of evil” succeeded in getting sanctions lifted then Iraq, which had dispersed their weapons programs and even outsourced them to aligned countries, would be free of inspections and also be free to reconstitute [Bush specifically said reconstitute] their programs and purchase anything it required to succeed. Iraq had not yet opened up freely and provided a verifiable full report of their weapons program or supplied evidence they destroyed what they claimed they destroyed. In some pits there was not enough material to account for the amount of weapons they claimed to have disposed of, in many cases they claimed to have destroyed materials but did not do so under UN observation as required.
And if sanctions were lifted what would become of the prisoners Iraq had captured in its previous two wars- mainly entire families of Kuwaitis whose hereditary landholdings Iraq wanted to negate? We would never know, and would not be returned. There was still some hope they were alive. But I don’t recall if any did. The Bush Sr. admin if the cease fire had been formalized yet and certainly the incoming Clinton admin should have bombed the snot out of Baghdad when they weren’t immediately returned but instead let the matter sit for years trying to generate coups against Hussein instead of direct action, and failing, getting our assets killed instead, leaving us more and more blind to what was going on there just as Iraq was getting more and more aid from France and Russia, etc..
I would suggest it would be more likely that he may have an idea how many caches there were.
If we were to announce that we found, let's say, 6 different caches of weapons and Al Dhouri knew that there were 20 out there, he would know to keep looking for the other 14.
If we make vague references that don't go into enough detail to make any impact politically at home we are not revealing any info that may get our boys killed in Iraq.
It is a catch 22 in which our honorable former president would err on the side of our military men over his legacy.
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