Every bit of that is non-sequitur. The entire discussion is about whether Iraq had WMDs or WMD programs in 2001. Limiting it to a nuclear weapon or nuclear program is irrelevant. But they had a serious nuclear program so that point is debunked anyway.
You’re a dishonest SOS.
“You’re a dishonest SOS.”
Coming from someone with your expertise that’s nothing to take lightly.
Poison gas is not an existential threat to the United States. Nuclear weapons are. Which is why George HW Bush emphasized the possibility of Saddam having them before Gulf War I, and it’s why GW Bush, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice all reiterated that possibility before Gulf War II.
They aren’t fools and they didn’t confuse the threat of artillery shells loaded with VX or sarin gas with nuclear bombs. It’s the difference between a tactical weapon and a strategic one. Some fools may conflate the two, and you are likely to be more of an expert in that field than most.
The problem for the lay public occurs when public officials use the term WMD in a purposefully indiscriminate fashion that plays upon the public imagination. It lets people imagine that nuclear weapons are the issue when in fact it is a battlefield weapon like a poison gas artillery shell.
We found thousands of WMDs once we occupied Iraq. Artillery shells filled with poison gas. What we didn’t find was highly enriched uranium, the necessary fuel for an atomic bomb.