First of all, I've never said ignore it. A lot of very ignorant mistakes were made. But you seem to think those mistakes are prima facia evidence that we should make another, bigger mistake by letting Saddam have them. I disagree. Two wrongs don't make a right as the saying goes. People are supposed to learn from mistakes.
And stop trying to attribute opinions to me that I do not hold. Everything I put in that thread is fact. I presented as such. Had I been trying to spin things there is plenty there that I could have left out, but didn't.
Your vitriol towards me is misplaced. I welcome anyone providing additional FYI information, just try to keep the childish personal attacks out of it.
In the 1970s and 1980s there were several indications about Saddam Hussein’s development of the WMD programs (biological, chemical and nuclear). The Israeli attack on the Iraqi French-made Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 slowed down the progress of the Iraq’s nuclear weapons program but the biological and chemical WMDs were highly developed, due to the Soviet assistance, Iraqi scientists and a sophisticated system of procurement, organized by the Iraqi Intelligence in Western Europe and in other parts of the World. The nuclear weapons program was never abandoned by the regime, and before the first Gulf War (1991) Iraq was very close to producing its own nuclear weapons. (There is some evidence that Saddam could have purchased nuclear technology from Pakistan, through Dr. Khan’s network, and that he has tried to buy nuclear weapons or components from China). The war destroyed the technical base for the production. But the highly skilled scientific and technical personnel (over 200) remained in place, dispersed. The regime managed to save their nuclear fuel, many technical means of production and the blueprints of the nuclear weaponization. The after-war international (UN) control proved ineffective. Iraq also saved an essential part of its biological and chemical warfare technology, materials and personnel. Some of the WMDs, materials, specialists from Iraq have been transferred abroad to continue research and to organize the production abroad: mainly to Sudan, Libya and Algeria but also to the neighboring Syria (with a purpose to strengthen Syrian regime’s offensive capabilities against Israel).
The efforts of the Saddam’s regime to preserve and develop its biological, chemical and even nuclear weapons capabilities have been well documented in a report, submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives by Yossef Bodansky on February 10, 1998 (See: Task Force on Terrorism & Unconventional Warfare, "The Iraqi WMD Challenge — Myths and Reality"). From the very beginning, Saddam Hussein embarked on a policy of concealment and cheating of the UN inspection. Thus the elimination of the Iraqi strategic military programs and the destruction of their technical means have never been completed and fully effective. "Despite Baghdad’s protestations, Iraq does have a small but very lethal operational arsenal of WMD and platforms capable of delivering them throughout the Middle East and beyond." — summarized Yossef Bodansky in 1998 [page 2 of the report]. This capability was possible due to the following actions: (1) dispersing and hiding of WMD materials, technical means, blueprints for the production and personnel in Iraq proper; (2) transfer of a large part of the Iraqi WMD arsenal, technical means, materials for the production and scientific-technological personnel to other countries, mainly to Sudan, Libya and Algeria, and partly to Yemen and Syria; (3) reviving of the sophisticated system of illegal procurement of WMD technology, sub-systems and strategic materials in Western Europe (mainly Germany, Austria and Switzerland), via other countries (Bulgaria, Belarus, the Ukraine, Poland) and in Asia (Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, China).
Iraq was also capable to develop new types of offensive weapons, capable of carrying and dispersing bio and chemical WMDs (like a plastic-plywood drone, range 700 km, GPS navigation system, carrying 30-40 kilograms of bio or chemical warfare agents, launched from the ground, aircraft or from a ship).
The Bodansky report also concludes that the Saddam regime has signed agreements with Sudan, Libya, Algeria about common ventures in the developing of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. These were Saddam’s investments into the future, though his decisions were reluctant and taken under the pressure of the UN inspections and American bombing of Iraq’s "no fly" zones.
The first Gulf War (1991) proved a complete failure of the Soviet conventional weapons systems on the Iraqi battlefields. The Iraqi Army and Air Force had been crushed before they could make use of their WMDs (chemical, biological). The Russian-made SCUD missiles, launched against the Coalition forces and/or against Israel, proved inaccurate in aim and ineffective.
In spite of the huge indebtedness of the Iraqi regime to Russia (over US$ 8.0 billion), the Russian Government decided to invest a new service into the rebuilding of the Iraqi military forces by supplying large quantities of spare parts, components, air-defenses equipment, worth at least US$ 1.0 billion. Secret agreements, signed between the Iraqi Intelligence and the Russian GRU, provided for a "clean up" operation, conducted by Russian and Iraqi military personnel, to remove some WMDs, materials for production, technical documentation etc. from Iraq, so that the Saddam regime could announce that Iraq was "WMD free". This operation began after the 1991 Gulf War and lasted until weeks before the outbreak of the 2nd war (March 19-20, 2003).