Saddam has used chemicals on Iraqi citizens, many, many times during his 30 year rein.
When Tony Blair said to the UN that it wasn't in disupte Saddam had WMD but only what to do about it, you could have heard a pin drop and NOT ONE national leader stood up and said Saddam DIDN'T have WMD. Everyone knows he had them at one point.
All the dithering around for months gave Saddam ample time to transfer them to another nation or sell them to terrorists.
Human rights organizations have witnessed the use of WMD on Iraqi people.
NYT author Judith Miller and many, many others have written books and seen the chemical factories about this very subject. We have satellite photos of previous use and storage and manufacturing.
This is indeed a good question, especially since the likelihood of the inspectors finding anything was quite evidently nil.
Maybe Saddam was hiding something else.
Pure, unadulterated blarney.
"All the dithering around for months gave Saddam ample time to transfer them to another nation or sell them to terrorists." -- Peach
We know what we have been told. We have no idea that we have been told the entire truth, a part of the truth, or outright lies. (If you have "nothing to hide" would you invite the police into your home for a warrantless search? After all, you have nothing to hide and refusing that search should be conosidered evidence of guilt? We don't know the actual circumstances of the alleged refusals)
We have satellite photos of previous use and storage and manufacturing.
Then where are they? I haven't seen any evidence presented yet as to the fact that these so called storage and manufacturing facilities did, in fact, exist or that they were used for WMD's. (or that WMD's had been used by Saddam since GWI) What we seem to have is two trailers with fermenters that could have been used for biological weapons production if there were several other uints involved in the process as well (which, to date, haven't been found or any evidence of their existance found) or which could have been used, by themselves, for any number of other non weapon purposes including the Iraqi claim they were hydrogen producing units for military weather and observation balloons.
All I want is the truth. The proof of that so called truth Bush promoted to gain support for the war: That Iraq had huge quantities of militarily deployabe WMD'd and that they were an imminent danger to us. That we had to get him before he got us. The proof of this will be producing those weapons for the world's open viewing. I will not consider a bunch of stuff that needs to be interpreted as evidence that Saddam might or could have possibly have had the ability to make them as evidence that I wasn't lied to. Geez, a possible garage bathtub operation is hardly a justifiable reason to attack and overthrow a sovereign nation's government. If it was, we could start bombing NYC or LA, or even the homes of numerous freepers, today .