Prior to the war, I had no doubt that WMDs would be found - in fact, I fully expected them to get utilized during the war itself. At the very least, I would not imagine that intelligence would be fabricated that could be so easily disproven. The fact of the matter, however, is that the prewar WMD thesis is strictly defunct. There's simply no way to pretend otherwise at this juncture.. (Whether there will be genuine political ramifications is another question altogether, and I'm doubtful there would be for various reasons.)
Whatever the case, here's a concise summary of the prewar thesis as described elsewhere:
Saddam Hussein had extensive, active, advanced, clandestine chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. UN inspectors couldn't find WMDs because they were inept, or corrupt, or because Saddam played the shell game so masterfully. US intelligence pinpointed dozens of high-value target sites, hundreds of intermediate-value sites and thousands of low-value sites. Chemical and perhaps biological weapons were deployed to commanders in the field, who had orders to use them against invading Coalition forces. Special Forces teams were dropping in to secure and neutralize high-value sites in advance of the ground assault, with high-tech analytic Mobile Exploitation Teams (MET's) close on their heels.
Anyone who would claim that this was not the public impression created in the buildup to war is a dissembler, IMHO; anyone who can now seriously suggest that anything remotely resembling that scenario could have been the case needs to check in with their nearest reality, ASAP...
These were the allegations as I distinctly recall them: 15,000 to 30,000 chemical munitions; thousands of tons of weaponized chemical arms; hundreds of gallons of biological agents; a reconstituted nuclear program with procurement of uranium & missile cores; a fleet of remote-guided WMD drones; dozens of mobile biochem laboratories; dozens of Scud missile delivery systems.
Where is all this extensive panoply of prohibited, unconventional armament? Where are all the scientists & engineers & military personnel & just random facility workers that put them together and maintained them? Where are the research & production facilities themselves? Did all this just vanish into the desert? Somewhere? Somehow?
If you want my personal opinion, our intelligence services - and by extension Bush and Blair - were misled by the Iraqi opposition groups. I remarked several times prior the war that these were the people least credible in their claims about the Ba'athist regime and Iraqi sentiments. They had a vested interest in encouraging the war which would see them returned into the locus of power in Iraq and they played their cards to the hilt. Evidently, they found a receptive audience willing to accept whatever casus belli they fortuitously provided.
Trumped up 'intelligence' from Iraqi dissidents is what the evidence at this juncture mainly points toward and that the Iraqis had indeed abandoned their WMD programs appears the inescapable conclusion, in my view. I have no problem if I'm eventually proven incorrect in this assessment. We shall see. This issue needs to get confronted on FR sooner or later because it's not going to just go away...
Unless you believe every show, every film clip of footage, all the hundreds of books about the subject are full of lies, then you can't possibly believe what you are saying.
He's used WMD on his own people many times starting in the 80's. Judith Miller's book reports approx. 2 million people were killed by Saddam using WMD in the 80's alone.
It's hardly worth discussing this matter with people who haven't tried to HONESTLY educate themselves about the subject.
Of Course! that's it! A big sandstorm, a GREAT BIG sandstorm, came along and burried all of them just in time to prevent Saddam from using them against us. Someday, in about 2193 or so maybe, another great big sandstorm will blow the sand eslewhere and uncover them. Then we'll have the proof that were were right.
I'm beginning to suspect that maybe I've been had.
Tony Blair's sensational pre-war claim that "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "could be activated within 45 minutes" was based on information from a single Iraqi defector of dubious reliability, . . .
British intelligence sources said the defector, recruited by Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, told his story to American officials. It was passed on to London as part of regular information-sharing with Washington, but British intelligence chiefs considered the "45 minutes" claim to be unreliable and uncorroborated by any other evidence. . . .
The armed forces minister, Adam Ingram, admitted last week that the information had come from a single source. . . ." LINK