Eighteen months ago, 36% of Americans wrongly believed that Iraq possessed WMDs when we invaded. Today 50% of Americans believe that. 64% continue to believe that Iraq had strong ties to Al Qaeda. 53% believe in a geocentric universe.
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That’s because Iraq did have WMD. Here’s a story from the New York Sun:
http://www.nysun.com/article/35001
Chemical weapons, old or not, are WMD and weapons Hussein was not supposed to have.
There’s nothing “wrongly” about it. These weapons kill and they kill large numbers (aka, a WMD).
So you disagree with the White House’s Iraq Survey Group who, in the Duelfer Report, concluded that Iraq had no deployable WMDs as of 2003? If you’ve got evidence to the contrary, I hope you’ll get in touch with the White House and let them know.
The White House shot themselves in the foot with that proclomation. The truth is, WMD were found in Iraq, and Suddam was doing his best to keep weapons inspectors from finding them. He kicked those inspectors out about three times before the USA finally had had enough. He ignored countless UN resolutions telling him to disarm and let inspectors in to have proof that he disarm. He became a threat and is captured now because of it.
The report does say “deployable” WMDs. That may be different. Suddam had the chemical aspect of the weapons down, something he agreed not to have, but defied the UN order anyway. All he had to do was make a deal with another nation that had the technology to combine the chemicles with missles, and walla, deployable WMDs, ,even if Iraq themselves never fired a missle. Suddam was a threat to the US. I am glad we went in and took him out. The USA is safer because of it.
Jim Hoeft,
The build-up to the invasion of Iraq was not built on a few old chemical weapons. Surely you know must know that.
Those who continue to support Bush’s original policy to invade and occupy Iraq need to say they don’t care whether there was any threat of WMDs, because it was just the right thing to do for a list of other important reasons.
Furthermore, they need to say they don’t care about the avalanche of prevarication it took to get support for that policy, because — in the long run — history will prove Bush was right to do it, anyway. They also need to say they aren’t worried about how incompetent the planners have proven to have been, so far, because it was still in America‘s best interests to have done this, no matter how hard it turns out to be to actually complete the mission.
I would argue against all of that, but at least I’d know I am arguing with a person who is willing to talk about reality.
It’s simply disingenuous to say the weapons found there since the invasion proved Bush and Cheney were right all along about the imminent threat of Iraqi WMDs.
I don’t understand. You’re telling me that these WMDs are so secret that the White House won’t admit that they exist, but you know about it? Or that it’s not secret, but the White House won’t admit it…why?
Actually, we withdrew the inspectors. He didn’t kick them out.
That story has been so debunked. No intelligence analyst gives it any credence.
Those weapons were so old and have been buried so long they were useless. Those weren’t the WMD’s the White House lied about in order to invade Iraq.
They were so old and useless the Iraqi government and military couldn’t have used them….LOL, they had not ever recovered them b/c they “forgot” where they had been buried…and when they were buried it was to dispose of them not use them.
Any little rumor that can muddy the truth….
If this is the new measurement for US Illegal Invasions we are going to be real busy…there’s lots of old, forgotten, buried munitions out there. We’d better start right off of our own shores where our military has misplaced, forgotten, and disposed of munitions that are now coming out of their shells and contaminating our waters…..Oh my….
I remember a news article wherein some ex-Iraqi scientists were interviewed about WMDs. They said they’d lied to Saddam (claiming they had workable WMDs) to keep their jobs. An interesting twist on the matter.
This isn’t just about the existence of WMD’s (which has demonstrably proven to be true).
Iraq was not supposed to have WMD’s, nor the delivery systems capable of using WMD, nor were they to have the facilities to produce WMD, and they were to utterly comply with inspectors as to the precise condition of a WMD program they were to have dismantled.
For 12 years after the March 1991 ceasefire, they did not comply. Ergo, Iraq violated the ceasefire, and war resumed.
What boggles my mind is the focus on WMD as the sole reason for entering Iraq. Here you have a regime that was an unmitigated humanitarian disaster, a threat to stability in the Middle East, and a brutal dictatorship to boot.
Is the argument against WMD in Iraq and argument for the non-liberation of millions? What option after 12 years did the United States have — 12 more years of diplomacy?
Of course, the rejoinder to this argument is “cookie-cutter diplomacy”, i.e. if humanitarian concerns are the first concern, then why not liberate Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, China, etc. The illogic implied should be obvious — Iraq was a unique opportunity to liberate millions that the United States should have taken years ago.
I have yet to hear a viable alternative to war as a method of liberating Iraq, nor have I yet to hear an anti-war proponent be so bold as to argue that Saddam Hussein should have been left in power.
What were the alternatives to war? Diplomacy failed. Limited air strikes failed. Instigating rebellion failed. Instigating a coup failed. What was left that the Clinton administration did not try?
64% continue to believe that Iraq had strong ties to Al Qaeda.
I wonder what would lead to that impression…