The World Tribune (admittedly a source that should be taken with a grain of salt) is reporting that US intelligence believes that Saddam’s WMDs were shipped to the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon in January of 2003.
This is a rumor that was also spreading around the start of the war, and the border between Iraq and Syria is porous enough that you could move a truck full of bleating elephants across without raising much attention.
Glenn Reynolds also points to the idea that Russia may have played a part in helping Saddam hide his weapons of mass destruction. This is another potential lead that may or may not pan out, but it highlights the many ways in which Iraqs arsenal could have disappeared in short order.
Even satellites are limited in that they are in orbit, and they can only observe a given spot for a given amount of time. Plus, they’re not constantly recording everything that goes on, they need to be targeted in order to gather imagery. (Another reason why the US intelligence community needs to rebuild its human intelligence system.) Unless we happened to be looking or someone on the border would be willing to tell us, it’s not hard to sneak something from one country or another.
The Kay Report should be released some time next month if reports are correct, and the evidence David Kay has collected will likely show that Iraq had an active and dangerous program to develop weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United States or others. Especially after the anthrax attacks on the US Capitol, attacks which remain unsolved, it would have been insane to wait until a massive attacks fill thousands before acting to rid the world of the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Unless all nations are willing to work togther to end the threat of terrorists armed with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, it is not a matter of if such an attack will occur, but a matter of when.
I’ve been craving another Iraqi WMD fable for quite a while now and have been disappointed with the lack of new predictions coming from this blog in the past couple weeks or so. Thank goodness we’re back on track.
Would you like to make a prediction Mark? Let’s just say in 3 months there are weapons found. Will you come on this board and publically (as best you can on here) admit to being wrong?
Will I admit to being wrong? Probably not since I’ve always been of the mind that Iraq does have WMD’s (or at least did), but didn’t find that to be sufficient justification for waging pre-emptive unilateral war. If anyone should be eating crow over false predictions, it’s the people who told us they knew exactly where Iraqi WMD’s were…and have since cried wolf about 163 times that “the smoking gun has been found!”, yet apparently know no shame since they don’t even quit making WMD sighting predictions, let alone concede that overzealous wishful thinking led them to make false proclamations 162 previous times.
It’s kind of humorous that bellicose warmongers who questioned the patriotism of war opponents and accused them of being traitors in defense of their insistence that Iraq possessed WMD’s and that they knew exactly where they were, now have the nerve to suggest that the war opponents should prepare to eat crow….as if the burden of proof is on war critics to prove Iraq DOESN’T have WMD’s instead of on war defenders who insist they do, yet continue to come up empty. For the GOP’s sake, WMD’s had best be found or November 2004 is likely to be a crucifixion for the party.
Yet more historical revisionism.
No one said we knew where the WMDs were. If we did, we’d just bomb the hell out of that place and be done with it. The problem was we knew Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that were wholly unaccounted for.
Every credible poll on the subject finds that weapons of mass destruction are a non-issue for 2004. The American people supported removing a bloodthirsty tyrant, and they still support the war. If anything, it’s the anti-war posturing of the Democrats that is going to lead them towards political doom in 2004.
Ever heard of the term “fairweather friends”? I think Bush and the Republican Party are soon to learn the meaning of that term much as Bush-41 did 12 years earlier. It was easy for American voters to overlook the lack of WMD’s back when the biggest threat to US troops was that they’d get a sliver from disassembling Saddam Hussein’s statues in Baghdad. But when months go by, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent, no WMD’s are found, American troops get assaulted and murdered daily, and the draft is reinstituted to make up for the desperate lack of troop presence we guaranteed ourselves by mooning the rest of the world when we went to war uniterally, American voters tend to rethink things. Considering this colossal investment of blood and dollars was supposed to greatly reduce terrorism but is poised to merely expand it–and considering we can’t even manage to keep the power on in Iraq after a five-month occupation–expect to see continued erosion of support for Bush and the premise that “the war was justified even without finding WMD’s”. Bush convinced many of us that he could change the world with a one-month war. People were foolish enough to buy it, but are increasingly disgusted to find that they’re being manipulated.
I’ve talked to several people in the past few months in relation to Team Bush foreign policy, most of whom were not rabid partisans. Talking to same people since, I have noticed that those who had a generally favorable opinion of Bush six months ago have a generally unfavorable opinion now…and those who didn’t particularly care for him six months ago despise him now. Granted, Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa are hardly a bellwether for the nation but when Bush’s re-election numbers in a state like South Dakota stand at a mere 43% as reported by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader a couple weeks back, it’s becoming pretty evident that the ship is sinking for him. If WMD’s are between now and next year, Bush may save a little face, but still probably not enough to be salvaged given the enormous extent of the mess he’s created. If he doesn’t, even one of the not-quite-ready-for-primetime Demo candidates could unseat him…and the donks could have a surprise surge in Congressional ranks as well if enough swing district GOPers align themselves with the Bush administration, which now appears to be the political equivalent of Chernobyl.