The Washington Times reports on a Harris poll that found that 50% of Americans believe that Iraq had WMDs at the time of the US invasion.
While anti-war activists will decry this number, the idea that it’s utterly irrational to believe such a thing is wrong. We haven’t found any proof that Saddam had anything but heavily degraded leftovers, but it remains quite possible that what he did have was either hastily destroyed or shipped elsewhere. The argument that Saddam did not have WMD and that Bush lied about it all is the real delusion – absence of evidence does not imply evidence of absence, especially when there is some new and quite tantalizing documentary evidence in newly released documents suggesting an active chemical program.
Granted, nobody has proof either way, and the information is often conflicting. However, it’s not surprising that many thing Saddam did have WMDs. We know he had and used them in 1988. We know from Richard Butler’s UNSCOM report in 1998 that Iraq was deliberately hiding something from inspectors and that significant amounts of material remains unaccounted for.
The burden of documenting Iraq’s WMD stocks was always upon the former Iraqi regime, and they failed to do so. Whether or not Iraq really did have WMDs in 2003 or not is now a largely academic question – what is important is ensuring that yet another terrorist regime doesn’t spring up in Iraq and that the nascent free Iraqi government has a chance to defend itself against those who would tear Iraq apart.
This is an idiotic poll. Weapons inspector after weapons inspector assured us there were no WMD pre-invasion. Just goes to prove that when the seeds of misinformation are planted in the public psyche, unplanting them is no easy task.
“We know he had and used them in 1988.”
Of course we know that. We gave them to him.
Who cares anyway? If 50% of the residents of South Dakota believed that the Earth was only 6,000 years old, it wouldn’t necessarily make it so. This poll is as silly as it gets.
Sigh. In speaking of “seeds of misinformation”.
No, none of them said that. In 1998 UNSCOM gave the figures quoted by the Bush Administration as their estimates of Iraq’s WMD stockpiles at the time. The Duelfer Report indicates that they could find no evidence of active WMD programs, but not that such programs couldn’t have existed. The Iraqi regime destroyed any conclusive evidence that could prove it one way or another. It was likely that most of Iraq’s WMD production was destroyed in the first war, but the total extend of it between 1991-2003 remains largely unknown due to a lack of cooperation from former Iraqi officials.
Thanks for another example of how the left keeps spreading anti-American lies.
No, we did not sell chemical weapons to Iraq. Halabja was an attack using chemical agents developed with German help disseminated by Russian equipment mounted in French Mirage 2000 aircraft.
What we did sell Iraq consisted of the same agricultural chemicals you can buy at Wal-Mart and a few helicopters. They could have been conceievably used for chemical warfare, but there’s no evidence that Iraq ever did use them for anything other than their intended purposes.
But hey, we all know that “when the seeds of misinformation are planted in the public psyche, unplanting them is no easy task” – especially when that involves anti-American propaganda.
If he had them, why did he not use them when we invaded. He crawled into a hole and waited to be killed or captured instead. Does that sound like the actions of a madman dictator in possession of WMD’s. Let it go, man.
Refute the obvious for me now. I know you will.
I don’t think he thought that the US would actually strike. He had every reason to believe that Russia, China, and France would save his regime.
WMDs aren’t particularly effective battlefield weapons either. Using WMDs wouldn’t have saved him, and they would have proved Bush correct about his intentions. Saddam still believes that he’ll be back in power some day – and it made more strategic sense to make Bush look like a fool or worse by removing any WMD stocks that may have existed.
It doesn’t take a genius to think of any number of reasons why, but it does take a modicum of rational thought…