I posted a thorough reply but got an error and my reply was lost.. so I'll make this shorter.
jpotts wrote:Iraq was supposed to have zero (none) after 12 years, and 12 UN resolutions.
It is true, Iraq was supposed to have none. Saddam lied. There is no doubt.
jpotts wrote:Furthermore, this is in addition to the 500 rounds of Mustard Gas collected in 2004, and two other rounds that were discovered as re-wired IEDs in 2005(?).
You are referring to Sen. Rick Santorum's announcement. Here's the article from Fox:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.htmlAnd the declassified article they quoted:
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Iraq_WMD_Declassified.pdf The most inflammatory phrases are underlined naturally.
FOX's report chose the most excitable title: "Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq"
Of course, you and 90% of their readership stopped after the 3rd paragraph. If you kept reading you'd find the quote:
"Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.
"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war.""
NOT IN USABLE CONDITIONS
...
Let's look at a better article from a source less biased:
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=15918The Department of Defense
Quote from the article: "The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added."
The 1980s? Odd. That's about the time of the Iran-Iraq war.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9e4aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TEcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5645,1273436&dq=mustard+chemical+weapons&hl=en
Oh yeah... Iraq attacked Iran with chemical weapons (mustard gas) while we were their ALLIES. Did we try to stop them then? No. Oo...
Quote: "While that's reassuring, the agent remaining in the weapons would be very valuable to terrorists and insurgents, Maples said. "We're talking chemical agents here that could be packaged in a different format and have a great effect," he said, referencing the sarin-gas attack on a Japanese subway in the mid-1990s."
The Japanese subway attacks in the 1990s? TWELVE people died. It is tragic no doubt, but a FAR cry from a "weapon of MASS destruction." Maybe a weapon of localized destruction.
The American public was led to believe that weapons comparable to nukes were at the disposal of Saddam Husein. They were not. While the technical definition of "WMD" was satisfied by these findings, they were not truly capable of "mass destruction."
jpotts wrote:Iraq was big into chemical weapons, and their known stockpiles was the main focus of the weapons inspection violations, namely :sarin, mustard gas, and VX derivatives. To say that the focus was on nuclear and biological weapons, and not chemical weapons points to a profound ignorance of the issue.
By the way, did you know mustard gas was used during the FIRST World War? Man, they sure loved their WMDs back then. It is a dangerous chemical, but surely not the most by today's standards. And no article differentiated--which of the 500 "WMDs" had mustard gas and which had the more dangerous sarin gas? And If this was such a huge discovery, why was it not more publicly announced?
jpotts wrote:As far as anyone knew, they did not have ANY nuclear weapons (though much of the material they smuggled into Iraq was classified as having "dual use"), and their biological weapons capability was all speculative. However after gassing Iranians and Kurds, no one had any doubt that Saddam both had nuclear weapons, and was more than willing to use them.
Huh? First you say Iraq didn't have any nukes and then there was no doubt that they did?
I never said Iraq had nukes, merely that WMDs encompassed nukes and so the public believed the term "WMD" to include weapons which were comparable in destructive power to nuclear weapons. They are not.
jpotts wrote:Once more, you should really try reading a few books before you come onto this board and show all of us how very little you actually know on any given subject.
You have yet to cite a single article or book.
Please, enlighten me, cite some books you've read which support your point of view.