I have just this very minute resigned myself to the very likely possibility that no amount of searching in Iraq is going to reveal any credible, substantial evidence that Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction.
This resignation leaves me with a few possible resultant possibilities:
- The international intelligence community never really believed that Iraq was in imminent possession of such weapons.
- Saddam pays close attention to U.S. news sources and managed to hide all evidence of such weapons programs when he saw that U.S. military action was inevitable.
- Bush is a Nazi.
If (1), am I willing to accept being lied to, considering that it was for a good cause (the liberation of the Iraqi people)? No.
If (2), am I willing to trust the intelligence when it says there was evidence prior to Saddam cleverly destroying it? No.
If (3), am I willing to repeatedly view Flash animations of Bush’s face morphing into Hitler’s? No, but I am tempted by the "Bush or Chimp" sequences.
I am inclined to think that the concerns about programs for weapons of mass destruction were too premature to yield any credible evidence thereof, so at worst, I was lied to, and at best, the facts were stretched. Why couldn’t Saddam’s support of terrorists, and his brutal crimes against his own citizens, as well as his attempt against a former U.S. President’s life be used as the reasons for invading Iraq? I would have considered those to be sufficient!
There is another possibility. Saddam could have moved many of his weapons to Syria. I’m not saying all of them, but Dr. David Kay, head of the coalition’s hunt for the WMDs, claimed on 24 Jan 2004 that, “We know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam’s WWMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved.” We also know that Saddam was pretty tight with Syria before the war.
A Syrian official also is quoted to have said on the same day that, “These allegations have been raised many times in the past by Israeli officials, which proves that they are false.” I don’t know how that works, but whatever.
Also a possibility, but I think this is covered by number 2 if you change it to “destroyed, or so effectively hid that it might as well have been destroyed.”