39 months in and still no WMDs. You guys are looking really dumb at this point, literally grasping at straws.

None, Lee?

None at all?

39 months in and Lee looks as foolish as every, ignoring every revelation of the kind of threat Saddam was and what he wanted to become.

They say ignorance is bliss, so Lee must be on ecstatic individual.

Not to mention that people of all political stripes ought to be interested in what translated Iraqi documents say about any number of things, such as WMD, agents abroad, payments to terrorists, training camp records, execution records,......

Sodium cyanide could be used for extraction of gold from ore, although Iraq does not mine much, if any, gold. Or, in small quantities, it's a garden-variety poison. Certain chemical plating processes use it, too, but I doubt they'd have a legitimate need for that pre-war.

First, WMD has been found in Iraq, as those who have paid attention are aware. What has not been found are the large stockpiles we expected to be there. By "we" I mean Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, the U.N., France, Germany and everyone else in the world that voiced an opinion on the topic prior to 2003. So when you say "you guys" are looking dumb then I suppose "you guys" would include the ones mentioned above. I have pages of quotes from those Democrats who declared Saddam to be a danger possessing WMD in all the years running up to the invasion, and some, including Bill Clinton, even after the invasion. I have posted a dozen or so of them in past posts and columns. Do I need to post them again?

"Do I need to post them again?"

I'm sorry, I thought we were looking for WMDs, not Bill Clinton quotes... LoveAmerica usually covers the "blame Bill Clinton" beat, doesn't she?

No, Lorie, just produce the WMDs that George Bush said were there and I will be happy.

"I'm sorry, I thought we were looking for WMDs,"

Actually, we were looking for a WMD program, and we've found quite a lot of it (compared to the zero they were allowed under the inspection guidelines). We also found some of the ways they hid their ongoing program from inspectors, and have some strong indications of where the products of that program went.

Unlike Lee, I am not a Saddam apologist. Hell, I'd put a bullet in Saddam's head myself if I had the chance.

But I have to agree with the one commenter at Ed's. That looks like a list of plating chemicals. They would have a multitude of uses in legitimate businesses, from electronics to jewelry.

At a previous employer, we literally bought sodium cyanide by the train load. And the plant was located about 25 yards up hill from a major cities water supply, but that's another story.

Some of those chemicals are nasty stuff, for sure, and they could be used for improvised poisons. But compared to the real weapons grade stuff we knew he had, this stuff wouldn't even be in the same league.

There are good reasons to ban this stuff as part of an economic sanction program. Plating is critical to many industries, especially military, and substitutes are almost impossible to find. If this stuff was banned as part of the UN effort, and Saddam was trying to buy some on the black market, then that is probably a valid enough reason to throw him in jail.

Bottom line, I suspect these chemicals would be much more valuable to him for their industrial uses, rather than using them as components of weapons themselves.

Plating chemicals?

But didn't Bill Clinton say plating chemicals qualified as WMDs?

LoveAmerica? Help us out here...

We won't have a complete picture for a while. Lots of documents need to be translated. And who knows what was sent to Syria.

Bottom line, I suspect these chemicals would be much more valuable to him for their industrial uses, rather than using them as components of weapons themselves.

If we were talking about a normal country, not run by a crazy asshole dictator, you might have a point.

How much plating material do you need for a not-that-large missile factory (which is what the Dhu-al-Faqqar plant was)? For that matter, how much was in the shopping list above? If it's a few hundred pounds, then maybe it's relatively innocent, but if it's in ton lots, you're getting into the "let's order a bunch of chemicals for 'plating' and throw the rest away."

Like i said -- desperate.

Lee,
Since the lie about the link about Saddam and AlQ has been debunked, are you trying to cling to the other myth that Saddam doesn't want to have WMDs?

We can get you definitive proof of WMD, but it may mean finding where they went. Then, we should definintely go into Lebanon, Syria.

Do you really think Hussein didn't have WMD before the several month's lead time spent in the U.N. we gave him before going in?

If you trust him on that score, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for you.

Lee, darling:

jaymaster thinks Saddam was in control of an industrialized nation when he says "Bottom line, I suspect these chemicals would be much more valuable to him for their industrial uses, rather than using them as components of weapons themselves."

Sanctions led to collapse of infrastructure. Saddam couldn't even manage a traffic signal system in Baghdad let alone a plating factory for Yugo door handles.

Are you in estrus?

Check out another document Capt. Ed just posted. Seems Saddam's Iraq trusted CNN most to get their propaganda out to the world!

"Do you really think Hussein didn't have WMD before the several month's lead time spent in the U.N. we gave him before going in?"

No evidence of that -- in fact, the "evidence" regarding yellow-cake uranium and mil-spec aluminum tubes turned out to be total bullsh*t -- just like this blog's claim that Saddam's WMD shopping list was found.

Desperate politician's (and their loyalist supporters) grasping at straws.

I would like to address this to Lee the wise one, but I will refrain. Some like to redefine what was an original reason for doing something to one that fits their agenda. We did not, and I repeat, did not go to Iraq to find WMD, we went to remove Saddam from power. Anyone who says differently is a liar. Got that Lee. A liar.

And all those trucks crossing the Syrian border in those months; you think you know for sure NO WMD or materials were on them?

And how do you know this? ESP? Because it's been pretty well proven the CIA and the news media don't have a clue.

Guess he's ignoring the 500 artillery shells of gas too huh? Or the other IED made out of cem warheads found previously?

No proof he had WMDs before?

Guess the Iranian soldiers and Kurds he gassed just imagined it?

It's clear Lee is incapable of thinking. Just repeating what talking points he's been handed. I'll join the others in just ignoring him as he is nothing but a puppet mouthing the words others tell him to say.

"Guess he's ignoring the 500 artillery shells of gas too huh?"

The five hundred 17 year-old circa 1989 artillery shells that experts say are no more dangerous than the cleaning chemicals found under the average American kitchen sink?

Yep - I'm ignoring those too. Wow - the total desperation is increasing -- not many straws left you guys -- who else wants to proclaim their blind loyalty to King George?

Lorie:

There's an update on Captain's Quarters from Morrissey; the chemical list that includes sodium cyanide also has a dual-purpose use for "electroplating".

The five hundred 17 year-old circa 1989 artillery shells that experts say are no more dangerous than the cleaning chemicals found under the average American kitchen sink?

The ones that they "documented" as being destroyed, like all of the rest?

By the way - that "sink" must be pretty scary, since even a "deteriorated' shell has a lot of leftover nastiness inside. They found 80 year old mustard gas shells in France that still had enough toxicity to kill, and 20 years isn't enough to degrade some nerve gas chemicals. As long as the seals on the shell hold and keep the oxygen out, they're still going to be pretty nasty. And, of course, they can always reload (part of the agreement after Gulf War I was to not even possess munitions capable of carrying chemical weapons).

So, since you admit the shells exist, you also admit that Iraq violated UN sanctions... which means that your post at the top of this thread was 100% false.

Yeah, Lee, those 500 shells Saddam pledged to destroy back in 1991 as part of the ceasefire ending the first Gulf War. Conclusive proof that he violated that aspect of that agreement -- along with all the others he violated, too.

Hey, Lee, mighty genius -- what is supposed to happen when the side that surrenders in a war breaks the terms of that surrender? Stern lectures?

J.

"There's an update on Captain's Quarters from Morrissey; the chemical list that includes sodium cyanide also has a dual-purpose use for "electroplating".

Once again answering the age-old question -- "Who's Your Daddy?" Lol!

Do I need to post them again?

Speaking strictly for myself, no. But there's just this weasely shift-of-message thing that occurred during the Iraq war that stands out like a monkey in your armpit.

You see, (he said), once upon a time, a terrorist fundementalist Islamic organization called "al Qaeda" (literally, "the neoconservative Islamic front, according to some scholars) hijacked a bunch of planes and knocked down the World Trade Center in NYC.

So GW got his posse up and traced 'em back to Afghanistan. Good goin', chief! This was the right move. We dropped in on the people who sponsored that terrorist fundemnetalist Islamic organization, the Taliban, and basically stomped them into the ground. This is/was/will always be a good thing, in my view.

And we're going to have to do this again, en masse, real soon. So be it. Give me a drum and I'll beat it.

While this was going on, the President and his people started saying, Well, what if those Islamic fundementalists get a hold of those WMDs we know Saddam has?

Now most of the money and most of the hijackers who pulled that abomination off were from Saudi Arabia, the rest were from Egypt. No men, no link, no help from Iraq, which that terrorist fundementalist Islamic organization had publicly identified as a potential target for its wrath. Write that down, if you can't rememer that any other way: bin Laden hated Saddam.

No one has established a link -- outside of the true believers at Wizbang and elsewhere -- between Saddam and al Qaeda. The people who have tried to do this all recognize, on some level, that launching a war in Iraq without such a connection is just the purist idiocy. All we really know for sure is that bin Laden declared that Saddam was in infidel -- which he was, of course. What would bin Laden do with an infidel, if he got his hands on one? Kill him. Murder has long been the customary public expression of Osama bin Laden's.

So: was there a supportive, fellow traveller-type link between those warm, wonderful human beings? Shit, no. Only in the minds of neoconservatives. The 9/11 commission officially declared that there was no link between AQ and SH. This was after the fact. Neoconservatives continue to manufacture their own facts on this issue.

And so without establishing such a connection, GW and his pals got busy establishing the fear that Saddam had big stacks of WMD and was going to fork them over to AQ anyway. They started to beat the drums of war over that possibility. We attacked Iraq.

No WMDs, surprise, surprise -- or at least, not in the copious commercial quantities Geo "Burning" Bush said we would find them. (During the UN inspection phase, the Bush administration continually criticised the UN inspectors for "looking in the wrong places." To put that in plain language, the Bush administration publically suggested that they knew where those weapons were. Ask yourselves this question: Did they? If not, what does this say about them?)

To reiterate: No WMDs. Damn!

At this point, a curious thing began to happen in the Republican echo chamber. Neoconservatives fanned out and tried to do a little short-term revisionist history excercise by saying -- to me, among other people -- "Hey, those liberals are trying to say that we went into Iraq to get WMDs. Isn't that stupid?" (An exact quote, by the way.)

Oh yes, what a dumb idea. Who ever mentioned WMDs? Silly.

The new, manufactured truth was supposed to be that we went into Iraq because Saddam was a bad man -- who may have had and used WMDs at one point, and may even have used them on us, sooner or later, better get him, just in case. The Bushites were simply anxious to rid the world of a very, very bad man. It was just a coincidence that there was already a war on terror; we were over there anyway, what the hell: get Saddam.

Okay. Saddam was a bad man; he is a bad man; soon, he'll be a dead man, and I personally would like to piss on his grave, if not his body lying in state. I'd like to do that now. However, his very real, very execrable badness doesn't erase a few pertinent facts:

1. For a very long time, Saddam was Our Boy in the middle east, an Arab leader the United States could trust. We gave him money, arms, and technical assistance. We did it with a smile -- knowing EXACTLY who he was and how he treated people.

2. Saddam became a bad man, from the perspective of the Bush administration (and many, many others), when he tried to grab the Kuwaiti oil fields.

3. This was WELL AFTER Saddam had used WMDs on his own people. After that particular event, the Bush I administration (which included Rummy and Dicky) increased the amount of aid we were giving him. Bad man; dumb foreign relations.

4. EVERYBODY KNOWS and has acknowledged that Saddam would have liked to have built nukes and chem bombs and God knows what all and dropped 'em on Washington -- was in fact straining to do so. All good, sober, intelligent people know this. You can post a link to some statement by the Haight Ashbury state rep or some other goniff denying this; I'm sure that's the first thing that will follow the ad hominem attacks posted hereafter.

5. The bottom line is, the idea that we DIDN'T go into Iraq to get those WMDs is just a stupid lie -- and quite a few neoconservative whackos have suggested exactly that.

6. The notion that the only way we could make sure of this was by invading the country is DEBATEABLE.

7. To launch such a war, just when we needed all the good will we could get in the Islamic world to fight al Qaeda, was a stupid act. Saddam could have been contained -- a task made easier by the global horror evoked by the 9/11 attacks.

But no. The United States, the world's only superpower, attacked and invaded a small country that had never attacked her. (The notion that the Iraqis tendency to launch missiles at our planes justified the attack is laughable. Someone's going to bring this up, so let me get this over with now: ha, ha, ha. There. I feel better.)

The war against terror, properly speaking, is a psychological and political one, a war of hearts and minds. You cannot enlist the sympathies of people who already hate your guts by attacking some of their soi-disant "brothers" without just cause -- in their eyes. But thinking of things in terms of other people's worldviews is just not done, in some circles.

Which to me says that neoconservatives are the wrong people to lead this fight. If God really loves America, the Free Love/Cheap Beer Party will sweep congress and the presidency in 2008.

Or not.

Lee,

That's one person's educated assesment of what the chemical list MIGHT be used for. Regardless of its end purpose, having/possesing that chemical was STILL in violation of UN Resolution 667 from 1991. He wasn't supposed to have any precursors for WMD, period. Even if Saddam didn't know what the end-use purpose was for the SC, he damn well should've known (or somebody in his regime should have) that something like SC would get him into hot water, and to keep close tabs on what was coming into the country. Then again, psychopaths generally don't consider such nuances as ingredients as being in violation of said resolutions.

The SC is just one piece in a huge WMD, post-invasion intel puzzle. Perhaps it is the wrong piece; perhaps not.

Arguing with Lee is useless.

If undeniable evidence of Saddam having WMD's emerged, he'd simply shift his focus and drop the WMD 'talking point'.

BUT he'd never concede that point.

He's not interested in objective truth,in fact at base his position is that there is no such thing as objective truth. There is only subjective reality and his subjective reality is better than yours, because he cares...

As a matter of 'principle', he's opposed to any 'facts' (what an archaic term) that contradict his agenda.

That's because people like Lee are only interested in the world conforming to their world-view. The world is full of liberals like Lee.

Reason only counts to the degree that it confirms his feelings.

astigafa:

1) I've repeatedly cited sources from before the Iraqi invasion that showed Bush talking about other reasons, and explicitly saying that there was no imminent threat, no hard evidence of WMDs.

2) Saddam was "our bastard," yeah, right up until he revealed his true colors and invaded Kuwait.

3) You might have conveniently forgotten it, but I recall that there were a LOT of protests about going into Afghanistan.

4) The war was NEVER against Al Qaeda. It was against militant Islam, one aspect of it being Al Qaeda. Remember (if you can) that up until 9/11, Hezbollah had killed the most Americans.

5) Saddam DID give material support to Al Qaeda, among other groups. It's well documented.

6) We supported Saddam for very pragmatic reasons: he kept the Iranians in check. At the time, you might recall a little something about our relations with Iran. Here's a hint: Their pet name for us was "The Great Satan." I think it still is.

J.

Ladies and gentlemen...

By responding, you're only giving the troll what he wants... attention.

Or, to put it another way, never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Same thing for trying to convince a lefty of any facts. As has been pointed out, lefties don't believe in objective facts.

Yes, these 17 year old artillery shells

www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/news/134890.php

"WASHINGTON -- The "weapons of mass destruction" that two leading congressional Republicans reported had been found in Iraq were probably less toxic than the chemicals found under most American sinks, a former U.S. weapons-hunting team leader said.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who is engaged in a tough re-election battle, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said at a news conference Wednesday that unconventional weapons had been found in Iraq.

The weapons probably would have been intended for chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq War, said David Kay, who headed the U.S. weapons-hunting team in Iraq from 2003 until early 2004.

In an interview, Kay said experts on Iraq's chemical weapons are in "almost 100 percent agreement" that sarin nerve agent produced from the 1980s would no longer be dangerous."

The idiots in Saddam's army probably lost track of them, and they were overlooked rather than destroyed. Reason enough to start a war?

No.

You're running out of straws.... but thanks to this post the tinfoil-hat industry is booming - don't stop now!

astigafa:

Aside from pretty much everything you posted above being wrong, one thing really leaps out:

"For a very long time, Saddam was Our Boy in the middle east, an Arab leader the United States could trust. We gave him money, arms, and technical assistance."

Actually, for a very short time, we sold him some helicopters, gave him a little bit of intel versus Iran, sold him some agricultural supplies (low-grade insecticides) and then stopped. Our total "assistance" to Iraq amounted to less than one percent of his military budget for a couple of years, while the Soviet contributions were on the order of 60 percent for the same time period, and consisted of actual weapons like MiG-29s and tanks.

"Our Boy?" That's like telling a waitress in a restaurant that she's "yours" because you gave her an extra buck for a tip.

Over the same time period, we were actually on better terms with the rulers of Jordan and several other states in the area, and we've flat-out given Egypt more money than the stuff Hussein got to buy.

"No evidence of that . . ." It's not a criminal trial in the U.S. court system, it's a tyrant with a criminal history of seeking weapons.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. For some they are the same, for those of us with an education and appreciation in logic (and common sense), they are not.

"The idiots in Saddam's army probably lost track of them, and they were overlooked rather than destroyed. Reason enough to start a war?"

Not by themselves, but when you add in that the same "experts" you cite promised us that those shells had certainly been destroyed, it blows a helluva hole in your "inspections were working' theory.

"Oops - I completely forgot about that TWENTY-FIVE TONS of artillery shells that we promised time and again were certainly, positively, destroyed..."