This is why I still love John McCain, even after all the other crap: McCain tears apart the idea that Saddam had no WMD. Jed Babbin at NRO has more on this theme, from a highly-placed British military source. Don’t forget that Saddam’s army in the field had gas masks — ever wonder why?
If McCain decides to leave the Senate (or as long as Arizona has a Republican governor), Bush should keep McCain on the short list to replace Powell or Rumsfeld if either ever steps down (the current leader of that list is Condi Rice; I could see Rice at State and McCain at Defense if the incumbents leave, and both would sail through the Senate, whereas Paul Wolfowitz would not).
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“Don’t forget that Saddam’s army in the field had gas masks — ever wonder why?”
Errr, because they were told that, and prepared for the possibilty that, Americans or Iranians would use chemical weapons?
Seriously though, obviously its likely they’d use chemical weapons themselves…but still, an alternate, plausible and realistic alternative does exist.
Still, were the masks for protection from chemical weapons that could be considered WMD and that could be delivered to targerts in America? Or were they simply chemical weapons that would be questionably and marginaly effective in local combat?
Finally, we found the soldiers with masks…where are the chemical weapons that would require them to wear them? Masks on their persons, but no chemical weapons in the vicinity?
“Don’t forget that Saddam’s army in the field had gas masks — ever wonder why?”
Come on Crank, give us a list of reasons.
Considering the leadership’s paranoia, you think one explanation is that they told their soldiers that the infidels from America and Iran wouldn’t hesitate to use chemical weapons?
And yes, its likely that they had masks due to their own arsenal of chemical weapons…but were they really WMDs? Effective and lethal chemicals that could be delivered to American soil? Or wimply marginal chemicals with questionable deliverbility even within the contexts of a local battle?
They had the masks on their bodies, wouldn’t the chemicals be close by? If not, why bother with the masks?
Many plausible explanations outside of the simple conclusion you’d like us to all jump to…even if it turns out to be the correct conclusion.
It would be crazy to invest in the gas masks for no purpose. I very much doubt that Saddam actually expected the U.S. to use chemical weapons. The gas masks may not be conclusive evidence by themselves, but you have to look at the full picture of the program — what we know about Saddam’s past arsenal, what we don’t know about what he did with it, the trailers that have no apparent purpose but bioweapons . . . there’s a couple more pieces I’m forgetting here, but when it’s all laid out together is makes nonsense of the idea that there was no program and no weapons.
Hopefully, some of the recent captures will start to yield information that will let us answer the more important question: where did it all go?
saddam was such a crazy [], who knows why they had those masks. we didn’t dump chemical/bio weapons on the iraqis in the first gulf war so why would we do it this time around? seems much more likely that saddam himself had something in mind but i swear i can’t figure out why he didn’t just go on and unleash the stuff like he did on the kurds. what did he have to lose? i guess asking these questions is useless. the man was a moonbat.
even so i’m having trouble accepting the Air Marshall guy’s view that saddam destroyed all that stuff. that one just doesn’t compute.
1. why disarm yourself on the eve of battle (in which you will be at a significant disadvantage out of the gate)?
2. it would take a huge effort to destroy the stuff, surely even if he tried to do it he couldn’t get it all
3. SOMEbody must have witnessed the WMD destruction campaign. it’s really weird not to have found a friendly witness yet. it’s not like this is some secret search
mindboggling
Flem