There are three major arguments advanced by the current gaggle of naysayers: 1) Saddam didn’t have WMD. 2) Saddam didn’t have a delivery system capable of endangering the USA. 3) Even if Saddam had WMD and a delivery system, he wasn’t crazy enough to use them.
As an old retired colonel, I would like to debunk these three majors.
1) Saddam had WMD. Otherwise, he couldn’t have used themto gas Kurds. The question is not did he have them, but WHEN he had them, and where are they now? There were large amounts of radioactive miscellaneous materials found, quite capable of beign made into a dirty bomb which could kill many in Manhattan and which could mess up the economy of the city for decades, if not hundreds, of years. There were 1.7 metric tons of ENRICHED uranium, suitable for making atomic bombs. There were 1500 gallons of binary chemicals to create nerve agent, and there were projectiles capable of transporting such an agent. Some artillery shells containing nerve agent have been found. Some people might not think those agents are sufficient to be scary. I think they are quite dangerous materials to be in the hands of a dictator who has demonstrated he is a master of miscalculation. However, all these are materials and weapons he was not supposed to have.
In addition, there were electronic spy intercepts of conversations between Republican Guard officers suggesting that they were hiding forbidden equipment.
In addition, there are newly discovered documents, the contents of which have not been released and which are incompletely translated, strongly indicative of WMD production and storage.
2) The statement that Saddam had no delivery system capable of reaching the United States can be answered by considering the statement, equally true, that Afghanistan, al Qaeda, and Saudi Arabia had no delivery systems capable of reaching the United States either. No long range missiles. No cruise missiles. No stealth bombers. No nuclear missile submarines. Yet where are the Twin Towers? How were they brought down without a delivery system? The quite clear answer is that TERRORISTS ARE THE DELIVERY SYSTEM OF TERRORISTS! 19 men, mostly Saudis, were the delivery system.
3) Saddam was a master of miscalculation. He started the first desert war by invading Kuwait, and much of his army was lost. He had tempted fate by trying to assassinate George H. W. Bush, a former president of the United States. If the USA, for example, tried to assassinate Tony Blair, would not the British consider that an act of war? And then, if he had no WMD, why not just demonstrate that they were destroyed, as the UN resolutions required, and avoid being deposed and arrested and put on trial? Obviously, Saddam was not a completely rational and careful man. There is every reason to believe that he would have used WMD.
And by the way, where did the anthrax released into our postal system simultaneously with 9/11 come from? Who did that? It was a weapons grade of anthrax UNKNOWN to the USA or to Russia. Who could have manufactured that?
If you remember nothing else from this brief column, remember this: Terrorists are their own delivery system! They don’t need an intercontinental ballistic missile to get a nuke into Manhattan. They just need one determined terrorist with a bit of luck.
