I think the WMDs are in Syria. Getting close may bring about undesired consequences.

"I also find myself wondering what the hell the hard left will say if Hobbs is vindicated."

Essentially, this:

I would bet Justene is right - some of the weapons are in Syria. I'd bet big dollars that's where some of the still-classified evidence the Iraq Survey Group is investigating is pointing. And that would be a big reason for the Baathist remnant and their al Qaeda allies to work to impede and harrass the WMD hunters. And it would explain the increasing sophistication of those attacks (see the story I link to for details) - if Syria is clandestinely helping our enemy try to keep us from finding the WMD in Syria.

Two years from now, I hope, Tehran will be in the hands of the democratic revolutionaries and Assad will be enjoying his last days as ruler of Damascus.

It seems apparant that even before the coalition moved into Iraq, Saddam devised a plan for geurilla warfare. I wouldn't be supprised if the b@st@rd hid the weapons, as disproving Americans in the international eye is more devistating then killing their soldiers...

- it changes public opinion about the war and it implications.

I have to admit, I have an affection for the possibility that there never were any WMDs after the Gulf War defeat back in '91. That, in fact, while his flunkies were shoveling all sorts of BS at Hussein that X or Y was being accomplished, they were using the money to build one of those (literally) gold-plated palaces of his.

There is no factual basis for this story, but I find the irony so rich I can't resist it. Hussein thought he had them, and tried to hide them from Bush, who also thought Hussein had them, and all the time the bureaucrats were fooling everyone! Heh.

Seriously, tho: I think there is a healthy possibility that at least some, if not most of the stuff, got shipped to Syria. And let's not forget those buried planes we literally stumbled over. If the wind hadn't uncovered the tail of one, we never would have known they were there.

But, unlike SOME folks (g), I don't like to push something I don't have healthy evidence for, so I generally don't discuss it.

What the leftie critics would say if real stuff was found? They have an answer to hand already: "Bush lied." In this case, the discovery is a plant. Bet ya $50.

Obviously if tons of WMDs are found then the "hard left" will change the subject. Would you rather they keep accusing the adminstration of lying, even though there are WMDs all over the place? At the current state in time, there aren't WMDs all over the place, even though the adminstration said there were. So the "hard left" is griping about it. And well they should. Shouldn't the leaders of the Earth's only superpower be held accountable for claims they make? If they find WMDs, then the "hard left" can't complain anymore; so they'll focus on something else. I don't see anything wrong with this.

"[S]ome have simply deteriorated and been lost in the desert sands . . . ."

That is a ridiculous assertion. Things left out in deserts remain there almost forever. If you explore the deserts of California and Nevada, you can find tons (literally) of 19th century mining tools and equipment just lying around. Wood. Iron. Leather. It's still there. (Certainly, steel, aluminum, or titanium would be.) Granted, the stuff will be in a state of decay and perhaps useless, but it's still there.

There is no way that any modern weapons "have simply deteriorated and been lost in the desert sands" of Iraq. Not any weapon larger than a pistol made in the last 50 years, at least.

And don't give me the "shifting sands" business. The desert in Iraq (or at least the vast majority of it) does not consist of shifting dunes. It's dirt and rocks, and fairly stable.

"I have an affection for the possibility that there never were any WMDs after the Gulf War defeat back in '91"

This is not true I'm afraid (and I don't mean to imply that you were saying it was).

The amount of WMDs destroyed by UNSCOM after GWI is well known. In fact Madame Albright herself said Saddam had enough WMDs to kill humanity many times over...

"That is a ridiculous assertion. Things left out in deserts remain there almost forever."

You are correct John. The low humidity helps with this...

But actually finding those lost things, is another matter...

Chemicals and bio-weapons deteriorate with time, John, whether they're in the desert or not. We're not talking about metal or leather here.

Apparently, there was also enough sand to bury a bunch of fighter planes.

Sadaam had WMD, but he deceived the world into thinking that he had more than actually existed. He destroyed many, hid some, and exported the rest to who knows where. If there's any left, we'll find them sooner or later.

As much as I really don't really like the Bush administration, I've seen nothing that supports the fact that this administration lied about WMD to justify (a highly justified) war.

Tim the Soldier

Thanks, Tim!

That's a point that's been bothering me for a while: if Hussein really didn't have WMDs, why didn't he just come clean with the UN? He could have stopped the Bush administration's plans cold. Hell, he could have gotten the sanctions raised! Lord knows the man could have used the money...

Blowback: I'm afraid I wasn't very clear. I meant after the actions of UNSCOM, Hussein never really rebuilt his stockpiles.

Sorry about the confusion.

Casey:

Fox had a story earlier. Here is a quote that might answer your question.

"The Post reports that other top Iraqi officials have been telling interrogators that although Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, he wanted everyone to believe he did.

Saddam "had an inferiority complex," said Maj. Gen. Walid Mohammed Taiee, 62, chief of army logistics until the war. "From a military point of view, if you did have a special weapon, you should keep it secret to achieve tactical surprise. ... But he wanted the whole region to look at him as a grand leader. And during the period when the Americans were massing troops in Kuwait, he wanted to deter the prospect of war."

Haven't defectors/captured scientists also said that, in the case of chem-bio weapons, Iraq used way more of them on Iran than it wanted to admit to the UN and just flat-out lied about it? My understanding was that that pretty much accounted for a discrepancy of thousands of warheads known to have been manufactured.

"That's a point that's been bothering me for a while: if Hussein really didn't have WMDs, why didn't he just come clean with the UN? He could have stopped the Bush administration's plans cold."

Actually, he did. The administration said that the Iraqi inventory submitted to the UN showing no WMDs proved he was in violation of UN resolutions because they NEW he had them (trust us). This just in: he also apparently sent an emissary who met with Richard Perle (what were they thinking?) and told him they didn’t have WMDs and the US could send lots of soldiers and inspectors to verify. So we invaded. We were goin’ to anyway ‘cause it was never about WMDs.

And I guess that UN Security Council resolution last year was bogus, too, eh? The one that declared Iraq in violation of the disarmament agreement that ended the Gulf War?

I've heard the "last minute attempt" story. A low-level flunky tried to stall the invasion at the last minute, after Hussein had literally months to make the same invitation publicly, himself.

Are you surprised that, after 12 years of obfuscation and resistance, the US government had lost patience with Hussein?

The ironic thing is that this exactly parallels that Hitler tried to pull with Great Britain back in 1939. He convinced the German people that he had bent over backwards trying to keep the peace, including a "last minute attempt" to stop the war, too.

Some things never change...