bayano said:
sticking directly to the WMD question:
there is no evidence that the continuation of any WMD research program was planned for anytime soon by saddam
there is always increasing evidence that he had destroyed all of the country's WMDs and was not in an active process of rearming with wmds
Here's a letter to the editor I wrote a while back to my local newspaper in response to another letter. I think it fits here as well.
As Zac Haughn has accused the Courier of getting their facts wrong, so has he. The “homemade” bomb was nothing of the sort. It was a 155-millimeter artillery round which had been rigged as an IED. The round was a binary type which needs the spinning action of being fired from an artillery piece to mix the chemicals inside to create Sarin. The fact that it was rigged, most likely by insurgents, as an IED is what kept the exposure level to a minimum. I too read the AP reports to which Mr. Haughn has referred. I have also read many others, including ones buried in several newspapers.
Here are a few things I came across:
David Kay said the trace residue of mustard gas found in an artillery shell earlier this month was likely a relic overlooked when Saddam said he had destroyed such weapons in the mid-90s.
Hans Blix said his team found 16 warheads that were tagged a “used for containing Sarin,” but were empty.
Saddam’s government had disclosed binary Sarin testing & production after the defection of Iraqi weapons chief Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Saddam’s son-in-law. But Saddam’s government never declared that any Sarin or Sarin-filled shells still remained.
A dozen chemical shells were also found by U. N. inspectors before the war; they had been tagged for destruction in the 90s but somehow were not destroyed.
Iraq acknowledged making 3,859 tons of Sarin, Tabun, mustard gas & other chemical weapons. Iraq began producing Sarin in 1984 & admitted to possessing 790 tons of it in 1995.
The mustard gas shell may be one of 550 projectiles Saddam failed to account for when he made his weapons declaration shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year. Iraq also failed to account for 450 aerial bombs with mustard gas.
Kimmitt said the shell belonged to a class of ordnance that Saddam’s government said was destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War.
The big question: Can anyone seriously deny Saddam was in breach of U.N. resolutions concerning his WMDs?
