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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (2556)	2/3/2004 5:33:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7936

It was widely held that people were unsure. Intelligence services that had a reason to want to know and who said anything about it said the Iraqi's still had WMD. They did still have WMD programs that would be able to develop and build WMD and they where still building the missiles that could carry WMD. While Saddam has acted irrationally in the past it was hard to imagine that he would destroy all of his WMD but let his regime be destroyed because of the WMD. At the time that amounted to a strong argument for the presence of a WMD arsenal in Iraq. But even if Iraq had destroyed 100% of them and proved it, after the inspections and sanctions stopped Iraq could have just built them again. "A large amount of WMD were unaccounted for." Less than 5%. An almost meaningless statement, and one that's accuracy can't be judged. There where specific lists of unaccounted for WMD that would add up to a large arsenal. Whether that list included all WMD Iraq had produced or bought is unknown. Since the exact extent of the Iraqi arsenal was unknown the % unaccounted for was also unknown. That's what the weapon inspectors were in Iraq doing......accounting for the less than 5%. Accounting for 5% or whatever % of the stockpile that was unaccounted for wouldn't get rid of the organizational ability to build more. If the weapons where destroyed apparently the proof that they where destroyed was also destroyed so even with more access to Iraq then the inspectors ever had we might never be able to fully account for what happened to all of the weapons. "Bush overstated the WMD case but this was apparently due to faulty intel." That's a lie. Intel repeatedly said they were not sure. In a volume of data both pro and con, Bush and company only pulled on the data that would support his argument. There is just about always dissenting views and alternate opinions. The official position of the CIA and British intelligence was that Iraq still had WMD. Apparently even Iraqi military commanders thought that while their unit might not have WMD, other units did. Answer my simple question: Why couldn't Bush wait til the weapon inspectors did their work? When do you think they would be finished? We have more people there now and more access and control and only recently has it become decently sure that there where no WMD, note that's reasonably sure not totally sure. Tim