I really wish we’d turned up a big cache of WMDs — chemical, biological, nuclear — in Iraq by now.<\/p>\n
Because I’m sure they’re there. Hell, there’s not a government around (including the ones that opposed the war) who didn’t think Iraq had WMDs. They were all in favor of an ongoing inspections regime, remember? Not even Chirac could say, with a straight face, “No war. No sanctions. Iraq has no WMDs.”<\/p>\n
There were tons <\/i>of biowarfare and chemical materials known to be in Iraq when UNMOVIC was there. Iraq admitted it. They admitted it again in their grudging report to the UN in December. Except they claimed they’d destroyed it all. But they didn’t keep the receipts, and did it in secret, and couldn’t provide any proof of it.<\/p>\n
Nobody, not even France or Russia or China, took a look at that, shrugged, and said that inspections were no longer necessary.<\/p>\n
Iraq is the size of California.<\/p>\n
Give me twelve years — hell, give me one <\/i>year — and, even without military and a reign of terror and complete control over the territory — and I’ll bet you I could hide several semi-trucks, several tanker trucks, many tons of materials of various sorts somewhere in California, and it wouldn’t be found in a few weeks of sporadic searching. Even by an invading army. Perhaps especially by an invading army.<\/p>\n
(How large of a force do we have in California, just in the northern part of the state, looking for marijuana farms? How many of them go undiscovered?)<\/p>\n
I’ll even do it with satellites overhead. Heck, I’ll bet I could do it without resorting to smuggling any of it over the border into Oregon.<\/p>\n
I wish it had been found already, some of it at least. I hope it is, soon. I hope it isn’t discovered when it starts leaking into the Tigris, or we start finding mysterious cancer clusters in isolated towns in Kurdistan, or when someone rediscovers an ancient ruin somewhere and suffers from “Saddam’s Curse.” Or when someone else, in Syria, or Saudi, or even Iran or Iraq, starts using them.<\/p>\n
I hope. Because sooner or later they will <\/i>come to light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I really wish we’d turned up a big cache of WMDs — chemical, biological, nuclear — in Iraq by now. Because I’m sure they’re there. Hell, there’s not a government…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":144,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/06\/09\/rush_to_war_cri.html","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":0},"title":"Rush to war (crimes)","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 9-Jun-03 10:54am","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been pondering the Case of the Missing WMDs for some weeks now, along with, it seems, everyone else. Well, no, it seems that many folks haven't been pondering the...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":127,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/06\/10\/wmds.html","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":1},"title":"WMDs","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 10-Jun-03 6:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As Stanley Kurtz points out, not only did Iraq have WMDs, the New York Times has reported on them. The United States has discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq....","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":387,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/24\/sanctioning_san.html","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":2},"title":"Sanctioning sanctions","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 24-Apr-03 10:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"So back when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the UN passed economic sanctions on Iraq. And when Gulf War I was over, the sanctions regime was continued, contingent on Iraq's adherence to...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132234,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/11\/the-im-rubber-and-youre-glue-presidency-to-be.html","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":3},"title":"The "I'm Rubber and You're Glue" Presidency-to-Be","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 11-Dec-16 1:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So what's the classic Trump tactic when attacked?Counterattack. Dismissal. Slogan.And how did Team Trump respond to the reports that the CIA believes that Russia intentionally interfered with the 2016 election so as to get Trump elected? Let me paraphrase:The CIA is always wrong!I'ts a moot point because the election is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":164,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/06\/04\/what_im_not_blo.html","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":4},"title":"What I’m not blogging about","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 4-Jun-03 3:54pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I haven't been blogging about Iraq, or WMDs, or anything being attributed to Paul Wolfowitz, or mass graves of children, or other legacies of Saddam's government, or how the occupation\/liberation...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24549,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/15\/mission-accomplished.html","url_meta":{"origin":338,"position":5},"title":"Mission Accomplished?","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 15-Dec-11 11:21am","format":false,"excerpt":"The best thing that can be said for the Iraq War is that, yes, Saddam Hussein is gone, and even (future) potential of his (perhaps once again) pursuit of WMDs (even if he wasn't doing so at the time of the invasion) is eliminated. That's ... it. Non-trivial, but ...Have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}