Zar

Update: U.S. digs, searches in vain for Iraqi chemical weapons

Cap'n Jack

Its about time they got some proper WMD inspectors in to Iraq, because relying on soldiers to look is proving to be very ineffective.

Zar

Interesting that the lesson to draw from this is that the "soldiers" (they're not just infantrymen!) are ineffective, and not that the sites claimed by intelligence to have WMDs just plain don't have them. By the way, did you know that Scott Ritter, that vocal inspector from UNSCOM, is a marine? Although there have been some stupid things done by ordinary soldiers, such as breaking the U.N. seal on some already-accounted-for low grade uranium in storage, being military per-se doesn't make you disqualified. If anything, why wouldn't military men be most qualified to judge whether a weapons system has been found? At any rate, they seem to have persons on the ground who can scientifically verify any of the finds discovered.

Anyway, perhaps you are right that they need more time to go over things with a fine-toothed comb. But I have serious doubts about that because there already were significant inspections before this war and they will probably soon be done sweeping the rest of the suspect sites. This country has been inspected up, down and sideways, more than any country in recent history, if not all of history, so its not like we're starting from absolute zero.

James Still

The Bush Administration drug us into war on the pretext that Saddam was an evil dictator who both possessed chemical and biological weapons and was ready to use them. Colin Powell went to the U.N. to show a bunch of scary pictures of rockets loaded with chemical agents all ready to go. Here's the problem: if all of that was true then soldiers should have found those rockets and those artillery shells on the battlefield. Saddam knew weeks in advance that U.S. troops were about to invade. That gave him plenty of time to distribute those weapons to his troops in the field. Everyone was waiting for them to be used when troops approached Baghdad. But he didn't use them. Either Iraq doesn't have them or Saddam was not so casual about their use as Bush alleged. So the question isn't whether two or three months from now some unit finally digs up a container of VX cannisters somewhere. The question is why weren't these weapons on the battlefield ready to go the way the Administration claimed? Personally, I think Saddam didn't use them because he underestimated American resolve. He thought that his irregular forces could bog U.S. and British troops down in the south long enough for world opinion to catch up and put pressure on Bush to stop the war. Even if I'm wrong recent events have proven that our containment policy was working just fine. There was no imminent threat or need to unilaterally invade a sovereign country. Bush was wrong to start the war.

Zar

Interesting thoughts, James.

Cap'n Jack

Could also be that Saddam thought that he could win the war, using the weapons would have proved the US right and then the world opinion would turn against him making it extremely unlikely that he would be left to his own devices.

The whole thing is a little bit strange really. Its as if Saddam was surrounded by people who only told him what he wanted to hear and not the truth. Saddam wasn't exactly known for millitary tactics, this was his biggest downfall.

CALDONIA

Does the rapid collapse of Iraqi armed resistance to our military forces indicate our proficiency on the battlefield -- OR does it prove that the Saddam Hussein as 'world-peace threatening dictator with WMD' was a straw man created by Bush, Powell, and Rumsfeld?

I guess the jury is still out on that issue. But failure to locate the much discussed WMD as time passes is making the Administration rather uncomfortable. Watch the spin turn to arguments that our being unable to discover any such weapons "proves" that they were delivered to Syria or terrorist groups.

Herr Goebbels was quite correct in his theory about the Big Lie.

leonarde

One little item I haven't seen any comment on in these precincts was shown on CNN early in the week:

1) a report in the crawl at the bottom of the screen said that in France authorities reported that the "toxic ricin" found in a locker at a Paris train station last month (as in March) proved to be, on chemical analysis, wheat germ and barley.

2) It occurs to me that if the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" can be so wrong for weeks about a "substance" found in the calm of their own capital city, it's not in the slightest bit surprising that UK/US soldiers who have been fighting a war, and have tried to avoid both potshots, and the riotous behaviour of looters, have been so slow in getting a bead on the WMD systems of Iraq. Most of the corrections/retractions by the coalition have been made in DAYS, not weeks.

Cheers!

Zar

leonarde,

I hadn't heard that story, so thanks for bringing it to light.

However, I'm not sure if it has all that much impact. Its great that the Anglo-American forces have the people on the ground to check out and verify these things in short order. What is left of the "war" must not be slowing them down too much, then. Interestingly, some people here are claiming that there aren't any qualified people on the ground, which is their excuse for not finding anything yet. Oh, the topsy-turvy world of rhetoric!

We might have expected and hoped that they'd concentrate their efforts on this, given the priority this has. Indeed, I want things to move faster rather than slower, so this is alright with me. But this all does nothing to address certain fundamental principles of jurisprudence which have already been grossly violated in a way that cannot be retroactively justified, nor does it answer the question: Do they or don't they have WMDs?

Again, I find it telling that rhetoric from the administration is accelerating on Syria, claiming that they have Iraq's WMDs. Why should they pull that cat out of the bag so soon? Don't they expect to find them in Iraq?

P.S.: Also, one has to wonder at the initial credibility that Syria has all of Iraq's WMDs. Syria probably has enough problems without taking Saddam's problems to be their own. Syria certainly seems to have given assistance to Iraq over the years, but why take this hot potato as well? They've seen the wreckage Iraq has become. If Syria is going to have WMDs it seems most likely they would be for themselves. There are no UN resolutions against Syria at this time. Taking on Saddam's sins as well seems like an insane risk to me.

Kosh

Ah, C'mon. Is there ANY evidence to support such speculation? <glances nervously at the video of the Iraqi [dis]Information Minister....>