enrious

D'oh.

Quote:

I didn't say anything about the failure of the Ang/Am troops to find C/B weapons. The question is, why hasn't Hussein used them? I mean, presumably he knows where to find them, wouldn'tcha think?

Assuming he has them, there can be a number of reasons, such as the possibility that using them would hurt his own troops more than ours.

Quote:

Notice that I figure he does indeed have at least some such weapons -- ie, like Iran, Pakistan and a long list of other countries that nobody is invading just this minute. But the rationale for the war was -- think way back a couple weeks, now -- that Hussein was likely to use these weapons, if left unchecked.

But obviously that situation has changed. He hasn't been left unchecked.

Quote:

The answers as to why he hasn't seem to cluster around things like fear of retaliation and unwillingness to alienate absolutely everyone in the international community. But who on earth is this Saddam Hussein, who can be cowed by the threats of massive retaliation and universal opprobrium even when his country is being invaded? Not the same fellow, surely, as the Saddam Hussein who had to be deposed, since he absolutely could not be made to see the force of such prudential reasoning way back in... er, March. Couldn't be. Or, as I actually put it in my actual OP:

Assuming he remains in control. Of course, being in a NBC situation degrades the combat effectiveness of units in it. It is likely that the Iraqi units would degrade more than ours.

theyeti

Unfortunately, that's going to be a problem no matter what. The Bush administration decided to use the "absolute certainty" that Iraq had WMD as a pretext for war, hence they'll be under enormous political pressure to find some. They've also shown a willingness to lie and use fabricated evidence when it suits them. So you're damn right; skeptics are will indeed question the veracity of any such claims. That's what the administration gets for blowing its credibility.

I will want to see such things verified by a neutral third party. There's no reason not to let Blix or ElBaradei come take a look. No reason except fabrication that is....

theyeti

Jolimont

No, no! He's afraid the French will join the coalition!

Ronin

Who...me?!

Clutch

enrious,Assuming Hussein is alive and in control, this seems to exhaust the substance of your reply.

So, in your view, what reconciles A and B is that as American troops invade his country, destroy his army, and move onwards in their campaign to kill or depose him, Hussein's pre-war personal willingness to kill Americans through any means available actually decreases.

The subtlety of this view might be eluding me somehow. Perhaps you could explain it with greater cogency.

enrious

I thought I had.

It's one thing to use them against say Kurds. It's another to use them against forces engaged in battle with your own forces, when the use of them would likely hurt your own war effort more.

paul30

US hasn't had time to plant them yet.

enrious

D'oh! Heads will roll.

abe smith

uh, just to clarify: I think you may mean(to have said), not
"FLAUNT" (in earlier post aloft ^^^) but "FLOUT". (In very good company; the late & saintly Archbishop of Hartford made the same error in a weekly column a couple of decades ago.) For the sake of the constituents (I"m sure you know the difference, LP), "FLAUNT" means appx the same as "flourish", showing-off-ly; or "nastily/mockingly shove (evidence) into the opponent's face". Whereas "FLOUT"(Oxford AmericanCollege Dict.comes first to hand ) means "openly disregard (a rule, law or convention)". Hey, don't ya love WORDS!? No offence; of course.

Clutch

Ah, I'd overlooked this claim.

First, there's no reason to regard this as plausible, precisely because Iraqi forces have avoided pitched battles between heavy concentrations of troops, in which C/B weapons might backfire. Plus, Hussein showed early on that he had at least some delivery systems capable of striking from a tactically safe distance; if he was prepared to use C/B weapons against Americans, why not hold these in reserve for such use, or even use them for that purpose from the outset?

Was there any other reason to suppose that attacking Hussein and succeeding to this point should have made him less likely to use these weapons, on the assumption that he was dangerously likely to do so prior to the invasion?