enrious

There could be another reason, if reports have any truth to them.

Gas and especially Bio attacks are horribly ineffective in open terrain, especially against fast moving attackers.

IF the reports are true and there is a "Red Line" which has to be breached before they are authorized for release, then until this morning US troops didn't violate it. Releasing them now against fast moving forces in melee with their own troops would not only likely effect your troops more than the attackers but you'd likely not have enough WMD to contaminate a large enough effect in the first place.

After all...it's like firing smoke rounds. In an open, windy environment the smoke's going to blow away (ppm will drop quickly)...and that's assuming that your enemy is even there anymore.

I'm not saying this is why...I do think using WMD against a modern mobile miliatary in a desert envrionment (for anyone) is somewhat pointless.

It's not like gassing a city or a european country side where there are windblocks and depressions for it to settle. Or at least not as many.

garraty

Saddam isn't gassing anyone because his main gas man is now helping the U.S. in Qatar.

Bit strange this......

I wonder if the war crimes placed against him will still go through?

Fuck knows if this is true or not...

Jolimont

Ooooh! Another one!

Saddam is just like the weapons inspectors, he can't find the wmd either!

Ion

I think that given the seriousness of the danger Saddam is in now, there are two possibilities:

1) Saddam has very few of them (which was the role of the U.N. inspections anyway, proof that the U.N. inspections work), and wants to use them on crucial fights like at Baghdad;

2) Saddam doesn't have them anymore, they degraded due to ill maintenance (which was the role of the U.N. inspections anyway, proof that the U.N. inspections work).

Given the seriousness of the danger Saddam is in now, and the fact that 1) or 2) is true, then the Bush forgeries, spying at U.N. on U.N. ambassadors, myths about unaccounted weapons since 1998, are garbage.
It seems that Saddam who wanted U.N. inspectors not to be tied to U.S. but to be tied to U.N., had a point.

In the news, Bush shifted now from the reason for war being the existence of Iraqi's Weapons of Mass Destruction, to liberation of Iraqis against Iraqi's desire.

Chronologically, this goes for Bush starting a U.S. solo war against Iraq:

a) Weapons of Mass Destruction, unfound yet but recently supported with forged documents;

b) liberation of Iraqi, against Iraqi will;

c) Christianization of Iraqis, the latest from Bush's pals;

d) in the background, ever present during a), b) and c), is the 'rebuilding' of Iraq by profiteering U.S. companies.

leonarde

I think there are a LOT more than two. But just to take one that is being conspicuously omitted: Saddam is dead or severely injured and not calling the shots.
In addition we have no idea the degree to which communications and control have survived these air assaults. If the units with the chemical weapons don't know whether/when to employ them, then they probably won't be used.....

Cheers!

Ion

The existence of Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction is not proven by U.S. who is now overturning Iraq without finding them, but was adamant before the war that U.S. knows Iraqi's Weapons of Mass Destruction, give a deadline for Iraq to 'disarm' otherwise U.S. has to war against Iraq.

That U.S.' deadline is garbage:
in Weapons of Mass Destruction U.S. knows nothing and finds nothing; so much for the U.S. alleged reason to war.
This is possible indeed.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Too late, Bush's already done that on numerous occaisions.

Jolimont

If I remember correctly, he also argued that Saddam was hiding terrorists at some point. Now it turns out that there was a terrorist training "camp" in northern Iraq (it's acutally more like a village from the description I heard on Fresh Air with Terry Gross) but the reporter stressed therre was absolutely no evidence of a link between that group and Saddam. So while it was technically a true argument, it didn't speak to the necessity to invade Iraq.

Mark

There is a claim by some in the British military that the initial cruise missile strike on Iraq and operation shock and awe succeeded in cutting Saddam's communications with most of his missile-launching bunkers.

I don't believe this, however, because he could easily get the messages through another way, through radio or television or what-have-you.

ybnormal

Iraqi chemical threat "negligible": US military