Who believed Iraq had WMD?

[txprog]

I did not. I listened to Scott Ritter. I read Will Pitt and other things, such as a great discussion from the Traprock Peace Center that said there were no WMD and provided ample evidence.

I believed then, as we all do now, that the intelligence was manipulated to achieve a political end. I did not believe Colin Powel or anyone else in this administration. These guys wanted war. Period. They would do whatever it took to garner enough support from the American people and the international community to make it politicially viable. Their friends in the media were only too happy to carry their water. I wonder if they try to wash the blood off of their hands or if they are too blind to see that it's there? I'm sure they don't even bother to look.

No there were no WMD, nor did SH have the motivation to use them even if he did have something. His only motivation was survival, and why would he do the very thing to absolutely ensure the thing he most sought to avoid, his own destruction? Our press simply refused to ask this obvious question. They have failed us miserably. And they continue to do so.

[knowbody0]

1. no one

[roughandtumble]

26. I did when I crossed the line of departure.

I figured it was hit or miss, but that some lucky unit was going to be doing the 'funky chicken'. Google it or use your imagination. I figured I would spend the rest of the war trying to avoid breathing.

[AlCzervik]

2. nope and being against the war from the very

beginning caused my friends to give me a lot of shit and question my sanity, they now feel betrayed by Bush and all have apologized to me.

[Merrick]

3. nincompoops

and some muttonheads.

[cthrumatrix]

4. we were screaming on DU for media to ask a damn question ...they never did

and look what happened. It's disgusting, plenty of people had "other data, other opinions...all drowned out by the media war chant from their corporate masters.

[amber dog democrat]

5. Not for a second did I buy into it.

It was a myth that has come back to haunt them.

[TrustingDog]

6. I believe absolutely Nothing that comes out of Bush's headhole.

and I'm right about 97% of the time.
He does have some truths - like his base being the haves and have mores, etc.

[clydefrand]

7. Many uninformed people who don't want to know the

truth about their "Christian" prez.

[Not Me]

8. Not only did I not believe it (based on early inspector reports) but

I felt strongly that containment would have prevented them from using them or giving them to anyone who would use them against us or our allies.

[liberalnurse]

9. When Scott first came out talking about Iraq not

having WMD's..say late August..I was suspicious; thinking Foxx News was throwing things off track as a planned diversion.....Later, after Scott went to Iraq, pleaded his case with conviction, I then knew he was 100% real.

[George_S]

10. Not me

There was a op ed in the LA Times that argued the CIA already knew there weren't any WMDs there. For some reason, I was sure that was true.

Then when we invaded and they didn't use them, I knew for a fact.

[bryant69]

11. I believed they did

I thought they had Chemical weapons, and I thought they might use them, if we invaded. That doesn't mean I thought invading was a good idea; but I thought he had them.

To be fair, Clinton and other Democrats had also said that he had them for years.

As it turns out, I was wrong.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[TexasBushwhacker]

12. Never did n/t

[Maine-i-acs]

13. (holds up hand in shame) I did.

I was one of many who believed the spin.

Mainly because I knew we sold them the WMD in the first place.
And I knew George wanted the oil, but I also believed that the weapons were there. I didn't believe our government was corrupt enough to willfully screw over the whole civilized world and destroy our reputation for generations.

"Fool me once ... uh ... can't get fooled again."

[high density]

21. I believed the spin, too

I feel rather embarrassed. I guess that's what I get for watching too much cable news. They made Scott Ritter out like he was a person who had escaped from some sort of loony bin when it turns out he was right all along.

[2Design]

14. I didn't care - I knew bush just wanted war -

but I knew that before he was installed in wh

I didn't understand then why no one could see
I still wonder

[Peanut Gallery]

32. That was my view also

I had a gut feeling the administration was lying about its motives because its members have been out for their own selfish interests from the very beginning. There continues to be a casual disregard for civilian (and military) deaths, which speaks volumes. The way it's all played out has been beyond belief.

[rockymountaindem]

15. I believed that they did.

But I still didn't think that justified the war.

[Owlet]

16. They are not 'our press'

..and they don't work for us. They are cost/profit centers for multinational corporations and, as such, their first responsibility is to the company bottom line, not to the reading/viewing/listening public.

I agree with everything you say about Saddam's 'threat'.

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, D.H. Rumsfeld Department of Defense news briefing

In other words, read the paper as you would a novel: view the newscast as a commercial.

[Pithy Cherub]

56. Fire the guy

who hired this guy to say something so stupid! * speak as practiced by syncophants!

[Webster Green]

17. I heard some bushbot say "The whole Universe thought he had..

WMDs". Can't remember which of the bushco campaign consultants it was, but what an idiot.

The whole Universe indeed. How many marched and protested in the streets worldwide before the war? Millions!

[TankLV]

59. And 100% supported the idiot after 911. Except me, I guess.

And my partner. 2 of us in the whole fucking country, apparently, we were constantly told.

We were such AWFUL traitors!

[peacetalksforall]

18. I never believed it except for

one somewhat fleeting moment - the mobile trucks - I thought their was a vestige of possibility. But, all the other indicators pointed to oil and gas - Iraq's earth resources meant for their own people.

Once we found out the truth about the trucks, it meant no other claims could be believed.

What I did believe was the story of some soldiers talking to corporate employees who were caretaking the WMDs that are/were to be planted.

People on the internet figured it all out early.

I am very angry that even after the time that has passed, very few people in the public eye have the guts to ask for investigations about government involvement in 9-11. It is the new American Tragedy that we can't question anything publicly.

[gumby]

19. Who cares what you think?

George Bush does whatever he wants whenever he feel like it.

It's a "gut" thing, doncha know.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

20. I doubted it

but considered the possibility they might still have some old leftover pre-Gulf War I chemicals that they could make some limited mischief with. I did not believe they had nukes or bio weapons, and, most importantly, did not believe they presented any threat to the United States. When I expressed my dismay with the invasion, my freeper family jumped all over me about the "fact" that Saddam had nukes! And that he was a Bad Man "who gassed his own people!" It had to be done, they said.

I have refrained from saying "I told you so."

[The_Casual_Observer]

22. I never believed it, it was obvious he had nothing based on the

arguments presented by * & co. They themselves admitted that they were working off of 10 year old "intelligence". They ignored the fact that Iraq had been thoroughly worked over by Ritter and 10 years of sanctions. Every single piece of "evidence" they claimed was laughably weak on it's face. They had no case at all.

[porphyrian]

Stupid and/or gullible people? - n/t

[jimshoes]

23. Does anyone else think that after Kerry is inaugurated

we should make bushco* come clean about what the plan really was re: the Iraq invasion? Like in a court of law and under arrest. Subpoena or confiscate as evidence, Cheney's energy papers. And just for good measure, have the trials in Nuremberg, Pennsylvania.

[The_Casual_Observer]

24. It may very well come to this

This was probably the most serious "mistake" that this country has ever made, other than allowing the bastard to ever become "president" in the first place.

[Selatius]

25. Reply

I believed he had WMD in the lead-up to war. I was against it, and here was my reasoning for it:

If you have a neighbor you don't necessarily agree with, especially over whether or not he has a firearm, you don't go about solving that grievance by kicking down his door and running inside that man's house. That's just asking to be shot.

That's my reasoning against going to war. Worse yet, I feared that if Saddam did have these weapons and concluded that having them as a deterrence failed, then he would use it not only against US troops but also against Israel, and if Israel decided to join the war, it would have been one step away from another Arab-Israeli war.

[RafterMan]

27. I did

and I think this is the wrong argument.

Think about it this way -- if they *did* find WMD, would you now think the war was a smart move? No? Me neither.

For the next three weeks, make whatever argument you think will win us the election. But for the long term, remember that someday somebody is going to have WMD for real.

How will your arguments stop that war? To my mind, the "no WMD" counterargument leaves the Bush doctrine -- the real danger -- standing.

[RaleighNCDUer]

45. Good point. The question is irrelevant. It was never about WMD

It was about PNAC.

[moondust]

28. It was obvious.

If Bushco had had any conclusive evidence they would have capitalized on it at an opportune moment for political gain--like they always do--rather than struggle with endless questioning and hearings and arm twisting and dissent.

[Gin]

30. I believed they had chemcial weapons....not Nuclear.....once we crossed

into Baghdad and nothing happened....I knew we were had....I opposed the war from the beginning.

[William Bloode]

29. Well...

I figured he had some gas stocks left over, but i never fooled myself into thinking he was a threat. I never really bought the whole mustard gas as a WmD. Seriously thats WWI technology.

I have been against the war from the begining.

[B Calm]

31. When Iraq didn't use WMD's against an invading army

that should have been a clue to the wilfully ignorant. That should have been a wake up call to the wilfully ignorant, but no instead they chose to believe even a more ridiculous argument that Saddam moved them. Why would, he had moved them? Was he saving them for a rainy day? Cons never used common sense.

[Selwynn]

33. I knew the "intelligence" was questionable from day one.

And it makes me furious now that the media acts like "no one knew back then"

[wurzel]

34. It was preposterous.

I never believed weapon grade chemical or biological materials could be made in some basement. Saddam would have needed an industry to do that. Also the means to deliver them and transport them would require further plants. All this while being under constant surveillance and embargo? Also where were they during Desert Storm? If he had them he would have used them. And if he had them Bush 1 committed a criminal act in allowing him to keep them. It was impossible to me that anyone believed it. Including Kerry.

[TexasSissy]

35. I BELIEVED it, but I didn't KNOW it. There's a big difference! Kerry

doesn't (but he can't) make an issue out of that. Almost everyone in the world THOUGHT Saddam had them (it was a logical assumption, since he'd had them before, the U.N. Resolution said he had to prove he destroyed them, and he didn't prove that...so it was logical to assume he still had them). But that is VERY different from stating that you KNOW he has them, to the point of bombing the country.

Not many people seem to make the distinction of belief vs. knowledge in the WMD issue, but I think it is a very big issue.

[Javaman]

36. Never was about wmd's to begin with. Anyone that got their..

news beyond faux or cnn, would know that. He just wanted to finish what daddy couldn't. Period.

[Pig_Latin_Lover]

37. Innocent until proven guilty

I wanted more. I wanted inspectors in Iraq doing their job. I wanted a full barrage of credible evidence showing me that Iraq was a threat.

It's quite obvious that Iraq couldn't hit the United States. That was impossible. I also found it questionable that Iraq harbored terrorists. After 9/11, why would Saddam want anything to do with terrorism? He had his own personal amusement park.

As some people in the CIA said, Iraq was elective surgery.

I weep no tears for Saddam, but he was innocent of the crime we convicted him of.

[Zynx]

38. I somewhat believed he did, but I thought it was a reason not to attack

Iraq.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

39. If the world was convinced he had WMD - why did Powell go before the UN?

Why would Bush have bothered trying to convince anyone if they were already convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt? Why would any further inspections have been required if everyone knew that WMD absolutely were "in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat" according to his excellency Donald Rumpsmell?

[deadparrot]

40. I'm proud to say that I didn't.

My reasoning came from the fact that we have satellites trained on major areas throughout the world. We have the capabilities to photograph a pimple on Fidel Castro's ass. Yet we couldn't produce one, one, single solitary piece of real photographic evidence about ANYTHING. It was just Colin toting out stupid metal cylinders and ten-year-old charts detailing supposed weapons sites.

[RaleighNCDUer]

41. I had serious doubts

and when they still didn't use them after 24 hours I was sure. Saddam believed in them, and used them when his back was against the wall, during Iran/Iraq war, to put down Kurdish rebellion. I certainly didn't believe in the nukes (too complex, too hard to hide) or biological (lousy battlefield weapon) but thought he might have some leftover artillery gas shells from the war with Iran. But if he was to use them, it would have been at the massed troops at the border. They'd be useless against fast-moving units in combat.

And he was definitely not a threat to the US. Hell, he couldn't even control the Kurdish territories -- how could he be a threat to his neighbors or to us?

[Crunchy Frog]

42. I honestly thought that they probably had

a small amount of residual stuff that was militarily insignificant and not sufficient to be a justification for invasion. I felt that inspections were sufficient to deal with whatever might be there unless Saddam stopped cooperating.

I was actually kind of surprised that they found absolutely nothing at all.

[Skittles]

43. idiots

nt

[JanMichael]

44. Well shit, I thought that a couple of the Rumsfeld shells might still....

...by stored somewhere, but I never thought that they had stockpiles of anything more than Kalishnikovs. That's why I protested the f'ing Invasion in DC. Traces here and there but I NEVER expect zip, nada, nothing at all.

[quaker bill]

46. It never made any sense

America was his one significant enemy. We controlled 2/3 of his airspace and had bombed the country regularly for 12 years. Saddam had large stockpiles of WMD in 1991 and for some reason, he did not use them against us. It would seem that Saddam concluded, for whatever reason, that WMD would not be useful against American forces.

With that understanding in place, and given the sanctions severly limited his resources, why would Saddam invest more money in weapons that were not useful against the only army he was at all likely to face in the near future?

Any Dictator in the middle east that had survived as long as he had is by definition very good at one thing, understanding and protecting his personal interests. There was nothing about possessing WMD that furthered his self interests between 1991 and 2003. They would not have made him "safer". Thus he made no effort to obtain them.

Please note that nothing about this deduction requires any assumption of a desire to comply with international law on his part nor does it by necessity impute any higher moral character on the man. In fact the conclusion that there would be no Iraqi WMD program required nothing more than an assumption that Saddam was a craven and brutal dictator who was acting entirely in his own best personal interest.

Possession of WMD would not have been an asset, therefore he did not pursue them.

[JohnyCanuck]

47. Had a huge argument at a family gathering over Iraq's WMDs

This was the Christmas prior to the invasion and during the festivities of a family gathering someone brought up the question of what was going on in Iraq and was Bush really on the level with his accusations about WMD. Well I jumped in with both feet and announced to everyone there were no WMDs and Bush was full of shit and probably intended to grab control of Iraq's oil and use Iraq as a staging area to assume control of other important Middle Eastern oil fields.

I was unaware at the time that there was a distant relative in attendance (not even a US citizen) who was a real Bush admirer who immediately took me to task and announced with great conviction that there was no way the Shrubenfuhrer could be mistaken about this issue and if he said publicly that there were WMDs in Iraq he had to have firm, incontrovertible evidence that such was the case and no doubt they (ie Bush, The Dickster, Rummy etc) knew exactly where said WMDs were being stored (I get a real chuckle now at that one) and if he decided to invade Iraq it was only because he absolutely had to act with urgency to avoid Saddam running amok and causing world wide mayhem and destruction with his stockpiles of WMD.

I told her as politely as possible (not directly, but just strongly implied it) that if she really believed that she was as full of shit as GWB himself was. The conversation got pretty heated for a bit before we both decided in the spirit of the season we would let the matter drop.

[jimshoes]

52. Powerful stuff

that Kool-Aid.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

48. We destroyed Saddam's WMD at the end of Gulf War I

I am amazed that no investigative reporter has delved into this gigantic story and cover-up. I must have sent over 200 e-mails to newspapers and websites about this in the days leading up to the Iraq invasion and thereafter. According to Captain Joyce Riley, the President of the Gulf War Veterans' Association, Saddam's WMD were destroyed by US military special ops at the conclusion of Gulf War I. This led to Gulf War Syndrome. George H. W. Bush gassed his own people (his own soldiers) by covertly destroying Saddam's WMD with thousands of US forces nearby. The Reigle investigations in Congress in the early 1990's studying Gulf War Syndrome revealed that the US Department of Commerce under Reagan/Bush had issued hundreds of export licenses to US private corporations for the sale of chemical and biological agents that were easily weaponizable. Most of the documentation is still classified, including the covert activities of our own military immediately following Gulf War I. My belief is that we KNEW for a fact where Saddam kept his WMD and we destroyed it at the end of Gulf War I. We kept this information covered up (1) to avoid costly medical care to returning Gulf War veterans and (2) to avoid having to reveal the extent of sales of chemical and biological materials that had been authorized for private sale by US companies to Saddam Hussein. George Bush continued classifying all of this documentation from the Reagan/Bush years because it offered him a convenient excuse to go to war on the basis that Saddam could not account for his WMD. THIS IS A MAJOR COVER-UP AND NOBODY CARES!

In 1997, the CIA issued a White Paper entitled "Khamisiyah: An Historical Perspective On Related Intelligence". Buried in that White Paper was the admission that the US knowingly destroyed warheads containing sarin gas in the gigantic weapons depot at Khamisiyah at the end of Gulf War I.

Please read this article at a New Zealander website:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00020.htm

In testimony given on Capital Hill in 1997, Norman Schwarzkopf admitted that the US destroyed Saddam's WMD at the end of Gulf War I. This testimony was conveniently whitewashed from the final Congressional report. Here's an excerpt:

"...Officials seem to have had a hard time keeping to their lines at around this time as shown most clearly in the testimony of General “Stormin” Norman Schwarzkopf himself:

“In planning our military campaign again Iraq six years ago, we focused on our enemy's strengths and weaknesses. The one area in which they far exceeded our capabilities was in chemical and biological warfare. We knew that they had a very large stockpile of chemical weapons and had embarked upon a program to develop biological weapons. Further, they had demonstrated their willingness to use such weapons both in the war again Iran and in campaigns against the Kurdish population in Northern Iraq.

The measures we took to eliminate the enemy's chemical and biological threat were both active and passive.

The active measures were the destruction of known storage and production sites in the earliest stages of the strategic air campaign and also the systematic destruction of the enemy's chemical delivery systems, which consisted of the air force and artillery. There was always some concern that they could deliver chemical weapons using Scud missiles, although we had been assured repeatedly by the intelligence community that this capability did not exist.”

[kiahzero]

49. I didn't

I believed, amazingly enough, that Iraq had destroyed it's weapons in the mid-1990s, kept the plans so, if the world ever decided to stop working at containing the nation, they could be rebuilt. As I recall, that's pretty much what Duelfer report spelled out - yes, Saddam may have wanted weapons at some indeterminate point in the future, but he didn't have them, and he didn't have the ability to make them.

[Yunaleska]

50. I called BS from day one

Soon after the invasion I got in to an argument with 60 year old repug who prior to the invasion I had been guaranteeing we would find no WMD.

What happened? I brought up the fact no WMD had been found - she told me on FAUX news she had heard it was found. I asked what the hell she was talking about (kindly of course) and she said "They fired a shoulder mounted rocket at our soldiers!" to which I responded "A should mounted rocket is not a WMD". Her response? Screaming at the top of her loungs "YES IT IS!!!!"

Your average bush voter folks.

[BMJ]

51. My dad slapped me in the face one night long ago when I said...

"Iraq has no WMDs. I trust the UN over the US."

I've not brought up the fact that I was right, because I don't gloat.

[Liberal_Dog]

53. I Thought There Might Be A Few Scraps Left

But not enough to seriously threaten anybody.

[MattNC]

54. i did

but not to the extent the administration claimed.

[sangh0]

55. I did not know

We seem to have a lot of very smart people on DU

[wellst0nev0ter]

57. I Wasn't In A Position To Declare Adamantly That There Was No Weapons

I even assumed in the back of my mind that Saddam might have something (stupid, huh?). I was more concerned about his depleted military posed as much threat to us as those wooden airplanes he had, and that a power vacuum would leave three ethno-religious groups violently competing for power - with America in the middle of a very hostile Indian country.

I guess I should have known that with all the inspections that was going on, if Saddam had the capability to produce so many tonnes of banned weapon material it would have been readily apparent. Otherwise it did not present a unique enough case to go to war - in this case it should be the LAST country we should go to war with because of the sanctions.

[TankLV]

58. I knew it was a lie when their "evidence" consisted of cartoons & diagrams

instead of photos like Kennedy had.

I KNEW they were lying thru their teeth!

And we can see a pimple on an ant's ass now - 1000 times more accurate than we were in the 60's!

And then they had the NERVE to say that all the "other evidence" was so fucking top secret that they couldn't even SHOW IT TO THE CONGRESS!

THAT WAS A BALD FACED LIE - A LIE!

One could make an argument (unsuccessfully, IMO) that bunkerboy and ther rest were mislead - BUT THEY FLAT OUT LIED THAT THEY HAD THE PROOF!

THEY NEVER HAD ANY PROOF!

But I am the only one who notices that, apparently.

[T Town Jake]

60. Not me...I thought it was all horseshit from the git-go. (n/t)

[Buck Rabbit]

61. I believed if they didn't have them the CIA would put them there

If they aren't "found" in the next 3 weeks, I will have been wrong on both accounts.

I always felt the invasion should be argued against regardless of whether they were in possession of them or not.