Editor's notes: this editor (that would be me) has talked about the existence of WMD's in Iraq, for years. I was a building contractor for more than 30 years. One of my employees had worked in Iraq, as a private contractor, spending three years in country, defusing WMD's. When asked why this was never in the news of the day, he really had no answers. His guess was this: "most of the lettering on the containers and bombs discovered, were in English and identified much of the weaponry as coming - originally - from the U.S." He believed that "saving face" was more important to George Bush, than winning the national debate. We all know of GW Bush's high regard for the office of the presidency and the reputation of this nation.
During the time this person was in my employment, our church welcomed home a soldier from the Iraq war. He, also, confirmed the existence of WMD's as he spoke his assigned task, in Iraq, as including handling the weapons of mass destruction.
Combining this anecdotal information with the fact that Bill Clinton was Bush's source of information for believing WMD's existed, made the NY Times story a well received revelation.
You will want to read the full Times report, here.
I know better. Iraq had 14 months to move much of their arsenal into Syria. Saddam buried many of his jet fighter plans in the deserts of Iraq, and men that I know, spent years defusing WMD's, Butch Maddow to contrary.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the Reagan admin sold both chemical and biological agents to Saddam, (see the Riegle Report). The NYT article infers new discoveries of WMD... instead of the reality: weapons that are rotting remnants of artillery shells used during the Iraq-Iran war in the 80s. No evidence of an active WMD program. We already knew about this stuff 20+ yrs ago. No news. Iraq had no active WMD program, and it was an embarrassment to the Bush administration that all they could find were old, rotting chemical weapons originally manufactured by the West. So they kept it a secret, even from troops in the field and military doctors. But lies beget lies, and American troops are the ones who paid the price. In five of six incidents in which US troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States.
ReplyDeleteMy comment, immediately above, remains. Again, " I know better. Iraq had 14 months to move much of their arsenal into Syria. Saddam buried many of his jet fighter plans in the deserts of Iraq, and men that I know, spent years defusing WMD's," More than this, Four Star General Keen, told Fox News, yesterday, there was no cover-up, that these WMD reserves were well known and of public broadcast during the period of 2004/2006. What Reagan did back in the day when we regraded Saddam as the lesser of several evils, in the region, has little to do with the specifics of this discussion.
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