This is a pretty good restrained summary of the WMD situation from the ECONOMIST.
I say Iraq was a basket case - the Economist wonders at the mystery of the "shambolic" fight from Baghdad.
Interesting is the assertion that the presence of possible MWD came not from British or American intelligence sources - but from, as they put it - unimpeachable sources: "the United Nations weapons inspectors, and Mr Hussein himself.
Complete editorial at this "Tiny Url":
http://tinyurl.com/d6uk
GUNS normally smoke after they are fired. Had Saddam Hussein used his alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) during the American-led war that dislodged him, the doubts about his illegal arsenal would have evaporated. Yet despite all the talk of �red lines� around Baghdad, the sweaty protective suits in which American and British troops laboured were never put to the test. No Iraqi Scuds struck Israel or anywhere else.
These omissions at first seemed part of a larger mystery, namely why Iraq put up so shambolic a fight. But the ongoing elusiveness of the fabled �smoking gun� has led even those who supported the war to ask whether the WMD that in theory provoked it ever really existed�and whether the �proof� adduced by those who waged it was shoddy, or worse.
Conspiracy theorists should remember that much of the evidence against Mr Hussein came not from the American and British governments or their spies, but from two unimpeachable sources. They were the United Nations weapons inspectors, and Mr Hussein himself.
Mr Hussein had what police call form. He made and used chemical weapons in the 1980s. Throughout the 1990s, he strove to hide his WMD programme from Unscom, the un inspectorate then responsible for dismantling it. In this endeavour he enjoyed much success, though Iraqi defectors helped the inspectors to uncover, among other things, the extent of Iraq�s biological weapons programme, and its manufacture of VX, a nerve gas.
On the basis of Iraq�s known imports and discrepancies in its record-keeping, Unscom and Unmovic (the latter-day inspection body, led by Hans Blix) made some frightening calculations about the chemical and biological agents and munitions potentially at Mr Hussein�s disposal. On the eve of the war, Unmovic reported a �strong presumption� that around 10,000 litres of Iraqi anthrax might still exist.
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.attbi.com/~haledward ****************************************************
--- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.486 / Virus Database: 284 - Release Date: 5/29/2003
