Sorry it took me so long to answer you, just finished up a long shift at work. You asked,

“Mike, if Saddam wanted to prove Britain and the US wrong for invading, why would he deliberately place himself in material breach of 1441? The resolution did not only apply to stockpiles.”

There was nothing Saddam could do about the perception that he was in material breach of 1441, because he was in breach, and had been in breach of every UN resolution passed since 1991.

The resolution (1441), like other resolutions, “did not only apply to stockpiles,” as you say, but Saddam realized that nothing else mattered but the stockpiles. Saddam had also gone a long way to defusing the impact of being in material breach by allowing UNMOVIC into Iraq for renewed inspections. The fact that they had no hope of finding in 3 1/2 months what UNSCOM couldn’t find in 7 years has been buried in anti-Bush spin.

The widespread support to keep Saddam from being ousted proved that technical breaches meant little in the PR battle prior to invasion. Hell, the Left had already made it clear before regime change that any WMD stocks found afterward were going to be treated as American planted evidence. Still, finding stocks of actual chemical and biological weapons in Iraq after ousting Saddam would definitely have vindicated Bush and Blair, regardless of the conspiracy cries of planted WMD. Saddam realized that the actual WMD stocks were everything. Denying them to Bush and Blair was his only means of ruining them politically.

Regardless of whether he succeeds (and it’s looking more and more like he won’t), I don’t think the question of Iraq’s WMD could have played out any more to Saddam’s liking than it has. Saddam simply made sure there would be no actual WMD left in Iraq after regime change, and let the Bush hating media do the rest.

Peter, I have to agree, I think it will be years before we know it all. I heard last year that several Chinese got ill while cleaning out an old warehouse. It turns out some old drums were full of blister agent left behind by the Japanese.

Mike, if Saddam wanted to prove Britain and the US wrong for invading, why would he deliberately place himself in material breach of 1441? The resolution did not only apply to stockpiles.

I think they should have justified the invasion on the issue of noncompliance and humanitarian reasons as well as Saddam’s open support for terrorism.

But I think it was inevitable. Sooner or later Saddam was going to have to be dealt with, he was not going to have it any other way.

It took decades after the war to catalogue them all,some of them useful to the Allies never surfaced publically.

It may not fit the news cycle but it will be years before the full extent of Iraqs arms developments emerges

“But I just don’t get why he would actually destroy the weapons.

Why not sell them? Why not spirit them away until the coast is clear and then start making new weapons? If the weapons program [aside from nuclear] could be entirely up and running in less than two years why not ship the weapons to some deserving dictator and make more later?”

It’s certainly always a possibility that Saddam sold rather than destroyed his WMD. I don’t think this likely occurred, so great would the risk be that this would be discovered at some point later, and completely vindicate the Americans and British for invading.

Saddam knew he couldn’t deny the coalition their military victory. He knew he couldn’t prevent his elimination from power. He did however, have the means to deny the coalition a victory in the forum of world opinion, by denying the coalition the means to prove they were justified in implementing regime change. The means for this was the destruction of all remaining WMD stocks and production assets, at some point before regime change commenced.

In my view, the most believable scenario is Saddam simply didn’t want to part with his most valuable WMD stocks in 1991, (Anthrax and VX) and elected to try and conceal them, while declaring and destroying those WMD agents of lesser value, and those that he couldn’t deny having, because of their earlier use. It’s important to note that Iraq had never used bio-weapons against Iran, so had some plausible case to make to the UN in 1991 when saying he didn’t have them. The same goes for VX. It wasn’t used against Iran, although apparently now Duelfer says Iraq did launch 3 VX warheads during that war, but no one, including Iran, knew it at the time.

Saddam realized in 1991 he was going to have a hell of time, in the aftermath of the 1st Gulf War and sanctions, in getting new growth media for the Anthrax, and new precursors for the VX. I believe this was paramount in motivating him to keep what he had already made, while feigning compliance by declaring and giving up the less valuable chemical weapons such as Sarin and Tabun.

I read that oped and I think it is quite possible that he is right. We just can’t be sure, not yet anyway.

But as far as the partisans are concerned they should all stop and think about who the presdient was in 1992 before they get all huffy.

The link to Captain Ed above should have been this one:

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/002720.php#comments

The quote cited above:

“One of the most prolific purchasers of the oil was Swiss-based Glencore run by one-time fugitive American financier Marc Rich, which the report alleges paid over $3.2 million in kickbacks to the Iraqi government. Rich, formerly wanted for tax-evasion was pardoned by President Clinton in his last days in office.

The report says that the company denies any inappropriate deals.”

comes from an article at Foxnews.com:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134787,00.html

Jamie Irons

I don’t think Hillary would want to be President of the country John Kerry would leave her. Too many tough choices, too many problems mismanaged or ignored for four long years. Too much responsibility. The Clintons didn’t get where they are today by facing up to real choices.

Asher, the Oregon Dog Trainer’s support for Kerry isn’t really a surprise is it? The stupidity of their rationale is right in line with what I would expect (although I must admit to having read the paper only from picking it off the seats in the terminal).