Quote:
Originally Posted by Cisco Kid
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I was very surprised to see the title of this thread which implies that Bush/Cheney were correct that Saddam had an ongoing production and plan to utilize WMD which was the pretext for the invasion. We all recall Cheney explaining how if we didn't act there would be mushroom clouds and Colin Powell at the UN showing photos of what he claimed were rolling chemical/biological weapons plants. So now the NYT has confirmed those allegations? No completely the opposite unless my reading is erroneous.
"
American troops began encountering old chemical munitions in hidden caches and roadside bombs. Typically 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets, they were remnants of an arms program Iraq had rushed into production in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.
All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. "
And this
"
Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims" my bold
And then this
"
The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale"
The rest of the article gives great detail on the particulars of who what and when these materials were made, our soldiers' exposures, and the military cover up of its findings.
"
Participants in the chemical weapons discoveries said the United States suppressed knowledge of finds for multiple reasons, including that the government bristled at further acknowledgment it had been wrong. “They needed something to say that after Sept. 11 Saddam used chemical rounds,” Mr. Lampier said. “And all of this was from the pre-1991 era.”
Others pointed to another embarrassment. In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies."
Does anyone tell the truth? Certainly looks like the US Military lied on this one. You can be sure that had an active WMD program been found the political architects of that war would have then and now been proclaiming the evidence loudly.