Originally posted by Elfie
UN inspectors verified that certain amounts of chemical weapons and their precursors existed. Now they cant be found, OR verified as having been destroyed. Your link proves what? It does nothing to prove the non existence of these items. Maybe those items were destroyed, maybe not. There is no proof either way.
A quote from your link:
Repeatedly throughout the chemical weapons part of your link it talks about Saddams efforts to maintain the ability to resume his WMD programs as soon as the sanctions were lifted. There is nothing in your link that would lead me to believe Saddam WASNT trying to hide things from the inspectors.
In light of Saddam's efforts to hide what was left of his WMD programs, unless you can show proof that everything was destroyed, imo you have to believe those unaccounted for items still exist.
If the ISG doesn't have a vested interest in finding significant (or even the rather smaller sounding "certain") amounts of unaccounted for chemical weapons, then who does? And yet they say after a couple of years of searching with infinitely better access to the country and the key personnel than the UN inspectors, that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. If the people with the biggest vested interest in finding WMDs and proving Saddam was hiding them have admitted defeat, I suspect there is absolutely compelling evidence that there are no WMDs left. That's actual compelling evidence, not the flimsy nonsense the US & UK used as an excuse to invade.
I note the goalposts seem to be fashioned from finest Birnam wood - as they've upped and moved completely in the second part of the post we started out with significant amounts of chemical weapons, which have seeemingly shrunk to certain amounts, and now to Saddam retaining the ability to start up his WMD programs again when sanctions were lifted.
This last is a lot more wishy-washy: who can actually say one way or the other if he retained his WMD-making ability or not, seeing as he did not attempt to rebuild it? lest we forget, this is from the same lot that claimed he had WMDs ready to go. Pardon me for treating this with an extra side salad of cynicism. Also his initial WMD programs relied heavily on the US & UK governments' support: would he still have that? And if he had not retained his WMD experts, by killing them off or letting them go to work for the highest bidder, the US & UK would be the first to cry foul.
Either way, the issue of him possibly retaining the ability to make new WMDs after sanctions is a far more tenuous excuse to invade, which let's face it is what the whole WMD issue is about. The rest of the UNSC wanted UNMOVIC to check thoroughly before anyone said Iraq had WMDs or not; and the US & UK could not get a resolution to invade because of that. Iraq actually having hidden, viable WMDs was really the only semi-valid political/legal reason to pre-emptively invade.
