there's one slight problem tho...
Over the past 3 years, The "WMD" debate has raged on. Before the war, I doubted the administration's claims (as did 160 or so congressmen). I was told by more than one congressional staffer "you don't know...they have evidence we haven't seen that PROVES everything" before we invaded Iraq.
After the invasion, as our occupation commenced, I was told "we will find them." Then, after a couple of years finally the belated admissions by the President and other true believers in Washington that there were no WMD's in Iraq as previously reported. The WMD arguement never held much water to anyone who engages in critical thinking. It only served the overly nationalistic audience the Bush administration was trying to enrage. It just didn't stand to logic that all these things were going on when only months before 9/11 all reports suggested sanctions and "boxing Saddam in" was very effective in eliminating any threat from Iraq. It was obvious to someone who had watched the debate since 1990 that the "neocons" pushed on everyone to the point that making boisterous anti-saddam speeches were in vogue to even the most liberal politician in the 1990's. Iraq became a way any politician could "look tough" while offending no one who mattered, or voted.
But in right wing circles, where pundits come to play and spin, there was another explanation to what happened to the WMD's.
They went to Syria. Saddam boxed em all up before we came and sent truckloads of weapons undetected over the Syrian border. This is what pundits on the right whisper to each other when hearing disturbing news that there were no WMD's in Iraq. Their explanation allows them to not admit anything.
There's only one problem with that position. !st off, does anyone think Syria wants to be invaded for "holding some stuff" for Saddam Hussein? Syria may be a country who doesn't like us, but they're not stupid. Plus, we did indeed find WMD's in Iraq shortly after the occupation began. So none of the weapons were moved. How do I know? Here's how...
I spoke to a former Marine, Dustin Harmer. Dustin served with an engineering support division that went out and actually dug up land where reports said the WMD's would be found. And in many cases, they were.
One slight problem...they all had a stamp on them...each and every tube full of Ricin, Mustard Gas and all those nasty things everyone has been talkin bout for years now. The stamp was simple, but incriminating. They were all property of the USA.
As Dustin put it, "We found em all over the place. But every time, they had US markings on them and we were told that we saw nothing here."
He also explained that most of em were not actually usable. Most of the WMD's found were simply too old to be used. They had been essentially "thrown away" by the Iraqi leaders people.
How did we find them? From the U.N. reports that Saddam provided. These documents showed how the old weapons, provided by the USA were disposed of when they became too old to use. Remember those papers? The literal thousands of pages that our administration was somehow able to read in under 12 hours and conclusively determine that they were a lie. Hmmmmmmm...
Now, maybe it seems that those documents recording the WMD's, which were used to find them (by our troops post invasion instead of by inspectors in leiu of an invasion) were more accurate than our administration wanted anyone to believe pre-war.
Fact is that the only weapons Saddam had were the ones that Donald Rumsfeld himself facilitated in the 1980's when Iraq was fighting Iran.
No weapons were sent to Syria. Think about it. We had Iraq (and Syria) under satellite surveillence for a very long time before we invaded. We had photos of trucks all over Iraq and claimed we knew what every one contained inside. Yet, no one has any pictures of anything crossing the baren desert (which would kind of stand out, don't ya think?) Let alone bunches of trucks caravanning to Syria full of WMD's. The reason for that is that it never happened, despite what a bunch of delusional neocon followers want to believe.
Of course, it's obvious that no amount of evidence will ever convince some to publicly change their mind. But most of us know the truth. And with more eyewitness accounts like this about what really happened over there, even more will know.