If Iraq had WMDs why didn't they use them?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

If your country's being invaded and you have WMDs, what do you do? Smuggle them out or hide them very carefully, in which case it doesn't do you an ounce of good since you get overthrown and captured anyway, or use them to fight back against in the invaders? hmmm....

[J. J.]

If your country's being invaded and you have WMDs, what do you do? Smuggle them out or hide them very carefully, in which case it doesn't do you an ounce of good since you get overthrown and captured anyway, or use them to fight back against in the invaders? hmmm....

You use them if the other side doesn't have something worse.

[John Dibble]

If your country's being invaded and you have WMDs, what do you do? Smuggle them out or hide them very carefully, in which case it doesn't do you an ounce of good since you get overthrown and captured anyway, or use them to fight back against in the invaders? hmmm....

You use them if the other side doesn't have something worse.

Right. It was made very clear to Saddam in the first Gulf War that if he went chemical, we'd go nuclear. Mutually Assured Destruction.

Now, this doesn't say whether he did or did not actually have them - I think he did, but only in small amounts, not nearly enough to be a real threat to us.

[12th Doctor]

Because Saddam still hoped to survive.  If he didn't, he never would have allowed himself to be captured alive.  He would have gone down like his sons.

[Richard]

If your country's being invaded and you have WMDs, what do you do? Smuggle them out or hide them very carefully, in which case it doesn't do you an ounce of good since you get overthrown and captured anyway, or use them to fight back against in the invaders? hmmm....

Ideally you don't want to set them off in your own country.

[J. J.]

If your country's being invaded and you have WMDs, what do you do? Smuggle them out or hide them very carefully, in which case it doesn't do you an ounce of good since you get overthrown and captured anyway, or use them to fight back against in the invaders? hmmm....

Ideally you don't want to set them off in your own country.

Why not, he did before?

[Richard]

If your country's being invaded and you have WMDs, what do you do? Smuggle them out or hide them very carefully, in which case it doesn't do you an ounce of good since you get overthrown and captured anyway, or use them to fight back against in the invaders? hmmm....

Ideally you don't want to set them off in your own country.

Why not, he did before?

Chemical bombs can be controlled.  It is much harder to control nuclear fallout.

[AuH2O]

Because Saddam's plan was to win via insurgency after a military defeat. Whether or not it works, of course, he's toast.

[phk]

Doesn't matter really, Bush goofed up.

Saddam has been irrelevant for 13 months now, and were stuck in a quagmire.

[The Duke]

Because for a time, it seemed that the invasion of Iraq may be contingent upon UN approval, and UN approval was contingent on finding a stockpile of WMD.  So, you get the weapons to Syria so the inspectors can't find them and there isn't a "smoking gun" that the anti war crowd demanded.  No weapons, no UN backing, no invasion.

As it turns out, the invasion was no contingent on UN support, so Hussein's gambit failed.

[phk]

What's up is that the antiwar movement no longer consists of people out on  the "fringes" 

Rep. Coble is no Michael Moore.

Nor is he a libertarian in the mold of Ron Paul.

He isn't even a Jim Leach, the moderate Republican congressman from Iowa who criticized the war early on.

But then neither are Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Edward Luttwak, and various unnamed "senior members" of the president's national security team are leading the growing chorus in favor of getting out of Iraq ASAP.

[angus]

Hey, Ron Paul is a Republican!  And not Fringe!

but you're right about the quagmire.  On this fine point Ford and I have a rare parting, I suspect.  That is to say, I'm no more convinced that they did have them than John is that they didn't.  Problem is, you can't get UN approval when at least one of the Security Council members is way up Saddam's ass, right?  But it's all water under the bridge.  We still arguing this?  assinine.  The question now is do we have the balls to, as Carol Moseley Braun would say, stick it out?  Something like 31% of respondents in a recent poll say Iraq is the issue for Bush's second term.  (very likely I'd been among them had I been polled)  Whatever chemicals/radionuclides/bioweapons may have been there have been scattered all over the third world as a result of our efforts.  There can be no doubt that the average iraqi is better off without Saddam, but at what cost??!  The question now is, are we learing enough to really do business with them, to really offer a stable alternative to the High Noon at the OK corral mentality that pervades Iraqi society?  Quagmires aren't permanent, you know.  Bush can come out of this smelling rosey.  Not among dems, for whom he can do no right, but among those of us mugwumps who are willing to let him give us a stable supply of energy along with giving the iraqis a stable lifestyle.  These elections are a good start.  And I must say, as StatesRights pointed out, you watch Fox financial shows and you get some winners along with some losers.  Although DT is down, munitions and some energy sectors are up.  I'm breaking even.  give 'em a chance.  We'll know more after the end of the month.  till then we're circle jerking.  and my circle is pretty small at the moment.  not too many liberal republicans left out there.

[J. J.]

The question is, basically, "Why didn't Saddam use WMD's to stop the 2003 invasion, if he had WMD's?

The other question is, "Why didn't Saddam use WMD's to stop the 1991 invasion, and we know he had them?"

The answer to each question is the same, deterrence.