Unknowns

The question of Iraqi WMDs is still unanswered.

We know that Saddam failed to account for all of the WMD materials he purchased.

We know that Saddam kept his techinicians and scientists together.

We know that Saddam obstructed UN inspectors and moved material even as inspectors cooled their heels outside target buildings.

We know Saddam deployed missiles that violated his agreement to disarm.

We know that their was looting and removal of equipment and information even after we overthrew Saddam's regime.

We know Saddam needed WMD to deter the much larger Iran while Saddam's military was degraded from war and sanctions.

We know that it is possible for WMD to remain hidden from us given that we've found over 500 chemical shells. These were 1980s-era shells so not a smoking gun, but they do show that these wepaons van remain hidden.

The conventional wisdom is that Saddam was clean and merely bluffing.

Personally, I think that even if this conventional wisdom is right, Saddam would try to cover his bluff as soon as he could. And sanctions were faltering by early 2001.

But I remain convinced that the combination of our knowns indicates that Saddam had WMD at the time of our invasion. I only assumed he had chemical weapons. I worried we could be wrong again about the apparent state of Saddam's nuclear programs. And I was painfully aware of how easy it would be to hide a bio weapons program so had no idea what its state might be. Saddam could not be trusted regardless.

Remember that even Colin Powell, who critically examined the pre-war case, agreed that the evidence supported our claim (and the world's claim, too, recall) that Saddam had and actively pursued WMD programs.

Via Instapundit is the tale of one find that went unexplored. I remember this from way back and if I get the chance I'll look in my older archives. The article describes what one very credible witness, Dave Gaubatz, found in Iraq:

Between March and July 2003, he says, he was taken to four sites in southern Iraq — two within Nasariyah, one 20 miles south and one near Basra — which, he was told by numerous Iraqi sources, contained biological and chemical weapons, material for a nuclear programme and UN-proscribed missiles. He was, he says, in no doubt whatever that this was true.

This was, in the first place, because of the massive size of these sites and the extreme lengths to which the Iraqis had gone to conceal them. Three of them were bunkers buried 20 to 30 feet beneath the Euphrates. They had been constructed through building dams which were removed after the huge subterranean vaults had been excavated so that these were concealed beneath the river bed. The bunker walls were made of reinforced concrete five feet thick.

Oh, and Gaubatz and his team were exposed to radiation according to their medical records. He also believes--based on reports from various intelligence service contacts--the Russians helped Baathists and Syrians remove the contents of this site to Syria.

The bottom line:

The Republicans won’t touch this because it would reveal the incompetence of the Bush administration in failing to neutralise the danger of Iraqi WMD. The Democrats won’t touch it because it would show President Bush was right to invade Iraq in the first place. It is an axis of embarrassment.

Mr Loftus goes further. Saddam’s nuclear research, scientists and equipment, he says, have all been relocated to Syria, where US satellite intelligence confirms that uranium centrifuges are now operating — in a country which is not supposed to have any nuclear programme. There is now a nuclear axis, he says, between Iran, Syria and North Korea — with Russia and China helping to build an Islamic bomb against the West. And of course, with assistance from American negligence.

‘Apparently Saddam had the last laugh and donated his secret stockpile to benefit Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. With a little technical advice from Beijing, Syria is now enriching the uranium, Iran is making the missiles, North Korea is testing the warheads, and the White House is hiding its head in the sand.’

Of course, we don’t know whether any of this is true. But given Dave Gaubatz’s testimony, shouldn’t someone be trying to find out? Or will we still be intoning ‘there were no WMDs in Iraq’ when the Islamic bomb goes off?

So is this issue unresolved because the administration is afraid of being called incompetent and are the Democrats afraid of admitting WMD existed in pre-war Iraq?

Our apparent failure to exploit this lead is damning, if true. Yet our focus on WMD makes it difficult for me to believe we'd fail to look at this site at the time. I just don't buy that the explanation for this apparent oversight is reduced to a choice between administration incompetence and Democratic denial.

Did elements in the CIA or even the administration cut a deal with the Russians to let them clean this up for their help in some other aspect of the war?

Is the administration refusing to defend itself by exposing clear evidence of WMD despite constant and damaging attacks in order to further our national interests in some way that is not clear?

The administration has kept quiet on covert programs until our media has on several occasions exposed lawful and effective programs, when the temptation to trumpet some success based on those programs for political purposes was surely great.

I don't know what the real story of Saddam's WMD saga is, but I don't buy the current conventional wisdom that Saddam was clean, either.