Reply #14: Hard to say - and it depends what you mean by WMDs [View All]

Chemical weapons, yes. Nuclear weapons, no. Delivery systems worth a damn, probably not.

And although the weapons inspectors were making progress, and wanted more time (which they should have received), Saddam was playing a major cat and mouse game at inspection sites, which didn't help matters any.

At any rate, the main point is that even if he had SOMETHING, it wasn't considered to be an immediate threat. Perhaps I had my emphasis wrong in the post. I think most countries in that region have something. Could they have used it against us? Unlikely. Against a neighbor, perhaps, but then why the argument of urgency?

So it was a sham from the get-go - I just objected to statement about the WMD. Destruction, I think yes, but no indications he was going to do anything with them. "Mass" destruction, whatever that means, I think not, certainly if you mean nukes, definitely no. I'm not giving the administration a pass on this to say the least.

And on edit: there's a school of thought that Saddam's cat-and-mouse game was more important in trying to make his NEIGHBORS think he had some kind of dangerous weapons. If they knew he was effectively unprotected, he felt he was vulnerable. I think that played into it. It didn't help things, but it explains some of the behavior.