Originally posted by Deepblue
Where did the WMDs go?
*thinks about gassed Kurds*
I dunno, ask your VP - he helped sell them to the Iraqis.........
They were quite possibly destroyed. Hans Blix IIRC has pointed out that the Iraqis might very well have destroyed them and not admitted as such simply out of pride.
IIRC a great deal of the 'evidence' of the extent of Iraqs WMD came from a defector from 1995, Hussain Kamal (a Lt.General and Saddams son in law). What was left out was that this defector also said those programs had been disbanded in 1993 - under his command - as any response to their use would be nuclear.
According to Scott Ritter, one of the inspectors, UNSCOM was prepared to make a statement in 1995 that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed; i.e. that 90 to 95 percent of weapons had been accounted for (
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/44/news-wiener.php).
The assumption that Iraq would have WMD was one of the main ways (some) people were to be blinkered into believing the war was just. The administration knew people would expect Iraq to have WMD - regardless of any actual evidence - and used it as an excuse.