vashti's Journal

Mainstream Political Post: Saddam never bluffed that he had WMD
Yes, Virginia, occasionally I still dip into the murky yet soul-destroying waters of Real Politics.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001429.html

When it became clear in summer 2003 that Iraq had nothing, the Bush administration, the CIA and their flunkies were anxious to find ways to exculpate themselves. They came up with a bunch of different, often contradictory storylines. For instance:

• Saddam didn't have anything, but was going to restart his WMD programs the second our backs were turned
• Saddam was deceived by his underlings into thinking he had WMD
• Saddam pretended to have WMD in order to bluff regime outsiders
• Saddam pretended to have WMD because he liked everyone to look at him as leader of the Arabs

If you glance at the various government reports on Iraq, you'll see they all assert that one or more of these theories is correct. But if you actually read them carefully, you see the evidence they provide for their assertions is weak to nonexistent. In fact, they bear an uncanny resemblance to the pre-war case that Iraq had WMD.

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