Despite evidence to the contrary, there is the continued belief that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. Between the Democrats, the media who serve as their propagandist, and those who have an irrational hatred of George W. Bush, there has been a refusal to give up the lie that nothing was found in Iraq.
One of the reasons given by former president Bush for going into Iraq — beyond Hussein’s government funding international terrorist activities that did target Americans — was weapons of mass destruction were in fact found. In other words, the weapons were not the only reason, but also the financing of international terrorism.
A “weapon of mass destruction” is not just nuclear, but other weaponry meant to harm a large number of people through unconventional means.
According to DHS, “[a] weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or other device that is intended to harm a large number of people.”
Weapons of mass destruction do include chemical weapons, which were found in Iraq. Just because they did not get much attention from the media, does not mean they did not exist.
From a Fox News article titled “Sarin, Mustard Gas Discovered Separately in Iraq”:
‘The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found,’ Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad. ‘The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy.’
This was not a one-off instance of a chemical weapon, but one of thousands.
From the Yahoo News article “U.S. troops found nearly 5,000 abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq from 2004 — 2011: Report”:
On at least six occasions, American troops and American-trained Iraqi troops were wounded by the abandoned munitions, but news of the encounters was neither shared publicly nor widely circulated among the troops, the victims told the Times. Others said they were told to be vague or deceptive about what they found.
Those American soldiers and Iraqi allies who were exposed deserve to be remembered, not ignored for political convenience. Just because the Democrats, their media propagandists, and those who irrationally hate Bush want to ignore the truth, that does not make the truth any less accurate.
From Greensboro News & Record, “ARMY TESTS BARRELS IN IRAQ: A SUSPECTED CHEMICAL WEAPONS SITE IS THE FOCUS OF EFFORTS TO FIND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION”:
Preliminary tests run after the site’s discovery indicated the barrels contained chemical weapons… Besides the barrels, the Army found mobile laboratories and a large yellow warehouse containing hundreds of gas masks and 36 partially assembled SA-2 rockets capable of delivering chemical agents.
Those barrels, and others found throughout Iraq, were also weapons of mass destruction. It does not take long to turn a warhead into a chemical weapon with partially assembled rockets close at hand.
There was also that yellowcake uranium that was not supposed to be in Iraq that was found. Uranium is a component needed to make nuclear weapons, and Iraq had hundreds of metric tons.
From CBS News, “U.S. Secretly Takes Yellowcake From Iraq”:
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” – the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment – was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
That yellowcake uranium was a sign that Hussein wanted nuclear weapons and hid it from inspectors, before kicking them out and never letting them back into Iraq.
Everything the Bush administration claimed would be found in Iraq was found. There were chemical weapons and yellowcake uranium, both of which continue to be denied as having been found. It is a blatant falsehood that does not fit the evidence.
Bob Ryan is a writer who has an MBA. He is an American Christian Zionist who staunchly supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. He has been a weekly blogger at the Times of Israel since 2019.
A key source for the WMD discoveries made in Iraq was an article in the NYT in 2014: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html (Since it’s behind their paywall, you can find a useful summary at: https://thepoliticalinsider.com/bombshell-new-york-times-reports-wmds-found-iraq/)
No, there was another mistake, I noted at the time. Bush disarmed the Iraqi army but refused to pension them off so they went underground and joined the terror army. the US pensioned off the Waffen SS at the end of WWII. Evil as they were, this was a far better solution that giving them nothing to lose by continuing to fight by other means.
And, though Bush was accused of invading Iraq to take its oil, he didn’t do that but instead plunged the US into debt.
He should have done that, making them pay for the war, the way the allies, and later Israel made the Germanies.
Apparently, Bush read Natan Scharansky’s book about how democracy would save the world – which i haven’t read – and tried naiively to do that.
When US troops first went in, it was reported that they found a factory for putting sarin gas in perfume spray bottles.
Recall there had been a sarin gas terror attack in the Tokyo subway system, at one point.
They found a downed airplane that was being used as a training site for hijackers to practice on.
It was a haven for international terrorists. The terrorist of the Leon Klinghofer murder had received asylum in Iraq and had been living in Baghdad but died or was killed just before the US/allied invasion.
Debka file reported convoys of trucks heading over the border into Syria right after Bush made his ultimatum.
I remember all this from the time, as wel as an article about how the new Iraqi government was looking to sell its yellow cake to other countries.
There were later articles in the mainstream media claiming that the yellow cake was just some leftover from decades before not in use, or something.
I voted Republican for president, for the first time in my life, to re-elect Bush in 2004 because I supported the war effort for all of these reasons.
I think the only problem was that Bush held elections during the war and empowered the new government to tell us to leave. We should have handled it like McCarthur in Japan.
After McCain’s surge, all but 2 or three provinces had been pacified.