That's sort of a value judgment. One Sarin shell in New York is WMD. A thousand rotting in the desert are not.
We found Sarin shells in Iraq. One was even used as an IED that made two US soldiers slightly ill. Fortunately the binary shell didn't mix well.
The UN disagrees. Chemical weapons are in fact defined as weapons of mass destruction by international treaty.
Well, from the pre-war quote I posted above We allowed and supplied Iraq with chemical and biological munitions during the Iran Iraq war, some of them where alwyas going to be left over. Thats not what the US and the UK where trying to sell us before the Iraq invasion though. They were trying to paint Saddam as an imminent threat capable of unleashing WMD's. Not exactly a lie,... but certainly bullshit.
Yep. It started getting thrown around as a catch phrase and the term came to encompass everything other than a knife or personal firearm. By domestic law enforcement definitions, WMD is anything from a mortar to a grenade to a 2-liter Diet Coke and Mentos - along with hydrogen bombs and weaponized Ebola. In diplomacy the term meant something more like "nuclear weapons or their tactical or strategic equivalent." Chemical weapons can fit the bill, but only if you have fairly large quantities of them.
Not a single person has died of chemical weapons in Iraq since 1988. The question isn't how many have to die but why are you completely barking mad and making up shit?
So mustard gas and serin gas can't kill thousands of people? Tell that to the Kurds. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Both you and @gturner really need to stop lying. WMD was never found in Iraq and as I pointed out already (and you admitted to) we NEVER supplied Iraq with chemical and biological munitions. We sold them equipment that could be used to manufacture chemical weapons but which also could be used for producing all sorts of things.
No we didn't, we found a couple small mortar and artillery rounds with some degraded chlorine gas in them. They had been buried and forgotten for 20 years. In no way were they WMD or any danger to the US.
Close! Only two orders of magnitude off (which for you is pretty close). From the Iraq Survey Group's Final Report, Annex F: A total of 53 munitions have been recovered, all of which appear to have been part of pre-1991 Gulf war stocks based on their physical condition and residual components. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/l...nal-report/isg-final-report_vol3_cw-anx-f.htm
Then why is the New York Times saying we found 5,000, and why did the Pentagon in 2006 admit we found 500, and why is Annex F labeled "Chemical Munitions —Other Finds"
It's labeled "Other Finds" b/c the job of the Iraq Survey Group was to locate and secure Iraq's WMD. After three years of searching (with 1400 DoD and CIA staff) the final report stated that Iraq DID NOT HAVE WMD. Let me say that again. After 3 years of searching the county with over 1400 Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency staff, staff whose sole job was to find WMD, no WMD was found. No evidence that Saddam had a WMD program was found. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. However, there were some 'other finds' ('other' as in NOT WMD) including 53 rusted out and degraded CW munitions that had been buried in the desert for 20 years.
If you pay attention to the Bush rationale, you'll notice that it wasn't just about the WMD's that were supposedly were devoloping, but were suposedly being developed and / or had alread y been there since the 80s.
And if you read the damn report (or just read about the report) you would know that NO WMD WERE FOUND, either old or new. NO WMD PROGRAMS were found. Iraq had not had active Nuke or CW programs after 1991 and no active biological warfare program after 1995. All known* stockpiles were destroyed in the 1990s. I'll say it again, according the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency Iraq had no WMD and no WMD programs. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/ Read the damn report. Seriously. Read the god damn report. It's all in there. *As in known to the Iraqis! They thought they had destroyed everything. Those 53 mortar and artillery rounds were lost and buried out in the desert.
God damn you're a moron. As explained to you already all CBRN ARE NOT necessarily WMD. WMD stands for Weapons of MASS Destruction. A mortar round with some degraded chlorine gas that has been rotting in the desert for 20 years IS NOT WMD.
You can never win anything like this with air-power alone. If American air-power was backed up by serious fire power on the ground by the Iraqi army we wouldn't have a problem. However the Iraqi army can not be trusted. Too often they are more interested in throwing down their weapons and running. There must be troops on the ground to root out ISIS.
Supposedly the young Shia officers (sectarian appointees) that fled have been replaced by veteran (read Saddam era Sunni) officers and are having some success. The formation of a true coalition government this week should help as well. Also they are talking about bringing back the Iraqi National Guard which will be a help.
Frontline had an excellent special recently about losing Iraq. Maleki seems to have made every decision based upon sectarian thinking firing every experienced person and replacing them with lacky yesmen who were part of his sectarian group. Is it any wonder the government barely functioned in the best of times and that the army was completely useless?
My Iraqi neighbors would agree with that. A couple of days after Obama removed the last of our forces, Maliki accused his Sunni vice president of treason and murder and ran him off into Kurdistan. One bump we might hit is that in places like Abu Ghraib, interviews with the Sunnis say that they deeply resent the depredations of the Shia militias that have just shown up to defend Baghdad, and that if 100 ISIS fighters show up they will become a thousand because so many Sunnis will join them to strike back at the Shias.
Suddenly this thread makes a lot more sense. It turns out that "There were WMDs in Iraq after all!" is part of the most recent set of Lunatic Fringe marching orders.
