10-02-2012, 11:23 AM
(10-02-2012, 07:11 AM)cheezz Wrote: I don't know what the Duelfer report is, but I do remember what the UN inspectors had to say, which strangely enough, most people ignore. They decided that Saddam had WMD's because of what they didn't find, rather than what they did. There were literally tons of chemicals and biological agents which were accounted for back in the early nineties but had disappeared without a trace by the milennium. No information could be found about the location/existence for a whole lot of stuff that the inspectors saw in the nineties. I personally heard one of the chief inspectors say this in an interview with a news channel at the time they finished their inspections.
This is a serious misrepresentation of the position of Hans Blix and the UN inspection team. While they put public pressure on the Iraqi government many times to allow them greater access, and mentioned the various things that still needed to be accounted for to have a full inventory (and therefore, to definitively rule out that they had kept any.) The Iraqis position was that they'd destroyed it all, and that there were poor or nonexistent records. This seems plausible for a number of reasons. The Iraqis did not want to be invaded, so they did what they were asked, but they also did not want to be publicly seen as bowing to international pressure. The country was unstable and Saddam Hussein was losing his mind.
The inspectors never found anything, and neither did the coalition forces. Both groups have said so. What, then, does that say about the presence of WMD?
-Jester