So, where are(were) those WMDs?

[Griselda]

Well I found the transcript, so I figured I should post it. Since I didn't say I'd edit it in, I'll have to use bad form and reply to myself. It was a good excuse to look it up, because I wanted to see how close my memory was to what he had actually said. In any case, I could only find an audio transcript, so I typed it up myself based on what I heard.

Richard Perle from Fresh Air- January 8, 2004

Perle: Intelligence is an uncertain business, always.  In the specific case of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, we knew that he had them, because he'd actually used them.  We knew that he had a substantial program for creating them, parts of which had been found and destroyed, other parts of which we couldn't be sure about.  We had the United Nations' accounts of quantities of weapons that had been produced but the destruction of which had never been accounted for.  And I suppose it will remain one of the great mysteries of modern history why Saddam Hussein, if he was in a position to document the destruction of those weapons, chose not to do so.

As for the future; will people trust us?  You know, at the end of the day, we know that Saddam was concealing things and he had programs, and a desire to resume the production of these weapons, that's even reported in the Washington Post in the story you're referring to.  So, the result of hoping for the best and doing nothing would almost certainly have been the eventual reestablishment of his weapons of mass destruction.  The question was one of timing.

Terry Gross: But, in the question of timing, you're talking about the eventual reestablishment of the programs.  That coud have been a year, two years, ten years, twenty years, but the United States didn't have the patience for the UN Weapons Inspections process to continue, which could have taken perhaps just a few more months.

Perle: Well, but there was no end in sight.  If you take the view that there was nothing to be found, then the UN certainly wasn't going to find anything.

Gross:  But then they could have said that there really are no weapons, and that perhaps we've-

Perle: Right, they would have said that we have not found weapons, and the sanctions would have been lifted, and do you think that Saddam would have refrained from trying to reconstitute that capability after that?  I don't think so.