Am I the only person in the world who still thinks we'll find weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq? (T.B.,London)

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Request for Question Clarification by mathtalk-ga on 25 Jan 2004 10:37 PST

Hi, itsalphaandome-ga:

What would you accept as a weapon of mass destruction?  The sense in
which the phrase is used by Bush and Blair significantly expands on
the meaning (of nuclear weapons) which it would have conveyed in
previous administrations.  No one has ever seriously argued that Iraq
possessed nuclear weapons.

If the WMD meaning is expanded to include chemical and biological
weapons, then certainly we know that such weapons were acquired or
under development at times during the Hussein regime, namely the
Iran-Iraq war and the immediate aftermath during which Hussein carried
out gender-cide campaigns among Kurdish populations in the north and
among Shiite populations in the south (eliminating males of "military
age" in significant numbers).

Recently Danish troops discovered some buried mortar shells of that
vintage in southern Iraq:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/10/sprj.irq.chemicals/

which are undergoing tests for the presence of blistering agents.

If the tests are "sucessful", would these satisfy your criteria?

regards, mathtalk-ga

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Clarification of Question by itsalphaandome-ga on 26 Jan 2004 06:16 PST

Frankly I'm getting so desperate I would define a pea-shooter as a
weapon of mass destruction.

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Request for Question Clarification by mathtalk-ga on 27 Jan 2004 17:15 PST

Sigh.  Tony, we let you off easy on the top ups for college tuitions. 
Go have a warm beer and prepare to face tomorrow, when you learn
whether Lord Hutton plans a similar kindness:

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/

best wishes, mathtalk-ga

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Clarification of Question by itsalphaandome-ga on 28 Jan 2004 05:35 PST

Yes, he was indeed kind to me.  Good job I set up an inquiry on one
man's suicide - it distracted people from asking the question I was
really afraid of -why on earth did I take Britain into this war?

CNN has a quick vote on their website right now (http://www.cnn.com/)
and the results so far show that 25% of the voters still believe that
WMD's will be found. So, you might not be the only believer.

Naive, but at least not alone.  We wanted the oil.  WMD was just an
excuse the Republican administration came up with.  I wouldn't be
surprised if we screwed over the Iraqi people and stole their oil
rather than paying as promised.  And keep in mind 508 Americans, 56
Britons, five Bulgarians, one Dane, 17 Italians, two Poles, eight
Spaniards, two Thai and one Ukrainian have given their lives for
Bush's War (figures from CNN
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/).  Multiply
those numbers several time over to get the number of Iraqi dead.  I
don;t know how Bush and his cronies sleep at night.

just because it's kind of obvious this was posted as a joke, and no
one else picked up on it, the poster used the initials T. B. from
London.

I.e., Tony Blair.


The answer is no you are not the only one.  

-G.W., Washington, D.C.