No WMDs in Iraq, Donald?

In the Republican debate on February 13, Donald Trump declared that Bush lied about there being WMDs in Iraq. Well, Donald, you are just plain wrong. In fact, I recall hearing a report on NPR a month or so into the war that our guys had found canisters of Sarin gas in a warehouse. The story never got much play, but if that wasn't WMDs, at least in potential, then what was it, Donald?

The fact that the non-existent WMDs existed in the first place was established by years of UN reports during the Clinton Administration. No one ever questioned this until after Bush took office.

On October 14, 2014, the New York Times admitted that WMDs existed in Iraq. In a story titled “The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons,” the NYT detailed how we found thousands of chemical warheads and shells during the occupation. About a year ago the NYT published a story describing Operation Avarice, a joint CIA/military intelligence mission that purchased and destroyed more than 400 Iraqi Borak rockets equipped with chemical warheads.

Another criticism of the Bush war effort was the subject of “yellowcake” uranium.  Former Ambassador Joe Wilson wrote an article in the New York Times saying that no yellowcake uranium had been sold to Iraq. Yet on July 5, 2008, the Associated Press ran a story detailinmg the removal of 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium from Iraq.

There is also an unanswered question concerning three container ships that sailed out of Iraq under radio silence on the eve of the war. Originally reported by the London Independent, the story at the time was that the Navy was not going to intercept for fear that they might dump their cargo, which was presumed to be WMDs. This story seems to have vanished from the Internet, but the original page and the beginning of the article are still recorded in Internet archives.

The bottom line is this: Iraqi weapons of mass destruction existed. Their story has always been traceable in public military and United Nations reports. Even so, much of the activity involving finding and dismantling WMDs has been kept classified, and much of it probably still is. We may not know the full story for many years.

Donald Trump is welcome to hold the opinion that the Iraq War was a mistake. In retrospect, I agree that there were many aspects of it that should have been handled differently. But he should realize that when it comes to WMDs, it wasn’t Bush who lied. In addition, around 300,000 mass grave have been found in Iraq since the invasion. Since Saddam was in power for 24 years, that equals about 12,500 people a year (mostly Shia and Kurds) that he executed and threw into Nazi-style pits.

Regardless what any of us may think about the war, there's no doubt that world is better off with Saddam in hell.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have-bought-and-destroyed-iraqi-chemical-weapons.html