Syrian civil war may provide answer to Saddam’s missing WMDs

Dead children in the aftermath of Saddam’s 1988 attack on Halabja (Sayed/Wikimedia)

Secretary of State John Kerry’s formal accusation today that Syria has used chemical weapons against rebel forces and civilians sounds somewhat similar to Bush Administration charges against the regime of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq a decade ago.  Saddam had used his chemical weapons numerous times against Iraqi minorities and was all but ignored by the world.

 

When the U.S. led a coalition of nations to depose Saddam in 2003, the belief that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons as well as a nascent nuclear weapons program was a major justification for the invasion.  Failure to locate large stocks of the weapons led to charges that President George W. Bush had lied to lead the United States into an unnecessary war.

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Whatever happened to Saddam’s WMD?

It has been almost eight years since The US-led Coalition invaded Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. There were several reasons presented to the American public to justify the war. There was the Iraqi regime’s support for terrorism, its violations of human rights against Iraqi citizens, and, last but not least, Saddam Hussein’s efforts to amass an arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction which, it was argued, might one day be turned over to terrorist groups.

Since the antebellum political discussions much has happened. Saddam’s terror ties are confirmed and were thoroughly documented in a 2008 report, Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents. Likewise, Saddam’s record of torture and mass murder is now a matter of historical record. These facts have been overshadowed by the failure of Coalition forces to find the expected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, as well as indications of Saddam’s nuclear weapons program. This, in turn, has led to charges that the Bush Administration lied about the WMD in order to sell the war to Congress and public.

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