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Read other letters about this article
Correspondent "Gene" writes, "For the last time, Saddam had WMD because he used them against both the Iranians and the Kurds. He admitted to having them at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and he never offered definitive proof to the UN that he had destroyed them."
We all know Hussein had WMD at one time, as he was our ally during the period he used them. That is not the issue, which is: did he STILL have them or had he reconstituted them? All evidence both prior to and subsequent to our attack on Iraq tells us NO. To the extent there was any belief by us or other world intelligence agencies that he might still possess any remnants of his stockpiles, or that he was rebuilding them, this was based on out of date (or unreliable current) intelligence. Despite the Bush team's repeated mantra, there was hardly uniform belief about this matter, and little to no certainty. This is what Bush and company lied about: their CERTAINTY that Hussein possessed WMD, that they had ABSOLUTE PROOF of their nature, amount, and location. I think they probably BELIEVED he had WMD, and they proceeded on their BELIEF. However, they did not tell the world they merely "believed," but that they KNEW. This implies they possessed unimpeachable evidence proving the existence of Hussein's WMD, and there was no such evidence.
And, I suggest you read Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector for 8 years, on the question of Hussein's past and present weapons stockpiles.
But, writer "Gene," you ignore the point of Mr. Conason's article, which you cannot dispute: Bush has lied repeatedly AFTER the fact about whether Hussein allowed UN inspectors in PRIOR to our invasion. This can hardly be a mistake on his part, for why would his staff not have corrected him after the first time he made this assertion? How could he not have remembered it to begin with? That Mr. Conason would point out the fact of Bush's repeated lies on this point is hardly indicative of partisan "hatred" on Mr. Conason's part.
"Saddam was an incipient Hitler who had twice invaded his neighbors and was only waiting for the UN sanctions to collapse so that he could reconstitute his WMD program."
Hussein was a weak ruler of a third rate country, and no threat even to his neighbors any longer, much less to America. (See Colin Powell's and Condi Rice's pre-9/11 statements to that effect for confirmation of the administration's own views on that); even at his most powerful, he was no incipient Hitler, an inflammatory comparison made by Bush's father, also a liar who used war against Iraq for his own purposes. The UN sanctions program was hardly about to collapse, and had successfully contained Hussein for a dozen years, albeit at the expense of the health and lives of many Iraqi children and sickly elderly people.
