The “taken to Syria” theory doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and isn’t taken seriously outside of crackpot circles.

The fact that there is no evidence he destroyed them comports nicely with the data showing he didn’t have them and our basis for thinking he did, was cherry-picked, junk.

D.
——————-
Saddam had no WMD for a decade, report says
Thursday, October 07, 2004

By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller

WASHINGTON — Saddam Hussein did not produce or possess any weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade before the U.S.-led invasion last year, according to a comprehensive CIA report released yesterday.
Saddam intended to someday reconstitute his illicit programs and rebuild at least some of his weapons if United Nations sanctions were eased and he had the opportunity, the report concluded. But the Iraqi regime had no formal, written strategy to revive the banned programs after sanctions, and no staff or infrastructure in place to do so, the investigators found.

The 1,000-page report by Charles Duelfer, head of the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group weapons-hunting teams, is the most definitive account of Iraq’s long-defunct weapons programs…”

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002056408_weapons07.html

I wasn’t trained to be patriotic, so it’s hard for me to see it as much more than tribalism. Sometimes it’s useful, mostly it’s not. Hopefully someday we’ll out grow it.

Hussein could not have destroyed them without leaving evidence. No evidence exists. One of his generals stated that they were taken to Syria. I believe this is the most likely scenario.

But we know he had nerve agent and mustard agent because he used them both. He did not destroy them because there are no signs that he did and there would be.

DAR
If you call invading and smashing a country at the cost of 4 to 5 trillion dollars a “misstep.”

There is a small mountain of evidence showing he and Cheney were pressing the CIA and withholding and cherry-picking the data. I’ll limit myself to three examples (of dozens).

1) Italian Secret Service knew key Iraq intelligence was falsified, and told U.S. officials before the war
“Italian lawmaker: U.S. told of WMD forgeries” Associated Press

2) Five senior officials from Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball’s information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball’s accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.

Curveball’s German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm.

3) White House withheld intelligence data. Specifically, the Administration withheld or repressed portions of intelligence documents which questioned and contradicted the excerpts being used to promote the war.
“Asterisks Dot White House’s Iraq Argument” — Washington Post Page A01, November 12, 2005 and here: “Inaccuracies in Bush’s Defense of Lead-Up to War”

I have the links for all of the above if you want them.

BLK: “not that there were no WMDs, but we haven’t yet found them.>>

DAR
Good grief. Let it go. That horse left the barn a long time ago.

BLK: …they might be as small as two or three paint cans?>>

DAR
We went to war over three paint cans of poison that no one can find? I rest my case.

D.
—————
“Now look, part of the reason we went into Iraq was — the main reason we went into Iraq, at the time, was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn’t, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.”
–GW Bush, press conference, Monday, August 21, 2006

Anyone who can buy several bags of fertilizer has such “capacity.” See: Timothy McVeigh.

DAR
I would love to tell you about my redeeming qualities but Blake would claim that I am bragging. And he would probably be right.

I didn’t say *I* put a Canadian cover over my passport, I said I have friends that do.

Up until a year ago, I was Canadian (LPR status) and would have traveled under a Canadian passport. Now I am US and will use my US passport when I travel to Europe (my wife will use her Canadian one). Since Obama is being so nice to everyone, I probably won’t need to cover mine up.

If we are attacked and they want to shoot the Americans, maybe I can hide mine and share hers.

Americans disguising themselves as Canadians is a tradition that goes way back and probably got going during the controversial Vietnam years. My social studies teacher in 1983, an American (former military, served on Israel border), told us about this.

As for fooling officials? No, obviously, you take the cover off.

D.