The current conventional wisdom on Iraqi WMD is either that Bush lied (the loony Left) or that he misunderstood or was misled (everyone else). But there’s still segment of people who believe that Saddam did have WMD, but that we just haven’t found them. And now the New York Times, of all sources, provides some ammunition for that view.
In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein’s most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government’s first extensive comments on the looting. ...
“They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites,” Dr. Araji said. “They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting.”
I still think that Saddam had WMD or at least an active WMD program and that it was either carted off to Syria, destroyed in place by looters or Saddam loyalists or is still hidden somewhere in the vast wastelands of the country.
Of course, the NYT uses the story as an opportunity to bash the US military for failing to guard all of these highly sensitive sites. The fact is we we won so quickly we probably weren’t ready for that.
Still, I think that new information about what was really going on in Iraq before the invasion will continue to come out in dribs and drabs for years to come and the Bush administraton will be fully vindicated. Saddam is an evil man with evil intent who was planning evil things. That much is clear.
