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Re:US 'got it so wrong' on Saddam Hussein, says CIA agent wh... by brownbat on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @09:24PM (#13226327)
NYT on Operation Avarice, guess it didn't get cited above. My apologies...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-ha...

More WMD discoveries covered in WIRED:

https://www.wired.com/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-contin...

This press release from Stu Cohen, under "Myth #10," Stu points out what we're talking about in the original argument about WMDs.

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statemen...

"We judged that Iraq probably possessed one hundred to five hundred metric tons of CW munitions fill. One hundred metric tons would fit in a backyard swimming pool; five hundred could be hidden in a small warehouse.... When the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), led by David Kay, issued its interim report in October [2003], acknowledging that it had not found chemical or biological weapons, the inspectors had then visited only ten of the 130 major ammunition depots in Iraq; these ammunition dumps are huge, sometimes five miles by five miles on a side. Two depots alone are roughly the size of Manhattan. It is worth recalling that after Desert Storm, US forces unknowingly destroyed over 1,000 rounds of chemical-filled munitions at a facility called Al Kamissiyah."

This just illustrates that even if they hadn't found WMDs, it doesn't tell you they weren't there. Under myth #5 he describes the wide variety of sources that supported the conclusion that they were there. Under myth #9 he talks about the equivalent danger of rapid mobilization programs that are completely deniable and would not necessarily produce any recoverable material.

WMDs were found, but it would hardly matter if they weren't.

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