Bush admits weapons may not be there

In a speech at an Abrams tank facility in Lima, OH, today, President Bush admitted that Iraq may have destroyed it's chemical weapons before the war.

"He tried to fool the United Nations, and did for 12 years, by hiding those weapons," Bush said. "And so it's going to take some time to find them. But we know he had them. And whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find out the truth."

The way he says that, though, makes it sound like there would be no difference as to whether they were destroyed, moved or hid, when, in fact, there would be a huge difference - if the weapons were destroyed, then we had no reason for beginning the war.

I had commented briefly on this in a previous article, but I think its an important enough point to bring it up again. The number one reason for the invasion was to disarm Saddam of these weapons of mass destruction that we insisted that he must have. Saddam, of course, kept insisting he didn't have any, but we said he was lying.

Now, however, even President Bush is admitting that it is possible that he destroyed all of his weapons sometime prior to the war, or else he moved or hid them. Now, if he moved or hid them, and we can prove it, that would go a long way to backing Bush's rationale for the war in the first place. If, however, Saddam had destroyed them - which is what we had been demanding that he do - then there was no need to start the war. Saddam would have been complying with our requirements for avoiding an invasion.

Here's the thing, though, if Saddam had destroyed the weapons, why didn't he tell us that he destroyed them? I would think that he'd want to, so that we wouldn't invade. That would be the only logical reason for him to have destroyed them - forestalling the invasion. Otherwise, why get rid of your best weapons with an unfriendly army knocking at your door?

I suspect that Bush is using the "he destroyed them" possiblity as a way of avoiding admitting that maybe Saddam just didn't have any. For Bush, he believes it would be less embarassing for Saddam to have inexplicably destroyed his weapons right before an invasion designed to get those very weapons away from him, than to admit that they (the Bush administration) were either wrong, and Saddam didn't have them in the first place, or that they were lying about them.

Posted by thorswitch at April 25, 2003 04:05 AM | TrackBack