On Wed, 05 May 2004 21:10:38 -0700, Mark Hickey
wrote:

I'd really, really like to think there weren't any WMDs in Iraq, but
it's hard to figure out why Saddam would rather get removed than to
simply tell the UN where and how he got rid of the the ones he admits
having. I hope we don't find out where they went "the hard way"...

There is a possible explanation: Hussein actually thought he **DID**
have weapons of mass destruction because that's what his underlings
were telling him. A number of them were telling him that for several
reasons, 1. Their lives depended on their ability to produce WMD's so
they told him they were being made. It wasn't healthy to say no, or
they couldn't do it to Saddam Hussein. 2. His experts didn't really
have the expertise to produce WMD. 3. His experts were being paid a
lot of money to produce WMD and they for SURE did not want to tell
Saddam that they were getting all this money and nothing was
happening, so they told him they were making progress.

This is the angle (the human foibles factor) that the President's
cabinet, the ones who decided they did not like the intelligence they
were getting so they set up their own ad hoc intelligence group,
ignored: The possibility that there really were no WMDs.

The professional intelligence groups were saying that they could not
verify that WMD actually existed and Cheney and company just could not
believe it, given Hussein's retoric. They didn't think it was
possible that he was nothing more than a sadistic blowhard. But it
appears that is in fact what he was.

Corky Scott