Iraqi WMDs

For John, BLUF:  Definitions are important.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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"WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results"

This from Reporter Noah Shachtman of Wired Magazine.  Here is the lede:

By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq.  But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield.  Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.

Vindication of a sorts for the George W Bush Administration, from Wikileaks.  No, there was no real nuclear weapons program, but with the then and now definition of WMD, there were WMDs.

Between us, I would like to see the definition of WMDs restricted to nuclear weapons, but I am not going to win that one.  Too many special interests in play.

Regards  —  Cliff