Where the WMDs Are

The boodbath that was the Saturday GOP debate, expectedly, resulted in nothing more than deeper entrenchment for the Cruz and Trump sides.

But there has been one upshot - Trump called George W. Bush out for Iraq. This has forced Freepers to readdress this old issue.

Freepers have a rare ideological split between isolationists and imperialists. And another rare split between those who are still in the W. cult of personality and those who have moved well to his right. Add in ANOTHER split between the Trump folks and the anti-Trump folks and it's nothing but chaos and confusion. And conspiracies. Lots of conspiracies.

Robert DeLong brings to more and more common argument that Trump is just lying to fool the rubes:

Trump was smarter then all of us

Or maybe not, but he certainly can claim that to be his stance. Trump is not above playing the political game, which may even include changing positions when he thinks it might benefit him and feels confident no one can prove otherwise. He may even be doing it to pick up some voters who did not like Bush, and agreed with the war initially.

Robert DeLong follows up by wondering what you're supposed to do with unverifiable intelligence, if not go to war over it?!!

So? When you have sources telling you Saddam has WMD, and you are unable to verify, what would you suggest a President do? Remember Bush tried in vain to get Saddam to allow inspectors in but to no avail.

I am a Trump supporter, however, I think he was wrong. Did he mean what he said or was he pandering? My guess is pandering more than not.

In what used to be the party line, mylife blames Obama for not staying the course after Bush totally won:

We had Iraq sewed up untill pussies walked away, and more died after that than during the campaign

MarchonDC09122009 tries for the "if you are against invading Iraq you hate our troops" that was all the rage over a decade ago:

Every time we allow ourselves to go along with dumbed down lies reframing the Iraq 2003 war action narrative as willfully negligent mistake, we disgrace the 4000 soldiers who died there, and tens of thousands that of terribly wounded vets and their families.

The Final Harvest with the even more common right wing dogma that they got hidden in Syria:

But .. what people on the left tried to say was that it never existed. That was false.

It did exist. They found all sorts of data, and traces of the chemicals needed, to prove that Saddam had been producing it .. however, it had been sent to Syria and other places.

So, the left has always tried to prove that GW lied .. when the left also believed there WAS WMD in Iraq. But, once it was discovered that the WMD had been removed; immediately they turned on GW and began to say that it never existed.

That’s how the left operates.

dadfly regrets trusting Bush about Iraq:

bush invoked the time-honored, “trust me, he has them” argument. so i, for one, did (and full disclosure, i’m not a republican). to my everlasting shame, a more naive version of me bought his and powell’s brand of bs intelligence back in the day on sadam and iraq.

two theories: bush was playing fast and loose and counting on finding the evidence once he was in. or he was lying out right for the ruling classes’ own purposes in iraq. either way, bush’s war against iraq has proved to be disasterous for this nation. bush has a lot of explaining to do; and he has sacrificed a crippling amount of American blood, goodwill, “political capital,” prestige and treasure for what amounts to be a vainglorious, idolatrous, never-ending war.

Redwood71 repeats all of Bush's arguments from 2002, as if nothing has happened since:

There were many weapons in the country that were never reported or told about after the fact to include medium range missiles that were fired by Saddam into Israel, on pager 110. Iraq purchased cake from Nigeria, denied by Valery Plame at the CIA, and they were using VX given to Saddam by us starting in the Carter administration. He was handed mustard gas from Germany and used it on his own people during the Iran conflicts by accident near Tikrit.

Read Write Repeat may have found the one argument the Bush Admin didn't get around to making:

Abu Musab Zarqawi was pretty much a walking WMD.

Of course, it’s unfortunate we were unable to question Abu Nidal since he was covered in maggots at the time.

But montag813 goes the other way, even invoking Mike Malloy's Bush Crime Family:

Trump is right. This is cold turkey, folks. The GOP must RID itself of the Bush Crime Family infestation once and for all — to excise Reagan’s biggest mistake for good. Only then can we move on. The man Jeb calls “the greatest man alive” — his father — was a New World Order snake, and scion of the Nazi-supporting Prescott Bush. This family is poison. We need to be rid of them.

driftdiver heard from guys who saw WMDs

I know guys who saw em. Several hundred of our guys were injured by them during the search.

But most of them were shipped to syria.

To be fair, these were probably the chemical stuff that everyone acknowledged was there, since we sold it to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war. It would have no longer been useful.

Karliner just speculates about all the secret things that could be:

Read all 121 posts so far. Think there was WMD’s evidenced by evidence. Syria = one route..other routes? Anyone remember the Food For Oil scam(s)?? If they could siphon over a billion dollars I’m sure there was hush money for some weaponry to go elsewhere or at least the opportunity was there.

eastforker thinks Bush disappeared the WMDs in a secret agreement with France and Russia:

We know France and Russia were complicit in Iraq’s WMD program. Being that both are permanent members of the UN they would both have to agree to the US invasion. To get them to agree, GWB had to allow them time to get them out of country and they did, also we had to vow that they never existed for their agreement on the invasion.

Alberta's Child thinks Bush and Clinton are both war profiteers:

Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that U.S. foreign and military policy over the last 25+ years always seems to be aligned with major donors to the Clinton Foundation and real estate investment partners of the Bush family?

montanajoe objects to conspiracies that don't agree with his biases:

Instead of Freepers gonna have to start referring to a lot of folks around here as FreeNuts...

bert has this analysis I do not understand:

actually, Iraq was given freedom and their old men took it away

Reeses has a post that could have come from Daily Kos:

Before the WMD stories started I remember reading in the family newspaper that W's lawyers told him it would not be legal to invade Iraq without an imminent threat such as WMD. The WMD stories started shortly thereafter. Yes, there were US weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq and they couldn't find anything other than Iraq being less than 100% cooperative.

It was well known by just about everyone at the time that W's stated belief of WMD was necessary to make the invasion legal. But Saddam had it coming. After the first Gulf War, Saddam attempted to have W's daddy killed. W made sure that was a fatal mistake.

napscoordinator argues that throwing Bush under the bus is a clever tactic to get Donald "bomb the shit out of them" Trump some anti-war votes:

This is gold for Republicans. Trump is going to use this against Hillary in the General cuz she stupidly voted for the war. You need to catch up. You are still living in 2004 when everyone was cheerleading the vicious lies by the Bush Administration. Get with 2016. New Era and Trump is winning.

X-spurt pulls the rare strawman-ad-hominem-by-association

Shazam, now colin Bowell is now a quotable hero to Trumpbots?

Next thing we know it’ll be John F’n Kerry, FDR, Wilson and LBJ.

mylife sees Freepers changing their opinions and stomps his feet adorably!

I was in libya the 1st round.

I know people who used to be here on FR that used to be in Iraq

This is shapeshifting and I wont have it!