Where are Saddam’s chemical weapons?
The discovery Wednesday of 3,000 chemical suits in a central Iraqi hospital lends credence to the Bush Administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein has a cache of chemical weapons and he intends to use them. Thankfully, the war has progressed for more than a week without a chemical, biological or even nuclear attack. But the lack of these weapons does little to calm the nervous.
What if, as troops move closer to Baghdad, Saddam’s regime unleashes a barbaric assault in a last-ditch suicidal and murderous effort? Or, what if the U.S. captures Baghdad unscathed, secures the freedom of Iraqi citizens and then scours the desert looking but still not finding any weapons of mass destruction?
This after all is the reason Bush has led us into war – the president’s unrelenting belief that Saddam Hussein’s regime was manufacturing and storing these weapons despite an agreement that ended the Gulf War that he would not.
So far, troops have discovered a building constructed of desert materials, designed to evade aerial surveillance, that contained some chemicals. Those chemicals have yet to be determined as weapons grade. The discovery of the chemical suits seems to indicate that Iraq was preparing to protect some of its own during an assault.
As for missiles, as of this writing, Iraq had fired 10 that were either intercepted by Patriot missiles or fell harmlessly. Again, these weren’t missiles packed with killing agents. The death and destruction each could have wrought is no different, and even less effective, than the barrage the U.S. has fired on Iraq.
The theory could be advanced that the presence of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq forced Saddam to hide these weapons in places where he does not have easy or immediate access.
War is terrible enough without the vile weaponry that Bush claims Saddam harbors. No small thanks are offered that none of this has been used. But it is difficult, as troops draw nearer to Baghdad not to worry that an apocalypse is possible. And it is difficult not to worry, what if Saddam wasn’t lying?