"Saddam Hussein, today, had we not gone in, would be sitting on this [powder] keg and be in control of the whole thing," Thompson predicted. "He would have been the new dictator of that entire region in my estimation. He is\ufffdwas\ufffda dangerous irrational man who, by this time, would have been well on his way to having the nuclear capability himself."
In remarks delivered earlier in a caf\ufffd, Thompson said Hussein "clearly" had weapons of mass destruction prior to the beginning of the war.
"We can't forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there, he clearly had had WMD," Thompson said. "He clearly had had the beginnings of a nuclear program, and in my estimation his intent never did change."
"By today," Thompson continued, "[Hussein] clearly would have had that rejuvenated; especially looking at what Iran says that it's doing."
He's confusing March 2003 with January 1991. He's trying to argue that the evidence found after the 1990-1991 Gulf War described the capabilities of Iraq in 2003. He's ignoring the sanctions. He's ignoring the investigations. Saddam wouldn't be "controlling the whole thing" if we hadn't invaded. Intent isn't a WMD, and intent isn't a WMD or nuclear program. Saddam was not reconstituting his WMD programs under the sanctions. Even if the sanctions had been lifted later in 2003, he still wouldn't have been able to build WMDs by this point (there probably would have still been an embargo on precursors and nuclear materials).
Fred's intent is clear in:
"We can't forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there, he clearly had had WMD," Thompson said.
He wants to replant the seed in peoples' minds that the WMDs are there, we just need to look some more. A rusty 20 year old mustard gas shell buried in the desert, or a home-made chlorine gas truckbomb, isn't a WMD, though some have argued otherwise. We didn't go to war because there were some old, unusable, munitions from the Iran-Iraq war scattered about, or because people can blow up tankers filled with Clorox mixtures. We were told by Bush and Cheney that we had to go to war because Saddam was a deadly threat to us.
He's trying to justify Bush's decision post hoc and ignoring everything we've learned since March 2003.
He's just wrong. He's refusing to acknowledge that what Bush and Cheney said about Iraq in justifying the war was wrong.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.