Are there any wmds in iraq

To start the war, Americans had to be talked out of the idea that these policies were still viable. Today we mostly laugh about serial word-strangler columnist Thomas Friedman of the Times, but he was a key voice.

Failure to self-audit after Iraq led the media business to mangle of a series of subsequent stories. A British non-profit called Reprieve years ago even discovered journalists were routinely repeating government assertions that certain terror suspects had been killed in drone strikes, failing to notice the same suspects had been reported killed years before or in different countries, sometimes not even twice but three or four times.

It turned out the opposition burned the cargo. This slapstick idiocy was like something out of Evelyn Waugh. That the landscape is currently split into two different sets of wildebeest is not much of a comfort.

Reporting these days is more a matter of manufactured, behind-the-scenes consensus building than an individuated process of following facts wherever they lead, no matter how inconvenient. The damage this story did to our collective reputations is still poorly understood in the business. See Also. Newswire Powered by. Close the menu. Rolling Stone. Log In. To help keep your account secure, please log-in again. More Analysis. Explore the Center. Close Iraq Iraq. Began nuclear weapons development under then-Vice President Saddam Hussein in the s IAEA Director General announced in that there was no evidence of a reconstituted nuclear program since the program was dismantled in the s Security concerns in regarding stolen radioactive material in former IS-controlled territory.

Iraq Nuclear Facilities. Began research and development of a biological weapons program in , ultimately producing large quantities of botulinum toxin, anthrax, and aflatoxin during the s and early s R bombs and 25 Al Hussein warheads were filled with biological agents and deployed but never used Iraq Survey Group confirmed that Iraq abandoned its bioweapons program in January 12, Phyllis Bennis.

The inspectors have found no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction WMDs in Iraq. The U. The International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA report said that the tubes are much more consistent with a conventional rocket program than with nuclear weapons.

International support for war is lower than ever. The Iraq Survey Group determined that Iraq had abandoned its quest to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and that it had already destroyed all of its existing stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. I have friends in Texas, Seattle and Tennessee who say President Bush was right that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

They claim that the weapons were hidden in caves in the mountains, and are still hidden there, but we have not found them yet. How did such a belief get started, and is there a way I can dispel them of the idea? The group scoured Iraq, searching for deposits of weapons.