so Much for the WMD, Club.
Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
This one is my guess. Got rid of them, but could never admit this publicly, as it would not only demasculate him, but put him at risk of invasion from many sources.
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On some blog yesterday, I saw the suggestion that Iraqi scientists got good in the 1990s at getting money from Saddam for WMD programmes, but that all of the money was getting diverted (embezzled/stolen/used for other things) and no WMD were getting developed. Seems plausible to me. Saddam thought he had something going on, but the scientists were as corrupt as the rest of his regime.
eta:
The blog was Kevin Drum's, and he was pursuing something that Kay said:
- ....After [about 1998], Dr. Kay said, Iraqi scientists realized they could go directly to Mr. Hussein and present fanciful plans for weapons programs, and receive approval and large amounts of money. Whatever was left of an effective weapons capability, he said, was largely subsumed into corrupt money-raising schemes by scientists skilled in the arts of lying and surviving in a fevered police state.
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“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
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