Free Republic

-- Six weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Pentagon officials are quietly beginning to acknowledge that their failure to find Saddam Hussein may be proof that the Iraqi leader never existed. "We hate to admit it," said one unnamed official, "One of our main reasons for going in there was regime change. You know...overthrow a brutal dictator who tortured his own people. But at this point, we're not sure there ever was a Saddam Hussein. After all, if we don't have him dead or alive...who's to say?" The military official said that the statues, murals and videos of Saddam Hussein...

In 1971, Iraq began research into chemical weapons at a small site in Rashad, northeast of Baghdad. Through the 1970s, development continued at another site, known as al-Muthanna, where chemical agents were both produced and weaponized. These efforts bore fruit just in time for the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when chemical weapons were used on several occasions. But there is no "smoking gun." Biological warfare research was underway as long ago as the mid-1970s, at the Salman Pak site 35 kilometres south of Baghdad. It was the appointment of Dr. Rihab Taha as head of research in 1985, however,...

Iraq may resort to banned armaments: Ex-diplomat warns dictator might draw Israel into conflict, igniting wider war that could be spun as defense of Arab nation Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will resort to weapons of mass destruction and attempt to spark an Arab-Israeli war by attacking Israel if the United States carries out a plan to topple the Iraqi regime, says Joe Wilson, former US acting ambassador to Baghdad and one of the last American officials to meet Iraq’s leader face to face. Instead of a risky military drive to remove Hussein’s regime, the focus should be on destroying Iraq’s...