[Steve_Seattle]

"I'm no Rove fan, but what could possibly have been his motive to cover up the WMD? Why would he make Bush look bad? None of it makes sense. This article smells."

I agree, with one difference: if these chemical weapons were deemed to be random, aging, left-behind items, not some major stockpile, and if they had announced the finding of the weapons, the MSM would have ridiculed them and said they were exaggerating to save face, or even called them liars. People on this thread are forgetting that the media waged war on Bush for nine years (campaign plus two terms), and nothing he could have said would have changed their minds about WMD's.

[tanknetter]

I agree, with one difference: if these chemical weapons were deemed to be random, aging, left-behind items, not some major stockpile, and if they had announced the finding of the weapons, the MSM would have ridiculed them and said they were exaggerating to save face, or even called them liars. People on this thread are forgetting that the media waged war on Bush for nine years (campaign plus two terms), and nothing he could have said would have changed their minds about WMD's.

That's my take as well. IIRC, once we got into Iraq and Baghdad we found all sorts of documentary evidence that Hussein didn't have an active program or active combat capability, but thought he could deter the US from liberating his country by acting like he did have one. As stated in the article "... these were not the weapons we were looking for."

This was just one of a long list of examples of Hussein having no clue what he was getting into. For example, leading into Desert Storm Bush had to fire the USAF Chief of Staff for publicly disclosing details of the pending air war. Hussein was apparently gleeful over this, because to him it meant that Bush was about to be overthrown in a military coup.