Syria got all of Saddam's chemical stockpile
What if Iraqi WMDs were found after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled?
...Yes, because it makes perfect sense that Iraq would decide to secretly gift all its chemical weapons when it's about to be invaded (I mean, what's the point of deterrence if you suddenly get rid of it just before you need it) to a rival country that fought against it in the Gulf War, without the US noticing at all. All to make Bush look bad or something.
Syria's chemical weapons program was entirely separate from the Iraqi one.Syria got all of Saddam's chemical stockpile
You should have mentioned that as a clarification.That was the theory at the time
...Yes, because it makes perfect sense that Iraq would decide to secretly gift all its chemical weapons when it's about to be invaded (I mean, what's the point of deterrence if you suddenly get rid of it just before you need it) to a rival country that fought against it in the Gulf War, without the US noticing at all. All to make Bush look bad or something.
I remember reading that Bashar actually restarted the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline to help Iraq export illegal crude. I also recall hearing that Assad had inked a deal to help Saddam clandestinely rebuild his military through a number of Syrian front companies.Saddam did give many of his jets to Iran during the Gulf War and Saddam did have better relations with Baby Assad then his father so its within Saddam's personality to do it.
Its my understanding that Saddam was so far gone into his diabetic dementia that there was no one left except his equally demented sons (demented for different reasons) to carry out sophisticated government decisions. Basically, in the runup to the Iraq War, the Iraqi government had self-destructed.
Qur'an etched in Saddam Hussein's blood poses dilemma for Iraq leaders
It was etched in the blood of a dictator in a ghoulish bid for piety. Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur'an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight - locked away behind three vaulted doors. It is the one part of the ousted tyrant's legacy that Iraq has simply not known what to do with.
The vault in the vast mosque in Baghdad has remained locked for the past three years, keeping the 114 chapters of the Muslim holy book out of sight - and mind - while those who run Iraq have painstakingly processed the other cultural remnants of 30 years of Saddam and the Ba'ath party.
"What is in here is priceless, worth absolutely millions of dollars," said Sheikh Ahmed al-Samarrai, head of Iraq's Sunni Endowment fund, standing near the towering minarets of the west Baghdad mosque that Saddam named "the Mother of All Battles". Behind him is the infamous Blood Qur'an, written in Saddam's own blood.
Even to get to this point - the last step before entering the forbidden vault - has been a tortuous process.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/19/saddam-legacy-quran-iraqi-government
What if Iraqi WMDs were found after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled?
If he had them, they would have been used.
John McCain wins in 2008 and we're still in Iraq today.
What if Iraqi WMDs were found after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled?
Well, what scenario are we talking about? Is it OTL up until the moment US troops enter Baghdad, and suddenly "Oh shit!" they find several cache's of chemical and biological weapons? If it's that, then it's what's been described so far: no living with the Neo-Cons, (1) Rumsfeld never loses his shit eating smirk, (2) France and Germany eat crow for the next decade, (3) yada yada yada.
Speaking of Assad, how would this have affected the Arab Spring?No he doesn't.
The cridit crisis made foreign policy irrelevent come Election Day and he loses by the same margins. The only difference is it is to Hillary not Obama.
As for still being in Iraq... that would actually be a very very good thing considering it was a virtually won war that the WH washed its hands of. We paid the buchers bill and Americans were no longer needed to police Iraq. But, Iraq needed our military expertise, political help and air power to deal with al-Qaeda's regrowth because of the Syrian civil war.
Hillary wanted us to stay in Iraq and with her as President we would have and it would have positive repercussions on the situation in Syria as Assad's overflights would have been cut off and al-Qaeda and its bastard child would be far weaker in Syria as she would have supported the moderates from the start.
Personally I think Assad would be gone by now.