WI: Saddam Really Did Have WMDs

Firstly "But the butterflies would change the entire war and the history leading up to it."

Two, it'd be a Neocon fantasy at first. The war has legitimacy, the free world follows America's lead or otherwise walks away from the position of disagreement with the war (even if it's not agreement, it'd be closer to neutrality), Americans would keep their support up for the Bush administration, etc. As, or if, the war ended up turning into a quagmire situation, then the whole thing gets a lot more complicated. You'd be working off those earlier positions and having them forced to deal with the negative situation. It may be a position of the war being right initially, but no longer being worth it.
 
Israel is angry that the US risked them in such a manner. Everyone is collectively shocked that Saddam had WMDs and didn't really advertise or use them as after the war started and his defeat was at hand. New schools of thought start on wars between nuclear-armed powers.

Oh, and the American people are more supportive of the war.
 
Syria got all of Saddam's chemical stockpile

...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.
 
What if Iraqi WMDs were found after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled?

There was chemical weapons, but just sarin shells left over from the Iran/Iraq War... no active WMD program.

When coalition troops were rolling into Baghdad Saddam was having his banned ballistic missiles destroyed. I wouldn't be surprised if more old left over chemical agents from the Iran/Iraq War weren't being moved out or destroyed in the lead up to war.

The irony is in Bush's push for war he got Saddam at the very end of 2002 and early 2003 to start destroying his ballistic missiles and letting the inspectors back in, but Bush saw it as Saddam playing the same games as the 90s and had already decided on removing the regime.
 

BigDave1967

Banned
...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.

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.

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.

But, the important thing was there was no active WMD program in the early 2000s... Saddam's promotion that he might have stockpiles and kicking out the inspectors was huff and puff to scare Iran.
 
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.
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.
 
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.

So, no decision to allow inspections (whether they had WMD's or not)

No decision to use them (if they had them)

Post-invasion, ITTL, much crowing by W, but much would also depend on what was found.

If chemical or biological agents, many posters here have described what would have happened.

However (and I say myself its Unspeakable Seamammal level impossible), had an active nuclear program been found, there would have been no living with the Neo-Cons, who would probably remain the central locus of the GOP to this day, with the Tea Party as more of a local force and irritant.

Had the Iraqis been discovered to have had a working Bomb:eek: ITTL, many red faces all over the world, EXCEPT in the Oval Office. W enjoys a landslide re-election, 2006 is at worst a wash, his legacy is mostly secure (sorry about Katrina:eek:), and only the economic meltdown of 2008 allows Senator Hillary Clinton to be elected the 44th President of the United States.:cool:
 
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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.

Saddam was demented then and doing lunatic things like having his blood drawn to make the most holy of all Qur'an's, so yes he was out to lunch, but the Baath Party terror apparatus kept on going without him and he had moments of lucidity.

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

To put it in even better prospective Saddam didn't see the problem with having Iraq praise the 911 attacks publicly when they occurred nor the problem with Iraq putting up billboards like the one below in Baghdad.

hussein_poster_911sm.jpg~original


As for neocons what discredited them much more then no WMD's was the post war handling of the occupation by Bremer and the long fight against terrorists and militia in the country. Look at it this way a similar numbers of Americas view the Afghan war the same way as the Iraq War in recent years even though one of the main reasons for the war wasn't discredited shortly thereafter in Afghanistan.

Americans hate long wars even if they have rock solid reasons to start them.
 
If he had them, they would have been used.

He had them in huge quantities in the first Gulf War and didn't use them. In both wars he was hoping to use his allies in the international community to get the U.S. to back off before they get to Baghdad and using gas would be counter productive in that.
 
John McCain wins in 2008 and we're still in Iraq today.

No he doesn't.

The credit crisis made foreign policy irrelevant 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.
 
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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, Rumsfeld never loses his shit eating smirk, France and Germany eat crow for the next decade, yada yada yada.

The problem is is that, if Iraq actually had a usable stockpile of WMD's during the run up to the invasion, there's no way they aren't used once it's clear there's no stopping coalition forces. If I recall, the Iraqi military was left in the dark about the non-existence of the WMD's, and included them in their defensive schemes up until the moment they realized they didn't exist. Even if that's not the case (which it totally could be, that was relayed to me second hand), someone's going to end up pulling the trigger and using chemical weapons on advancing US troops. Once that happens (and it will, because the US Army is/was light years ahead of the Iraqi military, and once they realize they're going to lose someone is going to say "Fuck it" and uncork the genie) all hell is going to break loose.

From what I understand coalition troops rolled over the border in full NBC kits, so causalities are (hopefully) minimal. What the response is, however, is up in the air. If it's some rogue Republican Guard general I doubt the US would retaliate in kind, especially if it leads to a splintering of the Iraqi military and causes some of the saner factions to lay down their arms and surrender. If it's clear that the decision came from the top down, and wasn't some Lt. General with a death wish, than shit goes very, very poorly for the Iraqi's.
 
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.

1) Don't worry, they'll screw the next pooch.

2) Um, he never lost it. If you've seen that recent documentary on him, in his interviews (WHY did he agree to be questioned!?) he admits no wrong, takes no prosoners, and just gives that unshakeable shark's smile.

3) Eating crow is in neither nation's nature, especially a country that swears they liberated themselves in WWII with "just a little help" from their allies.:rolleyes: Though it might come down to new elections having to be called. Only for the governments in power to be returned to office with larger majorities.:rolleyes: Staying out of Iraq was HUGELY popular for both the French and German peoples. OTL they were right, and I doubt the presence of Iraqi chemical or even bioweapons would change those feelings. I would like to think that if nukes had been found (they wouldn't) the attitudes of continental Europe might have been more substantially changed, but I doubt it.:(
 
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.
Speaking of Assad, how would this have affected the Arab Spring?
 
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