WI: Allied Forces Find WMDs in Iraq in 2003

What if instead of finding no weapons in 2003 as OTL, what if American and Allied forces instead find a large arsenal of WMDs and facilities actively producing material for them?
 
Anti-war sentiment would be blunted. Most of such will exist solely over issues of the administration making bad decisions (e.g. dissolving the army). However, the occupation is still going to have the same kind of problems facing it, and the Bush administration is going to be trying to rush through things as OTL.
 
Anti-war sentiment would be blunted. Most of such will exist solely over issues of the administration making bad decisions (e.g. dissolving the army). However, the occupation is still going to have the same kind of problems facing it, and the Bush administration is going to be trying to rush through things as OTL.

Have to agree there. The post invasion failures of the follow up policy would be not overshadowed by that grand pre war failure. The problem of winning the battle but losing the war, or nearly so, would be much clearer.
 
If they had serious wmd the Iraqi's woudl have used them

Depends on capability and the targets. Saddam might target Israel again also if its nuclear weapons chances are they wouldn't be functional by 2003 since the project would have been bombed by the Israelis previously.

Also there is the question of delivery.
 

TinyTartar

Banned
Didn't they find chemical weapons OTL stored in Iraq? I admit to having poor knowledge of the scenario, but I'm pretty sure that chemical weapons are considered WMDs.
 
Didn't they find chemical weapons OTL stored in Iraq? I admit to having poor knowledge of the scenario, but I'm pretty sure that chemical weapons are considered WMDs.

Chemicals are WMDs, but as far as I know, none has been found in stored in Iraq in anything approaching useable conditions.
It is certain is that Iraq had chemicals at some point under Saddam, and used them quite liberally in the Eighties too. By 2003, however, they had either destroyed all their stores (Iraqi claim at the time) or managed to hide it very well, possibly off-country (there's some speculation that Asad's chemicals used in Ghuta are of Iraqi origin, but I don't know how reliable this may be). As far as I know, there is not any shred of reliable evidence that Iraq had WMDs, or an active programe to get them, in 2003.
 
What if instead of finding no weapons in 2003 as OTL, what if American and Allied forces instead find a large arsenal of WMDs and facilities actively producing material for them?

Well, that would require a PoD far enough back that Iraq hadn't destroyed her chemical weapons.

If there were significant production the UN inspectors would probably have found them. (If it's just stored, existing weapons, then they might have pulled off a shell game, moving them around to avoid the inspectors. Which is what many people, including myself, thought they were doing.)

If there WERE those stored weapons, or even a minor hidden production plant, then Bush's reputation wouldn't be in nearly the same tatters as OTL.

iOTL, his administration probably lied (at least to themselves), and certainly cherry-picked intelligence to support their preconceived theories. OTL, said theories were shown to be total nonsense. Here, they would have been partly right (possibly by coincidence, but still).
 
If they had serious wmd the Iraqi's woudl have used them

Basically. As I understand many of Saddam's top generals were actually in the dark about the WMD's being gone (either destroyed, or moved out of country), and had planned on using them against the invasion. If Iraq had actually had WMD's, they would have used them, not sat on them while their country was invaded.
 
Bush would be vindicated, while Schroeder and Chirac would have egg on their faces...
This could embolden further invasions, especially if Cheney takes advantage of this...
 
What if instead of finding no weapons in 2003 as OTL, what if American and Allied forces instead find a large arsenal of WMDs and facilities actively producing material for them?

On Oct 16, 2014 the NYT reported that from 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.
In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
:eek:
 
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