And, as fact, the chemical WMDs were the primary, known quantities in this ordeal - not nuclear.
To quote the head of the Army at the time, "...we expected to find large warehouses full of chemical or biological weapons, or delivery systems."
They even prepped for this type of warfare leading up to and during the primary military campaigns in Iraq.
That article was written in 2003, to give you clear context of what they were looking for. And we didn't get clear WMD cache findings until 2008, from what I discovered. With the most recent WMD findings being discussed in 2014.
Why is this? Because nuclear is much more difficult to hide. The radiation screams "Hey, we're doing some serious shit that's probably nuclear WMD related...look at me!!!!" Chemical and Biological weapons, not so much.
Also, here's your news article about 550 tons of yellow cake uranium being removed from Iraq in 2008:
Pretty shocking, right? Why weren't we told about this? Why was this not a big deal? Two very big stories about WMD shit in Iraq, one nuclear and one chemical, and it wasn't plastered all over the news for weeks on end with the media crawling all over the Government's ass, demanding interviews, demanding information, like they are with the Trump shit-show.
Nuclear weapons being it was pushed over and over as the reason. It was drilled into our minds. Nothing would have stopped Bush from holding a massive press conference and declaring "The WMDs have been found and I was right!" and he would have been.
"There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he [Saddam] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." -Condolezza Rice circa Jan 2003
And Cheney said, "What’s happening, of course, is we're getting additional information that, in fact, Hussein is reconstituting his biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs."
And Rumsfeld said Saddam, "has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, and mustard gas."
Part of the narrative was the September Dossier, which many believe to be the primary catalyst for getting us into Iraq in 2003:
"We can also agree that [Saddam Hussein] most certainly has chemical and biological weapons and is working towards a nuclear capability. The dossier contains confirmation of information that we either knew or most certainly should have been willing to assume.
...The document discloses that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them."
That was the "smoking gun" evidence that got many to be on board with the invasion.
It was the whole bag of potato chips, not just the yellow cake uranium stuff...which turns out that Iraq had an large amount of it, anyway.
What they found though was not what we went to war for, defunct programs and aging bombs that were dangerous to the user as the target was not what the war was sold to us on.
It's like the FBI raiding your home because they think you're making IEDs in your basement, but instead they find an old unregistered sawed-off shotgun tossed in a corner and use that for the justification of the raid after the fact.
Absolutely nothing would have stopped Bush from holding a press conference had the WMD/reason for war been found and the whole world would have listened, no amount of media spin could have buried 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.
"The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West," -snip
There were WMDs. Stockpiled. Hidden. Some assembled. Some in partial assembly and stored. And some in precursor forms.
And there was a massive amount of yellow cake uranium.
How does "5000 WMDs: warheads and bombs" amount to "nah, nothing was really found"? Colbert even did a skit on this.
In Colbert's words, "I feel a strong combination of two strong emotions: oh my God, shock and awe!" lol
It was sold on us that they were secretly stockpiling WMDs (they were), refusing to let UN inspectors in (they were but later let them in...somewhat), refusing to turn over their WMDs and WMD precursors (they were as we later discovered), hiding their yellow-cake uranium (they were), and trying to revamp a nuclear ("nuculer") weapons program (they once did but stopped).
So it would be like the FBI raiding your house because you were reported as trying to hide some pipe bombs and you were trying to make more. And then they find thousands of pipe bombs all over the place: fully assembled, partially assembled, and in complete parts ready to assemble. And on top of that, they also found massive amounts of fertilizer. But the Warrant the FBI got was approved under false-pretenses and overly-inflated notions of how long it would take you to become fully pipe-bomb ready.
No no, you're right. Bush is documented as pushing soooooo so very hard to 'get Saddam" with something. He was looking for every reason. The quotes are there. Which is very creepy, in hindsight. As in "murderess" creepy. Because I know he know his dick-war with Saddam would result in the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents.
Agreed. Why are people like you trying to change History because you weren't aware that there really were WMDs and Saddam was going to revitalize his WMD programs?
Is it the fact that you've been saying "there are no WMDs in Iraq!!!" for so long that it's just too hard to change one of your partisan talking points?
What happens if you say, "Yes, there were WMDs in Iraq, Saddam was hiding them, and Saddam was clearly vamping up his yellow-cake uranium stores for a nuke program"? Will you implode? Will you cry? What happens to you if you admit to facts that you had been, understandably, denying for years?
Try this: stop sucking Dem Dick so much, stop hating GOP peeps so much, and get out of your partisan talking points. Then assess based more on facts.
True Saddam was no angel, but at the end of the day, he was a necessary evil. It was through Saddam iron rule that kept the tribes from warring everyday. And once we killed him, the tribe had no one to keep them in check.