nuclear, biological and CHEMICAL weapons of mass destruction

There are those that say "there never were any 'WMD's' in Iraq." There are those who say that there was never any proof that they even existed. I decided to do a really quick search to see what google could come up with for it's first 10 hits. Check out these sites:

http://www.phrusa.org/research/chemical_weapons/chemiraqgas2.html

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0830-07.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1214-01.htm

http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistan3/4-7-04-poison-victims-demand-death-saddam.htm

http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html (an entire page dedicated to those who were slaughtered at Halabja)

http://www.genocidewatch.org/A%20Kurdish%20view%20for%20peace.htm

And this from our esteemed government: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/iraq/warning.htm

I want to quote a bit from that page as I find it particularly expositional concerning the Baath Party regime led by one Sadaam Hussein.

Al-Anfal

Halabja was neither an aberration nor a desperate act of a regime caught in a grinding, stalemated war. Instead, it was one event in a deliberate, large-scale campaign called Al-Anfal to kill and displace the predominately Kurdish inhabitants of northern Iraq. In an exhaustive study published in 1994, Human Rights Watch concluded that the 1988 Anfal campaign amounted to an extermination campaign against the Kurds of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of at least 50,000 and perhaps as many as 100,000 persons, many of them women and children.

Baghdad launched about 40 gas attacks against Iraqi Kurdish targets in 1987-88, with thousands killed. But many also perished through the regime's traditional methods: nighttime raids by troops who abducted men and boys who were later executed and dumped in mass graves. Other family members — women, children, the elderly — were arrested for arbitrary periods under conditions of extreme hardship, or forcibly removed from their homes and sent to barren resettlement camps. As Human Rights Watch details, Iraqi forces demolished entire villages — houses, schools, shops, mosques, farms, power stations — everything to ensure the destruction of entire communities.

I just think that it's important to have an historical basis before one says "there never were any WMD's." It's also important to have a perspective upon a regime that set about the systematical destruction and genocide of an entire race for no other real reason than that race's very existence and proximal location. The last few times there were such attempts at genocide we sat aside and watched; The European Jews, The Ukrainians under Stalin, The Cambodian People under Pol Pot. The saddest part of this latest genocide is that we didn't even pay attention.

If given free reign would Sadaam have used his chemical weapons, if there were any remaining, again? The answer is probably yes. Sadly, until 9/11 happened most of the citizens of the USA didn't really care what happened in the Persian Gulf/Middle East area.

So where do we go from here? Our troops are mired in a war which is being waged by politicians, we've forgiven Iraq it's outstanding loans, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

We, the American peoples, must realize that the democratic republic that we cherish is not the best form of government for everyone in the world. But we must also stand up to those countries that would threaten other countries for the sake of their own gain. And we must support the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are fighting whether we agree with or disagree with the "why" that has caused them to be there.