Jophiel wrote:
No matter where it explodes, a nuclear warhead has the intent and capacity to kill a "significant" number of people, so that's a moot point.
Ok. So you've just presented a very compelling argument that regardless of the fact that this particular shell was used in a way that prevented it from casusing mass fatalities, since it's design and construction has the intent and capacity to do so, it qualifies as a WMD.
Detonating a nuke underground where no one is hurt, does not make it not a WMD. In the exact same way, detonating this shell on the side of a road in a manner that didn't kill anyone either doesn't make it not a WMD either.
Just making sure we're clear on this. The shell was, by every definition, a weapon of mass destruction. It is specifically of the type that Bush claimed that Iraq possessed, and was specifically part of the reason we went to war with Iraq. Can we all just accept all of that as fact?
The only question is where this shell has been for the last 13 years. If it was in country, then this is indeed proof that Iraq "possessed WMD" at the time that Bush (and every intelligence agency in the world) said they did.
If it was outside the country, and then moved back into the country, then it provides support for the argument that Iraq's WMD were moved elsewhere during the 90s. Um... That's still a violation of the UN resolutions.
I tend toward the first explanation. If this shell was moved outside Iraq at some earlier date, and moved back into the country recently, then why didn't the people using it know it was a chemical weapon? That makes about zero sense. It makes a hell of a lot more sense that Saddam was hiding weapons around in caches around the country (you can hide a lot of this type of shell in a basement really), but didn't tell many people at all where they were. After the war, some group of people found one of the caches. Obviously, they didn't know what they were, or they would have used them differently.
Dunno. That just makes the most sense to me.