geoff wrote:


"They still have the know-how, which is the main point, not the
hardware" ... in case you've totally lost the plot, it's what you said a
few lines above. Do you have the faintest idea how long it takes to turn
know-how without the hardware into a real WMD - be it bio, chem, or
nuclear. Obviously not since you said "The point is that they had the
potential to ramp up WMD within days"


I have the know how to produce Ricin, an Atomic bomb, and a long range
missile.

The development programs to actally do it would take me years, and
millons (apart from Ricin, which anyone with an ounce of chemical
engineering can cook up in a kitchen). The plant required to do it and
the materials , however, could not fail to show up on anyones security
radar.

The yanks were fooled, or chose to be fooled, by Saddans posturing. When
the real experts knew - and even I knew - that what was claimed -
esentially biological weapons with delivery systems of over 3000 miles -
was absolutely impossible. The best SCUDS Saddam had could barely make
Israel. They were destroyed. To acquire and set up more and better is a
massive exercise on a country that had been bombed back to the middle ages.

One of the benefits of a snotty uni engineering course is that you have
a fairly good idea of what can be done and what cannot. What was
proposed by Bliar AS FACT was patently impossible.


I knew it then and It is confirmed now. I had expected a few small scale
labs cooking up sample quantities of nasties, maybe even a few shells
with nerve gas. Even that has not been found. Just a few places where
peope were making token efforts in order to get funding r to keep in wth
the Baath party.



your maths just doesn't add up