If Saddam Had Kept His WMD’s Would He Still Be Alive Today?

Many people say “we should have taken Iraq in 1991”.
The trouble with this stance is that it would have destroyed Saddam’s Command and Control structure. This would have left individual WMD’s; like biological weapons (which Iraq possessed at the time) in the hands of officers, generals, commanders (as well as anyone else who had ether access or keys to the places where they were stored).
From there they could easily have made there way into the hands of terrorists; and I believe that given the shier number of number of former WMD sites (scattered as well as hidden over massive areas in Iraq) this would have been almost impossible to stop.

Neither is the thought they would have made their way into the hands of terrorists particularly unlikely, as besides Iraq being in one of the most unstable places in the world; it is also one of the most socially unstable places in the world (because of its peoples numerous ancient sectarian and cultural differences) (who even at the best of times have only been oppressed by one group or the other).

Any WMD’s (but particularly biological ones) in the hands of terrorist would surely have spelt Doomsday for countries like Israel; but perhaps also Western cities (if the terrorist had successfully got them out).


Now if Saddam had been a proper # head; (like Kim Jim of North Korea) he could have just said to himself…
“I don’t give a stuff about how much the Iraqi people suffer from U.N sanctions, or how much my countries GDP remains frozen in time; so long as I have nice palaces, food on the table, Cuban cigars; and a secret police to keep all 3 I’ll be happy”

Then is it possible Saddam would still be in power today?
Does anyone seriously think we would have the balls to sign Israel’s death warrant (never mind the possibility of millions of our citizens) if so much as one biological weapon could conceivably leave Iraq following it’s invasion by us?

And is it not indisputable that if Saddam was a (truly) wretched dictator he could have personally guaranteed this possibility? (And are we talking about more than a van load of required material?).

You got a good point there, liberal.

I wonder also. . .

Perhaps if Saddam has done what the Iranian leader did making statements against the decimation of Israel, he will still be in power and with all his nuclear power up today.

Or perhaps Armageddon would have been well into its prophesied end of times nuclear holocaust.

If Saddam had a few biological weapons the biggest statement of all would be to use them. Therefore I'm sure he could make a statement twice as insulting against the state of Israel than anything the Iranian president has said (so far anyway).
But being secular he was never “crazy about religion” enough to welcome death by nuclear explosion. As for the Iranians that remains to be seen.
You would have thought though, the fact Iran has biological weapons goes some way to answering that question; meaning they’re current pursuit of nuclear weapons is likely to be more to do with a desire to be a regional superpower than more extreme.

Somewhat Off Topic…
This means we were doubly stupid to get rid of Saddam because Iran and him would always hate each other (at least as long as he was secular and they shared a border).
Therefore the United States could always have used Saddam as a counter force to Iran (just like the intelligent days of the 80’s).
But with 650,000 Iraqis liquidated since the “liberation” of Iraq (and the fact this sort of violence will continue more or less in current form under the current democratically sectarian divided government); I don’t think Iraq is in much of a state to be anything like a counter force to Iran anytime soon.

In fact from it; Iraq is more or less offering itself as an expansion of Iranian power-territory. And come the next election this will be much worse because 60% of Iraqis are Shiites (pro-Iranian) and Iraq is after all a democracy.
Of course not every single individual Shiite will be pro-Iranian; but neither will every single Sunni or Kurd be anti-Iranian (never mind pro-American).
Furthermore all democracies need to cater for the majority. And in Iraq 55% are unemployed, many are sectarian divided, and even more are poor.

Sweet dreams to the Middle East that would have been if only we had kept Saddam; and its sweet dreams as long as Bush stubbornly refuses to act on the need for a dictator (not in America but Iraq).
The question is how do you explain that to our dumb people?

All many would of heard is: “Get rid of Saddam, bring Democracy…whoops… bring dictatorship, someone like Saddam”. I mean you would have thought some of the electorate (who may even have lived of Mc Donald’s all their life) would have a head-heart explosion at that (particularly if they’ve lost somebody in Iraq).
But the war killing yet more people continues; and therefore so too does the impending political and pragmatic need to end it, (and especially owing to current circumstances) with a solution that won’t unite Iraq with Iran.
Democracy will do that; but the fact is the right kind Saddam style-ideology dictatorship will not. Otherwise when future conspiracy historians look back they’ll believe the West deliberately gave Iraq to Iran (perhaps before going to war it).

One thing that surprised me the most before during and after Iraq invasion is how our nation was manipulated and popular opinions show the extend of that manipulation.

Saddam was the power that kept Iran in check when it came to that region in the Middle East.

With saddam there Israel didn’t have anything to worry, but that was too sweet to let it be, chaos is what many wanted.

If you look at what is going on now after Saddams regime it has nothing to do with democracy, stabilization or a peaceful middle east.

The way the Middle East is manipulated by the power behind the invasion of the Middle East is something that is so blatantly exposed to be ignored.

Nope, he'd be dead.
All that would of happened is if he used them on troops, iraq would have poickets of nuclear waste land..

and bush would be standing a little taller on the podium, after all... the lie he made up, ended up being true...

If “an Iraq wasteland” would have been the result, it is certainly not “all” of what would have happened.
If this retaliation was delivered (at all) it could only be as a consequence of a “first strike” by a terrorist group.
Therefore I agree that through western eyes (at least) it would certainly be an advantage (for the Armageddon related reasons you described) if the Middle Eastern terrorist group in question wasn’t from Iraq at all. This way it would be in a perfect location to avoid any nuclear retaliation, and would therefore render the use of such force in first place, largely useless.
Admittedly it does not stop your idea of retaliation from happening; but if it did happen it would be too late for many people anyway. For example Israel only has a population of 6.25 million people. Biological weapons could get a million.

And ultimately the West can reason a lot better with heads of state, than it could reason with every terrorist demand. And that’s all that would happen once we started negotiating with terrorists armed the with WMD’s of a once proud military.

Perhaps if the Iraqi military had been more disciplined, and less sectarian divided then there would be more of a chance that this would not have happen. But as what loyalty and discipline there was in the Iraqi military came from the ruling minority Sunni population this is simply not the case.