COLLATERAL WMD LIE DAMAGE

In addition to leading us into a disastrous war, Thomas Ricks lets us know the WMD lies also indirectly hurt our troops. You may recall that 10s of thousands of tons of weapons were left ungtouched in Iraq and many of those weapons have later been used against us. Part of the reason these munition dumps weren't dealt with was the lack of troops but there's another reason (Ricks, pp. 145-46):


The poor intelligence on WMD would continue to haunt troops in the field—and, arguably, helped arm and protect the insurgency that would emerge in the following months. In bunkers across Iraq there were tens of thousands of tons of conventional weaponry—mortar shells, RPGs, rifle ammunition, explosives, and so on. One estimate, cited by Christopher Hileman, a U.S. intelligence analyst for Mideast matters, was "more than a million metric tons" Yet U.S. commanders rolling into Iraq refrained from detonating those bunkers for fear that they also contained stockpiles of poison gas or other weaponry that might be blown into the air and kill U.S. soldiers or Iraqi civilians. The COBRA II invasion plan unambiguously stated, "The Iraqi Ministry of Defense will use WMD early but not often. The probability for their use of WMD increases exponentially as Saddam Hussein senses the imminent collapse of his regime."

Such certitude made American commanders wary of destroying weapons bunkers. "You never knew which one was WMD, okay?" said one regretful Marine battalion commander. So the bunkers often were bypassed and left undisturbed by an invasion force that already was stretched thin - and the insurgents were able to arm themselves at leisure.