April 07, 2003
WAR: Gas Masks
We're still waiting on most of the news about what the troops find in Iraq, and I still hope to see somebody pull together a final analysis after the fact of how evidence found in Iraq ties the regime both to terrorism and WMD. The clues we've been given so far are intriguing, at least. To me, as damning as anything is the fact that all of Saddam's soldiers had gas masks. The regime must have known the coalition wouldn't be bringing chemical weapons. Why spend all that money on gas masks, why hand them out to every soldier? It's possible, I suppose, that it was all an elaborate ruse to scare the soldiers. But apply Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is correct) here: the simplest explanation is that Saddam had his troops outfitted with chemical gear because he expected to use chemical weapons.