Erik Kuehne, 33, of Chamblee, Ga., said he still believes weapons of mass destruction are hidden in Iraq.
Though he admits that no clear evidence has been found, he said there are indicators, such as that Iraqi troops were found with gas masks and that chemical munitions were found buried on the banks of the Tigris River.
He also questions why an entire aircraft was buried in the desert. “My gut feeling is that they did have weapons of mass destruction when the war began. Maybe they did not have the amounts we thought they had, but they had them,” said Kuehne, a wine cellar salesman.
“The gas masks said that either Saddam Hussein was going to use weapons of mass destruction or that he was trying to deceive us into thinking he had them to use against our troops.
Anyway, it was a bad bluff. If he didn’t have them, he obviously had them in the past because he used them against his own people for sure.”
As to where they are now, Kuehne is not sure. But he has an idea.
“I think they very well could be buried out there in the desert. It you look at the scientists who built them, it’s not in their best interest to admit they were working on banned weapons of mass destruction when they are facing a war crimes tribunal. So they are not going to say whether or not they destroyed them. . . .
“I think the big picture will emerge soon, and we will find out exactly if there were any and if there are any. It is definitely not over,” Kuehne said.
–Dahleen Glanton
`There is no evidence’
Kyle Ward was skeptical when Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the UN and announced Saddam Hussein had hidden chemical and biological weapons and was aggressively trying to build nuclear weapons.
Now he thinks it was all a big lie. The son of a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, Ward, 46, said he trusted Powell when it came to Middle East policies. So he decided that it was possible Hussein had nerve gas and other chemical or biological weapons.
“I never thought Saddam Hussein had any nuclear weapons in hand. I thought he might have had that capability and that his intention maybe was to be able to someday constitute some form of nuclear weaponry,” said Ward, an Atlanta marketing consultant.
“But I never thought there was an imminent threat from Iraq. And there is no evidence that any weapons of mass destruction have been found.”
Now, Ward said, he does not believe Hussein had any type of
weapons of mass destruction.
“I don’t think they had anything. I have changed my mind,” Ward said. “I think that at a point in time, the United States knew that too, and it has been lies, lies, lies.”
What troubles Ward is how the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” has evolved since the war began. It is at the point now, he said, that nobody really understands what it means.
“Weapons of mass destruction has become a marketing term, and it has such a broad definition that it is almost ridiculous,” he said.
–Dahleen Glanton
