Talk:Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

message: There was an international conference of intelligence officials in which the claim was made that Ukranian intelligence showed Iraqi WMDs were, with Russian assistance, relocated to Syria before the 2003 war. The conference is online at , the relevant portion beginning about 2:10:00. Secondary sources have commented on it     I wouldn't say its conclusive, but I think it bears mentioning in the article. Rhoark (talk) 17:05, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it falls far short of conclusive. I'd say somewhere between laughable and extravagantly humorous. See: WMD conjecture in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  — TPX 18:12, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alleged movement of WMDs to Syria 

message: ''
“Anyone claiming it is an absolute fact there were no WMD in Iraq before the war, is lying.”
Lying? But is not anyone giving the (false) impression that there were WMD in Iraq before the war, willfully misleading people?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.51.102 (talk) 20:16, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neo-cons and their Weapons of Mass Dis-information – part one 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Administrator requested to review and close the merge proposal two sections above this one. It has been open for seven weeks, and there haven't been any new edits for over two weeks (since April 19). Thank you very much.
—BlueMoonset (talk) 22:40, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: We have the backlog of RFC closure requests listed at WP:AN. We'll get to this one in due course; it's not necessary to call our attention to it. :-) Katietalk 10:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Katie, this isn't an RFC, and I don't believe this is listed at WP:AN—at least, I didn't see a section for merge request closures, and merge requests can linger for months. If you can point me to its listing at AN, or to where it should be added, I'm happy to drop this here; otherwise, I don't see that it will ever be handled without an active request somewhere. Please let me know the best next step: we have had a DYK nomination on the Operation Avarice article that has been proposed to be merged here that is over three months old and has been stalled for over two months waiting for the merge discussion to close. Many thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, I see. I looked at WP:PM and it's not listed there. An admin doesn't have to close a merge discussion unless it's really contentious, and this one isn't. That said,  I'm going to be occupied elsewhere most of Friday but I did take a cursory look just now, and I'll do my best to get it closed in the next day or so. Sorry for the confusion. :-) Katietalk 13:25, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Katie. The next day or so will be great. Much appreciated. (Good to know about WP:PM; I hadn't known it existed.) BlueMoonset (talk) 14:27, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Administrator needed to close merge discussion on this page 

message: " Iraq's nuclear weapons program suffered a serious setback in 1981 when the Osiraq reactor, which would have been capable of breeding weapons-usable nuclear material, was bombed by Israel before it could be commissioned"
Yet on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera we see this:
In a 2003 speech, Richard Wilson, a professor of physics at Harvard University who visually inspected the partially damaged reactor in December 1982, said that "to collect enough plutonium [for a nuclear weapon] using Osirak would've taken decades, not years".[36] In 2005, Wilson further commented in The Atlantic: 
the Osirak reactor that was bombed by Israel in June 1981 was explicitly designed by the French engineer Yves Girard to be unsuitable for making bombs. That was obvious to me on my 1982 visit.
Many claim that the bombing of the Iraqi Osirak reactor delayed Iraq's nuclear bomb program. But the Iraqi nuclear program before 1981 was peaceful, and the Osirak reactor was not only unsuited to making bombs but was under intensive safeguards.
In an interview in 2012, Wilson again emphasised: "The Iraqis couldn't have been developing a nuclear weapon at Osirak. I challenge any scientist in the world to show me how they could have done so."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.239.70.187 (talk) 02:54, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The cited source (FAS) supports this phrase.  Richard Wilson's quote may reflect an incomplete analysis.  He is right that reprocessing of the reactor's HEU fuel would not produce much plutonium.  But a 40 MW research reactor would seem to be capable of of producing significant quantities of plutonium through irradiation of natural uranium targets.  Whether that is actually possible may depend on the reactor design.  In any case, the inconsistency between the two articles should probably be reconciled in some way. NPguy (talk) 18:15, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "...which would have been capable of breeding weapons-usable nuclear material..." 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: It's sad to see the article in such a state. No, there were no WMDs in Iraq at the time of the accusations, as explained by Brian Glyn Williams. There shouldn't even be a lead-up to this clarification. Some of this material concerns a clear fringe view that has been outdated since the October 2004 report by the CIA that said Saddam "did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them." Someone even added a 2015 claim that the WMD claim was proved because reports surfaced that the CIA had bought weapons from a sketchy Iraqi; this follows a trend in some small conservative circles that still appear to make this seem like it's unresolved. It's not. The Iraq Survey Group said: "Saddam Hussein ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program. In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW [biological warfare] weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes." Prinsgezinde (talk) 00:35, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Note: I've read the Operation Avarice section above. This is fine for a minor section, but as it stood it seemed to promote a fringe view regarding Iraq's WMD stockpiles. Prinsgezinde (talk) 00:37, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Outdated article promoting fringe theories

message: To Dank Chicken and NPguy (and I guess to User:TheTimesAreAChanging, who reverted me but will probably not want to discuss it again): I'll partly revive this discussion precisely because I was already planning a large rewrite. I originally wanted to do this a month ago but I was building a new PC and was kept busy otherwise. The problem with the article now is that it's outdated and does not reflect the near-total consensus that Iraq stopped its WMD program in the early 90's (1991 according to the Iraq Survey Group, and repeated by the CIA). TTAAC is promoting (see here, here, and here) a misunderstood/misleading narrative where a certain New York Times article is used by some conservatives in the US to claim that Bush was actually right. This has been debunked by several newspapers. The very same NYT article says this:
<BLOCKQUOTE>The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale.</BLOCKQUOTE>
It was noted (and here) that the article literally stated the arms were from before 1991, and that Bush's claim had been that Iraq had an active WMD program with such weapons ready to use. Even the insignificant number of ones that were found as reported by the NYT article were not hidden by Saddam himself, but rather abandoned. Perhaps The Intercept explains it best here:<BLOCKQUOTE>Charles Duelfer, head of the CIA’s definitive post-war investigation of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs, explained that “Saddam didn’t know he had it … This is stuff Iraqi leaders did not know was left lying around. It was not a militarily significant capability that they were, as a matter of national policy, hiding.”</BLOCKQUOTE>
As such, I wanted to rewrite the article to detail its program before 1991. That paragraph about the NYT article at least has to be rewritten to reflect its actual significance, rather than how it is currently misrepresented. Prinsgezinde (talk) 18:45, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The paragraph in the lead section relating to Operation Avarice certainly needs re-examination (). I do agree with you. UN inspectors concluded a long time ago that not all material had been account for. They could not determine if Iraq was continuing to actively hide material or if Iraq had lost track of their unilateral destruction operations. The paragraph reads like a straw man. The full body of knowledge concerning these discoveries needs to be summarised. The current We found the weapons-esque declaration in the lead is insufficient.  — Niche-gamer 12:28, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Furthermore, we should re-examine with extreme scrutiny the many references from 1990-1991 and 2003-2004. These sources were mostly conjecture and claims, most of which have later been disproved. History-oriented Wikipedia articles are often abandoned a bit but in the case of this subject—one where sources have changed from divisive to unanimous towards the opposite side—this would be a big mistake. Prinsgezinde (talk) 21:01, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Please review my lead overhaul. I think it might lack a bit on the historical side (how it started, what phases etc.) and it could do with some more details regarding that, but at least the whole Iraq War thing is manageable and concise now. I'll address the article too, of course (though that doesn't even need that much work-save for the "avarice" section). People have been inserting 15-20 year old sources like "Iraq Watch" and statements by politicians or pre-war findings that are obviously outdated and superseded by recent sources. Prinsgezinde (talk) 13:55, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Further discussion