> > > 1. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.
> > >
> > > Not yet proven.
> >
> > He used to. Prove that he got rid of them. You know, like the U.N. has told him to. Like he's promised to. The way I see it, if you at one time have weapons of mass destruction, the burden of proof is on you to prove you've gotten rid of them.
>
> This confuses me. I cannot figure out how Saddam could prove that he destroyed the weapons, even if he was being cooperative. What kind of evidence would they expect him to provide?
>
> hypothetical scenario: Saddam is sitting around one day and decides he's tired of having WMD around, so he gets rid of them. A few years later, the U.N. decides he needs to disarm, and, knowing he hd those weapons, tells him to prove he's gotten rid of them. What could he do? The U.N. would have absolutely no way, without maybe a videotape of the actual destruction of the weapons, to know that they'd been destroyed and weren't just really well hid.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> ~Mina "hope I didn't come out sounding like a bleeeding heart liveral- I totally support Bush in his efforts" moon

I think it goes something like "The method you claim to have used would have produced this much of [easily identifiable chemical]. What did you do with that?" and so on.

Plus, the plants will have kept records (at least in the short term) of what they have created and destroyed, and it's hard to think of a decent reason for those records to be destroyed.

Then, international law demands that proof be kept (UN seals on the doors of decommisioned weapon plants, for example) of anything concerning nuclear weapons.

Certainly there is *some* proof that can be offered, but I imagine that this is less than the Bush administration requires to be satisfied.

winter"It's late, and I'm sure there is more, but I can't think"mute