WMD's through history
I went over to the
Belmont Club earlier this evening to find that Wretchard has several new posts up. One of them made me sit up and go "Hmm..."
Both of my parents were active in World War Two. My Mom was a chemist doing work with oxides of Uranium and my Dad was a physicist doing work on RADAR (if you have ever used a copy of the Halliday and Resnick textbook, my father is
that Halliday -- and they are both in their mid-80's and doing great.)
Anyway, Wretchard pointed out that another search for Weapons of Mass Destruction happened 60 years ago and that search didn't find anything either.
At that point - well, I'll let him take over:
bq.
Hitler's WMDs
In 1939, Albert Einstein was enjoying a sailing vacation on Long Island when fellow physicist Leo Szilard approached him on what he described as a matter of supreme importance. A large stockpile of uranium ore from Africa was in danger of being transferred to Nazi Germany, a country with which America was then at peace. Although seemingly innocent, it might be the last remaining step necessary to complete what America must prevent. It was absolutely important, Szilard argued, that President Roosevelt be made aware of the danger to the world of the imminent development of weapons of mass destruction, notably an Atomic Bomb, by Adolph Hitler. Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt warning of a Nazi nuclear weapon, reproduced
here, which eventually helped spur the establishment of the Manhattan Project.
bq. Hitler, too, believed he was building an Atomic Bomb, but was apparently misled by his scientific advisers,
many of who understood too well what such a weapon would mean in the hands of a maniac, and quietly slackened their efforts. At the end of the war, for a variety of reasons, including the Allied aerial destruction of Nazi industrial resources, American searchers who had believed they were racing neck-and-neck with Hitler for the development of nuclear weapons
found no operational weapons of mass destruction. The Nazis had been far from making an A-Bomb. There had been an intelligence failure.
Yeah - it is easy to point fingers here.
I was all set to link to
this page with all sorts of snarky quotes from US Democrats regarding Iraqi WMD's but got to talking with Jen and she brought up the real point that Bush did blow it. Rather, the intellegence provided to Bush blew it.
There are other reasons for removing Saddam's government and we are seeing tangible benefits in other countries - Libya and Pakistan are waking up. Life in Iraq is getting pretty good as well - people gripe about the power outages but they had those under S.H. - schools are opening, there used to be only a few newspapers, now there are over 280 in Bagdhad alone.
Posted by DaveH at February 5, 2004 11:36 PM