Saddam Hussein feared a U.S. nuclear strike during the Gulf War — and not without reason:
Washington indeed hinted that nukes were on the table.
“I know if the going gets hard, then the Americans or the British will use the atomic weapons against me, and so will Israel,” Hussein told his advisors one month before his troops stormed into Kuwait, according to analysis of hours of audio tape by the Conflicts Records Research Center.
“The only thing I have are chemical and biological weapons, and I shall have to use them,” Hussein added. “I have no alternative.”
Ironically, Hussein’s willingness to even consider deploying his non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction was the major reason the Americans raised the prospect of deploying their own WMDs.
In April 1990, the Iraqi dictator had openly threatened to “burn half of Israel” with his chemical weapons in the event of an Israeli attack on Iraq.
Hussein had also prepared to target Saudi and Israeli cities with his country’s arsenal of Scud missiles. All of the missiles were armed with conventional explosive warheads.
According to internal Iraqi discussions that CCRC documented and translated, Hussein responded to an inquiry about potentially fitting some of the Scuds with chemical payloads. “Only in case we are obliged and there is a great necessity to put them into action,” Hussein consented.
Before the coalition launched its campaign to liberate Kuwait on Jan. 17, 1991, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker warned Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz against using biological or chemical weapons. Baker reminded Aziz that the United States had the “means to exact” vengeance and eliminate the Iraqi regime.
[…]
In destroying Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons infrastructure by conventional means—albeit at high cost—the coalition deprived Hussein of his main rationale for ever deploying the weapons of mass destruction.
It helped that Hussein clearly feared the Americans could use their own WMDs against Iraq if Iraq introduced chemical and biological weapons to the conflict.
In May 2010, Baker declined to state clearly that he had meant to imply to Aziz that America might nuke Iraq. “Of course, the warning was broad enough to include the use of all types of weapons that America possessed.”
Still, the vague threat worked. “Years later, when Saddam Hussein was captured, de-briefed and asked why he had not used his chemical weapons, he recalled the substance of my statement to Aziz in Geneva,” Baker said.
“It was not wise to use such weapons in such kind of war, with such an enemy,” Aziz told PBS in 1996. The interviewer asked if Aziz meant to imply that America could have dropped an atomic bomb on Iraq. “You can … make your own conclusions.”
Possibly relevant:
When global powers engage in what increasingly looks like performative escalation, it raises bigger questions:
Who benefits from a conflict that stops short of actual war?
Is this about deterrence or distraction?
Are we seeing diplomacy or direction?
And most importantly:
Do we, the citizens, matter in this equation, or are we just the audience?
https://expose-news.com/2025/06/29/the-orchestrated-war-what-the-us-iran-israel-conflict-might-really-mean/
Probably mostly irrelevant:
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/new-york-police-counter-drone-solution
And yet, no WMD were ever found, and the modern consensus is that they never existed.
Modern consensus, true, but prior to the First Gulf War, the UN Inspections team stated there were WMD in Iraq (biological and chemical). There were, and then there were not. Where did they go?
Satellite footage just prior to the invasion show trucks moving north into Syria.
Bob Sykes says:
Packaged with a spin as to whom to blame, yes.
To cut through the inevitable mountain of bullshit, we can use plain old “motive-method-opportunity” approach or common sense. The former points at Saddam threatening the holy Petrodollar as a compelling motive. The latter tells us that if the circus had good evidence of anything remotely actionable, they could use it, rather than relying on silliness like asking 15-year-old daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador “Nayirah, darling, tell us a sob story about the eeevil Iraqi”.
Will says:
Cue the clumsily fake gas attacks in Syria. Which swiftly got upgraded all the way from “suspected chlorine” to nonsensical sarin, discussed while under development on Tw@ter. As an aside, some habitually tried to blame those on Trump when the fake was widely mocked.
The UN clowns not only confirmed those, but cooperated with ISIS snuff movie production:
https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/sweden-white-helmets-gas-attack/
What UN exists for, again? Oh.
And then the remakes went quite ridiculous:
https://www.theinteldrop.org/2022/11/26/white-helmets-ukraine-watch-filming-of-fake-gas-attack-hilarious/