Thompson claims Iraq had WMDs before U.S. invaded

I don't know what to say about this story. From The Des Moines Register:

Newton, Ia. — Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson said Monday he was certain former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a point of contention in the 4 1/2years since the war began.

“We can’t forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there, he clearly had had WMD. He clearly had had the beginnings of a nuclear program,” Thompson told an audience of about 60 at a Newton cafe.

Here we go again. We've got Fred Thompson now claiming that the Bush administration's war in Iraq was justified because Saddam had WMDs, even though we have reports that Iraq did not have WMDs before the U.S. invasion, and that President Bush knew that Iraq did not have WMDs, but decided to invade Iraq because of that very reason. And now Fred Thompson is continuing this same, tired, neoconservative lie.

Of course, it gets better. Let's continue with Freddie's backpedaling here:

Thompson later said he was referring Saddam’s attack on Kurdish northern Iraq with banned weapons in the 1980s.

“He acknowledged, I think, in filings made by the United Nations that prior to the invasion — sometime prior to the invasion — that he had chemical and biological weapons,” Thompson said in a Des Moines Register interview. “I mean he used chemical weapons on the Kurds.”

Thompson made the original statement while explaining why he felt the war was justified, despite the Bush administration’s chief justification for the invasion turning out to not be verifiable.

[....]

“In my estimation, his intent never did change,” Thompson said. “And by today, he clearly would have had that (weapons program) rejuvenated.”

So Fred Thompson is now saying that the George W. Bush administration was justified in invading Iraq because Saddam Hussein had WMDs in the 1980s? That was 20 years ago! Yes, Saddam Hussein had a WMD program, of which he used to gas the Kurds between 1986 and 1989. but that was well before the First Gulf War in 1990, in which the U.S. under George H.W. Bush evicted Iraq from Kuwait. At the end of the First Gulf War, Iraq was forbidden from developing, possessing, or using WMDs (chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons) in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 686, and in Resolution 687. Fred Thompson is asserting that President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq is justified because Iraq had WMDs twenty years ago before the First Gulf War of Bush Senior, when Saddam's WMD program was destroyed. This is such an absurd statement by Thompson.

Or maybe I shouldn't be too surprised by this. One thing I do realize is that Fred Thompson is pandering to the 30 percent GOP base that still supports the Bush administration--we're talking the hard-core right-wingers here. So Thompson continues pushing the Big Lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that George Bush was right for invading Iraq. The Thompson campaign would have known that Thompson's backpedaling correction of Thompson referring to Saddam gassing the Kurds would be printed well below the story and be ignored. Hence, Thompson scores GOP political brownie points in pandering to the pro-war winger base.