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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:28
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The war was not to find WoMD but to find out if there were any, because inspections couldn't be trusted. That there be no WoMD doesn't change anything to the fact that Iraq failed to inconditionnally and immediately collaborate. They did collaborate , but not immediately, and tried to put some conditions (with little success, but they still didn't respect the 1441 resolution).
The problem with the war is that: Either there were no weapons, in which case Saddam was just silly not to cooperate, and that's all. Or there were weapons. If they are not found, that means they may have been (at best) hidden, or (at worst) smuggled away by people who no longer feared their dictator (who was about to fall), and so could safely sell these cans of mustard gas to some nearby terrorist. Just pray that such smuggling didn't happen.
The war didn't prove more efficient than inspections, so from that point of view, it was indeed useless. (Other reasons for the war not being discussed.)
Note that diplomatically, all the opposition was against the use of war to find out WoMD, not against freeing Iraq, and that if no WMD are found, then the U.S. will look like a bully to all countries which already want to see them that way. Those who want to see the U.S. as champions of liberty won't change their opinions because of a few facts.
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Sava
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GO GO GO!
Mar 2001
time: 23:28
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Japher: uhhhh okay, explain your reasoning...
I didn't oppose military action in Iraq... I opposed Bush's use of it. For me, it wasn't about using the sabre, it was about using it in an intelligent matter. All non-military solutions weren't exhausted. Going into Iraq was on the agenda the day Bush put his hand on the Bible and lied to America. If anything, Bush was a stupid and inept politician for trying to use the WMD case. As Ivins' column explains, Tony Blair made the case that Saddam was bad. Once the war was inevitable, Bush changed his strategy to "let's make the war about liberation, etc" because he realized that the public was on the verge of pointing out his lies. That's where the revisionist version comes in.
In the end, getting rid of Saddam is the right move. I oppose the method that it was done in. The other thing I find interesting is that the US media didn't sufficiently report the alternative solution to war that consisted of 30,000 additional inspectors, the insertion of UN forces and increased scrutiny. But instead, it's omitted from the record. Had we gone down that path, the UN no doubt would have been on board for military action down the road. And perhaps my biggest complaint about this situation is that the US is being made the scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in Iraq.
There was an intelligent way of removing Saddam. But instead, Bush is a cowboy and decided to confirm the stereotype that the US is an imperialist nation that acts in its own interest. When Bush is gone, that stigma will still be hanging over our heads. And as an American, that offends me that Bush has run our name in the mud because people close to the administration benefitted from his war.
That's what my anti-war stance was about. You can continue to stereotype the left and act like an idiot, but perhaps if you turned off Rush and informed yourself, engaged in discussion rather than insults, you might learn what anti-war people were complaining about in the first place.
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Andrew1999
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If no WMDs are ever found no one will give a damn. Anything that happened before the last commercial break is ancient history.
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Japher
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Ook! Ook! Ack! Ack! Ack!
Jun 2002
time: 05:28
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quote:
You can continue to stereotype the left and act like an idiot |
Thanks for the permission. Man, you ussually just call me an idiot and leave it at that...
To me it sounds like your just mad that we didn't continue to bend over and take it from the UN for another 12 years. Is that right? I'm sorry you think Bush is a cowboy and I am aware that many ppl feel that way, and his flying onto that carrier just proves it. Yet, in a world thwarted with terror surrounding us and invading us I would rather have a president that is willing to do something about these fears instead of letting the French tickle our fancy.
Perhaps Bush was grasping at straws to get the war on the way, perhaps promising WoMD was a bad move, but when your dog begs for a bone you gotta give them something or that dog will starve and bite you in the arse. The WoMD was just that bone to the UN.
quote:
And as an American, that offends me that Bush has run our name in the mud because people close to the administration benefitted from his war.
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Yeah, and that suks. However, it is something that Bush decided to impose on us when we decided to go it alone. I feel bad that our ego had to get hurt in order to make Americans and the rest of the world feel a little safer now that the bstrd is out of power, not to mention stopping of the murders that was going on before we even got there (I am not indicating that we knew about them)... Oh well, I can do with a little humility or a little name calling if it means that freedom is to be dished out in large portions.
quote:
but perhaps if you turned off Rush and informed yourself, engaged in discussion rather than insults, you might learn what anti-war people were complaining about in the first place |
Man, I wish I never told you I listened to Rush... Oh, yeah, I also read the papers and watch the news. I get my fair share of liberal media, so don't worry about all the brainwashing that is going on in my head, it sounds like you got enough of your own to deal with.
At least we agree that Saddam was bad, I also think Blair handled the situation a lot better, and I am greatful to our British friends from stalling or delaying Bush from making an even bigger error.
I do not deny that this could of been handled better, but it wasn't being handled at all, and those that were suppose to be handling it were making excuses for why it wasn't being handled... It is that kind of delinquency that I can't stand.
If you want to talk about benefitting from the war I feel that Bush is completely in the wrong in his dealings here, awarding no-bid contracts to companies of his "friends". Point to note however, many dems do the same thing... Feinstein for one. This sort of thing, I am sure we can agree, is a travesty.
Snoochies...
Last edited by Japher on 09-05-2003 at 23:43
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Sandman
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Sinister Penguin
Aug 2001
time: 05:28
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WoMD is a contrived term created for purely political purposes. Chemical weapons are of limited battlefield use, and I consider them fundamentally flawed as terrorist weapons. They have never been used as weapons of mass destruction.
Biological weapons have, to my knowledge, never been successfully used in a modern battlefield, and as a terrorist weapon they are, at best, unproven.
A suitcase nuke can vapourize a large building. A large nuke can obliterate a city. To group them with gases and germs is completely specious, since only nukes cause mass destruction.
As for precursor chemicals, these include things as basic as chlorine, essential for sanitation, plastics, paper etc but denied to Iraq because it can be used to make chemical weapons. Since chemical weapons are not a serious threat, the reasoning behind the ban is flawed.
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HolyWarrior
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These were the same people urging George W. to allow the UN inspectors more time to find WMDs. Now they're caterwauling that no WMDs have been found.
Hypocrisy, thy name is liberalism.
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:28
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President Bush will suffer no internal political reprecussions if WMD's are not found in quantity (it is not only having a shell that matters, it is having enough to cause the sorts of apocalyptic scenerios the WH keep feeding us). The American people would never have supported a war of Iraq based simply on "liberation". If in 2000 Bush had asked for a war, well, it would not have happened: it should be remembered that previous to 9/11 this admin. was speaking about modifying Iraq sanctions, making them "smarter", whatever that means. Only after 9/11, only after the American people felt unsafe, was a war in the ME acceptable. I bet, if we go back to the pre-war posts on this very board, and consider how many of them justified this war on purely threat-based claims, vs solely on humanitarian aims, which wins? Look at the presidents own speeches: look at what he said on moday before the war, or his state of the Unions speech: talk of "liberation" was always there, but aways secondary, with the "threat of Iraq" taking up twice, trice as much time. Colin Powells big UN day in feb. was not about the Ba'aths regime's actions in the HR area, but about WMD's, and all the "clear intelligence" we had.Only after the war begun was the Humanitarian aspect of this war emphazised, beyond the "Iraqi WMD threat" part. Now, there were alwyas people who backed this war for humanitarian aims, btu they were always a small minority: the vast majority backed this war cause they saw Iraq as a threat; now with 'victory', they will willingly forget those fears (specially if they turn out to be unjustified) and bask in the glory of 'victory'.
Beofre this war, I aways said the only two arguments that made snese about Iraq and a war were "liberation" and the idological arguemtns of the Wolfowitz type. Every time I said that, a bunch of people would argue how Saddam was a new Hitler, poised to take over the ME, or kill millions upon millions, blah, blah, blah. Well, I guess I was right.
And for all of those who "bask" in their own "self-santification" about thier "great love of man", pleas explain to me how you feel about Turkmenistan being part of our great "coolition of the willing"? If you don't know about Turkenistan, look it up, its one of our new clients in Central Asia, a place with plenty of statues of its own....
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:28
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quote:
U.S. Weapons Hunters Lower Expectations
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:07 p.m. ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The commander of the American weapons hunters in Iraq says he's certain the U.S. invasion has ended a program capable of producing Iraqi chemical and biological weapons. But Col. Richard R. McPhee says his teams have found no such weapons thus far.
And members of McPhee's team and U.S. defense officials say that banned arms may never be found in Iraq.
This marks a shift in expectations to confirming an Iraqi capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, rather than actually finding them. Before the war, U.S. leaders said they knew such weapons existed in Iraq, and war was necessary to root them out.
``There's no doubt in my mind that what we have stopped here in Iraq is a WMD program that was being run, that was capable of producing chemical weapons, biological weapons as needed by (Saddam Hussein) now or in the future,'' McPhee said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Asked for the evidence, he replied, ``The expertise and knowledge of the people, the scientists, dual-use capability facilities. ... I believe clearly there was a capability here that would have kept going.''
The recent U.N. inspectors never declared they had uncovered a program designed to produce weapons of mass destruction.
A top operations officer for McPhee's 75th Exploitation Task Force said Friday he would be surprised if the team does not find the infrastructure and program for ``demand production of biological weapons'' -- in other words, not production, but a capacity to produce quickly on demand.
As for finding actual weapons, the operations officer said it may turn out that no weapons of mass destruction will be found.
The expert and others spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, citing a need to protect their identities for continuing work in intelligence and other sensitive areas.
Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, made a similar point at a Pentagon briefing Tuesday.
``I think we're going to find that they had a weapons of mass destruction program,'' Cambone said when asked whether banned weapons would ever be found. ``Now, how it was configured and how they intended to use it is part of the hard work that they're going through right now.''
After a month's field operations from Kuwait, McPhee's task force has moved into one of Saddam's palace complexes outside Baghdad, a sprawl of sumptuous homes and garish palaces -- all emptied by looters, some damaged by U.S. bombing -- set around a sparkling artificial lake.
A four-unit mobile laboratory is the heart of the operation, centered on two state-of-the-art investigative tools: a gas chromatograph mass spectrophotometer, which instantly deciphers the chemical makeup of suspicious substances; and a DNA thermocycler, whose highly classified catalog of DNA fingerprints would allow the Americans to confirm a sample as anthrax or other bioweapon microbes within 20 minutes.
The 75th ``XTF'' began work with a list of 900 Iraqi sites where inspectors might look for evidence of banned weapons work, led by 90 high-priority sites. Of those priority locations, 75 have been examined thus far, McPhee said Thursday, with nothing of major significance reported.
The U.S. military's advance through Iraq in late March and early April produced repeated false alarms from combat units that thought they had found banned arms. Suspected chemical weapons in metal drums turned out to be pesticides; suspicious white powder that made headlines was simply explosives; cyclosarin and mustard gas weapons agents were actually rocket fuel.
In fact, McPhee's experts said they haven't once had to don their most protective hazardous-materials outfits, because credible threats never materialized.
A top operations officer said a large percentage of the U.S.-surveyed sites had been inspected by the U.N. agency that resumed inspections for banned weapons programs last November and suspended them in March. Such Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological facilities had also undergone eight years of earlier U.N. inspections in the 1990s.
The U.N. teams tagged, sometimes sealed or planned to monitor dual-use equipment found at the sites -- that is, equipment that might be intended for benign civilian use, but is potentially useful for weapons-making.
The 75th XTF has reported one find of potentially major significance -- a truck trailer some specialists suspect was designed as a mobile production plant for biological weapons. It was seized at a northern Iraq checkpoint from an apparent truck thief on April 19.
This weekend, a highly qualified group of experts from the United States is expected to arrive in Baghdad to examine the vehicle thoroughly, XTF operations officers said. The investigation may be completed in 10 days, one of the officers said.
Of the trailer, Cambone said the experts have found no other plausible explanation for it than for weapons ``based on the equipment on board.''
Still, military experts said ``dual use'' has not yet been ruled out for the fermenter and other equipment in the vehicle.
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:28
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None have been found, but I think that at the end, a few will, i simply for the same reaosns those 12 empoty chemical capable warheads were found by the inspectors.
The Us and UK were claiming substantial quantieis of arms: as i have said before;
10,000 liters of anthrax (some of it in powder form), 700+ mustard gas shells, tons of nerve gas agents, 2 dozen SCUD missiles, mutiple mobile biol-weapons labs, UAV capable of spreading Bio-chem agents.
Even if at the end of the day 2 liters of anthrax, a lb. of nerve gas agents, and one possible mobile wepoans lab was found, there would still be a HUGE gap between what we were told was there and what they found. I think that would still be an issue.
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Pekka
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em seu burro dos pais!
Feb 2002
time: 07:28
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But I wouldn't call Bush liar because of this. I have supported this war and continue to do so, but for different reasons. Mainly, because Saddams death wouldn't necessarily change anything, his son would step over and so on. Assasination wouldn't do the job either. It would mean killing bunch of key people and that is close impossible. I would have supported regime change from the inside most, let the Iraqi people solve it with our support and weapons (what we afterwards collect back, or see destroyed). But it seems like it would have never happened anyway, so that's why I supported this.
That said, I do find it disturbing that the WMDs haven't been found. Why? Because we had lectures in the UN and pictures and the works. There was supposed to be clear evidence that they exists and they know much more, but they can't give that information because it would endager operatives in Iraq. It is very clear to me, that if this information was in fact there like it was said, the would have already found them. I don't believe, that these places where intelligence knew they were had been left unmonitored during the war, or before the war started. They must have kept close eyes to those places at all times. They wouldn't want to lose them when troops are attacking, dangering the troops for unnecessary risk for being nuked or what ever and with that information and close eye they'd be able to attack those places, or at least try with special ops, air force etc. This would be the most important thing, and the only real threat against the troops. So, I don't believe they 'lost' the WMDs during fighting or just before it. I believe they were never there, in the places intelligence claimed they were. I don't see any reasons why they couldn't keep on eye on these places with satellites and inside operatives and special ops. There would have to be HUGE tunnel systems to avoid moving the WMDs and distract, so that leads me to believe that either they have mistaken with those 'hot spots', or then there is no WMDs. Either way it seems bad. There's only two ways of moving the WMDs from those hot spots, and those would be trucks (Iraqi terrain doesn't make it easy to move them), and distracting with several trucks, fake moving, fake WMDs and at some point you just don't know where they really are. But I think if this really happened.. there are some serious problems in intelligence information anyway to do old school tricks like that in Iraqi terrain. Other way is those huge tunnels, and they would have been known about them already, or at least at this point, knowing where they are now. I don't believe they made tunnels all the way to Syria. Also, if they did the 'truck move' I believe they would have checked out EVERY truck that actually penetrated the borders for sure. Or, then they simply made the mistake to believe there was WMDs where there weren't.
I think it can be an honest mistake, with 100% good information you know is correct and make assumptions totalling existing WMDs in place X, Y, Z... This would, however be awful mistake because that was the pretext to this war, and it will seriously affect the future war plans to attack Syria or Iran. But all this said, I don't think it makes Bush liar. I think he might have been honest about believing to the WMDs. But it will have an affect to the future businesses, especially outside US and how people see Bush when he continues strikes.
If there are no WMDs to be found, or if they have been moved to other countries before or during the war, it means a huge mistake because what guarantees there are we'll get it the next time? Slim to none. Does it mean we can't go after them anymore? Of course not.
But it will make it more difficult, since there are lots of people dying in foreign countries in 'the hunt of the WMDs' and if they are not found, it means intelligence information is NOT sufficient, and if there is not clearly enough information, is pre-emtpive strike a good option?
People will get killed. What I'm interested is the total, in the long run which choice is better and leads to less damage. But if we can't keep track on these things and they can go to other countries and disappear at will if someone wants to.. are the strikes worth it? It will make lot more unstable regions (no Iraq is not stable, Afghanistan is far for stable being #1 heroin producer once again etc etc, so we can't talk about stable regions just yet, maybe later) and lots of new enemies instead of friends or neutrals that are willing to strike against us, and even more so want to get those WMDs, which they will surely get if the money is there and the money will be there. So at this point we can't predict the total outcome, and if we can't do that, pre-emptive strikes are too much of a risk in my opinion. We can't use Jimbo-tactics against these kind of things (it's coming right for us *BLAM BLAM!*). What we need is solid information about them, more good operations and agents and operatives, infiltration and stabilize the regions as much as possible, avoid making new enemies or braking existing alliances. If and when we get that solid information, then we strike deep and HARD and without notice or warnings and get as much of the dirtbags as possible at the same time.
Just my thoughts.
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uh Clem
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Born in the US; damned if I know where I live now
Nov 1999
time: 23:28
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Bush is a liar for the simple reason that he stated as uncontested fact what he knew to be only conjecture.
Whether his guess was right or wrong is immaterial. He said that he was certain when in fact he was not, and had no plausible reason to believe that he was.
Here's some statements Bush made over the course of a few weeks while campaigning last fall:
http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/2003_...e.html#92763368
Edit: scroll down to entry for "Wednesday, April 16, 2003" if the link doesn't take you there.
Samples:
28 Oct: "He's got weapons of mass destruction."
1 Nov: "We know he's got chemical weapons"
2 Nov: "We know that this is a man who has chemical weapons"
2 Nov: "He's a man who has said he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, but he's got them"
3 Nov: "He's a man who said he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, yet he has them."
No doubts, no conditionals or subjunctives. But the reality has proved that the case was NOT certain.
If anyone wants to argue that Bush was justified in lying, then make your case. I don't agree, but at least you'd be dealing with events as they actually happened here on Planet Earth (Reality, in other words).
But don't insult people's intelligence by saying that he wasn't lying.
* * *
BTW, I suppose it goes without saying that lying over matters of war and peace is nowhere NEAR as grave an offence as lying over receiving oral sex.
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LoneWolf
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I did not have WMD with that woman!
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09-05-2003 22:26
You must not have learned very much about modern nerve and blood agents. Both the Soviets and Americans had Chemical weapons that would go right through a gas mask or the commonly used MOP suites. That they were so effective, deadly, and long lasting is the main reason niether side had the balls to use them.
some of us live in the real world, others... well... don't.
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