13-05-2003 10:19									#211
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quote: Originally posted by Darius871 How long before the war? The articles I've read on the tanker story (again, not that I buy it, I was just pointing out that an easily detected land convoy was not the only possibility) said that they departed as early as the time of inspections.

Yeah, but that's after the US and UK navies got in place. Remember the story of Spanish warships boarding a DPRK freighter? And that's just a freighter, not a tanker.

quote: Originally posted by Darius871 Why would the work have to be that extensive? Any secret compartments that would be necessary could all be built below decks and invisible. Secondly, there would be numerous ways of getting the weapons inside that would be indetectable.

Well, it's not that easy. Before any alterations can be done, you need to thoroughly clean the inside of the tanker, or at least one of the compartments. Then you have you cut open the deck, because tankers are not designed to let large objects into the holds. That means you need to get the tanker into a dock to do all the extensive work, and it'll take quite some time to complete the task. I can't see why US spy sats would fail to note all these activities.

	13-05-2003 10:21									#212
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger They got it right. Consider this: Iraq -> no nuclear weapons -> gets invaded DPRK -> nuclear weapons -> talks under way Is there any other conclusion that you could draw from this?

How about :

Iraq fails to abide by ceasefire agreement and 12 years of diplomacy fail & attempts at new diplomacy fail due to a non-united front -> gets invaded

North Korea hasn't had 12 years yet, and there are far more promising signs that diplomacy will work (within 12 years ), especially with China having a motivation to prevent yet another arms race in their back yard - in particular, between North Korea and South Korea or Japan.

	13-05-2003 11:03									#213
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What really surprises me is that there are people (including here on Poly) who sincerely bought into this WMD argument of the government.

	13-05-2003 11:55									#214
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quote: Furthermore, the Causus Belli was not just that we believed he had WMDs, but more importantly he wasn't cooperating with efforts to make sure he didn't have them.

There's a bit of a problem with that, while the Iraqis were playing games with ABSCOM, Scott Ritter has said the inspections were being used by the CIA to track Saddam's movements/locations for possible assassination attempts. And the Iraqis were on to this so the relationship became even more antagonistic. The inspectors were finally pulled in 1998 (or was it '99) because Clinton was about to launch an attack to teach the Iraqis to behave. But the media and politicians kept reporting as fact that the Iraqis kicked the inspectors out in '98, not that the US ordered them out.

As for Bush and WMD, I won't believe anything the government says except that no WMD have been found. If none are found and that's what we're told, I will give Bush a pass even though others have explained his past comments were so declarative he cannot be exonerated of lying. I see this as a cop so intent on busting someone they hate that planting evidence is too tempting (of course another motive is the embarassment of not finding WMD).