WMD's in Iraq....Found some

[rehmwa 2]

Nicely put. I comes down to whether you think the current admin is crooked or whether you think (even if you disagree) that they are making what they think are the best decisions based on the information available at the time. (Hindsight arguments are for masturbators).

For some reason I thought that was a Wendy post.

After I picked myself up off the floor and double checked, it cleared up.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[billvon 3,092]

>But it is my contention that our presence there, no matter how evil, is
> necessary to overcome a greater evil . . .

I think that's one of the better arguments _for_ war with Iraq. I also think that if our president had said that that's the primary reason we were going to war - to stop a regime that's destabilizing to the whole region, and is a civil rights nightmare - there would not now be a lot of hoopla about how we didn't find any WMD's.

> and to take down a threat to our nation.

Iraq was no more of a threat to our nation than Saudi Arabia was, and is far less of a threat than North Korea is. (They have nuclear weapons and IRBM's, and are selling them to countries that support terrorism.) It was certainly a threat to our objectives in the Middle East, including brokering an Israeli/Palestinian ceasefire and stabilizing our oil supply.

I think one of the backlashes we're seeing now is that Iraq was painted as a demonic, powerful empire chock full of chemical-dispensing drones, nuclear weapons, anthrax cultures and Sarin, and that was why we had to invade. We did, and it turns out that the biggest threat we had to face were insurgents with homemade pipe bombs and AK-47's. People feel they've been manipulated; that they were fed a largely false story to get them to support a war. Had we stated up front that we were invading because we needed stability in that region, that wouldn't have happened.

[kallend 2,129]

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I don’t pretend to know as much the folks in Washington in super tight vaults, super secret rooms, behind closed doors and heavily armed guards. My security clearance is pretty high, but not that high. I have to trust our government, our elected government, to make their decisions based on educated, calculated analyses of the risks and benefits of our actions - or inaction.

You trust because you couldn't do your job if you didn't.

My job doesn't require me to trust politicians, and I don't. If I shake hands with a politician, I count the fingers afterwards.

History indicates VERY CLEARLY that anyone trusting a politician is naive in the extreme. This administration's words and actions over the Iraq war are abundantly indicative of doubletalk, misdirection and outright lying.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Gravitymaster 0]

There's one major flaw in your arguement.
The intellegence community and a great many politicians including Westly Clark, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and every Senator who voted to go to war all thought he had WMD's.

It's disingenuous for those who agreed there were WMD's to now try to distance themselves from their own judgement and to try to hang GWB out to dry. It's also wrong for you to constantly harp on the "he lied" mantra when you don't know for sure whether it was bad intellegence or not.

But hey, then we wouldn't have anything to argue about would we?

[kallend 2,129]

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There's one major flaw in your arguement.
The intellegence community and a great many politicians including Westly Clark, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and every Senator who voted to go to war all thought he had WMD's.

It's disingenuous for those who agreed there were WMD's to now try to distance themselves from their own judgement and to try to hang GWB out to dry. It's also wrong for you to constantly harp on the "he lied" mantra when you don't know for sure whether it was bad intellegence or not.

But hey, then we wouldn't have anything to argue about would we?

If you trust someone that feeds you lies, shame on you, but the liars are the evil ones.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,092]

> It's also wrong for you to constantly harp on the "he lied" mantra
>when you don't know for sure whether it was bad intellegence or not.

He said "we found them" (referring to banned weapons) when we didn't. It's very hard to claim that's not a lie, unless you are going to redefine what "lie" means.

Although for the most case, you could charitably say that rather than lying, he chose to deliver only hand-picked information (no matter how disproven or unsubstantiated) that helped him achieve his objective, which was support for a war with Iraq. If you're OK with that, then good for you. It bothers me to be fed an untrue story in hopes I will support a political decision. But that's just me.

>But hey, then we wouldn't have anything to argue about would we?

We could always argue about RSL's.

[Gravitymaster 0]

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> It's also wrong for you to constantly harp on the "he lied" mantra
>when you don't know for sure whether it was bad intellegence or not.

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He said "we found them" (referring to banned weapons) when we didn't. It's very hard to claim that's not a lie, unless you are going to redefine what "lie" means.

Think about it for a second Bill. As critical as GWBs credibility was to him, how would he benefit by lying if he knew eventually the truth would come out? Why would he give his political enemies fodder?

As for redefining words, I'll leave that up to the Clinton apologists since they seemed so adept at redefining the word "IS".


***Although for the most case, you could charitably say that rather than lying, he chose to deliver only hand-picked information (no matter how disproven or unsubstantiated) that helped him achieve his objective, which was support for a war with Iraq. If you're OK with that, then good for you. It bothers me to be fed an untrue story in hopes I will support a political decision. But that's just me.***

Nobody likes to be lied to. I guess the difference is I'm willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt until I'm shown convincing evidence to the contrary. To date the arguement "he lied" hasn't been shown to be very valid unless you are willing to admit Clinton, Blair, the U.N., John Kerry, Wesley Clark etc. were also lying because thats what you would have to admit if you are going to accuse GWB of lying.

>But hey, then we wouldn't have anything to argue about would we?

We could always argue about RSL's.

***

ROFL or another cypres debate?

[FunBobby 0]

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All you said can be applied to other countries and leaders around the world. Hence, it clearly cannot be the reason for the action, since it would logically follow that other countries must be invaded as well.

Hence, that may have played a role, but there must be something else at play.

You are correct. I wrote that stream of thoughts rather quickly, so I probably didn't state my points as well as I would have liked to.

The bit about intelligence is the “something else” you refer to. As I said, I don’t pretend to know everything that the government does. But I believe that based on his past actions and intelligence that we had gathered on his regime, our government viewed SH and his forces as not only a threat to our nation, but a threat great enough that it warranted military action.

The Bush administration some time ago very clearly stated that it viewed several states as threats, and even more simply, “evil.” Iraq and North Korea were among those. Sure, there are lots of bad people and evil leaders in the world. But the fact that someone is bad, evil, or hateful of you does not make him a threat. When that evil person who hates you demonstrates his willingness and desire to hurt others, and to hurt you, he becomes a threat.

SH is evil. SH has hurt others in the past. The government must have decided, based on the intelligence we had, that SH’s regime and forces, whether they were from his organized military, paramilitary, or loyalists, would have hurt Americans. He became a threat. So we removed him.

FunBobby

[newsstand 0]

I picked Kallend's post because it was convenient not because this relates to his post.

Anyone intereted in US Middle East policy over the last 50 years should read

Sleeping with the Devil : How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude

This is not particularly kind to any administration.

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

[Gravitymaster 0]

Can you give us a quick review of the book?

[billvon 3,092]

> As critical as GWBs credibility was to him, how would he benefit by
> lying if he knew eventually the truth would come out?

He didn't benefit. I've seen a dozen stories in the past few months about GWB's credibility problem as WMD's continue to exist only in his imagination. From USAToday:
---------------------------
The question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has left a cloud over the Bush administration's credibility that won't be removed until Americans know whether the administration was straightforward with them, a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday.
--------------------------

From CBS:

President Bush faces a Showdown at Credibility Gulch. The summer heat is on. Congress is preparing to investigate and sizzling, high-drama hearings are a distinct possibility. The Inquisition hit an important mark of scandal-worthiness -- the Newsweekly Trifecta; Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report all ran detailed features examining the charges of a cover-up in the covert world.
----------------------------
>Why would he give his political enemies fodder?

I don't know, but he did. Listen to any democratic candidate go on and on about how we didn't find WMD's. (Of course, it's hard to take them seriously, since most of them supported the war.)

>I guess the difference is I'm willing to give someone the benefit of
> the doubt until I'm shown convincing evidence to the contrary.

I am generally willing to do the same - but for how long? How long until the secret information that backs up the administration's claims that there were absolutely, positively WMD's in Iraq, and we knew exactly where they were, is revealed? If our future is to be one where secret information is used to start wars, change domestic and foreign policy, and manage news stories - we won't be living in a democracy any more.

> To date the arguement "he lied" hasn't been shown to be very valid
> unless you are willing to admit Clinton, Blair, the U.N., John Kerry,
> Wesley Clark etc. were also lying because thats what you would have
> to admit if you are going to accuse GWB of lying.

I don't claim that any of those people either lied or told the truth. I don't know if the guy in the office next to me lied about them either. But that's OK with me, because none of those people started a war that killed thousands. Bush did; therefore, he, rather than Kerry or the guy in the office next to me, is responsible for the justifications.

[Amazon 7]

In those super secret rooms the people weilding the power are the people who wrote this in Jan of 1998

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-013098.htm

Saddam Hussein must go. This imperative may seem too simple for some experts and too daunting for the Clinton Administration. But if the United States is committed, as the President said in his State of the Union Message, to insuring that the Iraqi leader never again uses weapons of mass destruction, the only way to achieve that goal is to remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power. Any policy short of that will fail.

Four heavy divisions and two airborne divisions are available for deployment. The President should act, and Congress should support him in the only policy that can succeed.


Pardon me if I am a bit cynical of the reasons given but it was a forgone conclusion long ago that he had the weapons.. and wanted more and wanted to use them. And the people behind this were just waiting to spoon feed the intelligence needed to scare the hell out of any politician who might possibly vote against going to war.
The other reason.. verry succintly put forth as a reason is what Wendy and others of us with kids who will be sent off to far off places are afraid of.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/27/bush.war.talk/
He said the Iraqi leader's "hatred" was largely directed at the United States and added: "After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad."

In his speech September 12 to the United Nations on Iraq, Bush mentioned the alleged plot to kill a former U.S. president but did not mention that it was his father. The alleged assassination attempt came when former President Bush visited Kuwait during the Clinton administration. The former president had orchestrated the U.S.-led coalition that pushed the Iraqi army from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.



If that is not a personal vendetta I sure as hell don't know what is.

I am not sorry that SH is in custody and the Baathists have been removed from power... BUT... tell me the truth dammit.

[AdD 1]

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Iraq was no more of a threat to our nation than Saudi Arabia was, and is far less of a threat than North Korea is. (They have nuclear weapons and IRBM's, and are selling them to countries that support terrorism.) It was certainly a threat to our objectives in the Middle East, including brokering an Israeli/Palestinian ceasefire and stabilizing our oil supply.

I think one of the backlashes we're seeing now is that Iraq was painted as a demonic, powerful empire chock full of chemical-dispensing drones, nuclear weapons, anthrax cultures and Sarin, and that was why we had to invade. We did, and it turns out that the biggest threat we had to face were insurgents with homemade pipe bombs and AK-47's. People feel they've been manipulated; that they were fed a largely false story to get them to support a war. Had we stated up front that we were invading because we needed stability in that region, that wouldn't have happened

Bill, I'm with you 100% on that one. If President Bush had just come out and said Saddam is a tyrant, we want to liberate the Iraqi people and as a payment take control of some of their oil, I would probably have at least some measure of respect for him. Instead there's this huge focus shift away from the original WMD thing, first to Al Quaida (which is so full of shit it's almost funny, bin laden hated Hussein with a passion), then to liberation of Iraqis.. manipulated is exactly the right way to put it. And it's nice to see people acknowledge they're insurgents instead of terrorists. The oldest trick in the book is to start labelling resistence to military occupation terrorism, the nazis were particularly fond of it. I'm not saying they're right, just that we have to be careful how we throw terms like terrorism around.

Life is ez
On the dz
Every jumper's dream
3 rigs and an airstream

[AdD 1]

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Pardon me if I am a bit cynical of the reasons given but it was a forgone conclusion long ago that he had the weapons.. and wanted more and wanted to use them

It shouldn't even be an arguement that he HAD WMDs at one point, after all the US sold them to him. The question is when did he become a threat to the USA? It wasn't after he used them on the Kurds, the white house was still behind him then. He only became a tyrant and bad guy when he disobeyed the US administration and invaded Kuwait, then the white house had a change of heart. The key question about the war is whether or not President Bush lied when he said he had evidence that the Iraqis were hiding WMDs from the UN weapons inspectors, and they threateded the US enough that the inspections were just taking too much time. That was the justification for invasion. If it were true, why haven't they been located? Why the lie about nuclear weapons which was so quickly proven to be ridiculous? There seems to have been insufficient and/or misrepresented justification for pre-emptive attack. Don't kid yourself, no administration past or present gives a shit about Iraqi freedom exept in terms of how it plays to the media and population.

Life is ez
On the dz
Every jumper's dream
3 rigs and an airstream

[benny 0]

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It seems a likely explanation. Apparently this stuff dates back to the Iran/Iraq war, and wierder things happen in wartime. They still dig up WWI stuff in France, 90 years later.

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what will absolutely crack me up is when they find the purchase orders for these things signed by Donnie R. himself

Never go to a DZ strip show.

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[quade 4]

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Gee, I thought he didn't have any?

Sorry Ron, but it looks like this wasn't the proof you were hoping it to be.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040114/D802PMF80.html

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[tunaplanet 0]

I'm still laughing at the title of this thread when there wasn't any found.

Forty-two

[FliegendeWolf 0]

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I'm still laughing at the title of this thread when there wasn't any found.

Well shit...that's what the administration has been saying the whole time!

A One that Isn't Cold is Scarcely a One at All

[Harksaw 0]

Regardless of whether or not they are found, we did not know where in Iraq they were, as the administration claimed before the war.

__________________________________________________
I started skydiving for the money and the chicks. Oh, wait.

[Ron 10]

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Sorry Ron, but it looks like this wasn't the proof you were hoping it to be.

True. But it still does not mean that GWB lied.
And for those that say he only showed the intel that pushed his cause...Well maybe he was only shown that intel....also he was not the only person that thought SH had WMD...Congress looked at it and agreed. So if GWB lied most of congress did also.

But yes it apears these were not WMD's...

I really don't care if we find any or not to be honest. He had them at one time (We sold some to him) he used them (we were not that pissed) and he tried to get more and claimed he did have them. Also he hated the US, and supported terrorism. If he could pull an attack against the US he would have.

SH was a dangerous person. I am glad we took him out. We had the chance to take out OBL years ago and didn't take it....If we had 9/11 might not have happend.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[newsstand 0]

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Regardless of whether or not they are found, we did not know where in Iraq they were, as the administration claimed before the war.

If you are saying the administration didn't know where the WMDs were just that they existed how do you explain that in a speech to the UN Colin Powell showed photographs of some of the 600 suspected sites containg WMD's as justification for action and in an attempt to get the UN behind the invasion. No WMD's have been found at any of the sites inspected since the invasion. Last count I heard they had looked at 400 and were not sure they were going to look at any more.

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

[newsstand 0]

Sleeping with the Devil is by a former FBI or CIA agent, I forget which, and it chronicles the US/Saudi relationship going back to the end of WWII. It talks about how and why we have ended up where we are in our dealings with them. How we have no intelligence operations going on there. The interdependence of the situation. We need the oil, they need our technology and money.

The first part gets a little slow because it turns into a laundry list of ex-US government officials and what part of the Saudi trough they are feeding at. After that it gets interesting.

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

[happythoughts 0]

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SH was a dangerous person. I am glad we took him out. We had the chance to take out OBL years ago and didn't take it....If we had 9/11 might not have happend.

Bush gets grief everytime he makes a decision and some sort of action occurs. Then, the Monday morning quarterbacks sit back and analyze, mostly for purely political purposes.

I guess that is why Clinton was so popular, you could never question the decision of someone who made none. Of course, the OBL inaction allowed the 9/11 attack to occur.

[turtlespeed 226]

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WMD are only important if we find some. If there aren't any, well, remember that Saddam was a really bad man and needed an ass-whuppin'.

Wendy W.

Ahhh, she finally got it.
There is hope yet.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[PhillyKev 0]

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Bush gets grief everytime he makes a decision and some sort of action occurs. Then, the Monday morning quarterbacks sit back and analyze, mostly for purely political purposes.

No...I think you'll see that most of us here were saying we were opposed to this action before it was taken. Most of us were saying that they should continue using UN inspectors because there wasn't any justification for going to war. How is that being a Monday morning quarterback. Seems more like expert handicapping to me since it turns out, the justification that was used for war does not exist.