Grasping At Straws

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear Mr. Read,

The UN and every foreign agency including CSIS documented that Hussein had WMD.

As does everybody else. They used them. The key word 'had' implies tense. 'Has' is a different tense, and therefore a different meaning.

Pre-emption is the right policy and WMD was only ONE of many reasons why Iraq was invaded.

If you bothered to read the postings you would know this.

The posts on this forum have nothing to do with US foreign policy.

Further to this quote, the threat of WMDs and the fabricated 'evidence' WAS given the sole justification at the time of invasion.

[Craig Read]

No WMD if you re-read Bush's speech and Powell's listed many other reasons why war was necessary and the Posts have gone over these. I suggest you search online and get excerpts from the presentations. They outline in detail a war justification. The rationale in those documents still stands today.

WMD was one aspect of the impetus to invade. Unfortunately it has been trumpeted by the media and by senior officials as the main catalyst. I don't believe that it was the main catalyst. The great fear was more likely the selling, or clandestine use of WMD by terror groups affiliated with Iraq or sold by Iraq to said groups. This is far more likely than a missile strike from Iraqi ground on US assets. Iraqi missile range is basically to Israel and Riyadh. Not a threat to US assets, but WMD being sold certainly is.

Bush should have fought this war on geo-political, humanitarian grounds and the links Iraq had with sponsoring and funding terror. That would have been the smart policy.

[SirRiff]

two things people tend to over look..

whatever weapons the iraqis may had had were primative and useless in any real war.

any nation has the capability to acquire or produce simple germs and rockets. we cant go around the world invading every nation with a high school biology program. technology has advanced and starting wars to make you safe is just as likely to destroy the world given enough time.

now, you just cant hide a ton of WMD in the ground in a garbage bag then dig it up again and throw it at someone. without the technology to use WMDs effectively the nobody can kill lots of people. iraqs weapons are so out of date and ineffective they could only be dangerous to teh civilian kurds who have nothing. it would be impossible for iraq to emply WMDs on the scale the US fears. they are a third world nation. saddam could only threaten local areas, not even regional and certinaly not international. and he was obviously a survivor, not a suicide bomber, he liked the good life and was not crazy enough to attack israel or kuwait knowing it would require a full US retalization. he was contained,

there was NO WMD argument to be made. it was all just hysteria on 9/11 fears.

the USs danger from iraq was no more then any of us face going through day to life life. car accidents, crazies with guns, all kill people every day.

a humanitarian case could have been made ethically and morally, but Bush knew his people would never go to war just for a war and fuzzy feeling. so he hyped it up.

SirRiff

[djpark121]

No Weapons Doesn't Mean No Threat

By Charles Duelfer

Monday, October 6, 2003; Page A23

The Iraq Survey Group headed by David Kay has now made an interim report. Ironically, this group has inherited the obligation previously levied by the United Nations upon Saddam Hussein -- namely, to credibly and verifiably detail Iraq's program of weapons of mass destruction to a skeptical international audience.

The group has had far more access and resources than the U.N. inspectors under Hans Blix and it has been in Iraq longer. How is it faring and what does the interim report tell us? Particularly, does the absence of a major weapons discovery mean that U.N. inspections were working and the war was unnecessary?

Kay states that while no ready-to-use weapons have been found, Iraq is a big country and many depots and other locations are yet to be inspected. However, the Kay report does list evidence of continuing research and development (though not production) in each weapon category. It also describes activities and equipment that Iraq failed to declare to the United Nations and that were not discovered by the inspectors.

Future reports will have to show in verifiable detail the extent of these prohibited programs, but these findings will not greatly surprise experienced U.N. inspectors. Hussein had long differentiated between retaining weapons and sustaining the capability to produce weapons. Experience has also shown that Iraq tended to pursue whatever relevant research was allowed or was deemed undetectable.

The apparent absence of existing weapons stocks, therefore, does not mean Hussein did not pose a WMD threat. In fact, fragments of evidence in Kay's report about ongoing biological weapons research suggest that Hussein may have had a quick "break-out" capacity to threaten his neighbors and, indeed, the United States with biological agents (possibly including infectious agents).

But clearly this is not the immediate threat many assumed before the war. Large stocks of chemical and biological munitions have not been found. The WMD threat appears to have been longer term. Assuming this finding does not change, it will be very important for the Iraq Survey Group to establish when all agents and weapons were eliminated. It will also be important to analyze why the picture Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the Security Council in February was so far off the mark.

Future reports will also have to demonstrate what facts about the Iraq WMD program the U.N. teams missed and how Hussein's regime acted to thwart the efforts of the United Nations. This latter issue is vital. Kay makes mention of the Iraqi concealment and deception as one reason why he has found so little. The first U.N. inspection team (UNSCOM) pursued a controversial program to investigate what we termed the Iraqi concealment mechanism. The goal was to show how the enormous resources of Iraq's security and intelligence apparatus undermined the inspection teams. We accumulated evidence that presidential secretary Abed Hamid Mahmoud, now in U.S. custody, directed a government-wide effort to contain inspection activity. This included penetrating the U.N. inspection teams and even obtaining assistance from other prominent countries to fend off the inspectors. Conducting surprise inspections had become almost impossible.

The Iraq Survey Group should now have access to the records and participants of the former regime. Future reports must provide a clear description of the Iraqi system for containing inspector activity. This is necessary to inform judgments about the effectiveness of the U.N. inspections. The argument is made that if no weapons were found in Iraq, then maybe the U.N. inspection process was successfully containing Hussein and, therefore, the war was unnecessary.

This will be proven wrong if the Iraq Survey Group can show that Hussein could outlast and outwit the efforts of the Security Council to keep him from ever obtaining WMD. While the inspection system may have appeared to be successful at a given point, it was not sustainable and eventually the U.N. Security Council would lose focus. Kay's group needs to document the strategy that Hussein's regime was pursuing to counter and erode the U.N. disarmament measures.

The Bush administration appears committed to developing a full picture of the Iraqi weapons program, even if it turns out to be less than was forecast. This task in Iraq, like so many others, is made much more difficult because of early mistakes. Key sites were left unsecured and looters destroyed much evidence. Tons of documents were collected haphazardly, and now they have to be sorted out by experts and linguists -- an extremely time-consuming process.

Finally, the Iraqis who are most knowledgeable have been living in fear of arrest by the Americans or death from various internal Iraqi threats. Most of the WMD program leaders have spent the summer in jail. The second-tier scientists and engineers fear the night when U.S. military surround their homes and take them away to face an unknown future. They do not find much incentive to cooperate.

Kay appears to be making necessary course corrections, and a full verifiable description of Hussein's programs and policies should be forthcoming. It will have to be meticulous. There are many very knowledgeable people in the audience, including U.N. inspectors and former Iraqi officials, who will ultimately pass judgment on its veracity.

-Washingtonpost.com

[SirRiff]

if all it takes is third world technology and accusations of intent, there are about 30 nations that could be invaded right now.

any high school lab in a major city can make dangerous germs. its easy.

any nation will have the ability to make basic chemicals.

saddam has been sitting on his ass for 12 years with his country under no-fly getting bombed. the hasnt moved or attacked anyone. so he obviously has no intent to start a war.

was his intent to spray someone with germs??

how long is his plan going to take? he has put off his programs for years now, he is not getting any younger, he has no means to deliver WMDS EVEN if he had them, and doing so with a rocket or plane would demand a complete US retalization.

saddam was content to sit on his ass and live out his days.

there was no WMD threat, and predicting a future intent is laughable. if the US can predict the future intent of saddam now, why couldnt they predict osama? why couldnt they predict sadam when they were supporting him? or iran? pathetic.

SirRiff

[djpark121]

saddam has been sitting on his ass for 12 years with his country under no-fly getting bombed. the hasnt moved or attacked anyone. so he obviously has no intent to start a war.

A fool knows that just because Saddam didn't move or attack anyone, it doesn't mean he doesn't want to start a war. Btw, You say this without remembering Kuwait don't you?

saddam was content to sit on his ass and live out his days.

Killing people left and right. Your contention is that Saddam is getting old and would have no intention of using WMDs. Pathetic.

[KrustyKidd]

if all it takes is third world technology and accusations of intent, there are about 30 nations that could be invaded right now.

any high school lab in a major city can make dangerous germs. its easy.

any nation will have the ability to make basic chemicals.

was his intent to spray someone with germs??

how long is his plan going to take? he has put off his programs for years now, he is not getting any younger, he has no means to deliver WMDS EVEN if he had them, and doing so with a rocket or plane would demand a complete US retalization.

saddam was content to sit on his ass and live out his days.

there was no WMD threat, and predicting a future intent is  laughable. if the US can predict the future intent of saddam now, why couldnt they predict osama? why couldnt they predict sadam when they were supporting him? or iran? pathetic.

SirRiff

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/275/wash/U...evidence:.shtml

''We have not found at this point actual weapons,'' Kay said after briefing Congress behind closed doors. ''It does not mean we've concluded there are no actual weapons.''

''In addition to intent, we have found a large body of continuing activities and equipment that were not declared to the U.N. inspectors when they returned in November of last year,'' he said.

''I'm not pleased by what I heard today, but we should be willing to adopt a wait-and-see attitude and that's the only alternative we really have,'' said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said of the Bush administration's justification for going to war: ''Did we misread it, or did they mislead us, or did they simply get it wrong? Whatever the answer is, it's not a good answer.''

KK

Well Riff, he had an ongoing program, was trying to develop missiles capable of hitting places like Cairo, Damascus, Tel Aviv, Ridyah and pretty much anywhere he wanted to intimidate. None of it decvlared to the UN. Just keeping the stuff around in case the US lets the heat off maybe? That's what his scientists have said along with this physical evidence.

As for the weapons themselves, well bad int maybe or possibly they still might be found.

saddam has been sitting on his ass for 12 years with his country under no-fly getting bombed. the hasnt moved or attacked anyone. so he obviously has no intent to start a war.

Riff, I can't believe that you, who are normally well argumented would say this. Here, let me try it;

A neighbor has a pit bull who bites people whenever he is let off the leash or not tied up. With the neighborhood full of children who play the folk there wanted him destroyed. The owner convinces all that if he keeps him fenced in and stops training him as an attack dog they will not destroy him. In the meantime the owner has, (unknown to the neighbors) been training Fido to bite harder and teases him with games so that although not the threat he was before he is still potentially dangerous to the small children in the area. All he needs ins the OK to let him back on the street.

After spending six months fenced in his yard the man who owns him says;

"Fido has been sitting on his ass for six months he hasnt moved or attacked anyone. so he obviously has no intent to bite anyone."

Well, I guess that scince Fido has been good (through forced confinement and the lack of opportunity to be bad) he will always be good. The people say and let him out.

I don't imagine that there is any sanity whatsoever in the rational of my hypothetical neighborhood population so why would it be different in Saddam's case?

I guess you would have to read up a bit on history of Iraq in the eighties and ninties Riff. Saddam has a pattern going and from the stuff uncovered the pattern was still going. As for him not getting younger his sons and the Regieme (surely you have heard that word used before) would still be in place and possed virtually the same threat as he, if not worse.

As for predicting stuff we went over this before. You can only work with what you have and white magic is not in the arsenal of intelligence. Saddam was a threat, he had a history of repeat offenses, did not co orperate with the international community and the intelligence of the day when combined pointed towards continuing procurement of WMD and material. We have found the material and the infastructure to continue the programes of manufacture as well as delivery of material he had but not the weapons. That alone is in violation of the UN resolutions and is a legal basis for the action taken. Sorry, Bush might have unknowingly been wrong about the WMD themselves but we will have to wait for that one.

[KrustyKidd]

whatever weapons the iraqis may had had were primative and useless in any real war.

any nation has the capability to acquire or produce simple germs and rockets. we cant go around the world invading every nation with a high school biology program. technology has advanced and starting wars to make you safe is just as likely to destroy the world given enough time.

Riff, once again you and I are covering the same ground as if you had a memory lapse from the last time we discussed this issue. First, Saddam's large and ill equipped third rate military WAS a big threat to the area's even less large and even more ill equipped militarys. Nothing he had needed to be Space Technology to be a threat to his neighbors. As well, he was working on some missiles (unknown and illegal by UN resolutions) that were capable of hitting targets all throughout the ME. Saddam, throughout his lifetime invaded other countries, tried to build superguns, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and such all to assist him in being the leader of the Arab world.

Now why should the US care about the Arab world?

That's called an area of America's strategic interest. It's where they get a lot of oil from and trade goes both ways.

If Saddam took over say, Kuwait again once the US had pulled out, how many times is the US supposed to mobilize for this guy before he gets the message? Anyhow, he could point a missile at SA and another at Damascus or Tel Aviv and intimidate the US into not taking action. Did he have a nuc or nerve agent in the nose cones? Maybe he had nothing, wouldn't matter would it because nobody would take the chance and Kuwait would be under his boot . Then how much oil would he control? Lots. Maybe even enough to control world prices and thus the economy. All that with a bunch of Nerve Agent? I don't have a fireplace and like most of the first world I'm dependent on an oil based economy. So is our stock market, my pension funds, the trucks that bring our food to the grocery store. I don't want to conceed control of that to him. I don't want to see the world economy being run by Saddam.

now, you just cant hide a ton of WMD in the ground in a garbage bag then dig it up again and throw it at someone. without the technology to use WMDs effectively the nobody can kill lots of people. iraqs weapons are so out of date and ineffective they could only be dangerous to teh civilian kurds who have nothing. it would be impossible for iraq to emply WMDs on the scale the US fears. they are a third world nation. saddam could only threaten local areas, not even regional and certinaly not international. and he was obviously a survivor, not a suicide bomber, he liked the good life and was not crazy enough to attack israel or kuwait knowing it would require a full US retalization. he was contained,

Now the threat to America. Saddam supports terrorists. He pays terrorists, he hates America for two reasons; they deny him his rightful place as ruler of a greater Arabia like Salladine and two they refuse to allow him to take over any country he pleases. The third one I did not include is the greater cause of Palistine and Israel which he couldn't give a shit about but uses nicely for PR purposes.

He had not ceased his WMD manufacturing progams and whether the stuff stores well of not is pretty moot when you can make as much whenever you want once sanctions are lifted. To give a small amount to a Islamic Jihad dude to use on Israel is fine I guess in your books. What if he gives a 45 gallon drum of it and only half of it makes it to Gaza. Where did the rest go Riff? Think the PLO or Hamas might trade it for food, money, arms, girls, boys ..... what? To whom? Al Queda? The bloody IRA for all we know but rest assured it would probably end up in America someday and in some devious fashion. That to me was justification enough to shut this bastard down.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear KK,

I believe one of the telling signs about WMDs and Iraq are the hard and solid facts about exactly how much WMD materiel was already 'exported' before the Iraqi invasion.

Saddam had:

Previous WMDs.

Used them.

Had ample emnity towards 'the Zionist Entity'

Had ample emnity towards the US.

Has he exported WMDs? No. They most certainly would have been used by now.

How much time elapsed after Resolution 1441 before invasion? 30 days. Yet the US inspection team wants 9 more months?

Besides, the military repercussions of resolution 1441 were lifted from resolution from 1991!

[KrustyKidd]

Good observation Lonius. That makes perfect sense. That does not mean that they have not been exported though.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear KK,

You are correct, yet it would seem to me that a suicide terrorist would not have any qualms about 'the morality of WMDs'.

Even Osama Bin Laden couldn't procure them, else he would have used them. They would have been far more difficult to track than passenger lists.

[SirRiff]

what are you people talking about???

SADDAM WAS BITCHSLAPPED!

his "army" would desert at teh first sign of trouble if they could.

his weapons were just the same as 20 other third world nations, machine guns, land mines, mortars and so on. no WMDs.

whatever he did in 1991, he certainly learned his lesson, he was SITTING ON HIS ASS for 12 years.

what was he gonig to do, out wait the US influence in the region? the US had been there since 1991, adn there was no reason to believe they were leaving. that much is obvious since they came 1/2 way accross the world to kick his butt in the first place.

i dont think that saying he had the capacity to carry out a decent conventional attack is realistic. if he was some cracy fanatical leader like hitler, he would have dont it by now or died trying. he wasnt. he liked the good life and his palaces.

so we have this aging dictator, with a third world army, who has sat there for 12 years doing nothing.

what was his intent?

i dont know, and you know what? IT DOESNT MATTER

why?

because he would not have had the OPPORTUNITY to move on his intent.

he obviously didnt have massive WMD stockpiles, all the US reports admit that.

could he have had programs that he stopped 12 years ago? yeah, he could have.

were they of any use? NO.

they were stored away and abandoned, and certainly were not pumping out real WMDs before the war.

was he gong to wait another decade, get out the old high school equipment, and start over again?

well hell, any high schoo in europe given 10 years could make enough disease germs to kill hundreds of people.

that line of "intent" is so vauge and of such low thresehold that almost ANY nation on earth except Canada or switzerland could be accused of that.

lets compare it to the US conventional wars.

they bombed the hell out of vietnnam and killed 1 million civilians, not to mention institutinalized the use of war crimes in teh jungle

secrety sent weapons to osamas rebels in afganistan in the 80s

secretly assisted in a coup in iran in 1953 (shows intent)

secretly assisted in a coup in Chile on setp 11, 1973 (ironic)

'

secretly supported saddam while he first starting gassing an killing his own people

secretly sold weapons to iran to fight saddam.

and not to mention the numerous other coups in south american

the huge amout of misery the US has SECRETLY spread just by conventional weapons, secret coups, and supporting dictators, blows saddam out of the water.

hell, numerous secret coups shows just as much intent as saddam hiding test tubes in gardens.

this war was just following through on strategic and political philosophies. nothing more.

SirRiff

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear SirRiff,

I agree with most of what you state, however: Many (and especially the US) argue that 'the means justifies the end' and therefore overlook brutalities in favour of their own end. When the 'end' is something they dislike in an 'enemy', they will not confront that 'end', but rather attack the means, even if they had employed those same means.

[KrustyKidd]

what was he gonig to do, out wait the US influence in the region? the US had been there since 1991, adn there was no reason to believe they were leaving. that much is obvious since they came 1/2 way accross the world to kick his butt in the first place.

i dont think that saying he had the capacity to carry out a decent conventional attack is realistic. if he was some cracy fanatical leader like hitler, he would have dont it by now or died trying. he wasnt. he liked the good life and his palaces.

Dam Riff. How many times do we have to go over the same thing? He was a well heeled dictator because he had a hundred thousand US soldiers on his doorstep ready to pounce on his ass if he moved an inch. No wonder he was a good boy. You are right that he was not a fanatical leader like Hitler in that he only killed a million and a half people so was, in comparrison an amatuer. You have to remember that even with his decimated third rate military he still posed a terrible threat to those countries which surrounded him as they had all smaller, less effective third rate armies.

In closing this brief rehashing of the same responses to the same arguments you have put forth over and over, I would add that in order to contain Saddam indefinitely the US would have to remain indefinitely on his borders. As the UN was not going to foot the bill why should America? Furthermore in the event that he died of old age you know that his two son's had at least the evil in them that he possesed so saying that his dictatorship would die may be true, but a worse one would more than likely evolve.

[KrustyKidd]

Tripped over this article probably just like these guys tripped over the weapons LOL. This is everyday stuff to Kay and his crew in Iraq. No French connection? LOL, I won't even try to make anybody like the left eat any words. This kind of stuff just keeps on comming out of the woodwork. I'll dig up the hundreds of Al Queda that were training in Iraq in a few minutes.

rench Weapons Dated 2001

NewsMax has obtained exclusive photographs proving that Iraq violated a U.N. Security Council ban on importing weapons. The photographs show a wide variety of imported weapons with production dates as recent as 2001.

A U.S. military inspection team that visited an Iraqi air force munitions site in late September 2003 took the photographs. The site, located in the Suni triangle near Baghdad, has at least 13 concrete bunkers filled with missiles, bombs and bomb-fusing devices.

U.S. military teams uncovered several examples of U.N. violations, including a number of French bomb fuses with a production date of "2001-Sep-5."

The French-made aerial bomb fuses had documentation noting that the devices were produced in 2001. The French bomb fuses were stored in a box stating the manufacture date was 1985 in an apparent effort to mislead U.N. and U.S. inspectors.

Cluster Bombs

Another series of photos shows that U.S. inspection teams discovered a cache of South African CB470 cluster bombs. According to the declaration made in November 2002 by Saddam Hussein, Iraq had no such weapons.

Saddam denied that he had cluster bombs but U.S. State Department photos prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom showed that Iraqi Air Force engineers were working on modifying conventional cluster bombs into chemical weapons.

Cluster bombs carry a large number of "bomblets" or "sub-munitions," small, softball-sized grenades that separate from the main bomb unit. The falling bomblets then shower a large area with explosions.

Cluster bomb technology can be adapted to chemical or biological warfare by replacing the conventional explosive submunitions with biotoxin-armed bomblets.

Russian Bombs

Another example was a large quantity of KMG-U cluster bomb dispensers developed in Russia by the Spetztekhnika Vympel NPO in Moscow and manufactured by Bazalt State Research and Production Enterprise.

The Iraqi KMG-U dispensers were armed with the PTAB2.5 anti-tank bomblets and AO2.5 bomblets. According to the Russian manufacturer, the KMG-U dispenser and submunitions were not available for export until 1993. However, there are no reported export sales.

The U.S. teams also found fully active Russian-made AA-8 air-to-air missiles, French-made Durandal anti-runway rocket bombs, Russian anti-personnel cluster bomblets and huge quantities of unguided rockets. Many of the munitions were piled into large heaps or simply scattered over the open countryside.

The condition of the find illustrates the huge task faced by U.S. forces as they try to disarm Iraq. Saddam loyalists could easily obtain and use the munitions found lying in the open desert against American forces.

Moreover, the discrepancies between documentation, box markings and actual items found show that an intentional effort was made by Iraqi troops to mislead U.N. inspection teams. In some cases false shipping documents written in English were discovered with the weapons.

In addition, the effort to find chemical or biological weapons is being hampered by the vast quantity of conventional munitions stored in dangerous conditions. The Iraqi army was well-known for storing chemical weapons with its conventional explosives.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear KK,

I am not sure to whom 'on the left' you refer, but France did have huge interests in Iraqi military defense. They also sell arms without qualms, as do almost all arms dealers. TotalFinaElf would have given some of those munitions as gifts if it thought it would ensure billins in oil monies, as per existing contract. I'm sure it was TotalFinaElf that helped twist the gov'ts arm against intervention in Iraq. As any good 'Business' would do.

Cluster bombs used as a delivery vehicle for WMDs? Possible, highly unlikely. How many bombers of fighter/bombers did Iraq use/employ against The US/Uk? How many could have struck Israel? I believe the answer is zero.

Many 'factual'charges against Iraq are based on 'possibly could have'. Hardly proof.

[KrustyKidd]

No, not proof of him being a stategic threat but remember the nieghborhood. Third rate armies, rations delivered in a series of dump trucks (seen it with my own eyes) one has turnips, next has carrots, next has bottles of water and so on. Armies equipped with Korean war era weapons. It doesn't take much of an edge to be more powerful than your neighbors. That was what Saddam sought. He had no illusions of taking over Texas militarilly.

The things I quoted were all weapons he was forbidden to have and that he had said over nad over he did not have. Blix couldn't find any of it. So far they have found in the forbidden (and justification for war) missile programs beyond 150 km, nuclear programs still in progress, chemical programs still in progress and these. Nothing like being caught naked with the farmers daughter but ishowing enough intent that we all know he didn't give a damm about any or all resolutions. Wonder what he would have done next when the US had left? Turned everything in to the UN?