This just occurred to me! I can’t imagine why it took so long. It seems to me that the anti-Bush/anti-Iraq war/and general war-on-terrorism posters to these forums almost uniformly slam Bush and his administration vis-a-vis the fact that no significant WMD have been found in Iraq, which gives the impression that they believe the war would have been justified if WMD had indeed been found; yet many of these same posters are quick to condemn those of us who perceive a synergy between Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaeda as being idiots who have fallen for Bush’s war propaganda, and claim such things as “Bin Laden would never purchase weapons from a secularist such as Hussein;” or that “there has never been a relationship shown between Hussein and Bin Laden;” and that “if Hussein were ever perceived as having provided WMD to al-Qaeda, he would have hell to pay via the U.S. response and would therefore never be so foolish,” etc., etc., etc.
So, which is it? Would finding WMD’s in Iraq cause these posters to do an about face and proclaim that Iraqi WMD’s were indeed a threat and we were justified in invading Iraq after all, or would they then simply claim there is no evidence Iraq would have provided al-Qaeda with WMD and we still should never have invaded Iraq because Iraqi WMD’s posed us no threat?
So, you can’t have it both ways. Would finding WMD’s in Iraq have justified the war? Or would it have made no difference because you’re just flat out against the war in the first place and this is just an argument you use to try to discredit Bush’s motives and/or truthfulness, and you would then just fall back on the “no evidence of a relationship” argument to decry the war in Iraq, thereby exposing the hypocrisy of the “no WMD’s found” stance you use to assail the war effort?
It’s perfectly consistent to have been against the war for general reasons, such as it not being a good idea to destabilize an already volatile region with a war, especially without a viable (or, indeed, any) plan for how to improve the situation after the major battles were over, AND to criticize Bush for the fact that not only was his excuse to go to war flimsy, it turned out to be false on top of everything else.
Hell, I don’t know, Starv. Some mornings, when I get up, hating freedom is the most important thing, you know? Some other days, its the glowing light that effuses from the presence of George, the Shining One. Other times, its shallow, puerile and inane accusations that would insult the intelligence of a crack smoking hamster.
Exactly. You just stated two atrocities stacked on top of each other. If you took one away, there’d just be one atrocity left in your set. How is that a paradox?
The reason the Bushies manipulated the WMD intelligence was in order to convince people that Iraq was a threat. I believed Iraq had kept some WMD but never that they were a threat. It’s difficult to be intimidated by a country you have not only recently beaten like a gong but where you actually still have a military presence. Remember we were still flying missions over their territory. Iraq was contained. They weren’t a threat.
WMD doesn’t change that so it doesn’t matter if we find some now. It doesn’t justify the invasion, that is. It certainly does matter. Administration critics keep harping on it because there are people who still don’t realize that what type of amoral politicians are running the White House. It’s a political ploy.
Er… why can’t it be both? Why can’t someone say “Saddam doesn’t have nukes, and even if he did, he wouldn’t give them to bin Laden?”
Also, why would finding WMD retroactively justify the war? If there wasn’t enough evidence to justify the war at the time, then the war was unjustified because it was based on flimsy or false evidence. I expect my government to know what they’re doing before they spend my tax dollars and my fellow citizens’ lives on a war, rather than just starting with a guess and hoping they’ll eventually be proven right.
Why can’t I have it both ways? Because you said so? Both the nonexistance of WMDs and the complete lack of evidence of collaboration with Al Qaeda paint a picture of Bush being completely wrong.
Only if he had credible evidence before the war that these WMDs existence. I wouldn’t give Bush the benefit of hindsight.
If police storm into a random house and find a meth lab, the fact that they got lucky doesn’t retroactively justify the illegal search nor does it justify any similar illegal searches in the future.
Not quite. One “atrocity” is decried in such a way as to imply that the war would have been at least understandable, if not actually justified, if it had turned out to exist. To these people I would say, do you mean what you say or don’t you? If not, you are being either dishonest or hypocitical…and either way you lose credibility.
My position before the invasion was that Bush had not proven that Iraq had WMDs or was a threat to the US, therefore he had no legal justification for an attack on sovereignty even if he were to retroactively find WMDs.
It’s like a cop searching a house without a warrant. Finding something still does not justify the search.
So no, dude, there is no inconsistency on my part. I am critical of Bush both for lying about the WMDs and for invading another country in defiance of the UN Charter. Even if WMDs were suddenly found, the invasion would still be illegal. You have to prove your case for invasion before you start killing people, not afterwards.
I simulposted with Blalron but made virtually the identical argument complete with the same police search analogy. Is that a coincidence or is this just such a well travelled path around here that the answers write themselves?
I think a lot of people in this country supported Bush in forcing the issue on having the UN inspectors going in searching for WMDs. However, they only had a few short months to look, with Iraq eventually knuckling under to all the requests they made, and yet Bush pulled them out and went to war regardless.
He refused to keep searching through the summer and onwards. The matter would have started becoming clearer that there was little if any threat within a few months. The issue of WMD’s might have been resolved without going to war, although I suspect over time Saddam would have blown his cool and probably brought war upon his country anyway.
Well, then, how would you define evidence? IANAL, but it appears to me that in court it is something that tends to lend reasonable weight to a certain conclusion or belief. Iraq’s neighbors all thought he had WMD (a belief he himself fostered); the U.N. thought he had WMD; most of Europe thought he had WMD; the U.S. intelligence agencies thought he had WMD; and he played games for 12 years with weapons inspectors, including a period of time when there were none because he kicked them all out and was allowed to get away with it, and certainly WMD development and/or manufacture could reasonably be thought to have occurred during that time; and he had shown a propensity to use WMD against his enemies, even in his own country. I would think all of this would more than qualify as evidence by any definition I’ve ever known of.
This doesn’t even make sense. We didn’t storm randomly into Iraq; we haven’t found WMD; we haven’t gotten lucky and claimed this luck made us right; and we haven’t gone charging into any other countries that I know of.
A better analogy would be police storming into a crack house well known in the neighborhood to be a crack house; a house where crack has been readily available in the past; a house whose owner has implied it’s a crack house to his neighbors; and a house that surveillance has shown has a strong possibility of being a crack house…and then upon busting into the place, finds its owner either moved his crack someplace else or indeed no longer had any. Either way, I don’t believe anyone would feel the police acted without sufficient evidence.
The police go to a judge to get a warrant to search this place which has been a crack house in the past. However, the judge tells the police there isn’t probable cause to believe that it is currently a crack house.
However, the Police Chief have a “gut feeling” that there are major drug deals going on in there. So he tells his men to storm the place anyway even after they were denied a warrant. Nothing is found.
I knew the responses I’m getting here were going to happen and I should have addressed their liklihood in my OP. I am not talking about those of you who have always professed disagreement on both counts. With those of you who have always professed disagreement on both counts, I have no quarrel. You are entitled to your opinion as I am to mine.
I’m talking about those who imply by the nature of their complaints that since no WMD have been found, we had no business going in. I’ve seen this time and time again, both in these forums and in the news media in general. The fact no WMD have been found seems to be the primary justification for condemnation of the war.
No, the reason people are complaining about it is because Dubya said he KNEW there were WMD, and THAT was his main reason. That “Oh yeah, they have them, we just can’t tell you our sources, or show you are evidence.”
Now, we find out we’ve been lied to. THAT doesn’t bother you?
I’m not a liberal, but I didn’t buy the WMD threat in the months of 2002 leading up to the war. Most people (including me) expected Iraq had some level of WMDs, but I always thought that country would be pretty far down the list of likely places Islamic terrorists would go shopping for them. Iran, NK, the Central Asian nations of the former USSR, or even Pakistan would be a much better and easier source.
There were lots of reasons to be pro-war and lots of reasons to be anti-war. I don’t believe focusing on just the WMD issue is the catch-all you think it is.
Blalron, I really don’t think so. Under the circumstances I’ve described – circumstances very similar to those regarding Hussein’s Iraq – I can’t imagine any judge taking the position that there was no probable cause.
And like I said, how do you define evidence? Short of GWB standing in the desert with WMD in his hands, there doesn’t seem to be any definition of evidence that you would accept. I believe that given the circumstances, Bush had more than enough credible evidence to take action.
And one thing that rarely seems to get mentioned around here is the tremendous loss of life could very likely occur in the event the Bush administration fails to confront every threat. I damn sure wouldn’t want the job of trying to keep all the people in this country safe. And if I had, I’d take it damn seriously and I’m sure I wouldn’t feel I had time to continue to play hide-and-seek with a WMD using dictator who happens to be the next-door neighbor of al-Qaeda, and who hates the U.S. with a passion, and who has defied U.N. sanctions and weapons inspectors for 12 years.
And in regard to giving the inspectors a few more months, what would make anyone reasonably expect that a few more months would have provided absolute proof one way or the other, when 12 years of U.N. resolutions, restrictive sanctions, and on-again, off-again weapons inspections failed to do so?
How about actually proving that Iraq had a fucking WMD? Not suspecting it, not hoping for it, not wishing it, actually proving it as a certainty.
You are incorrect on the law.
Iraq’s neighbors all thought he had WMD (a belief he himself fostered); the U.N. thought he had WMD; most of Europe thought he had WMD; the U.S. intelligence agencies thought he had WMD; and he played games for 12 years with weapons inspectors, including a period of time when there were none because he kicked them all out and was allowed to get away with it, and certainly WMD development and/or manufacture could reasonably be thought to have occurred during that time; and he had shown a propensity to use WMD against his enemies, even in his own country. I would think all of this would more than qualify as evidence by any definition I’ve ever known of.
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Un ispectors were in country searching before the invasion and were pulled out by Bush because they couldn’t find anything. The rest of your above paragraph is legally meaningless. It doesn’t mean jackshit what anybody thought, you would actually have to prove it.
The fuck we didn’t.
We were answering your own hypothetical, dude. You asked “what if” we had found WMDs. The answer is that even if we had found WMDs the invasion was still unjustified.
You are completely wrong on the law. No warrant = illegal search. Period. No exceptions.
In the case of Iraq we’re talking about a “crackhouse” which last had crack 12 years ago (crack which it bought from the cops, btw) and had shown no sign of running any more “crack” business for years. The fucking pigs busted in without a warrant and they didn’t find any rocks. Even if they had found the rocks, they still had no right to bust in without a warrant (and a “warrant” in this analogy means the authorization of the UN).
The US is not even really the cops. The UN is the cops. The US and its “coalition” is nothing more than a vigilante action.
Now, you can disagree with all that. I really don’t care (even though you’re wrong), but in your OP you asked if finding WMDs would alter us “liberals’” position on whether the war was justified. The answer is no, and there is no contradiction. There were two wrongs committed by Bushco with this war. One was that he invaded without proving his case, the other is that he lied about his case. BOTH of those wrongs will still hold true even if he stumbls on some WMDs tomorrow. He STILL wouldn’t have proved his case before the ar and he STILL would have lied about the certainity of his case. He said, for instance, that he knew right where these WMDs were located. Was that the truth? At least one recent report says that many of the sites identified by the Bushies as weapons sites from satellite images turned out to be chicken farms.
Actually, it doesn’t bother a lot of people. As far as they’re concerned, the ends justify the means; Iraqis are, or will be, a lot better off, a vicious dictator is off the throne, so who cares?