My take on it, not that I expect you to agree, is that Bush had every reason to believe Iraq had them, thus his claim of “knowing” it, if indeed he ever put it that way. His information may have been inaccurate; Hussein may have moved his WMD and laboratories to another country; or he may have hidden them in Iraq so well they haven’t been found. Who knows? The point is, after 12 years of hide-and-seek with the inspectors and the overwhelming belief of Iraq’s neighbors, Europe, the U.N., the U.S. intelligence agencies (and even Clinton himself, apparently) all believed Iraq to posess WMD, and the consequences of waiting and having them fall into the hands of terrorists was simply too great to risk.
Don’t you think the very fact that the U.N. wanted to continue inspecting for WMDs is pretty solid evidence that they weren’t sure of their existence? If the U.N. thought it was a slam dunk, and thought invading Iraq was the right decision at the time, why wasn’t Bush able to get his resolution passed?
Why do you guys always want to go back in time to justify the war? In the current situation, Saddam did NOT kick out the inspectors. In fact, Bush kicked them out so he could start the invasion.
The criticism of Bush is that he acted unilaterally and rashly, without consensus and without sufficient evidence. The fact that no WMDs have been found is just more evidence that such is the case. It doesn’t make the case, it just makes it all the more obvious.
Well, golly gee, Starv, if he had so much credible evidence, where did it all go? By “credible evidence”, do you mean that dog and pony show that Colin Powell presented to the UN? I remember that, do you? Then you remember that not one…not one!…of the accusations leveled panned out.
And while we were all in a dither about Saddam’s atomic anthrax invisible pink unicorns of Death…our very bestest buddy, good ol’ true blue Pakistan, is conducting a nuclear Tupperware party! Death on a stick, get 'em while they’re hot!
War is the method by which the stupid and cruel visit suffering on the innocent. Any nation with any claim to a shred of human decency will resort to it only under the most clear and dreadful circumstances. War doesn’t grade on the curve, there is no “gentelmens C”, no Special Olympics where you earn an “attaboy!” for trying your hardest.
Thousands of people are needlessly and pointlessly dead. There are no more obscene words in the language. We have squandered lives, money, and prestige and all we have earned is the contempt of reasonable people world wide.
“Credible evidence”, my ass! You can’t polish a turd, Beavis.
Those were anthrax chickens! Being bred and trained for intercontinental flight! Chickens with albatross wingspans and capable of catapult-assisted takeoff. Then America would learn to cringe, looking to the skies and dreading the Buck-buck-buddy-YAWK of Doom!
He did put it that way and he was lying. He did NOT have “every reason” to think that. He was told alll along that the intel was caveated.
The Kay report says that there is no evidence that weapons were either moved or hidden. After more than a year of investigation an questioning of key Iraqi figures (including Saddam hmself), we have still turned up no trace of labs or stockpiles or even info about anything being moved. It now sounds like Saddam had been running a bluff and that no programs even existed.
The pointb you seem to be missing is that GWB is not the sheriff. he does not get to make decisions about who he can invade or who he can’t without UN approval. He KNEW that the intel about WMDs was sketchy. He knew the imminent threat" was bullshit. Don’t make excuses for him.
Your OP has been answered anyway. The question of who was right about the justifications is really beside the point of whether war protestors have contradicted themselves.
Ah…here we are at the point when Diogenes cames flying in spouting invectives in all directions like a loose cannon and making very little if any sense. To wit:
Cite?
Cite? Prove they were pulled out because they couldn’t find anything. They were pulled out because Bush felt he could no longer risk playing games with Hussein over whether he did or didn’t.
Again, cite?
It means “jackshit” to me, as you so eloquently put it, and it would to you, too, if your town got vaporized because Bush turned a blind eye to the potential alliance between Hussein and al-Qaeda and failed to stop an al-Qaeda attack using weapons obtained from Iraq.
Quote: “This doesn’t even make sense. We didn’t storm randomly into Iraq;”
Do you even know the definition of “random?” (Man, this is like shooting fish in a barrel.)
I see. And explain please, how Blalron’s (flawed, in my opinion) analogy has come to be an absolute in this discussion.
This is silly. You have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever when or where Iraq last had WMD. You have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever what it may have been doing to develop them. In short, you have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever!
I would put my analogy regarding this so-called crack house (or “crackhouse” as you put it, but then by the tone of most of your posts, I guess you’d know) up against yours to any reasonable person any day.
If so, they’re impotent cops that failed to act for 12 years and after resolution after resolution, and if you think I want the fate of my city in the hands of a self-serving cowardly global organization who won’t have to pay the price in lives and destruction if it’s proven to be wrong, you are sorely mistaken.
Cite? Prove he lied. As usual, you are simply stating your own prejudiced take on what he had every reason to believe was true (as I’ve described at least a couple of times now…remember, Europe; the U.N; Iraq’s neighbors; our intelligence agencies, etc.?) as a lie. Your opinion does not equal fact. This is something you continually seem to be unaware of in your posts all over these forums.
::yawns:: Cite?
I don’t know…and neither do you. It does seem to me that they may have been moved, or he could have been mistaken for any number of reasons. Neither constitues a lie.
What…Bush himself analyzes satellite imagery? And didn’t a previous president, having pretty much the same intelligence gathering resources as Bush, bomb an aspirin factory or something like that? Did you come on here railing about him lying about what was there then?
From where I’m sitting, the anti-war protesters have been proven correct, Bush has been caught lying about the reasons to invade Iraq, and Starving Artist is apparently in dire need of a few square meals.
“Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.”
–George W. Bush, September 12, 2002
“I’m not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein – because he had a weapons program.”
–George W. Bush, May 6, 2003
“But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.”
–George W. Bush Interview with TVP Poland, 5/30/2003
All of these statements have, needless to say, been proven false.
Yeah, I know, I know, you want to split hairs over whether or not Bush lied, or was simply misled by others. Putting aside the simple matrer that Bush did lie (meaning he made statements with intent to deceive), that means the President of the United States is either a liar or an idiot. Do you really want to ally yourself with such a character?
Another thing that somehow never seems to get mentioned around here is, if Hussein was so innocent, and he knew U.S. patience was running out given our concerns about WMD being used in terrorist attacks, why didn’t he just open up completely and say, “Sure, come on in. I have nothing to hide, as I told you. Look wherever you want,” followed by complete and open cooperation all the way down the line. If anyone was in the position to avoid this war, it was Hussein. Why is he being given a pass?
And did not GWB give Hussein one last chance to bail. He informed him he had 48 hours to leave and avoid war. Hussein demurred. This 48 hours could have been much better spent springing a surprise attack, as opposed to giving Hussein and his henchmen even more time to prepare. This was very disadvantageous to us militarily as it gave him advance knowledge of when the attack would occur and allowed him to make preparations which undoubtedly cost additional U.S. lives. I’m sure GWB wanted to avoid war (and just for the record, I don’t really expect many here to agree) and felt the risk was worth it in the hope Hussein would come to his senses and leave to live out his life in asylum somewhere.
But that didn’t happen, and here we are with all of you claiming Bush was just faunching at the bit to lie to us and send young men and women off to die just because he wanted to be a cowboy.
Sheesh!
This impression you’ve formed may well be the crux of your biscuit.
While I’m not one to heedlessly “slam Bush and his administration vis-a-vis the fact that no significant WMD have been found in Iraq,” I thought that I may emit a spark to cast a brief light on the subject.
I’m as surprised as many at the relative dearth of WMD finds in Iraq.
I objected to the invasion for several reasons. The gist of many of them revolves around what good the war would do the US. I’m old-fashioned like that. I think that American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States? Without a threat to the US from Iraq, I couldn’t for the life of me see which ‘just interests’ the invasion would serve. SO while I assumed that there were indeed Iraqi WMDs of some sort, (though I thought it was highly unreasonable and unprofessional for the Admin to’ve used the upper end of the worst case scenarios for their public statements involving the quantities of WMDs), I noted that the NIE on Iraq said that Hussein wasn’t about to initiate an attack on the US, not even by proxy. When you add this to Dr. Rice’s comments about how Iraq was effectively deterred by the threat of national “obliteration”, and Cheney’s comment re terrorism and Iraq- “Saddam Hussein’s bottled up”- then you end up with a picture that doesn’t show much pf a threat to the US from Iraq.
Without this threat, what are the ‘just interests’ of the US in invading Iraq.
Rather than Iraqi WMDs themselves, I’ve been more concerned about the lack of a threat from Iraqi WMDs.
The lack of significant WMD finds only serves to further illustrate the lack of a threat to the US from Iraq. (Or maybe it just colors in between the lines of an already illustrated picture?)
What exactly is a synergy? Is it in the same class of things as a “contact”?
Personally, I think that a lot of very smart people fell for it, too. 9-11 was quite a shock for many people. We were approached while we were still fresh in mourning and feeling vulnerable. Our emotional turmoils were exploited for the purposes of selling the invasion. Intellect is no sure defense against the way that emotions can cloud issues and judgements.
This actually was the very same argument used by the learned Dr. Rice. She said that Iraq would face ‘national obliteration’ and that such a threat did indeed act as a deterrant to Hussein.
As I noted earlier, weapons, in and of themselves, do not a threat make.
Solid evidence of Hussein arming al Qaeda against America is something that I often fervently hope for. I’d rather be wrong than right about this whole affair.
No, the weapons in and of themselves wouldn’t justify the war for me. There’d have to be a threat to the Us from these weapons.
This question has several parts. The answer to the question as it now stands is simply no. But, given the complexity of the question’s phrasing, an objection to even one part renders the whole thing inoperative. So, please allow me to respond to each element individually.
I’m not ‘flat out’ against the war. I just think that we should wait til it’s in our best interests to protect our just interests before we go to war. As soon as this happens, I’m all for it.
There’s nothing further anyone can do for ‘Bush’s motives and/or truthfulness’. The poor, little buggers.
While there’re still some who argue his ‘truthfulness’ there’re far fewer left who’ll argue for his honesty, (which is more important, IMHO).
As to his motives, only by the fruits can we know them.
So,the reply to this would be ‘no’ as well because I don’t use the argument. If I did, Iwouldn’t use it to try to discredit ‘Bush’s motives and/or truthfulness’.
I’m going to discuss this part of the question, (‘field it’ as GHWB would say), rather than answer it, because of it’s peculiar syntactic restraints.
What you have termed the “‘no evidence of a relationship’ argument” is just a subspecies of the ‘no-threat-to-the-USA-from-Iraq’ argument, which as my original starting point, there’s not really a way that I could claim to ‘fall back’ to it. I’m more just sort of ‘still here’.
Evidence of some sort of significant relationship, (opposed to just a plain old relationship, I mean the US, itself, has had numerous, extensive, detailed, intimate and cooperative contacts as well as an operational, (though not necessarily consensual) relationship with al Qaeda.), bewteen Hussein and aQ would’ve beeen one of many possible good places to start a demonstration of a threat to the US from Iraq.
Well, given that the preceding qualifiers weren’t fulfilled, it’s impossible for anything folllowing ‘thereby’ really to have much meaning, but I’ll continue to field rather than answer.
A lack of WMDs really speaks more to the inherent shortcomings of our national securit strategy which advocates preventive wars. (Despite what the WH says, they’re NOT pre-emptive wars. There must be an imminent threat for there to be a pre-emption. Pre-emptive wars in the face of an imminent threat have been sanctioned as just wars for centuries. They require no policy or strategy changes, no endorsements from any bodies established by treaty, nor any defense to Congress, (as the GOP has repeatedly asked me to do). Pre-emptive wars are already US policy and already sanctioned under international law.
Iraq was a preventive war. Preventive wars, as oxymoronic as they are, do require policy or strategy changes, and endorsements from bodies established by treaty, and a defense before Congress.
I hope I’ve made clear how the nature of the questions you’re asking prevents you from finding the info you really seek.
You know, it’s amazing! I’ve been to your homepage and you are clearly a very funny and highly intelligent fellow. How you can come up with some of the things you say here just floors me. I’ve long had a theory that people function on two levels: one is intellectual, the other emotional…and that the two have little impact on each other. This is the only way I come up with as to how such intelligent people can be so completely out there in terms of logic.
Do you really think the difference between President Bush lying to us as a deliberate, contrived and cunning ploy to lead us into an otherwise unjustifiable war that he just couldn’t wait to fight, versus not even being misled – which implies deceit – but simply given information that ultimately turned out to be wrong much as when Clinton bombed an aspirin factory (or whatever it was. I’m sure I’ll hear shortly although it will change nothing) is hair-splitting?
Come on, I know you don’t really mean that…do you?
::reads SimonX’s post, leans back and sighs: Ahhhh…an intelligent and reasonable post from an intelligent and reasonable poster. How refreshing!
Unfortunately, time grows short and I believe I’ve addressed most of the points you bring up in posts subsequent to my OP. I apologize for whatever syntactic and/or grammatical errors populate my posts. I am but a poor singular voice (in this thread, anyway), crying out in the wilderness and slogging away against overwhelming opposition, and trying to make myself understood as best I can.
Before I leave to peruse the other forums briefly before the 3:30 Central Time lock-down, I will provide you with the definition of synergy you asked for. This from Merriam-Webster:
-
broadly: combined action or operation
-
a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct participants or elements (as resources or efforts)
I certainly have no problem whatsoever seeing a likely synergistic relationship between al-Qaeda and Hussein. While much of your post seems to concentrate on the threat posed by Iraq itself, this is not and has never been my concern. But what Dr. Rice said notwithstanding, I could very easily envision a scenario in which al-Qaeda had attacked the U.S. with a WMD it obtained from Iraq, and assuming the WMD can be traced to Iraq, Hussein claims no knowledge of it…it may be an old one he didn’t know was there and it was apparently sold to al-Qaeda by some subordinate, etc. The U.N. and the peace-at-any-cost crowd would either believe him or call for endless investigations to determine whether or not Hussein knew, and if he did what action should be taken. Then, of course, no agreement could ever be reached as to how the weapon actually fell into al-Qaeda hands nor in regard to what action should be taken. Then, if the U.S. took action on its own, after having tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people killed in a city like New York or Washington or Philadelphia, etc., it would still be reviled in pretty much the same way as it is today. “We’re looking for a cat to kick after having been attacked again; we’ve had it in for Hussein all along and have been faunching at the bit to attack him and this is the perfect excuse; we don’t care what the rest of the world thinks we should do,” etc.
Me, I’ll go with GWB and his approach any day.
I mean, reads SimonX’s post…
Sorry I forgot to give you props, Simon. 
Uh, nobody said he was “innocent”. Duh.
Actually, that’s pretty much what he did. The inspectors were being allowed to do their work, that is, until Bush told them to get out so he could invade.
He’s not being given a pass. What you’re not getting is that we don’t just get to unilaterally invade whatever country we like because it’s run by a bad guy. If there’s international consensus, and the U.N. votes to do it, yeah - then it’s possible. But that didn’t happen. That’s why Bush tried to make the case that Iraq was a threat to the U.S., so he could justify it as self defense. But his flimsy case fell apart like a house of cards. War isn’t always the answer, and just because the U.N. decides to take action other than war does not mean they’re giving anyone “a pass”. And there’s absolutely no reason Bush couldn’t have waited, and given the inspectors more time, in the interest of international relations. But he had to act like a petulant child and insist that it be done “right now”.
So? That justifies a preemptive attack?
I don’t think it was a surprise by that point. Everyone knew Bush was going to attack.
The date of the attack was not announced. We didn’t know until after it had begun.
Yeah, that’s about it.
And what you’re not getting is we didn’t invade because we didn’t like his politics. We want to make damn sure no Iraqi WMD make it into al-Qaeda hands.
As I’ve said before, the U.N. isn’t the one to pay the price in human lives and destruction should an Iraqi WMD find its way into al-Qaeda hands go off in the U.S. We have a right to defend ourselves. The U.N. had more than enough opportunities to show it meant business, and in its typical benign and impotent way, did absolutely nothing!
That’s a shocker, all right! But he had to act like a petulant child and insist that it be done “right now”.
[/quote]
You have got to be kidding! The President of the United States, a millionaire businessman, fighter pilot, Yale graduate, and two-term governor of the huge state of Texas, is a “petulent child” who just decided willy-nilly to send young American men and women off to die in Iraq because, damn it, he just doesn’t like Iraq.
Have you seen how much President Bush has aged since 9/11 the start of the war? Do you really think he would send people off to die so willy-nilly? Ridiculous!
No. It’s cuz Saddam tried to keel hiz daddy.
I agree with rjung. Either Bush is an unscrupulous liar or he’s a gullible idiot being controlled by evil forces. I can’t decide which one is worse.
You have got to be kidding! The President of the United States, a millionaire businessman, fighter pilot, Yale graduate, and two-term governor of the huge state of Texas, is a “petulent child” who just decided willy-nilly to send young American men and women off to die in Iraq because, damn it, he just doesn’t like Iraq.
Have you seen how much President Bush has aged since 9/11 the start of the war? Do you really think he would send people off to die so willy-nilly? Ridiculous!
[/QUOTE]
These arguments are pure 2003. Look through the archived threads for answers.
Well, I’ll tell you what. If they ever find WMDs, then we’ll talk.
And we all know we’re not talking about some rusty old shitcan buried in the sand since 1984! I want to see yellowcake uranium, unmanned aerial vehicles that spray biotoxins, Al Qaeda’s receipts for Iraqi dirty bombs, anything. ANYTHING! Throw us a bone here!
As oposed to the tremendus loss of life that actually did happen in the event of the Bush administration confronting a non-existant threat?
This, to me, is the weakest of the arguments by far against Osama having ties to Saddam. The back and forth cooperation among religion and government politicians has been historically legion. There are certain men who use religion as a means to achieve political gain, and I think Bin Laden is one of those. The Qu’ran clearly does not sanction the destruction of innocent life, or for that matter the lives of faithful Jews and Christians. Bin Laden’s interest is political, not religious, much like certain famous American religious leaders. The latter may not blow up buildings, but they use their positions of authority to build empires all the same. Now, he may wish to paint a picture of himself as a pious man by officially condemning secularists, but only the most naive fool would believe that the inside tent-talk is anything other than how to achieve political victory. There are ways to cooperate with the likes of Saddam without sending a message of cooperation. In fact, such surreptitioius dealings occur in diplomatic circles all the time. If worse ever came to worst, Bin Laden could always have pointed to Sadam’s “conversion” to Islam and claim that God had ordered him to reach out in conciliation, all the while condemning him if necessary. Such goings on are nothing new.
First of all, one needn’t be a liberal to take issue with Mr. Bush’s Iraq war. Why this is presented as a liberal paradox escapes me, it seems needlessly inflammatory.
There are such things as justifiable wars and there are ways to enter into them legally. What is sad in Bush’s case is that he failed to learn from his own father on the proper way to initiate a war, conduct it, and then get out.
The reason for the war, at the time the war started, was the WMDs that supposedly posed a threat to the US. This has been shown to be false. A secondary reason was the supposed connection to the War on Terrorism. No such connection has been established. A third reason was the atrocities committed by Hussein. Only the third had any validity, but then the US surrendered the only moral high ground that it had by torturing its POWs.
I would have supported this war IF these weapons were actually found and IF they posed a threat to the US or its allies and IF there was any hard linkage between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda. None of these has been shown to be true, therefore I do not see this paradox.