I am getting bored of repeating arguments to you again and again. As I, and others ,have explained several times , inspectors worked fine while they were on the ground and they destroyed large parts of Saddam’s weapons facilities. Obviously when they weren’t even on the ground they weren’t working That suggests that the right step is to get the inspectors back.
Which is it? Did inspections destroy large parts of Saddam’s weapons facilities or did they work? These are different in my book.
Working means destroying all of Saddam’s WMDs, not a lot of WMDs.
Now, heres where it gets murky. We hear it insisted that Saddam bin Laden is a madman with nothing but aggressive hatred for the USA. Can’t wait a moment longer, because he might get WMD’s. Which, apparently, he already has.
So, given this, we should have expected some WMD type attack on the US for up to eleven years now. He’s a madman, has no restraint, scoffs at the notion of retaliation…so why not?
So: either he doesn’t have these weapons or he’s not crazy. Or both.
“Working means destroying all of Saddam’s WMDs, not a lot of WMDs”
OK can you guarantee 100% that regime will change will destroy all Iraqi WMD, prevent any from being used or given to terrorists or stolen? If you can’t guarantee this then by your standards regime change won’t work.
Well, track record or not inspections haven’t worked and I don’t see anything wrong with modifying methods that don’t work even if there are unknowns in the new plans. I agree that maybe regime change isn’t a flawless method, but I’d feel more secure with a whole army of American troops doing a job similiar to that of the inspectors. Not to mention, we’ll have a voice(for a period of time) with the new Iraqi government, who will no doubt help us to account for WMD long into the future. We won’t have to rely on just our intelligence, but theirs too.
Isn’t that what we are doing now? Didn’t George put through the new resolution with the regime change clause at the end? All we need it Russia and France to get on board then vote it through the U.N. We are basically giving Saddam his last chance.
Aside from some of the safety issues of WMD, I think of our responsibility for the Iraqi people. The people in Iraq are suffering at the hands of Saddam right now. I’ve spoken to an Iraqi national before. We had long talks and I questioned her about Saddam. This was way before September 11th and she basically told me he was evil. I’ve heard the stories about him pouring gasoline down people’s throat, trying to kill his son, and she added a few things about him cutting off peoples ears. She had to make a long series of flights to make it to the U.S. Something like Iraq to Jordan to Greece to Amsterdam to London to New York to Detroit. Her husband has a price on his head cause he is in the U.S. now. Can you here the violin yet?
Even with the collateral damage caused by U.S. bombing the Iraqi people will still be better off in the end.
First of all, it’s quite possible that Saddam’s anthrax was used in the attacks on his. He has one of the leading programs in using anthrax as a weapon.
More directly, you have considered the possibilities that Saddam is not crazy or that he is totally unrestrained. You left out the most likely case – he has some restraints, but less than most leaders. We know for a fact that his sense of restraint is nothing to count on, based on his unprovoked attacks on Iran, Kuwait, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
In fact, his current resistance to inspections looks pretty insane to me. Chances are he will will be overthrown this winter. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t wind up on the wrong end of a Daisy Cutter. If he sincerely renounced WMDs he could stay in power as long as he wanted. This conduct doesn’t inspire confidence.
“Well, track record or not inspections haven’t worked…”
No the track record is precisely that inspectors worked when they were on the ground even when obstructed by Iraq. I don’t have the link someone put up some time back but they succeeded in destroying huge quantities of weapons and missiles. And this time round the negotiated conditions will be much more helpful to inspectors.
“I’d feel more secure with a whole army of American troops doing a job similiar to that of the inspectors”
Why? Soldiers don’t have any expertise here. And they will operating in an anarchic post-Saddam environment in a race against time with various rogue elements trying to get their hands on weapons. It’s a lot more risky than inspections not to mention all the other dangers.
“Even with the collateral damage caused by U.S. bombing the Iraqi people will still be better off in the end”
That is highly debatable. There are several scenarios where the Iraqi people will be worse off; for instance if there is civil war after Saddam is gone or if Iraqi resistance is stronger than expected and the US has to fight Baghdad street by street destroying most of it or if the region is destablized by greater Islamic militancy.
“Isn’t that what we are doing now?”
I don’t know. I suspect that my approach is what Colin Powell and Tony Blair want and I hope they prevail. OTOH there seem to be others in the administration who have decided on war and are want to just use the UN route as a fig-leaf. It’s hard to say what the administration really wants to do.
Before the war was over tensions between the USSR and United States/England were on the rise. Heck, less then a decade after WWII ended we had American pilots engaging Soviet pilots during the Korean War.
Marc
Really no need to provide a link, I’ve been reading long before I started posting. I recall seeing you prove that inspections did work. I didn’t really doubt it, my phrasing in my previous post was just wrong. You could say that inspections worked. The inspectors did their jobs, destroyed some weapons but didn’t really provide any type of guarantee that further weapons weren’t on their way and didn’t make anyone any less easy about Saddam.
As to American troop training, well again, I need to make myself more clear. If we have a presence in Iraq then surely we will have people with the proper knowledge to find the labs and identify the material. American troops will make that easier. Maybe they won’t be going from door to door, but its easier to spot suspicious persons or vehicles from the ground with an army of armed personel cordinated all across the country with eachother, the intelligence community and spy planes then it is with just the spy planes and the intelligence.
Well, its gonna be that way eventually anyway. Saddam is going to die one day thats providing he doesn’t start a war first or give his weapons to terrorists to use against the U.S. and/or Israel(potential nukes). His WMD of mass destruction are going to have to be accounted for by a responsible power someday. I’ll take sooner rather than later.
Well, I don’t know if I’d expect a huge civil war with an American military presence. I don’t think those oppressed by Saddam are gonna be too bummed out when he goes. They will probably be more enthuiastic about their new government if anything Of course this couldn’t be said for those with family memebers who have been on the wrong end of U.S. bombs or those who fall with Saddam, but I don’t think they are a majority of the population, especially if they are already dead. A comprehensive marshall plan will always help. From my understanding Iraq is a secular arab state not a fundamentalist Islamic state. Iraq will remain secular just as a democracy this time with no religious anti-American biases that go with fundamentalism, despite that fact that there are many muslims living there. I heard an interview with Kenneth Pollack on National Public Radio. He wrote a book about the case for regime change title(grudgingly). He stated that oil revenues would make it easier to build Iraq back up, which is another thing working in our favor. Using the example of prior Marshall plans(Japan, Germany) I’m fairly certain Iraq won’t collapse after the fall of Saddam.
Things that are published by the government are, by legal definition, not copyrighted. From time to time you might find something that is republished on a government website, but absent some evidence of that (attribution, etc.), it is fair to assume that things that appear on a .gov website are government domain.
Stoid, it’s clear that you didn’t know that – and therefore I thank you on behalf of the Reader and the SD staff for your excess of caution – we take this intellectual property stuff seriously, and we always appreciate it when our members help us out. For future reference, you can assume that anything that appears on a government website and which doesn’t have a copyright notice or which doesn’t reference an original source which has such a notice is free to be republished in its entirety in any media.
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BTW… Where is Stoid?
I’m just a newbie, but is it acceptable form around here to not respond after you post a thread?
Nope. There are myriad reasons that the U.S. never attacked the U.S.S.R. - MAD was simply one of them. Rep. Paul has an amazingly simplistic view of history.
The U.S. doesn’t have a history of attacking countries it doesn’t like simply because it can. For example, since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., the U.S. hasn’t attacked either North Korea or Cuba, even though it had a 5-year window it could attack N. Korea without fear of retaliation, and to this day Cuba could not retaliate.
Since #1 is untrue, #2 is also untrue.
Nope, they don’t.
Largely true, and the Bushies’ attempts to link Saddam to terrorism are misguided.
True. What does that prove? The police in Montgomery county, Maryland have not put that sniper behind bars. Does that mean that Maryland County supports snipers? Or just that they haven’t been able to catch said sniper?
Untrue about the chaos. As for the UN report, true, but what is the relevance?
Because we have another threat to deal with.
Not if the U.S. does things correctly.
I really don’t understand the question. Was Hitler not Hitler in 1934, when Germany had no navy or air force and a miniscule army?
In 1938, at the time of Munich, Hitler had bupkus in terms of military strength. For his planned invasion of Checkoslovakia, his invasion forces would be numerically evenly matched with the Czechs, who had significant fortifications on the border, while he would have been forced to leave a mere 5-7 divisions on the Western front to defend against approximately 100 French divisions.
But Britain and France chose not to confront Hitler, delaying 11 months until the invasion of Poland, and Germany used the time to build up its forces.
Considering that, in every single war since 1865, the country or countries the U.S. has been at war with have either had no capacity or extremely limited capacity to attack the United States, I’d say, yeah.
I am, and I’d vote for a candidate who supported that.
And how exactly have we violated the rules of the international community?
Rep. Paul is absolutely right. What we should do is invade Iraq and set up a democratic government there, and end our support for dictators in the Middle East.
The Mexican-American War
The Spanish-American War
Grenada
Panama
Again, Rep. Paul seems not to have cracked the history books.
What an asinine statement. That’s called transference of motivation. The oil company execs may see an advantage to them in a war against Iraq. It doesn’t mean that the Bush Administration has the same motivation.
Largely because our current commanding generals’ defining experience was Vietnam.
It is in violation of international law, and has violated the agreement under which the U.N. and the U.S. agreed to stop attacking it.
- The Peace of Westphalia, which allowed the rulers of an area to determine the religious beliefs of their subjects, ain’t a good basis for anything.
- The U.S. violated this “time-honored” sentiment in WWII, when it set as its war goal the unconditional surrender of Italy, Germany, and Japan. Had Hitler sued for a peace that would have left him in charge of Germany, the U.S. would have rejected it.
Yes, it was.
Sua
“If we have a presence in Iraq then surely we will have people with the proper knowledge to find the labs and identify the material”
The biggest problem will be in the first few days after the Iraqi regime falls. There will be anarchy. Many of the American troops will be exhausted and sleep-deprived. They won’t have a clue about where the weapons are. They will be in a race against time with Iraqi rogue elements and terrorists some of whom will have this knowledge. (remember that once they realize they are toast, Saddam and his loyalists will do everything to make sure that the weapons fall in the wrong hands as a final act of revenge agains the US). This is not, to put it mildly, a recipe for an orderly transfer of control of the weapons to the US. Sure, after some time the US may have a friendly government in control but by that time the worst damage will be done.
About post-Saddam Iraq there are several experts who seem to be quite pessimistic along the lines I have mentioned. There are all sorts of vicious tribal hatreds and historical feuds that the US will find hard to control especially in the long run. There are also countries like Iran and Turkey who have their own agendas. And I wouldn’t necessarily assume some kind of comprehensive nation-building effort from the Bush administration. They don’t really believe in that kind of stuff no matter what they are saying now. Just look at Afghanistan. Even though Karzai is still there, his rule is very shaky and limited. There is little guarantee that there will be a friendly regime there in the long run. The same will be true of post-war Iraq.
Cyberpundit -
I am not sure of your point. You seem to be saying that inspectors would be better than war. But the war will be fought in order to force Iraq to allow inspectors. How do we enforce, in other words, the agreement signed by Iraq that brought about the cease-fire without waging war?
You also seem to be assuming that Iraqi terrorists who have just lost a war with the US are going to be in better shape than the US is. That did not seem to be the case at the end of the Gulf War. Why do you think it will be the case now?
I’m here. I asked folks to answer and they’ve been kind enough to do so. I see a whole lot of opinion, a little willful ignorance and some interesting information. Thanks, everyone. I appreciate your efforts as I’m sure many lurkers do as well.
Howzat?
“But the war will be fought in order to force Iraq to allow inspectors”
Hardly. The hawks claim that inspections don’t work unless there is regime change. So they don’t want to allow inspectors back unless there is also war and regime change.
As to your question; any reasonably unfettered regime with access to all sites should work at least as well as “regime change”. Iraq is close to accepting this.
“You also seem to be assuming that Iraqi terrorists who have just lost a war with the US are going to be in better shape than the US is”
Huh? I am not assuming anything of the sort. The very comparison is ridiculous since the US and the terrorists are fighting a completely assymetric war with different methods, resources and goals. In Iraq, to win , the US will have to control every single site and prevent its weapons from being stolen. OTOH the terrorists win even if they manage to steal significant quantities of unconventional weapons from one site. There is nothing to indicate that Al quaeda has been so weakened that it can’t insert teams in Iraq for this purpose.
In my previous post I should have said “any reasonably unfettered inspection regime”
I think the desired outcome is that Iraq accepts inspections without limits both now, and in the foreseeable future. The current regime is the one who broke its word and refused to abide by the agreements under which the ceasefire to the Gulf War occurred.
I don’t speak for all “hawks”, but Saddam is someone who I trust not even a tiny bit. It isn’t a question of what Iraq is “close to accepting”. They have already agreed to it, and broken their promise. Now the goal is to enforce the agreement, and take steps to ensure that this continues to happen.
Iraq does not get to change its mind after the fact. The world has a right to expect that neither events such as the invasion of Kuwait, nor support of terrorists, are encouraged to happen again because Saddam Hussein is a liar. Inspections are going to happen until Iraq has shown that they are not producting WMD, either for their own use, or to hand over to terrorists.
Perhaps I misunderstood you earlier. You seemed to be saying that the US soldiers would be exhausted and sleep-deprived, whereas it would be a simple matter for the Iraqis to whisk their fissionable material, extraction labs, bio-warfare refinement plants, and so forth, off to safety. All this in an Iraq which has just lost a war where the US would
- target their WMD development sites first
- cripple their infrastructure
- destroy their tanks, planes, and transport vehicles
- kill as many of their military as practical
- shoot down their planes on sight
- attack anyone who seems to be coming in to reinforce the Iraqis, including and especially al-Queda teams
You seem to be setting an awfully high standard to see if we won a war. I dispute it, because
a) we don’t know for a fact that Iraq is not already distributing WMD to terrorists, although it is the sort of thing they would pull, and
b) if we destroy the places where WMD are being produced, we take a good long step toward reducing the danger of terrorists using dirty bombs and so forth, both by eliminating current stockpiles, and by reducing the threat in the future.
Similar to the war in Afghanistan. We smashed the terrorist training camps, not only to kill terrorists, but to prevent future ones from being trained.
“Nits make lice”, as was observed in a very different context.
Regards,
Shodan