Naw, Luc has optimism and was sure that the world would be sunny and Sadaam would never want WMD ever. And, what, are you a pessimist or something? Sure all the evidence points one way, but not having WMD is a valid goal, and one I believe can be reached. Thus, Sadaam was not going to develop WMD if left to his own devices.
It would be fair to conclude that I believe Iraq was a significant threat, one given to brinksmanship and dishonesty and which couldn’t be trusted. I would refer you to NattoGuy’s excellent post above. There was no way to know just when Hussein would obtain WMD, but there was very little doubt in my mind that he would obtain them at some point. Hussein was too clever by half and couldn’t be trusted. The threat was too great, he had to be removed.
You keep bringing up Chalabi. IMHO, you are putting way too much stock in this guy. He is not the reason we went to war.
Your analogy ignores past behavior, knowledge, experience, and falsely equates legal tender with illegal materials. I can’t remember if you were one of the ones who ripped Starving Artist for his “faith based optimistic” basis for justification. If so, it would be ironic that you reply to fact with a very poor analogy. Please don’t do it again. I suppose I should take this as an admission that you don’t dispute the conclusion that Iraq would almost certainly have had WMD shortly after 2003.
Anti-war advocates such as yourself seem to take great pleasure in quoting the part of the Duelfer report which states that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction. So if you are a particular fan of the author and document, you’ll certainly also to find these chapters interesting:
**Scientific Research and Intention to Reconstitute WMD ** - p44
Cooperating with UNSCOM While Preserving WMD - p47
Looking Ahead to Resume WMD Programs - p49
Guarding WMD Capabilities - p51
Transition (1998-2001) - p56
Nullifying All Obligations To UNSC Resolutions - p57
**Preserving and Restoring WMD Infrastructure and Expertise ** - p59
Enjoy. It’s enlightening reading.
Ehhhhh… not so much.
[Indeed, it now appears increasingly that defectors handled by the INC were sources for the most spectacular and detailed – if completely unfounded – information about Hussein’s alleged WMD programs, not only to U.S. intelligence agencies, but also to U.S. mainstream media, especially the ‘New York Times’, according to a recent report in the New York ‘Review of Books’.
Within the administration, Chalabi worked most closely with those who had championed his cause for a decade, particularly neo-conservatives around Cheney and Rumsfeld – Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.](http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0221-01.htm)
These are good points. But do any of them argue for war? Wouldn’t increased inspections and continued sanctions be just as effective? In retrospect, we find out that sanctions and inspections were doing a terrific job, even with Saddam gaming the system for all he could.
Granted, we could never be sure until we invaded that this was the case. But your criteria are no better; we can never be sure he would have pursued WMDs once sanctions were eased. He had been on the receiving end of a helluva beat down once before and knew that it could happen again if he ever looked at anyone wrong. Maybe it scared him straight. It seemed unlikely before the war, but now we know apparently that’s exactly what happened.
War is a serious step. Preemptive war for imminent threat is something that is unfortunate but necessary. Your criteria for defining “imminent” is dangerously lax. Almost every country in the world has probably considered a WMD program at some point or another. And apparently that’s all you are asking for.
We should have erred on the side of caution. That’s not to say we should have discontinued inspections or sanctions. But tens of thousands dead and injured (on both sides) is a helluva price to pay for an intuition.
Aw, don’t worry, little lady. Starvy does indeed love you! It’s just that he has to share the computer with a couple of teenage girls and occasionally has to step away for awhile.
Furthermore, Starvy is frequently outnumbered and he can easily fall behind simply because he’s receiving comments more rapidly than he can answer them. And, his natural inclination to indulge in verbiage aside, some questions take quite a bit longer to answer than others, so there is the temptation to answer the shorter ones and try to get to the ones requiring more lengthy answers during lulls in the discussion.
Today, we’ve secretly replaced SA’s normal legion of screaming nubile groupies with Finn, a hetero male. Let’s see what happens.
Could you at least give a time-frame to indicate when you expect to have your criteria for a failed war posted to this thread?
Some of us have dial-up, and have to check in on our porno downloads, you know.
Ghod, I hope he doesn’t post “When the Secretary of Defense signs a letter of unconditional surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri.”
Oh no, that’s not true at all. The point I made regarding Iraq’s imminent re-start of its WMD program does not stand alone. I assume that the reader understands that it is in the context that Iraq was prohibited from producing WMD’s by numerous UN resolutions, all of which Iraq violated. It isn’t as if Flyspeck Republic, with no “criminal record”, decided to produce nukes. I assume that the reader also understands that France and Germany independently agreed that Iraq most likely had WMD’s, so it isn’t as if Shrub came up with the idea on his own.
I also assume the reader also knows that Desert Storm, legally sanctioned by the UN, was ended by a UN cease-fire agreement, which Iraq violated by firing at air patrols over the no-fly-zone. A violation of a cease-fire is an act of war, so it isn’t like there wasn’t some degree of war already going on. In reality, the 2003 invasion was a decisive end to a conflict that had been causing Iraqis misery for 10 years and should have been completed in 1991 when there was a mandate for it.
These are all facts, undisputed as far as I know, and they justify the miltary action. I’ll be glad to change my position if anyone can show me that these facts are wrong.
Sniffling and crying? “Starvy doesn’t love me”? Why, hell…I wonder where I (a well-known person of the male persuasion) would have gotten the idea that Finn is a lady!
You really shouldn’t lead ol’ Starve on like that. You’ll only break his heart and make luci jealous.
That doesn’t answer the question.
The forces we sent into Iraq were both insufficient and unprepared. They complained that they didn’t have nearly enough forces to secure the suspected WMD sites, of which most were looted. Weapons and nuclear materials were looted due to lack of troops, and some have since turned up on the black market. The likelyhood of “dirty bombs” being created is high. Our troops did not have the best equipment (“the army you have…”). Lack of security resulted and continues to result in huge setbacks for reconstruction.
Only an imminent threat, not just a “significant threat”, could possibly justify going in with what we had at that point.
So… do you believe Iraq was an imminent threat?
Even NattoGuy is unwilling to call them an imminent threat, and he is going too far in calling them an imminent threat to possibly start rebuilding WMD, because we (USA) had significant pull in the process by which he could have eliminated sanctions and inspectors. It was far from “imminent” and we had plenty of time to build forces, intelligence, and strategy. Instead, we went with a known liar and criminal and made a mess of things.
He was a big factor, although it is difficult to tell if he was tricking our civilian leaders or if they might have known he was lying. He was also a big factor in the way we went to war. He was the one Bush talked with about the future of Iraq - he was the major player in their theoretical future government. He convinced the civilian leaders in our government that they would be welcomed, and that WMD would be easy to find.
Why couldn’t we allow the inspectors to do their job, which Saddam was letting them do at that point, in the meantime building up our forces and intelligence on WMD? Well, why should we if we were going to be welcomed and WMD would be easy to find?
The fact that the Bush team believed him over the CIA, which told Bush that Chalabi was a known criminal and liar, is telling. It shows just how incompetent our planning and execution of this war has been, and how desperate to hear what they wanted to hear our leaders were.
There is also the intangible cost of going to war based on lies. This is the cost Bush supporters never even think about. This is largely what causes us to lose respect and support in the world, and gain so much hostility against us. This helps build the terrorist ranks and convinces people that we are evil.
And here I figured I was being so over-the-top that it’d be obvious. For some reason I also thought you were a chick.
50 cents says his answer is along the lines of, “When a Democrat gets elected President for me to blame.”
Again, these are good points, and I will concede them to you. But they still don’t argue for an American war. The UN was reasonably satisfied with Saddam’s negotiations with Blix and ElBaradei, and last time I checked, it was up to the UN to enforce their own resolutions. France and Germany may have agreed that Saddam had WMDs, but when push came to shove, they didn’t believe he was a big enough threat to go to war. So that’s not really an argument for war either. You still base your arguments on a hypothetical, and IMHO that is a very dangerous thing to start tagging as imminent threat.
The only argument for war you give is the firing at air patrols in the no-fly zone. I do believe that is a casus belli, but this is not a binary type thing. I also could be convinced otherwise; the US was enforcing UN resolutions again in this point, and I don’t know nearly enough to say if this qualified as imminent threat. If you believe that invasion, regime change, and occupation was justified on the basis of a few SAMs, none of which IIRC actually did any harm to any Americans, then that is your prerogative. I just think the amount of blood and treasure expended on SAM firings is a bit excessive. De facto war or not, the US took the most extreme measures possible with regime change and occupation, and you still need to be able to justify that level of response.
I’m no pussy. I can recognize imminent threat and I support war if it is necessary to head it off. A great example is the Six-Day War in 1967. But Iraq is not it.
As an aside, I believe that without inspections or sanctions, Saddam would have gladly restarted WMD programs. He was a monster that could have been a huge threat to the region (albeit probably not to the US). But nobody was discussing removing all sanctions and inspections. As flawed as the UN sanctions and inspections were, the apparently had done a wonderful job of keeping him completely hamstrung. If the inspectors had found so much as an atom of plutonium or one piece of machinery or materiel tied to any part of any kind of WMD program, I would have supported the invasion. But without that, you have sacrificed a whole lot for intuition.
Gee, everyone’s just on pins and needles waiting for me to post my opinion on the war and my criteria for declaring it a failure. You people aren’t fooling me – you just want such a post from me so you can set about misconstruing it, misstating my words and intent, making false assumptions from it, and otherwise ripping it to shreds. Wow, I feel just like George Bush at a press conference.
Well, be that as it may, here goes…
However, before we can define the success or failure of the war, don’t we have to first ask ourselves what its true objective was? In my opinion, this question could be answered by asking what, if anything, would have caused the United States to back off. If A would cause the U.S. to go to war, and B would not, couldn’t it safely be said that B was the true objective of the war?
Now, what, if anything, would have forestalled the U.S. invasion of Iraq? If that one thing would keep us from going to war, couldn’t it also be fairly said that one thing would be the goal in going to war?
Please…allow me…the answer is yes.
So, let me ask again: Was there anything that would have forestalled the U.S. invasion of Iraq?
Yes!
And that thing was for Hussein to step down and leave the country and take his utterly reprehensible sons with him!
That was the goal of the war: to remove Hussein (and the numerous threats he posed) from power in Iraq.
That goal has been acheived! Hussein and his henchmen are no longer in power in Iraq, and the threats they posed have been eliminated.
Therefore, I have no criteria for declaring the war a failure, as I already regard it as a success!
The primary and overriding goal has been acheived! There are many other good things that can come about because of the war, and to the degree they do they are icing on the cake. There are things about the war that can go badly, and to the degree they do, we’ll have to contend with them and do all we can to rectify them.
But the war itself is already a success. Hussein is out of power; his shithead sons will never be in power; Israel and the entire region are more safe and stable; other countries who might be inclined to test our resolve and willingness to protect ourselves now know our resolve is both strong and supported by a majority within our own country; and there is absolutely no threat of WMD from Iraq causing harm to the U.S. or any other country.
Wow, that’s short term. You would still consider it a success if by the end of next year, Iraq had emerged as a new Shiite Islamic fundamentalist regime more threatening towards Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Israel and the US? How about if it devolved into a 3 part civil war with genocides on all? What if it dragged Turkey and Iran into the quagmire and destabilized the region?
Naw, I plan to rip it to shreds purely on factual and logical grounds.
Several problems with this, first of all, that allows you to say that even if every single US serviceman were to be butchered tomorrow, the war would already be won and nothing would be wrong with it. Which I guess is fine, because you’ve now, essentially, re-defined the war as ending with Sadaam. (See, it’s good to elaborate on meaning)
So, I guess the question becomes: What is your definition of winning the peace, and what would your definition of failing to win the peace be?
So you think it was about protecting Israel. Why don’t you just shut the fuck up. You’ve done enough harm as it is. What do you want to do, make people hate Jews? You’re a racist?
Next thing you’ll be posting stuff like this:
I thought you said “factual and logical.” That is neither.
Well, that may be what the question becomes to you, but for myself, I’ve never commented on “winning the peace.” Personally, such Kerryesque notions aren’t part of my phrasing vocabulary.
But of course it’s a serious issue. However, in times of war, you take the action necessary to protect yourself win the war, and then try to deal with the conditions that remain to whatever degree you can. Should we not have invaded Europe and taken on Hitler because the Soviet Union might become a superpower and run roughshod over and absorb countless other countries and ultimately bring us to the brink of nuclear war? No. We did what we had to do and then dealt with the consequences as they played out.
Not having a crystal ball, that’s all any country can do.
Are you insane?