I find your use of the smiley a bit confusing. Is that a humorous way of acknowledging that I never said any such thing?
In your haste to provide clarity, you have neglected to include specifics. What, precisely, were these “many things” that we have found that Saddam had hidden from us, aside from the demonstrated fact that his dreadfully threatening military machine couldn’t have taken Belgium in a fair fight. Since there are “many”, could we have, say, half a dozen of the most scary? In your estimation, of course.
Except that it is a perfectly valid excuse, one that any sovereign nation would find objectionable. A perfectly valid excuse that we provided him. After subverting a UN mission to our own ends, we are hardly in a position to claim righteous indignation if he is less than cooperative, even if we cross our hearts and pinky promise that we won’t never ever do it again. A lot of people would think that demanding a privilege to make the rules, then break the rules, and then insist on being empowered to enforce the rules is, as our limey cousins have it, a bit “shirty”. Not the done thing, if one claims to be wearing the white hat, and all.
Unless we are simply stating “We don’t care, we don’t have to care, we’re the Americans, fuck you.”
No, it is simply acknowledging that our jibes are humorous. I asked in another thread if you were able to take this sort of thing. If not please tell me.
No need for a dozen. I think we only need one. But just for you, I’ll point to this Statement by David Kay in October 2003. We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN." I would also point your attention to this interview from General Zinni. “*I believed that Saddam Hussein was trying to pull a fast one on the U.N. inspectors in that he wanted them to give him a clean bill of health because they couldn’t find a smoking gun. In other words, a stockpile. And I don’t believe he had a stockpile. What he was very cleverly doing was building a framework that could start a program once he came out of sanctions. *”
After saying that you never claimed Iraq was innocent, I find it interesting that you are now, in the same post, trying to equate Iraqs acceptance, or not, of UN weapons inspectors to “any nation”.
I disagree entirely. I ask again, what is the difference between what the weapons inspectors were there to do (and I assume you agree Saddam was compelled to allow them to do) and what the spies did?
Perhaps when dealing with honest neighbors, or with cold war opponents. But when enforcing a cease fire which was flouted often by Iraq, I don’t think he can claim the moral equivilance of these situations.
For the record I have not given much thought to whether or not it was a good idea to engage in spying activities through UNSCOM. But I think it is incredible that we are seriously talking about letting Saddam off of the hook because of it. In the American system of jurisprudence we sometimes allow a guilty man go free because of misconduct by law enforcement. This principle is flawed in some instances. Applying it to international relationships is simply not possible.
The inspectors were, ostensibly, working on behalf of the UN, presumed to be a neutral party who’s findings might be credibly relied upon by the community of nations as a means of determining the merits of the case. It may escape your grasp, but spying on behalf of the United States, however meritorious, is precisely not what a neutral party is expected to do. It is a hypocrisy of galactic proportions, and, much worse, it gives a very bad man an entirely legitimate objection.
As an analogy, it wouldn’t have been necessary to falsify evidence to convict Charlie Manson. To do so undermines the legitimacy of the prosecution. There are rules. We are expected to play by those rules. One of which is, obviously, must be that a neutral party must be, in fact, neutral.
To successfully conduct a “war on terror”(which, you may recall, this was ostensibly all about…), we will need the cooperation, sympathy, and respect of the world at large. Displaying open contempt and disdain for the opinions of the community of nations is unlikely to be persuasive. Nor should it be.
wherein the following quote from Scott McClellan, chief pander…
(emphasis added in dreary resignation)
Note the clairovoyant use of the future tense: “…he was going to begin pursuing…”.
The article continues with a brief summary of the McLies served up to the American people. You will most likely find that tiresome, and are advised to pick up your little basket and skip along, skip along.
No, as a political problem I agree entirely that inappropriate actions by American members of the inpsection teams were a bad idea. My question is how do you tell the difference between bad activities and good activities? Can you only tell when the information is used? If so, it seems Saddam had a foolproof out. All he had to do was claim that certain information could be used as inappropriately gathered espionage and he could have prevented the inspectors from doing lots of things.
I don’t understand this analogy at all. Are you saying that the inpsectors or the spies were falsifying information? I haven’t seen that claim before.
Uh, what? What exactly about this particular issue is “Displaying open contempt and disdain for the opinions of the community of nations…”?
Well, the lies mentioned are from the Cheney interview we disected above. I will let that analysis stand. Additionally they pulled a few quotes from this speech given by the president on October 7th 2002. It lays out very strongly what the administration feels are the threats posed by Saddam Hussein. It seems to state pretty clearly that the administration feels Saddam has stockpiles of chemical and biological WMD. The specifics seem to deal more with amounts produced some time ago and never fully accounted for.
Soem interesting information, though. I will be interested in seeing the final report from the weapons inspectors due to be presented today.
I think we can agree to disagree on all points. I don’t know whether or not his remarks were reproduced in context and you haven’t given any cites to the transcript and I, like you, haven’t found any yet. All news agencies seem to agree on what he said, namely that we didn’t act quickly enough to stop post-“liberation” looting and that we lacked sufficient troops to adequately police the country after all of the native police functions were destroyed. Also that he had asked for more troops but had been insistent enough in the asking. I have trouble crediting that all of the news agencies are quoting him out of context.
Bush also said that he relies on military commanders for troop levels. That’s crap. I don’t believe there has ever been a military commander who thought he couldn’t use more forces when the job was to attack an area thought to be defended. Military commanders get the forces allocated to them by higher headquarters based on the local commander’s estimates. If the estimates exceed the available number the local commander makes do with what is allocated. Rummy was well known to believe in the small, agile and heavily armored force concept using all the latest lasers, smart weapons and other bells and whistles available today. That was obviously adequate to defeat an Iraq army that melted away without much resistance, but not adequate to police Iraq then, or now.
As to Shinseki, yes he and Rummy didn’t see eye to eye on force levels in general and his retirement was announced way in advance. Of course the ultimate retirement of any Chief of Staff can be announced on the day he or she assumes the office. However it remains a fact that Shinseki retired early and that happened right after he said that more troops in Iraq would be required than were allocated by Rummy.
But as you say we disagree, and apparently always will, on the wisdom and necessity of our invasion of Iraq and the general obfuscation and seesawing of administration folks on the matter.
