Twenty years ago when we bleeding hearts were saying that maybe it wasn’t such a good fucking idea to supply dodgy despots with weapons of any description, the weirddaves of the world were saying “Wah, wah, wah,…”
Nice that you put all calls against you in the future, fuck that, you’re a half-wit now, and in twenty years you’ll still be a half-wit.
Check out this piece in last Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section, then. It not only advances such an explanation, but uses it to justify the war:
Does that help?
Well, dimwit, I’ll put that right back at you. Circumstances and times certainly changed between the 80s and the 00s for the U.S as well. They tried ( What I have already said was, in hindsight, a mistake in policy ) to deal with Iraq as a potential ally and avoid agressive measures instead hoping that an economic pressures and lobbying with a friendly Iraqi government would be the best way to promote stability in that section of the Mid-East. They failed, Iraq proved unwilling to come to any sort of agreement or compromise with the world community, and thus we were left where we are now. Next time some dimwit chimes in with how it’s all the U.S.'s fault because of Reagan’s Iraq policy and so forth, I expect you to be first out of the gate with “changed circumstances and times”, because you wouldn’t want to be inconsistant, would you?
So you think it’s rational for them to not even try?
And you think it’s OK for them to be planning attacks on U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel because it’s only “regional power projection”? You want to talk about a destablilized area of the world, obliterate Israel ( along with their inevitable last ditch nuke strikes against Damascus, Tehran, Baghdad, etc,) and overthrow the Royal Family in favor of a fundamentalist Islamic regime, and that outta do it. Hell, you’d prolly be one of the first ones up against the wall as a westerner as the whole region went to hell in a handbasket.
I was never for the war solely on grounds of finding WMD, for me it was more about removing SH from power because he was evil, but I think your last two points are contradictory. First you say that Iraq was probobly hiding some “minor NBC program capacity”, and then you say that it was “not, <snip> a direct threat to the United States”. Nobody thought that Iraq was going to attack the U.S. with rockets and bombs, but a “minor NBC program capacity” is precicely the kind of thing that can be used to manufacture small ammounts of Chem or Bio weapons without being discovered, and provide terrorists groups with them. They could then be deployed in the U.S. with plausable denyability for Iraq- win/win for them. I think this was a minor but very real threat from Iraq, one that would have grown over time.
Actually, 20 years ago I was viehamently against U.S. support for Iraq, but at least I understod it in the context of couterbalancing Iran, who had just gotten done holding our embassy hostage for over a year, and in the larger context of the global confrontation we were engaged in with the Soviet Union, who was trying to annex Afghanistan at the time. Say what you will about Reagan, and I am no fan of the man, but he was correct when he figured we could outspend the Soviets and bankrupt them from power.
Hey, if you can’t win the debate you’ve got, widen it to include a bunch of other stuff.
RT,
Yes that was an enlightening article that does a nice job of answering the question I posed, thank you. It also seems to back up my position supporting the war rather than yours oposing it, but I do see the logic of Iraq maintaing it’s air of mystery over weather or not it possesses WMD.
Huh? I’m not bringing all that other stuff into this debate, TGW was talking about what I believed 20 years ago and I answered.
With Reagan outspending the Soviets.
The author doesn’t back up your position at all. He provides a rationale for war completely unrelated to yours. (And I think that op-ed writer’s rationale for war is full of shit, JFTR. But that’s a whole 'nother story.)
Having thought some more about this I’d like to say that your comparison of my position to that of Chicken Little would be more suitable to the position of Bush. Remember Bush? He who asserted that Iraq had WMDs but didn’t actually show any evidence.
Bush ran to Blair and said, “Blair the Iraqis have WMDs!”
… and so the story begins.
Do you see? That’s an analogy, yours was merely a not-very-useful ad hominem attack.
Meanwhile, Weirddave insists that we must wait a full year before we can judge if the WMD acorn is real or not.
Weirddave, your trite dismissal of my position brings to mind the Iraqi (Mis)Information Minister:
Weirdmohammed Saeed al-Sahaf says
“In one hour I can take you to a place where you can see Arab-West relations better than ever, there are no negative consequences of this conflict. My feelings – as usual the world is a happier place because of it. Do not believe the lies of the infidel The Great Unwashed, we are crushing his arguments with unconventional attacks, soon God will roast his stomach in hell” ad nauseum.
Oh, if only I was as popular as that guy! I’d have a talk show faster than you can say “Allah will consume the infidels in rightious fire”.
Look, I’m sorry for my snarky tone here, I just see a lot of people, on both sides, rushing in to pronounce that their opinions have been vindicated without much evidence, and it annoys me. You may be right, and I certainly wonder myself “Where are the WNDs?”, but you may be wrong too, and I want to give the situation time to play out before I make a final pronouncement one way or the other. I think we have an unparralleled oportunity to make a major change in the decades old quagmire that has been Middle Eastern politics, and heartily hope that we can do so. I don’t have a lot of personal confidence in Bush as the man to do it, however. My "one year’ time frame was pretty arbitrary, but one month is not long enough to know what’s going to happen either. These things take time to play out.
All right. Here’s how I see this situation:
a) The weapons are hidden and have to be found (likely),
b) They were destroyed in an effort to spite the US after the war was over (which is a possibility, but strong evidence would still exist),
OR
c) They never existed and all of our intel was way off the mark (which I don’t believe, by the way).
Some of you may remember when they found the first alleged chemical weapons manufacturing and/or storage building. It ended up being inconclusive. As such, if I were the administration, I would withhold any further announcements just as they have until I was sure.
I’m thinking that they’re just waiting to come up with something conclusive before they announce anything, since they were burned before by being premature.
But one month is enough time to know what has happened. To summarize an earlier post:
I can’t figure out what else we need to know.
[hijack]
Welcome back to the board, Doors! Are you back on American soil now?
[/hijack]
Fucking hell! That’s all a bit reasonable. What have you done with the real Weirddave? You bastard!
Anyway, we agree that we’re in no position to conclude if this campaign was effective or not, was good for world security or not, etc. – only time will tell.
This is the bit where we might disagree, my best guess is that the war was not a good thing, rightly or wrongly the coalition has exposed itself to accusations of hypocrisy, and conducting a politically-motivated, illegal war. The polarising effect of these allegations and the capacity for the irrighteous to use such views to justify or fuel their own twisted agendas made it a no-brainer to me.
The unilateral and ambiguous nature of the action has set a dangerous, retrograde precedent (if that isn’t an oxymoron). Who is to judge the legality, appropriateness or righteousness of future military action committed by one of the many despotic administrations of less liberal nations than yours or mine?
And welcome back Airman Doors.
Not only are we back up to Orange (not to be confused with Amber) Alert, but yesterday, our Prez discussed the threat situation. There’s a lot of nasty stuff to be worried about, but it doesn’t seem like WMDs from Iraq are on the list. Thank you, Mr. President, for continuing to make my case for me.
Welcome back, Airman.
Interesting to see this issue come up again, and some of the same apologists for Bluesman jumping up to protect his honour in the absence of any evidence that might support the veracity of his claims.
It’s all very well to defend the man, but for gawdsakes, you have to acknowledge that his pompous spouting back then was complete and utter bullshit.
As expected.
Fucking hell.
Wrong thread. Sorry for ressurecting this one Mods.
This should have been in the one titled ‘Bluesman’.
Too bloody early on Monday morning and not enough caffeine in my veins yet.
Since this was accidentally bumped, I’m just gonna close this sucker down.
Lynn
For the Straight Dope