If the USA ends up not finding a stockpile of WoMD, we are going to be labeled a bully by the rest of the world. We desperately need that extremely elusive “Smoking Gun”. I bet that we already have a ship somewhere in the Persian Gulf loaded with a smorgasbord of banned substances that are just waiting to be discovered somewhere in the Iraqi desert!
It’s not like there is anything moral about war in the first place!
Assuming that this is the substance of your debate, I’ll reply, “I bet not”.
Uh, I believe the US already is labeled a bully by a significant fraction of the rest of the world. Also, WMD are only one of the several reasons put forward by the Administration for prosecuting this conflict, and they seem quite satisfied that the other reasons sufficiently justify it, even if many of us are not so satisfied.
Troops are already finding other things (such as the warehouse full of human remains in Basra), that the administration will be happy to point to as justification for the action. At this point, IMO, actual evidence of usable WMD would be the cherry on the sundae, as far as the administration is concerned.
They’ve already got thier alibi. Saddam calls up Assad of Syria:
“I’m sending you 20 eighteen wheelers full of…stuff”
“What kind of stuff, Saddam, you evil old bugger”
“Oh, you know…stuff. Knick-knacks, momentos, stuffed people, thirteen tons of VX nerve gas, some brick-a-brack…”
“Groovy. Who you taking to the Tyrant’s Ball?”
and to continue that dialogue,…
Assad. " Hey, Saddam. Hold the phone a minute. There’s someone at the door…"
If the current regime in the US were to try something as stupid as planting WMD, the deed would be hard to keep a secret. Conspiracies are hard to keep secret, whether proposed by liberals or conservatives, sane or kooks.
That’s the beauty part, hey. Assad will deny it, GeeDubya just shrugs his shouders and says “He’s lying.” The people who are determined to believe him will, the rest of the world won’t.
I don’t think the US is above such behavior. If we don’t fake it ourselves, we can pay someone else too, as with the Uranium fiasco.
The real question is (presuming there aren’t any to be found) can we pull it off?
I don’t think there’s any evidence that we actually paid for the bogus uranium stuff. If we did, we really got screwed, cause it total whale dreck. Lamest forgery since I signed an excuse slip “Mom”.
Your right. The source was unidentified, I think I just heard on of the experts on the news speculate that. I guess someone like Kuwait might have faked it too.
However, it actually would have been well worth the money to have an excuse if gets sniffed out.
I respectively (totally) disagree with your take. If we don’t find a large stockpile (more then a few test tubes labeled “POSION”) there is going to be hell to pay! Nobody in the current administration could care less about all the name-calling going on. However, if we are going to further pursue this “War on Terror” (we still have Korea, Iran and Syria to deal with) I don’t believe we can withstand the entire world protesting our use of force on whatever regime we disagree with! Saudi Arabia (for one) {b}will** turn the oil off for a little while just to prove their discontent! I hope we do find some chemicals buried in the outskirts of Baghdad but, we desperately NEED a “Smoking Gun”!!
and should do whatever it takes to come up with one.
It wouldn’t be the first time our government performed an abominable act!
Hell, I just hope they don’t find the receipts!
It doesn’t have to be kept secret – it just has to be kept low-profile enough so that most folks don’t believe it. Look at how many folks still think Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey were innocent gals who were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton, instead of exploitative accusers financed by conservative millionaires trying to take down a President.
I trust, sir, that you are not slandering the virtue of Paula Jones, the Heidi of the Ozarks!
It’s not all that scandalous to pay money for “intelligence.” Just offer gobs of money for finding of WMD and… surprise! Where did that come from?
We need an Iraqi rat to tell where the stuff is buried. If not we’ll need to drop off a few thousand “beach dorks” with their metal detectors and little shovels to walk the desert for a while!
The thing about an Iraqi snitch is interesting. Unless Saddam did it all himself, then there must be a whole bunch of people in Iraq in a position to rat him out. People scattered all around. People who would know that the very best route to comfort and happiness, or maybe just money, would lie with providing the coming regime with valuable info. At least one would have come forth by now, wouldn’t you think?
Unless, of course, he killed them all. Or they had nothing to sell.
I do not yet see an online cite for it on the CBS news page, but on the radio they were recently reporting some troops are experiencing symptoms of Sarin poisoning (weakness, vomiting, and skin rashes) and tests of the area show the presence of Sarin. Now they haven’t FOUND it yet, and it took them three tests to decide if it was there or not, so if they planted it I don’t think they’d make themselves look so confused in the process of looking for it. This is also a report from an embedded reporter so it hasn’t been confirmed yet and could possibly be erroneous.
Nothing on the AP breaking news about it. I could check Fox. I’m not gonna, but I could.
Troops, journalists undergo cleanup for nerve gas exposure
I suppose they’ve found some sort of chemical agent, but they don’t really know what it is. Maybe it’s sarin, maybe it’s insecticide. They haven’t worked it out yet.
CBS, or ABC? ran a segment in their nightly news tonight showing American troops examining an outdoor cache of corroded barrels. According to the report, the stuff was labelled as pesticide. There were also a few barrels located in an open hole in the ground, with suspicious wires leading up to them. The video showed the barrels to be in pretty bad shape, and many pesticides are cholinesterase inhibitors (just like nerve agents). If you get it on you, it can make you sick. That doesn’t make the stuff a WMD to anything but a cockroach or boll-weavil.
The report also showed GI’s showering after handling the material. That’d be appropriate after handling any leaky old chemical drum.
Considering the zillion possible ways in which the outcome of this war will be bad for the U.S., I’m not sure we want to create another one by being caught planting evidence. But OTOH, if we could be assured that it would work, that the scheme would never be uncovered, then I say do it. If it helps America to come out of this war a little better off than it otherwise would, then it’s the right thing to do. I don’t much care for lies, but foreign policy hasn’t exactly been a moral enterprise in…well, it’s never been about morality, anywhere, anytime, by any nation, in the history of the Earth.
errata’s idea sounds like the best way. No conspiracy, just evidence of dubious character.