# Iraq, WMDs, Who Doubted? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 26, 2004, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217 "2004-01-26T21:42:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/21 "2004-01-27T11:36:34Z")
**Ranchoth** We are? In what way are we better off? Have we removed an eyesore, is that it? Is it some kind of aesthetic thing? Because in practical terms its hard to see how. Saddam was no threat to us, couldn’t have threatened us if he had wanted to. We have spent a gazillion dollars and some 500 of our soldiers, and we ain’t done yet. When will we be done? I don’t know. Do you? Could you maybe outline just how much blood and treasure is “justified” to accomplish this lofty goal? 200 billion dollars? 500? More? A thousand soldiers, 10,000 civilians? More? At what point do you cry “Hold! Enough!”? And on what basis do you determine that the Iraqis are “better off”? Howzabout this for counterpoint: [http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/7765782.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp](http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/7765782.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp) "CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said yesterday, starkly contradicting the upbeat assessment that President Bush gave in his State of the Union address. The CIA officers’ bleak assessment was delivered orally to Washington this week, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified information involved." Is this sort of thing what you mean by “better off”? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/22 "2004-01-27T11:45:05Z")
In answer to the OP, [here’s](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=169108#post3121022) my (incorrect) stance on March 12, 2003: > [@jjimm](#): > > As for WMD - they will certainly be found. Die-hard conspiracists will say “they were planted”. I wouldn’t dismiss this; wouldn’t necessarily believe it either. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/23 "2004-01-27T11:45:38Z")
> [@Doc Nickel](#): > > Personally, prior to the war, I was worried about who, or what, would take his place, were he to suddenly expire, whether from a 9mm brain aneurysm or a normal heart attack. > > Either the clerics move in and (probably) start turning it into another Iran-style theocracy (or, at worst, a Taliban-style theocratic dictatorship) or Hussein’s sons take over. > > I doubt either one would have been an improvement. I can see you’ve really thought this one through, **Doc**. :rolleyes: Who’s gonna be in charge once the US walks out in July? ---
**Author:** ![Doc\_Nickel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5fc32e/32.png) [@Doc\_Nickel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doc_Nickel)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/24 "2004-01-27T12:40:47Z")
> [@Desmostylus](#): > > I can see you’ve really thought this one through, **Doc**. :rolleyes: > > Who’s gonna be in charge once the US walks out in July? Did you miss the “prior to the war” part? In any case, I was under the impression we’re not “walking out” in July, we’re handing over power to a purely Iraqui… something. Whether that something is a Parliment, a President, a group of clerics or a cabinet of ministers is still unclear. But as far as I understand it, we will still be there helping rebuild, training the police and military, etcetera. ---
**Author:** ![Eolbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@Eolbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eolbo)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/25 "2004-01-27T12:58:07Z")
I’m of the opinion that our policymakers that have promoted and used the term ‘WMD’ deserve a good asskicking. Its imo extremely detrimental to any serious debate, conflates radically different types of weapons and is chiefly used in emotive fearmongering. I took it for granted that after all the fuss and its past history that Iraq did possess chemical weapons so I guess I fell for the snake oil in that regard, more fool me. I just didnt think chemical weapons justified war and that it was a ridiculously flimsy pretext. It seemed obvious to me after the IAEA reports and faked documents that Iraq did not have nukes and wasnt working on them. Nukes are the only weapons that I think would have merited such concern but I dont think nukes would have justified war either. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Svinlesha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@Mr.Svinlesha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Svinlesha)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/26 "2004-01-27T13:16:04Z")
**Dr. King** : Whew. You had me worried for a minute there. **Ranchoth** : > [@](#): > > - Why else was he screwing around with the weapons inspectors for so long? For kicks?\* You know, this question gets asked a lot, often as if the mere asking could serve as evidence that Iraq possessed “WMDs.” But when you stop to think about it, there could be a number of explanations for Hussein’s apparently irrational intransigence vis-à-vis the UN inspectors. To begin with, it is well known that the inspectors were spying on Iraq on behalf of various western governments. This sort of activity was prohibited by the cease-fire agreement, but it went on anyway. Perhaps Iraq had good reason to resist inspections that were simultaneously information-gathering exercises far beyond the “WMD” official inspectors’ mandate. The Iraqi government doubtless had state secrets other than its weapons programs that it wished to keep clandestine, for whatever reason. In addition, it is possible that Hussein resisted the inspections so as to increase his prestige among other Arab nations. That, at any rate, is Tariq Aziz’s explanation. In addition, Kenneth Pollack argues cogently in a recent article that Saddam was probably motivated more by internal than external considerations. Characterizing Hussein’s grip on power as “_very shaky_”, Pollack notes: > [@](#): > > \*\* He\*\* [Saddam]\*\* had faced disturbances in several of his most loyal Sunni tribes. In addition to Kamel, a number of high-ranking officials had defected to the West, including Saddam’s chief of military intelligence, Wafic Samarai. Coup plots abounded. In 1995 the Kurds smashed two Iraqi infantry brigades at Irbil, humiliating the Iraqi army. In 1996 Iraqi intelligence uncovered a CIA-backed coup attempt whose participants had penetrated some of Saddam’s most sensitive intelligence services. Iraq’s economy was suffocating under the sanctions, and inflation was rampant.\*\* Given this state of affairs, Pollack reckons that Hussein found himself between a rock and a hard place: > [@](#): > > \*\* Saddam may have felt trapped by his initial reckoning that he could fool the UN inspectors and that the sanctions would be short-lived. Because of this mistaken calculation he had subjected Iraq to terrible hardships. Suddenly cooperating with the inspectors would have meant admitting to both his opponents and his supporters that his course of action had been a mistake and that, having now given up most of his WMD programs, he had devastated Iraqi society for no reason. > > This suggests that in 1995-1996 Saddam took one of his famous gambles—gambles that almost never worked out for him. He chose not to “come clean” and cooperate with the UN for fear that this would make him look weak to both his domestic enemies and his domestic allies, either of whom might then have moved against him. But he would try to greatly diminish the chances that UNSCOM would find more evidence of his continuing noncompliance by reducing his WMD programs to the bare minimum, in hopes that the absence of evidence would lead to the lifting of sanctions—something he desperately sought in 1996.\*\* David Kay provides us with yet another possible explanation – namely, that Hussein had become rather unhinged over the last couple of years. I quoted the relevant section of the text in my previous post, but just to reiterate: > [@](#): > > \*\* In interviews after he was captured, Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister, told Dr. Kay that Mr. Hussein had become increasingly divorced from reality during the last two years of his rule. Mr. Hussein would send Mr. Aziz manuscripts of novels he was writing, even as the American-led coalition was gearing up for war, Dr. Kay said.\*\* The simple fact is that there are a multitude of possible explanations for Hussein’s actions, and just because one of them happens to be near to hand doesn’t necessarily guarantee it’s correctness – Occam notwithstanding. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/27 "2004-01-27T13:39:20Z")
Sept 7, 2002 [Iraq: What’s the Evidence?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=134407): > [@Squink](#): > > Satellite photos show that Saddam has been building [cropdusters](http://www.iht.com/articles/69836.html) and [doing construction work](http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;%24sessionid%24HHP3LROBMUHOXQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2002/09/07/wirq107.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/09/07/ixnewstop.html) at his bombed-out nuclear facilities. The nuke plant pictures at least are popping up on news sites. There’s much speculation as to what meaning should be attached to the photos. > According to the CIA, Iraq has not reneged on its commitment to the [nuclear test ban treaty](http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html). Nothing ever happened to change my mind. I _am_ certain that bin Laden thanks the Lord daily for the respite America’s haring off after Saddam has provided him and his organization. The resulting quagmire and international disharmony ensures him that it will be a long long time before anyone can mount an effective campaign against the stateless terrorists. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Iskander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/db5fbb/32.png) [@New\_Iskander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Iskander)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/28 "2004-01-27T17:32:41Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > There is an assumption going around that “everybody” believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs. This is simply not so. Many people, myself included, suspected that the threat posed by SH was being exaggerated for political purposes by the POTUS and his administration, and that the presence of WMDs of any usability was dubious at best. > > Anyone who doubts that there were informed Americans who were skeptical of the claims of Bush pertaining to the possible imminent threat of SH should watch this speech given by Scott Ritter, the former Chief Weapons Inspector for the UN in Iraq (1991-98), and a self-described “card-carrying Republican.” Don’t be cagey, did you “suspect” beforehand, or did you know? I was challenging people here to prove they knew SH didn’t have WMD and said so before the invasion. So far, only **the illustrious London\_calling** was able to provide the proof. Him and Scott Ritter make exactly two people. > [@Knorf](#): > > There is one reason, and one reason ONLY to justify putting American soldiers in harm’s way, and that is to counter a **direct threat to the security of the United States**. It is quite clear that this threat did not exist, as far as Saddam Hussein was concerned. There were exceptions, though: war of 1812, Barbary pirates expedition, Mexican war, Spanish war, WWI, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, GWI, Somalia, Kosovo… ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/29 "2004-01-27T22:06:16Z")
> [@New Iskander](#): > > Don’t be cagey, did you “suspect” beforehand, or did you know? I was challenging people here to prove they knew SH didn’t have WMD and said so before the invasion. How the hell could we know that he didn’t have WMD? I don’t have access to all our intelligence information. Heck, I don’t know that you aren’t building a nuke in your basement, but I won’t tell people that I do and then say that I want to invade your house, perhaps killing a few members of your family in the process. The point is that we were told that SH did have WMD. We weren’t told he might have WMD. We (meaning those who were skeptical of this Administration) kept asking for evidence and not finding it satisfactory. Plenty of people found Powell’s UN presentation unconvincing (although not many in Congress, it seems)–_The Nation_ published at least two pieces saying he had not made a strong enough case. Also, some things were known by us. It was known that the weapons inspectors were quite confident that Hussein hadn’t reconstituted any serious nuclear program. While chemical and biological weapons are easier to hide, it was at least known that the inspectors weren’t so far finding any under a pretty intrusive inspections regime. I also seem to recall that certain facts about the U.S./British intelligence were known like the forged Niger documents and the plagiarized British intelligence report, although I could be wrong on the timing of the former. For the record, my feeling before the war was that, based on their past history, neither Bush nor Hussein had a shred of credibility whatsoever and so we had to go on independent verifiable facts. My wild-ass-guess was that the truth might lie somewhere “half-way” in between…i.e., Saddam has a bit of chemical or biological weapons but less than the Bush Administration claimed and nothing that justifies him being considered an imminent threat. As history has now taught me, my wild-ass-guess still managed to overestimate Bush’s credibility! But, I don’t see what relevance it has whether we knew or not what SH had or did not have. Our knowledge was only based on what we were being told, largely by the Administration and some by independent sources like the inspectors. Bush’s knowledge was based on what he was being told which is a lot more than what we were being told. And, this Administration has hardly been forthcoming about exactly what Bush was told. The Administration has thus far given us no reason to doubt that they were guilty at best of believing what they wanted to believe, cherry-picking intelligence, and overstating their confidence in what they believed. At worst, they were outright lying. Hell, people like Cheney continue to obfuscate to this day. And, Bush uses contorted phrases like “weapons-of-mass-destruction related program activities” to obfuscate. And, there is plenty of evidence that this Administration considers misleading statements and outright lies to be one of the most trusted tools in its toolbox for convincing the public and others to go along with its policies in domestic policy areas ranging from tax policy to the environment. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2004, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/30 "2004-01-28T00:43:25Z")
> [@Doc Nickel](#): > > Those outside suppliers are, of course, France and Russia, among others. Some of that ordnance was, we know, sold to Iraq _after_ the UN embargoes, and thus, _illegally_. How much, we don’t know, but we _do_ know that both countries did so. Cite? At least ten characters added. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2004, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/31 "2004-01-28T00:59:36Z")
If it makes **New Iskander** happy, I’ll readily admit that I believed before the war that Iraq had WMDs. I’d search for my earlier posts on the topic, but I’m lazy. 😉 _However…_ I also said – at those times, which a search would verify – that the **amount** of WMDs Saddam had would be trivially insignificant. Probably no more than a mayonayse jar full of spoiled anthrax, shoved in a cupboard somewhere. A far cry from the 500,000 tons of vX that George W. Bush was claiming at the time, and certainly nothing that would have justified the war. Of course, the Administration was insisting up and down the Euphredes that Saddam had a massive arsenal of WMDs, and the Bushistas toed the line in their cute little non-thinking way, bless 'em. I can only imagine the fact that Saddam _didn’t_ have any WMDs is too much of a shock for their poor little psyches, so they’re now resorting to desperate tactics like throwing out bullshit that “_everyone_ believed Saddam had massive quantities of WMDs!” No, we didn’t. And we were right. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2004, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/32 "2004-01-28T04:39:42Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > **Ranchoth** > > We are? In what way are we better off? Have we removed an eyesore, is that it? Is it some kind of aesthetic thing? > > Because in practical terms its hard to see how. Saddam was no threat to us, couldn’t have threatened us if he had wanted to. We have spent a gazillion dollars and some 500 of our soldiers, and we ain’t done yet. When will we be done? I don’t know. Do you? Could you maybe outline just how much blood and treasure is “justified” to accomplish this lofty goal? 200 billion dollars? 500? More? A thousand soldiers, 10,000 civilians? More? At what point do you cry “Hold! Enough!”? 200 Billion dollars isn’t going to send our nation into hock. And about our military losses…considering that we lost 500 troops over most of a years, in an entire country, and most of the casualties have been from low-intensity guerilla attacks, I’d say that, militarily, we’re not doing half bad. > [@](#): > > And on what basis do you determine that the Iraqis are “better off”? Howzabout this for counterpoint: > [http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/7765782.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp](http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/7765782.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp) This is an—unofficial—_warning_ about something that _might_ happen. Civil war won’t _definately_ happen. We can take measures, such as bumping up the election schedule, to keep it from happening. I doubt that we’re just going to sit around with our thumbs up our collective wazoo and wait for Hell to break loose. And I think the Iraqi people are “better off” because we’ve removed a dictator who was, by all accounts, a psycho asshole. And we’re laying the foundations for a new democratic government in Iraq, that’s probably going to be at least marginally less psycho-assholey. And I imagine that things are going to be better for the Iraqi people when the UN Sanctions get lifted, too. And the U.S. will be better off because we’re working to make Iraq into a place accessible to U.S. interests—political, military, economic, and whatever else. I’m not an Isolationist. I don’t believe that we should just stand by and hope that the world will make itself better. Especially when we have the power and ability to _do_ something about it. Maybe by leaving Saddam alone, things wouldn’t have gotten worse. But, by going after him, things are able to get _better._ I’m not pretending that the Iraq war was altruism embodied. We went into Iraq because it served our interests. It may sound callous or greedy, but that’s what countries _do_…they look out for #1. And, as it happens, making Iraq a better place for the U.S. is going to be good for a lot of other people, too. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2004, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/33 "2004-01-28T14:27:02Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > I’m not pretending that the Iraq war was altruism embodied. We went into Iraq because it served our interests. It may sound callous or greedy, but that’s what countries _do_…they look out for #1. Yeah…Just like Iraq did to Kuwait. And, Germany did to much of the rest of Europe. Invading nations for one’s own countries interests does indeed have a long and glorious history…But perhaps one that we would not want to emulate. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2004, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/34 "2004-01-28T14:31:04Z")
[Note: These countries also claimed they were doing good for the people involved. Now, I am not a complete moral relativist and I do see distinctions between these nations and the U.S. But, still, I just don’t see how one can justify having one set of rules for ourselves and another set of rules for everyone else.] ---
**Author:** ![OliverH](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/278dde/32.png) [@OliverH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OliverH)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/35 "2004-01-29T12:33:19Z")
> [@John Carter of Mars](#): > > I thought he had biological and chemical WMDs, but probably not nukes. The fact that none have been discovered doesn’t matter much to me. Saddam needed to be gotten rid of, and we got rid of him. > > I don’t think that France, Russia, and Germany knew more than anybody else did. Their vote against invasion wasn’t a noble act. They all had financial ties to Iraq that they didn’t want revealed and/or lost. Ergo their vote in the UN was entirely in their own self interest. An argument that completely ignores economic realities. The amount of business both nations were doing with Iraq is so unimportant to their overall economy that it takes a great deal of malevolence to suggest economic reasons. The war action itself, with its influence on consumer confidence, had a much more severe effect not just on the economy of these countries but others as well, than the loss of any business with Iraq could ever have had. Aside from that, it takes great disingenuity to claim a government that saw companies prosecuted for foreign subsidiaries selling items to Iraq perfectly consistent with regular civilian infrastructure, but of potential use in missile guidance systems, would put business with Iraq over everything else. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/36 "2004-01-29T14:21:43Z")
As noted upthread, there’s no way any of us could KNOW Iraq did or didn’t have nukes, so the OP is for shit in a lot of respect. As I recall, the debate over the invasion of Iraq was couched in terms of whether or not the U.S. should launch a pre-emptive strike or stay with the U.N. peace accords. Even then, there were a lot of voices saying the evidence for nukes was scant or nonexistent, and we should continue with the sanctions and containment – it was working so why fix it? And that’s why I opposed the invasion of Iraq. So I didn’t KNOW whether or not Iraq had nukes, but I figured, sanctions aren’t broke, so why fix 'em? As for the after-the-fact claims that invading Iraq has been a good thing and will make America’s position in the world stronger – I think that remains to be seen. We’ve got a lot of troops mired in a Mess O’ Potamia now, with a group of bloodthirsty Sunnis, Shias and Kurds who hate each other’s guts with a passion. My feeling is they are all playing nice while the tanks are in town, but once the American ground forces leave, they’ll be at each other’s throats. In the meantime, the invasion of Iraq has done nothing but strengthen the stateless terrorists like Al Qaeda, giving them time to regroup and making them a LOT more popular in the Middle East. It has done nothing to shore up the Saudi regime whose purported instability is the realpolitik rationale for the invasion of Iraq. And while deposing Saddam’s regime had some human rights benefits, why, there’s a whole laundry list of dictators whom we could stand to topple on those grounds, which would leave us in a much less precarious situation post-toppling. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Iskander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/db5fbb/32.png) [@New\_Iskander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Iskander)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/37 "2004-01-29T17:43:07Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > Heck, I don’t know that you aren’t building a nuke in your basement, but I won’t tell people that I do and then say that I want to invade your house, perhaps killing a few members of your family in the process. This analogy is extremely flawed, because it leaves without mention the 12 year history preceding the invasion and reputation of the invaded party. If you were to say that I was an arrogant and repressive bully; terrorized my own household for decades; started mayhem in the neighbourhood; had to be beaten into submission by superior force; had sanctions imposed on me; required constant surveillance for 12 years; never cooperated with authorities; always behaved in provocative and threatening matter; required repetitive use of force to keep me in check; then, when my property is raided by authorities and shoot-out ensues, which leads to “killing a few members of my family in the process”, the conclusion must be drawn that I was asking for it all the time and bear the whole responsibility for the results. If you were to say something like that, you would be making a good and comprehensive analogy. Instead, you put the whole blame on the sheriff who decided to go ahead with the raid. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/38 "2004-01-29T19:51:13Z")
Not “sheriff”, implying acting on behalf of, and with the approval and support of, the public, but “self-appointed vigilante”. Either way, if we said all those bad things about you, it would be our responsibility to make sure first before “making you shoot back”. Now, about all those insurgent attacks that have been happening unrelated to Saddam anyway - got a simplistic and self-excusing analogy for those, too? Nice sig line. Apply it to your mirror. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Iskander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/db5fbb/32.png) [@New\_Iskander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Iskander)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2004, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217/39 "2004-01-29T21:55:10Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Not “sheriff”, implying acting on behalf of, and with the approval and support of, the public, but “self-appointed vigilante”. POTUS=“self-appointed vigilante”? Oh, yes, “selected”, right… But wait, still not “self-appointed”, no? > [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Either way, if we said all those bad things about you, it would be our responsibility to make sure first before “making you shoot back”. Why didn’t Clinton do so in Waco? > [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Now, about all those insurgent attacks that have been happening unrelated to Saddam anyway - got a simplistic and self-excusing analogy for those, too? Easy. Ever tried to destroy a hornets nest? > [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Nice sig line. Apply it to your mirror. Did that ten years ago, honest. Like to follow suit? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-wmds-who-doubted/226217.md?page=1)