That cite hardly proves the allegation. [ul][] It doesn’t show that George W. Bush made money from the war.[] It doesn’t show that Halliburton stockholders are Bush’s friends. It doesn’t show that concern about Halliburton profits motivated Bush’s decisions.[/ul]
I am not asserting that I presently know for a fact Bush’s primary motivation was making money. (I guess it came off that way, though.) But I do suspect it, and the fact that his cited reasons are falling apart like an old Yugo does much to increase my suspicion.
I agree. If Iraq didn’t have large amounts of WMDs, then we were misled.
I tend to agree. I expected substantial amounts of WMDs would have been found by now.
BTW have you ever been in the Trinity Alps? I have. If WMDs were hidden in the Trinity Alps, the only way we’d ever find them is if someone provided specific information. A WMD plant is smaller than a farm. It’s indoors, so it can’t be identified from the air. It can even be hidden underground. Iraq had the entire four-year period of 1998 - 2002 to hide things.
The Chicago Trib had an editorial the other day. It started out saying it looks bad that WMD stockpiles were advanced as the primary reason war was needed at this time, and that we have yet to find anything other than 2 trucks.
But then it neatly swept all such arguments away with a concluding paragraph that said essentially, "Who can argue that the world is not a safer place with the removal of Hussein."
That is the spin I see happening. As days and months pass, advocates of this war and Bush will say, Why focus on the past? There were several reasons for this action. We don’t wish to remain mired in the past like you armchair critics. Look at the present and the future, which are better without Hussein.
IMO, this type of refocussing, vagueing up of what was presented so clearly before, end-justifies-the-means explanation sells pretty well with the US public.
I wonder if congressional hearings would be appropriate to inquire as to the reliability of the jusifications the administration presented for the war?
I hope at least some of the Dem candidates have the balls to hit Bush pretty hard on this one. Unfortunately, I see him smirking, and shrugging it off - and the voters allowing him to.
This isn’t NEARLY as sexy as blowjobs.
The FBI decided that it only takes thousands of dollars, a garage and some technical know-how to produce weapons grade anthrax.
So the question should be:
What countries do NOT have biological weapons capability?"
It seems that most countries I can think of can come up with thousands of dollars and a garage and a Phd or two. Fair game all, I suppose.
Yep, the ol’ “the ends justify the means” argument, a morally bankrupt position taken by the most desperate.
As for the spin, it’s already ratcheting up – I noticed Ann Coultier has an editorial today entitled “Nobody Cares,” and I’m sure you can guess what her theme was. :rolleyes:
We’ve invaded their land, killed their leader, only one thing left on the to-do list, right, Ann?
> I agree. If Iraq didn’t have large amounts of WMDs, then we were misled.
Well and good…but can you say that they don’t have them? Most who wanted to give the inspectors more time are now saying that we should have found 'em already. Hmm…
The US inspectors have had as much time as Blix had asked for, and there are a whole lot more of them. Also, they acknowledge they’ve run out of places to look. Try again, athelas.
I think your premise might need to be re-worded. After the first Gulf War, UN weapons inspectors catalogued chemical weapons such as nerve gas. There is no question as to whether or not they did exist…they did, the question is what happened to them? Were they destroyed? Were they moved and hidden? Etc, Etc.
If Saddam spent the past several years destroying them, why wouldn’t he let the UN inspectors see and catalog the destruction? Why did he give the inspectors years of “run arounds” if he was destroying?
I am generally a supporter of the Bush administration, and I agree that the world is better off without the Saddam Hussein regime in place.
But that is irrelevant to the issue of whther or not he lied about, or acted irresponsibily in believing and repeating, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. I will not be fooled by the attempt to slip this one by. I will be waiting for actual wepaons of mass destruction - biological or chemical or nuclear - to emerge from Iraq.
And if they are not found within six months or so, I am going to be looking for someone other than Bush to vote for come 2004.
I make room for the possibility that a reasonable explanation may emerge in place of the actual weapons. So far, I haven’t heard the administration say anything close to a reasonable explanation. I am deeply disappointed on this issue.
- Rick
Well said, Bricker.
What do you think of the Bush war plan, that gave our troops free rein to leave prospective WMD sites unsecured while they motored on towards Baghdad?
Given that keeping Saddam’s WMDs out of the hands of terrorists was the threat that supposedly justified the war, does it trouble you that our war plan placed little emphasis on keeping the supposed WMDs from being looted by terrorists?
Pay attention, Boo. Most (99%) of Iraq’s WMD stockpiles were destroyed by UN inspectors in the mid-'90s.
While I am still sitting on the fence on this, waiting for the final data to come in, it bothers me that you are all overlooking the fact that many other nations agreed with the Bush administration that WMD were there. They just didn’t agree on the solution.
So were they all in on the conspiracy? Or are there more logical explanations?
For example, here is a report from CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (they were opposed to the war):
This seems quite plausible to me. The question is asked, “If Iraq didn’t have large stockpiles of weapons, why didn’t they submit fully to inspections?” The answer may be because Iraq came up with a solution: Destroy the actual weapons, but work instead on production facilities. Build a system of dispersed components that apart look fairly innocuous, but which can be brought together quickly when large quantities of weapons need to be manufactured. Maintain dual-use facilities. Etc. So they still can’t tolerate full inspections, but the weapons themselves may be destroyed.
The fact remains that there was a large consensus before the war that Iraq DID maintain a large WMD capability.
Now, it’s true that most of the other countries were not quite as certain as the U.S. and British intelligence services when it came to specifics. Most other countries talked in terms of missing materials, lack of cooperation, suspected programs, etc. But the general consensus was that Iraq maintained WMD capability, even if they weren’t sure exactly what it was.
So why is there no evidence of it today? Well, they could have been wrong. Perhaps they were misled by expatriate Iraqis. Perhaps Saddam destroyed the weapons, but was playing a game of trying to pretend he MIGHT have them, believing that this was a deterrent.
And if the Bush administration DID lie about it, they should be held accountable. HOWEVER, the LEAST likely reason for their lying would be to help out some cronies with oil contracts. The more likely explanation would be that the administration strongly felt that Saddam had to go, but that they didn’t think the ‘real’ reasons would fly with the public. For example, the administration may have come to this conclusion:
A) The chief danger, in the medium and long run, is political instability in the middle east, which is breeding terrorists.
B) A prime factor is the existence of Saddam’s regime, which is a major thorn in the peace process, a sponsor of terror, a potential source of WMD.
C) The existence of the Iraqi dictatorship forces the U.S. to maintain large bases in places like Saudi Arabia, which is inflaming anti-Americanism.
D) The presence of a brutal dictatorship in the heart of the Middle East allows other nasty countries to deflect criticism of themselves.
E) A democratic Iraq could be the catalyst that starts real change in the middle east, which in the long run is the only way to really limit terrorism.
F) Saddam is a really bad guy, and the people will be glad to see him go. So Iraq would not be a Vietnam. So the war is just, and Saddam’s defiance of the U.N. is a good enough casus belli to make the war feasible.
Conclusion: Saddam has to go.
Now that we agree he has to go, how do we convince the American people? Well, appeal to fear. Play up the weapons of mass destruction angle.
Not to say that this would be acceptable behaviour, but that is a far more likely scenario than, “Hey, let’s overthrow Saddam and risk all of our careers and kill thousands of people, just so Cheney’s old frat buddy can make some money!”
Sam Stone asked, "So were they all in on the conspiracy? Or are there more logical explanations?"
I think it more likely that they simply went along with the US because it was easier than not going along.
The US really threw its weight around during this whole thing. I don’t think anyone can reasonably deny there was a “you’re either with us or against us” attitude prevalent in the months leading up to the invasion.
So if it turns out that the Bush administration played fast and loose with their intelligence information, other countries may come to feel they were misled.
We’ll see.
Except that world opinion has agreed that Iraq has had WMD not just in the run-up to war, but for the decade before that. Bill Clinton said so, fer Pete’s sake. Is he in on it, too? How about the members of the Armed Services and Intelligence communities, who also agreed? How about Colin Powell? The CIA? George Tenet just gave testimony that the CIA backed its assessments 100%, and was not pressured by the administration in any way.
How about Tony Blair? England didn’t just rely on U.S. evidence - it has a very capable intelligence capability, and it concurred.
The most likely explanation of this so far is an intelligence failure, possibly caused by over-reliance on unreliable sources like Iraqi defectors with an axe to grind. Iraq was notoriously hard to penetrate, because of the extreme paranoia of the regime, and the brutality of its control over the people. So a lot of the intel was secondary sources and inferences from data analysis, things like that. So it may be that Saddam was actively decieving the intelligence communities, and it worked.
In the end, we may still find the weapons, or evidence that they existed up until shortly before the war. Or we may discover systematic failures in intelligence gathering. Or we may discover that we were intentionally deceived, but because the government thought it was doing the right thing.
But I believe it’s ludicrous to believe that there is a vast conspiracy within several governments to deceive the world and overthrow countries in order to make some money for some fatcat industrialists with connections to the government. That’s just conspiratorial fantasy, fueled by Bush hatred.
so to summarize, Saddam was actively trying to establish links with terrorist groups bent on destroying the United states.
AQ used the US to successfully defeat the Soviet Union and then viscously turned against it’s ally. Not a great source of trustworthy information.
Sam, I had some hope for you when you stated that Bush should be impeached if he lied about WMD. Now I’m starting to lose hope when I hear you repeating this utterly weak blog-speak.
It seems to be the current talking point du jour with the right-partisans that “everybody said Saddam had WMD, so why are people saying Bush lied?”
As I’m more than sure you’ll recall – NO, not everyone agreed Saddam had WMD before the invasion. It was questioned over and over and over – in the media, on this message board, by other countries. The Bush administration offered the thinnest and sometimes even laughable evidence to show that Iraq had Nuclear, no, no wait, um chemical, um drones – yeah, that’s it! Drones!
It was comical then, and it’s comical now that anyone would say “everyone agreed” with this trumped up dog-and-pony show.
When, in 1998? Five friggen years ago? Or in 2003 and he was depending on the garbage the Bush administration was handing out?
Same deal, lied to by the White house. Some of them are pissed.
All people that work for GWB. And how is this helping your point?
Bingo. Although the Bush-folk were led willingly toward that putrification.
Another round of misleading blog-speak – “why did Saddam refuse to cooperate?!?” He did cooperate, surprisingly well, with the last round of inspections. Read Han’s Blix 2/28 report to the U.N. (The following are my comments copied and pasted from the last post where this topic came up, apologies). In Blix’s report, Iraq:
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Allowed inspectors access any to place the wished to go. The inspectors conducted 550 inspections, “performed without notice, and access was in virtually all cases provided promptly”.
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“Iraq has further been helpful in getting UNMOVIC established…Help has been given by the Iraqi side when needed for excavation and other operations. Iraqi staff has been provided, sometimes in excessive numbers, as escorts for the inspection teams.”
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Provided inspectors with access to a previously declared site where proscribed weapons had been destroyed.
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Had begun destruction of all of thier Al Samoud 2 missiles before the U.S. invasion. Iraq had disputed that these were proscribed weapons, the inspectors disagreed, and Iraq complied.
This doesn’t sound like “not cooperating”. It sounds like slow progress and issues being worked out, and occassional roadblocks by the Iraqis. The final paragraphs in the report show that Blix is frustrated that progress is not being made quickly enough, not that no progress was being made.
“Refused to cooperate” in my book would equate to shooting the inspectors. Perhaps you’re unaware that this didn’t happen?
All that having been said, I agree with you that the ‘Bush attacked Iraq for his buddies at Halliburton’ theory is weak.
Well first, I will grant Sam that much of the world and indeed war opponents granted there were probably some NBC materials.
I would continue to do so, as I said before and during, I fully expect there are some theater weapons, that is things like chemical morter shells and the like insofar as they have deterance qualities in re neighbors.
However other characterizations are not so supportable:
There is, Sam, a clear difference between allowing there were NBCs, probably chemicals, and allowing that the NBCs present were a threat. You recall no doubt my argument pre war that there were likely some theater weapons but nothing really to worry about in terms of actual threat. Well, guess who was right.
As for Tenet’s testimony, well what the bloody fuck do you expect the sitting CIA director to say? “Yes, by George, my boss pressured me…”
I presume Sam you too live in the real world where such things do not happen.
Well, Sam, you seem to have missed some recent unpleasantness in England on this very subject and again the same kind of statements from British intel analysts that their work had been distorted. It at least goes to the British opposition that they are driving this home, despite having supported the war.
Well, bad intel, but it strikes me that occams razor would say that naming Saddam as the guy actively decieving the world regarding the NBC materials does quite pass muster.
Well, after building up a straw man of exagerations, yes your picture is hard to credit.
Something rather more focused, however, is rather easier to credit. That is, a certain group of neo-cons with an agenda, some pre-set views and a desire to make a case come hell or high water. And of course some nice ideological echo chambers to expand upon the hints and like.
Well in his resignation speech the former cabinet minister Robin Cook said
There is also a hell of a lot of pressure on Blair about this issue at the moment.