Agreed. Of course, the reason the Iraqi’s were cooperating ‘reasonably well’ was because there was a US army on their border. That tends to get peoples attention. Had Saddam and his merry men been so cooperative in, oh, '98 say, then perhaps all this wouldn’t have happened. What do you say? 
-XT
Yes, the threat of a military response caused their cooperation. And then the actual military response made the cooperation a moot point and ended up, from the standpoint of WMD, being a total waste.
So much disinformation, so little patience. Yes, indeed, Saddam fired unguided missiles. Stupid? Yeah, I guess. Rumsfled himself remarked that the Saddamites had fired over 700 missiles at the “coalition” airplanes. He did not find it remarkable that 700 missiles were fired with not a single…no, not even one…apparent hit. Or at least, he didn’t mention it. Details, details.
Reason: they didn’t turn on thier radar guidance systems, because the aircraft to be targeted carried anti-radar missiles that homed in on radar guidance. The procedure would then be, translated from Arabic, “turn missile guidance system to ON. Kiss your sorry ass goodbye.”
Best guess: nothing more than a futile and expensive display of pique. If I poured a quart of tequila down your throat, blindfolded you, and spun you around about fifty times, then handed you a .22 caliber pistol to bang away at overflying flocks of geese, you would have a better chance of hitting one than an unguided air defense missile fired off in the general direction of the sky.
Why stop there, XT? You should have pointed out that his position also kills little baby ducks.
Could I get a cite for that?? I was unaware his position killed baby ducks. What about small puppies? Kittens? Baby seals?
First I’ve ever heard of it. You are right, you’d have a better chance with the .22 than hitting anything with an unguided missile. You don’t by chance have a cite? Not that I think you are wrong, but I’d really like to read about that if you do…just for laughs.
What about the planes Saddam sent up (I know we shot down several)? Were the pilots also blindfolded? Given tequila? Spun and handed a .22?
YOu are right though…it would be a pretty futile gesture if this was their standard response. Pretty stupid I’d say. Was this something they always did, or did they only start doing that after we fired some HARM’s at them?`
-XT
Took place on these very boards, back in the days when there was still some basis for hope that maybe, just maybe we weren’t really going to do this stupid goddam thing.
We were discussing the usual stuff, then we got off on a tangent about how Saddam was doing all this hostile and dangerous stuff…stamping his foot, shaking his fist, so on and so forth…and then someone came rushing in, from the pouring rain, to say how Rummy was just on Faux, talking about how the Iraqi’s had fired over 700 missiles at our brave coalition pilots. Whereupon yours more-or-less truly asked how come they didn’t hit any, sidling up to the possibility that these numbers might be exaggerated. I mean, 700 shots and not one hit?
A more knowledgeable Doper, (name escapes me, side effect of glaucoma prevention program…) brought in the skinny, to wit: they weren’t hitting anything because they didn’t dare turn on the radar guidance, or they would catch a missile right up their Nixon. So, yeah, basicly they transformed a sophisticated radar-guided weapon into a very expensive Roman candle.
Why? Who fucking knows? Does anything about this Mongolian cluster fuck-up make sense? If pressed, I might be able to find the cite, but I’m kinda lazy and easily…ooh! shiny!
Well, they were not contradictions. Did you look at any of the reports? They said, basically, that the consensus is that Saddam has WMD (chem or bio at least) but that they do not have definitive proof of it. It is not a contradiction. It is simply an honest assesment of the facts.
That depends on the likelyhood that “complete, well constructed and fact based conclusion” is to be found. It could be that such things simply don’t exist when dealing with hostile international players. I would say that it also depends on the consequences of waiting.
Quite.
xtisme provide close enogh to this.
Just saying that characterizing Saddams behavior as simply denying his WMD program is a bit disengenuous.
Quite so. I’m glad you support Americas invasion of Iraq to do so a second time. 
A dislike of Bush?
It seems I have offended you with this comment. I appologize for doing so. I truly did not mean that phrase in any sort of derogitory way. I mearly meant that certain prejudices are a necessary part of life.
Can I throw Ale’s question back at you? What does the guidance state of the missles have to do with anything? Just turning on the radar guidance systems of these things towards our airplanes in the no fly zone could very easily be interpreted as a violation of the cease fire agreement between America and Iraq. firing the missles was certainly not a fireworks display given in honor the the pilots. :rolleyes:
Well, I’m too lazy (at least tonight) to look it up either. Not that I doubt your story but it sparks a lot of questions in my own mind. Were ALL the shots unguided or just some? Most? Why didn’t the Iraqi’s simply use heat seekers or some other non-radar guided missile (I’m sure the Russians or the Chinese could have been, er, asked nicely, to sneak a few across the border)? For that matter, there are other methods that can be used to defend against HARM’s or missiles of that ilk…some of them even fairly low tech IIRC. And of course there is still the question of the planes we shot down.
Anyway, maybe I’ll have some time tomorrow to look it up for myself to see what the deal was.
lol, no…nothing about that mongolian cluster fuck makes much sense to me…it seemed to be an effort to see who could be the most stuborn and stupid. I suppose all things considered Saddam won…because he’s in a cell and both Clinton and Bush got re-elected. Well, if you can break away from your contemplations of the shiny thing I would appreciate it if you could find that old thread, time and inclination permitting. 
-XT
Nope, my request for a cite was for this quotation:
And you think I was born with a Hate-Bush gene or something?; no, my dislike stems from his (and staff) morally banckrupt actions in the Iraqi affair and other assorted attitudes towards the rest of the world. It has nothing to do with his political affiliations which I couldn´t care less.
It has nothing to do with:
A) Wheter or not there were WMD in Iraq
B) The justifications given for the urgent need of military action
C) This thread topic
I´d like to reply to the other points, but I´m late for work already.
:rolleyes: Nice attempt at a list, though, including as it does numerous examples of lack of deception mixed with existence of substantial (though never unanimous, as your attempted argumentum ad absurdam fallacy would have it) popular support. I already spotted you Tonkin Gulf, which as you know led to a war far more disastrous and even mistaken than this particular clusterfuck. Pity we, and especially Bush, didn’t learn from that example, isn’t it?
pervert, the Zimmerman Dispatch was not used by Wilson as a pretext for war, nor is it likely he’d have had popular support even if he did. The US entered WW1 because of the Lusitania sinking, which was a fact, not bullshit or even a mere lie.
The anti-aircraft guys in Baghdad may look stupid for not turning on the radar and firing anyway, but what the hell else could they do? Just stand there while a Saddam-appointed (or at least Saddam-fearing) officer tells them to defend the homeland, and yes, we’re not gonna be able to if we use radar, but maybe we can get lucky if we shoot, and we won’t if we don’t, and anyway it will help keep up morale to see our missiles shooting back? No, they’re going to do what they did. Wouldn’t you?
But US/Allied casualties over the entire decade of successful containment were **zero (0). ** Extrapolate that all you like and you can’t ever get in the same universe as “a grave and gathering threat”.
Well, I wrote my list before you posted your message ‘spotting me’ the Tonkin Gulf, so its not like I included that illegally or something. In addition, as I said when I originally posted it I was rushed for time and just trying to answer another posters question. Also, I did ask you first…not necessarily for cites but in general how you can say that no other war time president (which you later retracted for the Tonkin Gulf fiasco) used similar tactics. However, you asked something specific about Wilson and WWI so I’ll answer that briefly (though I said I wouldn’t provide cites for all that mess I’ll break down this once). As with some of my other examples, this is actually VERY similar to what GW did IMO (i.e. propaganda and deception to change the public mood and move them towards accepting war as a solution).
Actually I wasn’t thinking of the Zimmerman dispatch per se when I listed Wilson, more of his systematic attempt to bring the US into the war through wildly exaggerated propaganda. Oh, Zimmerman was a good example of the systematic approach but it was part of the process not a one shot good deal to get us there. Your example of the Lusitania sinking is a good example of how Wilson and his boys had already prepared the field so that we could use this excuse as a causi belli. Here is a brief blurb I turned up in a 5 min search showing kind of what Im’ getting at…and honestly it doesn’t quite lay out the point I was making in any case, just sort of gets at it obliquely. I read a book a while ago on Wilson that layed out a much stronger case for what I was getting at, but I can’t remember where I put the book now or the authors name.
Well, I’m unsure if they were stupid or not at this point as I don’t know the details. I’ve provisionally accepted this story at face value but I’d really like a cite with some details so I can evaluate it myself in context. Its claimed that no US jets were shot down , and I can certainly believe that, but there could be other reasons for this besides the IRaqi’s not turning on their radar. If you think it through, how many jets did the US lose when the full scale invasion took place? How many in the first gulf war? I’m sure the Iraqi’s had their radar on then, and our pilots were much more at risk then (attacking deeply into enemy territory, ground attacks, attacking well defended areas, etc…not patroling the no fly zone) after all. From memory it wsn’t very many planes we lost even then.
Well no…from a stand up military perspective I don’t think ANY nation on earth is really a ‘grave and gathering threat’ to the US. And for myself I don’t think Iraq was a ‘grave and gathering threat’ to the US from ANY perspective…I’ve never seen anything convincing otherwise. However, to play devils advocate for a second, I don’t think it was Iraq’s conventional military that was perceived as a threat to the US or anyone else…it was the possibility of their unconventional arms (chem/bio) being used or give to terrorists that was perceived as a potential threat.
-XT
At the time, turning on the radar was considered a hostile act. If memory serves, we shot more missiles at them for that than their shooting stuff at us. 700 missiles would be almost one a day for two years - I don’t remember ever hearing about such a barrage. I suppose that if they did turn radar on during an attack we would have gotten very serious.
Why did he do it? Probably the same reason he never came out and said there were no WMDs - macho posturing.
I’d also like to remind everyone that one of the problems in the '98 inspections was that Saddam accused the inspectors of spying for the US - and he was right. That was a Clinton screwup, just to be even handed here. In 2002-2003 while Saddam wasn’t publishing guides to the WMD sites, the inspectors got to go just about anywhere they wanted, including places off -limits before.
Not only that, but they locked up war opponents (those nasty socialists) and suppressed information. One of the reasons the flu epidemic was so bad was that the government censored news of how many were sick on the grounds that it would hurt the war effort. My wife is researching a book on the flu, and she has discovered that Wilson was a far bigger sob than I ever imagined.
My appologies. How about this.
In a 202 address he said
“The forces of evil will carry their coffins on their backs, die in disgraceful failure, taking their schemes back with them, or digging their own graves,” he said in the address marking the anniversary of the end of the disastrous 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
“No weakling should imagine that when we ignore ill talk, this means that we are frightened by the impudent threats…and …no greedy tyrant should be misled into an action the consequences of which are beyond their calculations,” he said.
But I never said anyting like this. I mever accused you of being born with anything. Nor did I accuse you of disliking Bush because he was a republican. I simply noted that you had a dislike of him, and postulated that this may color slightly your reading of history. I really did not mean it as a criticism.
I certainly agree with you first point. And possibly your third. However, it did have something to do with the second. It definately shows hostile intentions by Iraq. Which were certainly included in the accusations against it before the war.
Well, I think you are significantly wrong on this point. The Zimerman telegram was definately used as one of the reasons to go to war against Germany. I never said it was the only one.
But don’t take my word for it.
As with the most recent conflict, it is sometimes helpful to read the original acts, speeches, or resolutions rather than rely on news reports (or history books) for the condensed version.
Right. Turning on the radar was a hostile act. Are you saying that firing the missles was not a hostile act? I can’t hardly make myself believe that. Again, the only point (as to this thread) about the missles was that Iraq had been very agressive for a long time. It was not simply a poor put upon innocent country which the US was bullying.
Well, for full accuracy, the inspectors themselves were still claiming areas of holdouts by the Iraqis. They were hopeful that such issues could be resolved, but they had been pretty hopeful throughout the inspection regime. Many of those reports read like “We have made progress. We have much progress to make” sorts of things regarding Iraqi cooperation.
What utter crock. In point of fact, yes, the US was – and is – fucking bullying Iraq and the international community as a whole. What do you call the unilaterally imposed no-fly zones over Iraq? Personally, I can’t find any other label for the infringement of a nation’s airspace than an act of war. That Saddam was reduced to firing a few blind missiles in return only points to the reality of the situation. Namely that Iraq was far from being any sort of thread to the US.
I call them one of the terms of the cease fire directly resulting from the unilateral invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, agreed to by Iraq, and sanctioned by UN resolution. Do you seriously call them bullying?
But this seems contradictory to me. If Saddam was no threat, and the no fly zones were merely acts of war perpetrated by the US, then we could have ended the inspection regimes, no? But if we did that, would not have Saddam been a threat in pretty short order? I’m not sure how you can escape the trap of thinking the inspection regime was onerous and inappropriate while at the same time pointing to it as the reason Saddam was not a credible threat.
Maybe you should stick to arguing about things you know something about? The Embarrassment and Illegality of the No-Fly Zones
Well, sure. It was effectively a continuation of the Gulf War, which didn’t even end in a real truce like Korea did. What’s the problem with that? The way things happened, the no-fly-zone period was just a long ceasefire in the middle of a single war.
pervert, the Zimmerman Dispatch didn’t constitute an act of deception on the US President’s part. It is *not * analogous to Tonkin Gulf or Saddam’s Got WMD’s, which were deceptions by the US President for the purpose of starting a war. It’s fair to nail the racist Wilson for spinning it into a Krautbashfest, though. Too, WW1 was already well underway, with substantial non-government-sponsored participation by many individual Americans already occurring. Iraq was in a contained cease-fire, a difference that does matter.
Good, then. The argument has been widely made by various elements of the “war was justified” clan, though, that Iraq’s act of firing missiles at US/UK planes was an aggressive act that required its military defeat. Never mind whose country that was happening in.
You are right RedFury, the no fly zones were not sanctioned under the various UN resolutions IIRC (though 668 could very loosely be interperted this way if one wanted to stretch and bend things sufficiently)…nor (afaict) did Iraq ever sign off on them as part of the cease fire. They had been in place since '91 (IIRC) however, and were enforced for over a decade…by 3 different presidents. So, its kind of a stretch to lay this all on GW’s door step…after all, he was doing what his daddy and Clinton had done before him. Precidents.
You could reasonably call them ‘illegal’ I suppose, and certainly they were never used as a causi belli mostly because of their quasi-legal status (and because in the end this issue was being distorted by both sides to club the other over the head with), but I think it would be a stretch even without formal UN sanction for them to call them so. I think a good case could be made under the Charter (recall that Iraq WAS a threat to Kuait, and had invaded them…then go back and look at the charter) for having overflights into Iraq by coalition forces to inspect things, though I admit I’m no expert (or even close) on this subject. I doubt YOU are either though so unless you have some kind of cite showing that it was ‘illegal’ I think I’ll just leave it at that. BTW, your own cite isn’t exactly what I’d be looking for. Something a bit more authoritative would be nice.
Its certainly not so much of a stretch however to see them as the US/UK ‘bullying’ Iraq since thats precisely what they were put in place for. However, calling it ‘unilaterally imposed’ is bullshit, unless you think that the UK and France (admittedly France later backed out) are also part of the US now. I dont see it as ‘fucking bullying’ the ‘international community’ community either…quite the opposite. Had we REALLY been bullying them (instead of the other way around) we would have used it as a pretext to invade Iraq in the first place.
-XT