Wait, what? You’re saying the casus belli were vindicated? In Powell’s words “mobile production facilities used to make biological agents” on trucks and rails; “in a matter of months they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the [first] Gulf War”. This from eyewitness accounts that proved to be total fabrication.
A significant, revisionist shifting of the goal posts there.
No, in fact I said the opposite, assuming you’re talking about the reason for the 2003 invasion. Saddam had tonnes of WMD in 1990 but most of that was destroyed. Some was just lost. Anything found after 2003 was apparent lost leftovers from 1990, and no real danger as weapons.
Here what I said “The point being- although there was evidence Saddam was rebuilding his arsenal during the sanctions period (he even bragged as much) it turned out not to be true. Once Saddam let Blix back in, and Blix had reported “Can’t find anything so far”, there was no reason at all to invade. There was reason to threaten force unless Saddam let Blix back in, sure, but once he did, the invasion was without need.”
There is some evidence that Saddam might have shipped a few prototypes and plans to Syria in 2003, but there no doubt he was no danger as far as WMD went at that point in time. I am pretty sure the Bush Admin even knew that, after Blix got done.
He was. But since Lute was replying to my post about the stockpiles, I assumed that is what jjimm was talking about. Perhaps Lute & jjimm were carrying on a private debate, then? Not on a public message board?
If jjimm had disagreed with your post, he’d have quoted you. Lute appears to be trying to claim that one Sarin shell is proof of a viable, active WMD program, and thus the war was justified. Jjimm was pointing out that this is a pile of cobblers.
The real gem was this 2003 Middle East Prediction Thread from GD. A bunch of real nutjobs there, one going by the name of flowbark:
I thought I was. Pollack later stated that his book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq was a balanced treatment of the subject and wasn’t really a case for invading Iraq. Alright then. Except that my reading was that it was a balanced case… for invading Iraq. Then again in another thread I spoke of cold feet when I saw GWB thumb his nose at the rest of the world.
Crap. I was wrong.
Crap. I was wrong. Closer to 4500.
I seem to recall that nukes were unlikely, but chemical weapons probable. Though these really are 2 different beasts. Oh yeah, there were bio concerns as well.
Iraq was rated “Not free” over the entire 2004-2011 era. Some of its numbers improved though: civil liberties got better, then worse. Political rights improved somewhat. I think there were 2 elections.
Oh, give it time. With any luck for the next one we won’t pretend to be the good guys out to save the poor Iranian’s from themselves. Then we don’t have to look quite so incompetent, and we can just pillage the oilfields from day 1. We could also design some spiffy badguy uniforms too!
I didn’t know you had to quote a post to disagree with in, and Lute was agreeing with my post, so if you think Lute post was wrong, so was mine.
Lute said “True, Saddam Hussein didn’t unleash any weapons of mass destruction, but insurgents have been using his old stockpiles of chemical weapons to make their IEDs. “WMD” aren’t just nukes.”
I am sorry, I see nothing in his recent posts which say the war was justified or that Saddam had a active viable program. Care to quote that post?
In general, your estimates were dead on for the first war. Of course, we shoulda known that winning the regular forces was going to lead to war #2, which was costly and long.
I missed the Middle East prediction thread, but here, on the same day that thread was started (March 12, 2003, a week before the invasion), I made the following prediction:
That 2004 incident was an explosive device that had been improvised from one of Saddam’s old Sarin shells, presumably from one of the old stockpiles that DrDeth mentioned. The fact that those stockiples existed–and largely ignored because they’re “too old”–and at least one shell had been used in an IED was my point.
