It’s impossible to do the latter.
John: The inspectors had between november 27th 2002 until the start of the war; hardly YEARS…
How many times have we heard “Wolf!”
And every time, there’s no WMD.
Now we’re starting to hear that they’ve been transported across the border to Syria. And that Iran must halt its attempts to acquire weapons of mass destructions, and Pakistan must stop exporting weapons of mass destruction.
It’s gonna take a long time, cost lotsa bucks, and kill lotsa people to find that fucking wolf.
At some point, it may occur to all of the countries on GWB’s shit list that the only way out is to take out the U.S. altogether.
So it’s no longer “mutually assured destruction” and peace, it’s “kill the other fucker first”.
Randy:
Maybe I was a bit unclear. The inspectors have been in and out of Iraq every since 1991. I don’t know the exact dates, but I’m sure if added up all the time, it would come to “years”. But even if we only count the latest inspecting effort, then let’s give the troops at least 4 months before we start raving about “where are the WOMs”. And remember that the SOLE purpose of the inpsectors was to look for weapons. The troops have other more important tasks to accomplish.
Oops. WOMs should’ve been WMDs.
I couldn’t agree more. I’m truly frightened by the hints that Syria may be hiding Iraq’s WMDs. If we used them as a pretext to invade Iraq, what’s to stop us from using them again as another pretext to invade Syria? I certainly wouldn’t put it past this administration to try it. After all, Rumsfeld is already claiming that they’re sending arms across the border, and that they will be “held accountable” So, after Iraq is reduced to rubble, we’ll go after Syria, and then Iran…
Scary stuff indeed.
pentagon Official reply when he was asked why he was so sure Saddam had WMD:
“we kept the receipts”
…
John: …“then let’s give the troops at least 4 months before we start raving about “where are the WOMs”.”
I agree that it’s premature to conclude that WMDs of some kind won’t be found. OTOH, I haven’t noticed anyone “raving” in this thread. The OP was colorful in the manner of elucidator, but it was not, to my mind, an elucirave (if I may coin an expression). And if Randy or someone else was “raving” I must have missed it.
I may seem to making too much out of a single word, but I find that words such as “raving” and “shrill” are often cast about loosely, on and off these boards, by way of discrediting opinion on superficial grounds.
IIRC, the inspectors left Iraq in 1998–so we’re talking about a hiatus of some duration.
John: …“then let’s give the troops at least 4 months before we start raving about “where are the WOMs”.”
I agree that it’s premature to conclude that WMDs of some kind won’t be found. OTOH, I haven’t noticed anyone “raving” in this thread. The OP was colorful in the manner of elucidator, and arguably premature (as some have suggested). But it was not, to my mind, an elucirave (if I may coin an expression). And if Randy or someone else was “raving” I must have missed it.
I may seem to making too much out of a single word, but I find that words such as “raving” and “shrill” are often cast about loosely, on and off these boards, by way of discrediting opinion on superficial grounds.
IIRC, the inspectors left Iraq in 1998–so we’re talking about a hiatus of some duration.
Oh, Iraq is on the record as claiming to have produced over -ahem- 10,000 tons (not a typo) and thousands of gallons of such things as:
VX
Trichothecenes
Aflatoxin
Sarins
Mustard Gases
Gangrene gas
Ricin
Botulinum
Anthrax
others
And they cannot account for any of it. Again, they claimed these in excess of 10,000 tons and hundreds of gallons of some and thousands of gallons of others. Do you think they under reported or over reported… and with these amounts does it matter?
[Emphasis added]
There is evidence that Iraq was providing proof of the destruction of banned weapons. What evidence is there to the contrary? You picked an odd example to make your point.
For clarification, simply having the al Samouds was not a violation of UNSC Resolution 1441, but failing to cooperate with their destruction would have been.
Using dated quotes from UNSC inspectors to imply that the UN knew Iraq to be in violation of 1441 (yet still failed to act) is unproductive to the debate, IMHO.
Further, it is beating a horse that may not be dead, but it ain’t about to get up and walk around.
On preview, Philster, cite?
For example, when you say “And they cannot account for any of it,” let’s take VX as an example. At the end of GW1, Iraq claim to have remaining stock of 412.5 tons of VX in stock. 411 tons were destroyed under UNSCOM, only 1.5 tons remains unaccounted for.
While that is plenty to remain concerned, it highlights the exaggeration of your claim.
John:
As Elu pointed out, there was hardly any continuity between the inspections work before and after the 4-years when no inspections were allowed.
So saying the inspectors (and thereby implying Hans Blix et al)have had years is simply not correct. They got a couple of months.
When Iraq accepted the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire agreement, it agreed to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction. But after a senior Iraqi official defected in 1995, the nation admitted to producing biological and chemical agents that could be used as weapons of mass destruction. Here is a look at the chemical and biological agents Iraq claims to have manufactured in the past.
Details of chem/bio agents and amounts (under Iraq…Weapons)
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/weapons/index.html
[super-cynical-mode]
Making the world safe for Christianity…
[/super-cynical-mode]
JOhn.
if you want a good reason to believe that Saddam has WMD–look at his famous 12,000 page report in which he documented “ALL” of Iraq’s weapons.
The Iraqis swore that they had fully and completely listed EVERYTHING they had.Half the world, and blind-man Blix, fell for the lies.
Golly, gee whiz, what’s this then?–all of a sudden, a few weeks later they “accidently” discovered a few barrels of toxins. Funny 'bout that–the closer the US Army got to Iraq, the more forbidden weapons Saddam “accidently” discovers.
If any intelligent person actually believes that Saddam’s hands are clean, I can’t figure out how. For decades every western country sold him all the raw materials, and (as elfje noted above) we have the receipts.
So we are supposed to believe that he flushed it all down the toilet, because Blix politely asked him to?
After 12000 pages of lies, I have a feeling that Saddam might not be the most honest guy around. We know he paid for the raw materials–if he cant prove he destroyed them, basic logic says he must still have
them.
And those chemical protection suits found in captured Iraqi army bases are a pretty good sign that somebody is planning to wear them.
Oh be patient. Wait another week. 2 weeks tops. You’ll see.
“We don’t have any weapons of mass destruction. My wife …Morgan Fairchild…yeah, that’s the ticket…my wife got rid of them.”
Even if we do find Iraq’s hidden cache of WMDs, will we find the authorization from the UN Security Council for a military action? Or how about some evidence that Saddam was planning to use those WMDs to attack the United States?
Gonna take more than two weeks to find those, methinks.
Wow, and Saddam was clearly right on the brink of bombing us with his yet-to-exist WMD’s, huh? Look at how all his neighbors were covered with WMD’s as soon as we attacked…
Like those chemical suits, which Saddam was clearly about to pack into a Al Saud, and launch at Kuwait.