A similar story came out a few days ago, december. It turned out that the “vials of white powder” were some sort of test kit for the presence of chemical weapons.
Big deal. This is just another “Wolf!” call.
if no WMD’s are found,
the Bush Administration announces-
“Ooops!”
or
“Well, exCUUUUUUUSE ME!”
From MSNBC:
**
Another option: WMDs are at sea.
Although this story seems to have dropped out of the limelight for some time now…
**Looks like this debate might be academic… **
Or not (although I think ultimately we will find something).
Apparently not. And the Administration seems to be going with Option 1, which I see no one had any money on. Will wonders never cease…
Well, it is certainly possible that SH had less WMD than we thought. But he did have them, at least at one time. And Blix, and us both asked for prove he had destroyed them. And SH could not do so- which even Blix found fishy. SH kept records on eerything- so where were those records? Dog ate 'em? :dubious:
Like I have said before- Saddam had plenty of time after the ultimatum. Thus, he moved some, hid a few, and estroyed the rest. SH was arrogant & maybe crazy. But NOT stupid. He could have though if the war dragged on ah la Stalingrad (which appeared to be his plan) , and the casualties started mounting up- and no WMD’s were found; popular pressure would force Bush to withdraw. And you know, that could have been a very good plan indeed, it could have worked…
There have been clues & evidence of WMD, mind you. The empty but wiped clean bio-weapon vans. Possible they were never placed into service? Then why wipe them clean? The Iraqi’s are really not known for being clean in their warfare. True, up to now, there is nothing clear cut, no “smoking gun”.
It’s not really Option 1, though, because they are not admitting they were wrong. The Administration’s tack seems to be "They had the WMDs during the UN inspections, but then they quickly ditched them all when the U.S. invasion was imminent. Seems pretty unlikely.
What’s really going on is Option 4 - downplay the WMD angle in favor of the “liberation” angle, coupled with…
Option 5: All’s Well That Ends Well - We’re better off now that Saddam is gone, so the ends justified the means. And anyone who disagrees is a whiney liberal pinko un-American Saddam-lover. And that Iraqi oil is OURS now, so hands off!
Ah the wonderful dance of lost credibility has started.
Now I wonder where our usual suspects are now that our own Rumsfeld has floated the idea.
It does rather look like that Financial Times article I cited here about 2 weeks ago was a trial balloon. I believe december questioned its validity. What say you now?
Option 6: Make up more bullshit
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=2840293
Have we had enough yet? Probably not.
Stand up and say “Bush, you lied”.
If I grasp at straws in my world I get shouted down real quick. If the Bushistas do it, it is for the “War On Terrorism”.
Call as spade a spade.
He didn’t lie. Of that we can be certain. Everyone, even those who opposed the war, thought Saddam had WMD. And we didn’t believe it on Bush’s say-so. We believed it on the say-so of years of inspections, Bill Clinton, the heads of the Senate Intelligence Committees, the British government, the French government, independent military analysts…
If Iraq did in fact destroy their weapons, Bush is very unlikely to have known about it. And it raises the question of why Saddam refused to fully cooperate with the inspectors and provide proof of their destruction.
Yeah, the presidant wouldn’t lie, would he ? “There are no war plans on my desk” sound familiar ? (They were in the filing cabinet, I’m sure…) As for WMD, I’m sure that Bush wrapped it up in proper politico-speak so that he wasn’t technically telling an untruth. Nonetheless, it seems safe to say that he was either trying to deceive or at least seriously overstating the case.
As for Wolfowitz: He argued before the war that Iraq’s WMD were enough of a threat to justify an invasion. Now WMD is a “bureaucratic reason”. Either he was telling the truth about the motives then or he is now, but both can’t be true.
Yup, even a notorious war opponent like me is still half expecting something to show up. (Not the hundreds of tons that we were led to believe. I would have thought that some theatre defense weapons would appear. I’m pretty damn surprised that there’s not even a single shell…)
Anyway, the central pre-war issue was whether the Iraqi WMD constituted a threat severe enough that the US was justified in flipping the UN the bird and attack preemptively. A lot of the people who were against the war said that no, there was no evidence of a serious threat. And it’s beginning to look like they were right, no ?
…who only wanted a “sexy document”, if there is such a thing.
I direct interested readers to reporting in the Financial Times on this matter and US efforts to split Europe.
FT 27 May 2003 “The plot that split old and new Europe asunder” by Quentin Peel, James Harding, Judy Dempsey, Gerard Baker and Robert Graham
FT 26 May 2003: “US accused of deserting diplomatic path in Iraq”
FT 27 May 2003 “US aware of efforts to split Europe over Iraq”
In particular 26 May article cites sources as confirming the decision had been taken already by January, with perhaps decision by December 2002, the article notes “The findings imply that the UN diplomatic process was pre-judged. White House officials told the American public up until March that the president had not decided to use force.”
Of course december will point out the sources are unnamed, to which I counter in advance so were the FT sources in re the NBC quoted several weeks ago, and that played out precisely.
Precisely, I expected some theater defence weapons as well, I expect some may in the end be found, Chemical part of NBCs.
Remember the Maine…
You have a touching faith in the US population attention span and their ability to live in denial.
Unfortunately the rest of the world may not be quite so obliging. But we don’t care about them, do we?
Funny you should say that - the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 had a couple of historians on to talk about, among other things, significant dates in history, and the sinking of the Maine was cited as one possible date of the beginning of (what they loosely described as) the “American Empire” (and before anyone gets persnickety, this was in comparison to the British, Roman and Ottoman Empires so the caveats were taken as read).
Speaking of the Today programme, I also enjoyed John Humphreys making interviewees squirm about the use of cluster bombs in built-up areas. (You can hear the whole story here).
This is not an option. Changing the administration in another country by military force just because, in your opinion, it’s not nice is illegal. This is why Bush had to talk up the WMD story in the first place. Those weapons made Iraq in breach of his interpretation of UN resolutions. Without this justification all he had was “Saddam’s a maniac”, which is undoubtedly true but not enough in international law to permit you to invade someone else’s country.
If Bush did pick option 4 he would be officially making the US a rogue nation that invades others just because they don’t conform to their opinions of what’s right and proper. He would be making the US the self-proclaimed World Cop and the sole definers and defenders of justice.
Personally I think he’ll go with laying on another few layers of BS to try and confuse the issue and then hope people will stop asking about it. Which isn’t going to happen. But then, he never thought much through in his little escapade beyond the oil-fields.
Because we thought the regime wasn’t nice?
I’ve heard that said before and it’s rather strange. I think we can all agree that Hussein was more than just “not nice” and that his overthrow was a good thing.
Doesn’t make it any more legal adaher. You don’t like a law get it changed.