I note you’ve made absolutely no attempt to either justify this theory, or to answer my question about defining the European theatre of WW2 as “needless proactive meddling”.
Incredible - am I really going to be the first one to link to this?
Granted, it isn’t the mountains of biological weapons that elucidator was hoping for, but it seems to be what Colin Powell was speaking of before the late unpleasantness with Saddam.
An Iraqi chemical engineer said that the units in question could produce 50 liters of botulinum toxin and 500 liters of anthrax in a couple of days.
Now, are we going to:
[list=A]
[li]quibble that the means to produce WMD is not the same as the WMD themselves, or[/li][li]say that there are only three mobile units found, and that the millions of doses the Iraqi mentioned aren’t enough to go to war over, or [/li][li]accuse the US of lying about the whole thing? [/list] [/li]Or some other piece of obfuscation?
Regards,
Shodan
A. is not a quibble. A is a fact, a thunderingly blatant one.
B. is as well, especially as the “millions of doses” is pure conjecture, as “but they have found neither biological agents nor evidence that the equipment was used to make such arms, according to senior administration officials.” We weren’t told Saddam bin Laden could make bio-weapons, we were told he had made bio-weapons, and oodles and gobs of them. I can explain that distinction further if you need me to.
C. is the nub of the thing. What did the President know, and when did he know it? Was he bamboozled into thinking that Iraq had “massive stockpiles”, hence incompetent, or was he mendacious? Hence a scoundrel.
The article you cited doesn’t say that. It says:
Who exactly is this defector? Let me guess: one of Chalabi’s pals. And the article doesn’t even quote him as saying that stuff about the 500 litres of liquid anthrax, etc.
I’d go for (D), mock Shodan for falling for more of the same bullshit.
I’ll take “A” for 500 $:
Furthermore I would urge the US to ASAP make these units available to 3d party experts who can validate the U.S. experts findings and analysis thereof.
And Shodan, I’m waiting for your reply over in the Dowd thread.
And I’m willing to bet $10 that “a still-unidentified caustic agent” equals “sodium hypochlorite solution” equals “ordinary household bleach”.
We are offering ONE HUNDRED TIMES that amount for the capture of Bin Ladin, and that has gone unclaimed for nearly two years now.
Shall I then imply that Bin Laden does not exist?
Ben Laden has or had a brain and a lot of money which cannot be said about the WMD. If he is dead it could be nobody knows where his body is. If he is alive he can move around and has plenty of money to pay people off. Are you now telling me the government of Iraq is still functional enough and has the resources to continue to hide the WMD? Because not even President bush claims that and I hope you are not implying the WMD have the ability to hide themselves and move around by themselves.
You cannot seriously expect intelligent adults to take this silly story as having anything to do with the USA’s stated justification for war.
The story you have linked to presents, as evidence of a WMD program, that something has been cleaned with either bleach or detergent. By this definition, my kitchen is evidence of a WMD program. This may scare the hell out of you, but did you know that more than 190 countries possess bleach and/or the means to produce laundry detergent? Scary, huh?
I don’t think even you can take this seriously. Surely to Christ you must realize, despite your unwillingness to admit it, how pathetically thin the whole thing is becoming. TONS of chemical weapons, they said. TONS of anthrax. An enthusiastic nuke program just a year or two, maybe just months, from producing a working bomb. So where the hell is it, Shodan? Nobody’s engaging in obfuscation here except you, because the important point remains: we still have no evidence that any of the USA’s claims were true. Not a single one of the USA’s WMD-related claims has had any significant amount of evidence unearthed to support it. Thousands of people were killed for a casus belli that appears to have been total bullshit - and in fact in some cases has been PROVEN to be total bullshit (see “Nigerian uranium.”)
I can understand you believing Bush et al. to start with, but tey’ve already been caught in a few whopper lies, and the “Secret evidence” they promised you has suddenly been swept under the rug. Doesn’t that bother you? Aren’t you willing to start asking why this stuff isn’t surviving the light of truth?
If they were at one point hidden, I hope you are not implying that the fall of the Iraqi govt. would mean that suddenly these WMDs, which by your own admission have no brain, would suddenly jump out into the open and say “Hey guys, Here I am!”.
I do not know if they exist or not. I was simply pointing out that the idea that no one has claimed a reward does not disprove their existance.
Um, elucidator, I didn’t step up because I’ve been kinda busy elsewhere.
Anyway, I offered up three options over in another thread, and I’ll restate them here, in order of probability:
-
The weapons are hidden and we just have to find them.
-
They were destroyed in order to make the US look really stupid. If that were the case, there would still be abundant proof.
-
Our intel was downright wrong and there were no weapons. That is so unlikely that even the international community doesn’t believe that. Hell, not even France could argue that Saddam didn’t have WMD, they just argued that it wasn’t cause for an invasion.
So I’ll tell you what. How about we sit on this a little longer. One way or another we’ll find out, and then one of us will end up looking like an ass. If it’s me, I’ll admit it. If it’s you, will you admit it? :dubious:
A little longer? How much longer do you need? The USA claimed to have tons of evidence and info? Where is that evidence and info? That is not something they need to find, that is something they claimed they had months ago. We want to see it.
And I take exception to your calling the invasion “the liberation of Iraq”. It was an invasion.
I dunno, I’m becoming increasingly of the opinion that I would have to see large amounts of unambiguous, confirmed-by-neutrals evidence to ever believe in the existence of Iraq’s WMDs. If they just turn up a couple of truck loads of shit I’d be equally prepared to believe it was planted. My skepticism grows by the day.
This might look like a catch-22. It is, but not one that defenders of the WMDs-exist school could honestly be surprised by.
Politically, it would have been a very smart move to have found them already.
AD, how about another possibility? The intel was right, and Bush chose to ignore or dismiss it because it didn’t match the story he wanted to tell of an imminent threat to the US requiring immediate preemptive action.
Where on your scale of probability does Bush’s lying fall? It’s pretty high up on mine, I’ll tell you.
Rex, I don’t mean to be mean about this, but are you aware that the Germans publicly stated they sank the Lusitania, and that at the time they announced it with no small amount of pride, and that we know what submarine it was and who the crew were, and that they publicly commented on sinking it? You must know this stuff if you know anything about the war. You’re just making stuff up, I assume. I’m sorry, but the Lusitania was sunk by U-20, not some phantom British sub, and it’s a fact beyond any dispute whatsoever.
Rex, do you actually know why the United States entered World War One?
Airman, I forgot to welcome you back. We’re all glad to see you.
Good thinking.
From the linked article:
And from the same source:
Emphasis added.
Already there. I don’t think you are going to like it - your analysis is still a piece of shit. Sorry.
So, by that logic, weapons-grade plutonium is not evidence of WMD, just what is used to produce them. And chemical munitions shells are not WMD, just the method by which they are delivered.
And rifles aren’t weapons, just the means by which you deliver a bullet, and bullets aren’t weapons, because they aren’t much good without a rifle. Right.
Perhaps you noticed that this “something” to which you refer is a portable bio-weapons production facility?
If you think the US is claiming that this is a bio-weapons facility because it was cleaned, or because it was used to produce bleach, you are either not fluent in English, or deliberately being stupid.
Until now.
Let me get this straight.
Colin Powell goes on international TV and before the UN, and says, “Iraq has portable facilities to produce weapons of mass destruction. Here are the photos and radio intercepts that show this.”
Now we find three instances of exactly what he said was there - portable facilities to produce weapons of mass destruction. Yet you claim that finding exactly what he said was there is not evidence that he was speaking the truth.
Far from sweeping evidence under the rug, or keeping it secret, it is in the New York Times. And yet you persist in saying, “Just because we found what we were looking for is no indication that it really exists”. Or something.
This is very like arguing with creationists. What you seem to have in common is the carefully cultivated ability to look reality straight in the eye, and say, “No. That doesn’t exist, because I don’t want it to exist.”
I listed three alternatives. The lefties on the list have come up with a fourth option - shut your eyes really tight, stick your fingers in your ears, and pretend.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Welcome back, Airman. And thanks.
The latter is another debate entirely, one I’ve engaged in here before. Suffice to say that we could easily have avoided involvement in the war in Europe. The Germans’ declaration of war on us was not threatening, because they were in no position to do anything about it. We could easily have finished off the Japanese by focusing all our efforts there, and negotiated a peace treaty with the Germans at a later time (only necessary if they had won Europe, which is unlikely even without our intervention.) Since we could have avoided the European conflict entirely, that makes it needless proactive meddling. I still have no idea why we even bothered attacking Germany.
As for the former, it was clearly in the Germans’ best interest in WW1 to keep us out of the war, but we’re supposed to believe they sunk our ships and killed civillians and invited Mexico to attack Texas? OTOH, it was the British who desperately wanted us in the war. If the British didn’t sink the Lusitania themselves, they certainly invited it to happen, and probably were glad that it did. And the Zimmerman telegram definitely was faked, we learned this way back in high school, I thought it was common knowledge. The British claim to intercept this message, and it just happens to serve their goal of getting us into a foreign war. Pretty suspicious.
Oh, please. At least actually admit that the U.S. justification for war was not “They have mobile production units,” but in fact was a vast array of accusations and claims concerning an arsenal of weapons that did in fact exist, not just “they have some trucks that could produce weapons.” George Bush, the President of the United States, personally stated that Iraq possessed thousands and thousands of tons of chemical weapons. It was claimed that Iraq had acquired nuclear materials from Nigeria (shown to be a lie) had acquired “aluminum rods” for the production of nuclear weapons (shown to be a lie) and… well, I could go on, but you’ll likely pretend these lies were never told.
As to the allegedly hot evidence you’ve cited, what do we ACTUALLY have? Leaving out your fantasies, we have
-
A story apparently not picked up by any other news service about three trailers that “senior officials” say COULD have been used to produce “bioweeapons,” but they don’t actually have any evidence they were.
-
Nothing else.
There is no evidence here that any biological weapon was ever produced by these trailers. Beyond the claims of U.S. “Senior officials” we don’t even have verification that’s what they were designed for. The pressure vessels on the trailers contain materials use in the production of hydrogen gas, not bioweapons, exactly as Iraqi witnesses have claimed, but the story of U.S. officials is that - wait for it - the Iraqis planted the aluminum traces to mislead investigators.
There is, in fact, no evidence any weapons ever existed. Now, maybe your memory’s faulty, but mine is not. The U.S. claimed that thousands of tons of weapons already had been produced and were an imminent threat to be used. Where are they? Put up or shut up.
But I’ll tell you what; this is what, the 25th story we’ve heard out of Iraq about how the smoking gun’s finally been found? Let’s wait three days and see what happens.
Oh, and did you know the word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?