Oh, I never thought it would. Just a counterpoint to the endless repetition of “There were no WMDS!”
Interesting nonetheless that the terrorists appear to be showing some interest in these WMD that nobody hereabouts thinks are worth anything. Just like Bush said pre-war that Saddam could provide WMD to other terrorists rather than use them himself - again - in order to preserve plausible deniability.
As regards the pre-1991 part, seems to indicate that the inspection regime had not brought about the total disarmament of the Iraq terror regime. And I may be wrong, but I don’t think the Kool-aid drinking even on the SDMB has reached the point where they would deny that Saddam was awaiting the end of the inspections so he could convert his dual-use facilities back to weapons-making and go back to manufacturing WMD to threaten his neighbors.
I believe the documents were just copies of stuff he already had handed over - another attempt to stall, IOW.
Probably true, except that no amount of WMD is going to be of sufficient quantity or quality. If such was ever found, the Usual Suspects would go back to Bush-bashing for something else without a second’s hesitation.
The report says these degraded bombs exist. It then states that enemy combattants in Iraq are interested in aquiring chemical weapons. What form of logic are you using to conclude that enemy combattants in Iraq are searching for these weapons? Isn’t the casual inclusion of these two otherwise disconnected statements indication enough of a transparent attempt to deceive? Are you that eager to find something that isn’t there?
So far that hasn’t been ANY amount of WMD found in Iraq, so let’s not act like us lefties just can’t be satisfied.
In point of fact, though, finding WMD now would still not retroactively justify the invasion. You can’t ask for the warrant after you’ve already done the search. We needed to prove that Iraq was a threat before the invasion in order to justify it (a point I made repeatedly before the war ever started, so there’s no change of position on my part).
Shodan: Do you really think the Bush has found something that will in any way shape or form justify his war and that he’s being silent about it because… why? He’s being magnanimous towards the Democrats and doesn’t want to politicize the war? :dubious:
I don’t know if you clicked through my link to the PDF file, but the cover letter from Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte reads thusly:
So in other words, the Department of National Intelligence was not issuing any new information as a matter of their own operations. They were responding to a direct request from a high-ranking congressman three days ago. The only reason for the existence of this paper at all is that Hoekstra et.al. were hoping to make political hay out of it right at this moment.
Hoekstra’s safe in his Michigan district, so I can only assume, by the fact that Santorum is revving this one up, that Hoekstra wrote to the DNI on Santorum’s behalf, since he’s trailing in the polls.
The site Iraq Watch reports that Hussein’s gov’t told UN weapons inspectors that they had misplaced 550 artillery shells filled with mustard gas shortly after the First Gulf War. Perhaps these are them.
Far be it from me to take anything Hussein ever told anyone at face value, but the eternal unanswered question of “If he had them, why didn’t he use them to save his own ass?” suggests they really were missing until recovered by Coalition forces.
*Rep. Hoekstra is the Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Huh? If stockpiles of WMD were found on the order of the descriptions given by Powell in his UN speech, that would make many of the Democrats less vocal in their claiming that the war was a mistake, even if they continued to accuse Bush of executing that war poorly.
Well, if Bush didn’t give people so many things the bash him about, that wouldn’t be such a problem.
I dunno. If someone says, “We just raided an insurgent hideout outside of Baghdad, and we found six canisters of useable, military-grade sarin; we’re currently examining it to see whether it conforms to information about Hussein’s weapons-programs,” then it’d certainly give me pause for thought. I’m not asking for evidence of a working WMD program currently; I’m just interested in seeing any evidence that Hussein had deployable WMD.
As someone on another board said, I might have a rusty old Revolutionary War-era blunderbuss hanging over my fireplace. If a robber breaks in and I beat him to death with the blunderbuss, should we call that death by firearm?
These warheads are dangerous to folks trying to dismantle them. They’re not dangerous to enemy combatants.
Terrorists are interested in them? Pardon me if I don’t base my judgments off what terrorists want; there is some small, tiny possibility that they’re not well-informed.
Let he who feels the weapons found are useless and degraded be the first to open them.
BTW: I am in the “why this war and why now?” category. I don’t know why we had to ramp up our Iraq war again, especially while still involved in Afghanistan. However, Bush wasn’t the only one who believed Hussein was harboring WMD’s the disagreement was on what to do about it. I personally would have liked to have seen sanctions played out more and Afghanistan settled before this came to a head. I also feel that Iran and N. Korea were greater looming threats (and time has borne that out).
My feeling on the current situation is “We broke it, we own it.” No matter what we thought about going to war in Iraq, or how we got there, we are responsible for the current situation and need to play it out to a reasonable conclusion (which I suspect won’t happen until Bush is out of office at the earliest).
The scandal was that the invasion was geared to protect the oil assets and not the suspected WMD places, that included munitions to blast the useless or non existent WMD, many of those munitions were looted by the insurgents. And IIRC their deniability that the munitions were gone before American troops had passed by proved to to be not plausible.
Yes.
Since the inspections were finding items like illegal missiles that got to be destroyed, my impression is that we had him in check. Not finding viable WMD or new ones coming after the last Gulf war, shows the sanctions and military force of the past did work.
Yeah, the fact that virtually all the WMD capabilities of Saddam turned out to be BS can be ignored now. Not.
As it has been found, this Republican/Fox point is misleading in the extreme, you being taken for a ride by the 100th discredited point by the extreme right is not amusing but pathetic considering where you are posting…
Huh? There are some things in my fridge that I really don’t want to open up, but that’s precisely because they’re useless and degraded. In order for something to qualify as a WMD, can we all agree that it must be:
A Weapon
Capable of causing Mass Destruction?
If I’m wrong and these canisters are capable of being deployed as weapons that cause mass destruction, then I’ll eat crow. But the news we’re seeing now suggests that they’re more like military waste, less like military weapons.
Indeed, the Iraqis did not bother to open them since they were degraded and dangerous to handle, useless for war.
You need to get the bull out of the china shop.
You need to get the bull out of the china shop.
The problem here is that there are several factions fighting against us in Iraq, The few and homicidal Al-qeada ones IMHO lie when they say they want the US out, they would love for us to be around Iraq and to get into Iran. It is that faction the one that unfortunately has been made to be the main item in Iraq by this administration.
The reality is that the local insurgency, that does want us out, is growing for other reasons and the longer the US stays is making even moderate Iraqis realize that we are looking like colonizers, talking like colonizers, and walking like colonizers, but we are really making freedom go on the march… you see.
Speaking of which, how is that plan of invading Iraq so that we keep WMD out of the hands of terrorists working out for you? Given what we now know about the lack of guarding of Al Qaqaa and other potential sites for WMD, it seems like the administration’s plan for keeping WMD out of the hands of terrorists consisted of “Pray that Saddam doesn’t really have any there or that the folks who loot the sites are very upright citizens who will then turn any bad stuff that they find over to us rather than sell it.” That, or they knew that their claim of being concerned about WMD getting into the hands of terrorists was just a bunch of hooey!
Dunno about the Iraqi mustard gas munitions, but here’s something about sarin. It’s Wikipedia, so follow the source material. Anyway, the relevant text:
If the stuff in the memo is of a similar, or even the same, lot as above, (which seems possible, given the age) these sarin munitions are useless, and have been for many years.
The one thing that I could not parse (Okay, one of the many things) about this whole ill concieved cluster fuck was the fact that if the WMD had been there, why weren’t us troops guarding all the supposed sites that Rummy and Darth Cheney swore were there? Instead, our forces were used to guard oil wells, and even that had a badly planned, last minute aspect to it.
It is interesting that this story shows a significant weakening of the GOP position. For several years now, the GOP position has been:
*“Well of course we lied! That’s what we do! Hell there was an opportunity to use force against Arabs.” Whaddaya think we need? Justification? What are we? Democrats?" *
Now, the Republican bravado has slipped to show concern that the middle-electorate may remember the run-up to the war and not be entirely happy with their feeling about that memory. Instead that initial lust for blood has abated and is looked at with disgust.
The story is a press release of a party firmly on the back foot.
[snicker]Someone might already have touched on this. However, it’s obvious to me that GW is such a sharing fellow. If WMD’s justifying the Iraq invasion had been found he would certainly step aside and let Santorum make the announcement.[/smicker]
