Wow. Considering how many lefties saw themselves in my post and starting crying, I must really have hit a nerve.
Cervaise’s post was needlessly hostile and ill-mannered. I figured that if Cervaise had the right to pee in the punch bowl, then so did I, and I responded in kind.
This is so typical of the mind-boggling hypocrisy common among liberals. They consider themselves entitled to ignore even the most minimal standards of decorum and courtesy–because, you see, their obvious moral and intellectual superiority clearly gives them the right to ignore ordinary standards of behavior. But let the opposition do the same, and somehow the opposition isn’t playing “fair.” Cervaise isn’t being abusive; he’s just “speaking truth to power” (or some such nonsense). But let me respond in a similar manner, and somehow I’ve gone too far.
You guys have merely demonstrated yet once again that lefties tend to behave like petulant children when confronted with opposition. If anybody else has a problem, I advise you one more time to take it up with the mods.
Sorry, but there’s more than enough evidence that right wingers act no better than the left wingers. As the statement by Cervaise accused some right wingers of being stupid, yours accused the left of being fools or traitors. You have no room for talk of petulance.
I think the main problem of this country is the polarization of the left and right. Neither side is allowed to admit that the other may have a point, or that someone of their side may be wrong. I don’t care which side you may be on, but that’s stupid.
"The chemical weapons that have been recovered by US forces in Iraq were all made before the 1991 Gulf War and were too degraded for their intended use, US intelligence officials said.
Republican lawmakers have cast the disclosure that about 500 chemical weapons have been found in Iraq as evidence that Saddam Hussein had a stockpile of the weapons before the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
But the intelligence officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said the weapons were too degraded to have posed a threat to US forces in March 2003."
I have to wonder how these expired munitions, if they can’t pose a militarily significant threat to Americans in Iraq, are supposed to magically turn into Weapons of Mass Destruction once, hypothetically, they are transported by al Qaeda to the Homeland.
Maybe The Never Ending Eternal War On Everything With No Hope Of Anything Good …
Dick Cheney: “If we pull out, [the terrorists in Iraq] will follow us. It doesn’t matter where we go. … And it will continue—whether we complete the job or not in Iraq—only it’ll get worse. Iraq will become a safe haven for terrorists.”
OK. Shodan claimed that he wanted this thread in GD to keep down the “personal” sniping, I will now encourage Lonesome Polecat, vibrotonica, Cervaise, Who_me? (and anyone else who feels a need to jump into that silliness) to take it to the Pit.
So, general casey says that IRAN is supplying the insurgents: great, now the full measure of our foolishness is becoming clear. We have managed to drag ANOTHER party into this war…and Iran has a huge advantage in this. they can now play the nuclear card, and keep iraq unstable. meanwhile, we are being bled by a thousand cuts. So just about every bad result that could have come about, has resulted from invading iraq.
I wonder if Rumsfeld ever thinks more than 60 seconds into the future…maybe he’ll be replaced…but by who? :eek:
You misstate the issue. They are clearly weapons, and as such, of interest to terrorists operating inside Iraq.
They are not Weapons of Mass Destruction.
There is no evidence that Hussein ever would have handed weapons to a group that was just as committed to overthrowing his secular government as it was in fighting the West. (Recall that the al Qaida training camp in Iraq was in the Northern protection zone where the USAF and RAF prevented the Iraq army from attacking it.)
Ah, I see. Now the President and his defense department are in on the conspiracy to make Shodan look silly and excitable. It couldn’t just be that Shodan was wrong. No, no: this one goes all the way to the TOP.
Man, so invading Iraq and then providing laughably inadequate security (the latter for no reason I’ve ever been able to figure out other than pure disconnect from reality) and turning the country in a lawless state ruled by largely unchecked insurgents both foriegn and domestic must have really tamped down on that weapons smuggling problem real good.
I mean, yeah, taking away the one figure in the region whose interest it was to NOT have his WMD used against us an replacing him with a chaotic horde of nutjobs really improved that situation. I am, was, and remain all for taking out dictators. But it’s pretty amusing to see all you realpolitik conservatives, most of whom defended the tactics of strong-arm dictators during the Cold War, now basically advocate replacing those dictators with insurgents all over again. Down with Pinochet! Bring back the guerillas!
Rumsfeld is neither the CEO nor the VP of corporate planning in this mess. Rumsfeld was the COO, given orders to reduce the size and weight of the military and, later, to go forth to overthrow Hussein. I seriously doubt that he was actually behind the planning of the Iraq invasion other than to take instructions from other rooms in the White House and order the Joint Chiefs of Staff to carry out those orders.
Chemical weapons have a shelf life of 2 years. The very liberal ,left keaning organization,the Department Of Defense, says they have nothing.This is childish name calling about nothing. Fox tv goes straight to name calling. I thought the Straight Dope nwas above that.
The administration and its lapdogs tried floating this tale last october. It sank due to lack of credible evidence. I’ve not seen anything more convincing this time around. Has anyone?
With Iran and Iraq apparently mendingties I think it makes more sense to view Casey’s remarks as part of the disinformation campaign against Iran than as a real and troubling development in Iraq.
Huh? No. I said it pretty clearly: the distinction I’m drawing is between weapons that may be employed to inflict mass destruction, and other things. As you cite:
“Mass casualties” are in this case synonymous with “mass destruction” (I’m not talking about sarin gas that can put a crater in the earth). If Duelfer is saying the old munitions couldn’t cause mass casualties, he’s saying they couldn’t be used for mass destruction. This supports what I’m saying.
That doesn’t say they’d qualify as WMDs. My bread knife downstairs is lethal, but it’s not a WMD. MASS DESTRUCTION. Those are the words to focus on.
Given this, and your desire not to make things personal, you may want to refrain from using the phrase “Usual Suspects” again in this thread.
Not to mention binary weaopns, which can extend the shelf life even longer.
That doesn’t change the fact that the weapons in the OP are basically worthless now, but there are lots of things that affect the shelf life of chemical weapons, and I’d be suspicious of any blanket statement about their shelf life (including Ritter’s). There may be some technological limit to extending shelf life, and perhaps that’s what Ritter was talking about when said “5 years”, but the article I referenced doesn’t give any further details.