US: ‘Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction’, says British paper the Sunday Herald. Meanwhile Bush says there are WMD. The comments are from unnamed sources here, but are they preparing to weasel out of the WMD claim soon?
This is in the pit because this will likely devolve into namecalling.
In news-speak Senior Administration Officials almost always refers to someone at the cabinet level or higher.
If the story is legit I’d say it’s a way for the administration to begin the spoon-feeding of the story to the electorate.
This is fantastic! I was for the war on the grounds that psychotic dictators are a bad thing, but I was also opposed to the Bush presidency on the grounds that partially lobotomized presidents aren’t much better. This way, I get to have my cake and eat it too!
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
I was pretty sure Iraq didn’t have shit, but for some reason I’m not overjoyed now that it looks like I’ll be right.
Doesn’t the third paragraph (“According to administration sources, Saddam shut down and destroyed large parts of his WMD programmes before the invasion of Iraq.”) contradict the claim that they had no WMD?
can’t possibly be wrong, after all, posters here, like december and Milo asssured us the administration was correct that it was an absolute truth that SH already had WOMD, and that’s why it was vital that Iraq be invaded right that second.
It contradicts the idea that they were a clear and present threat to the national security of anyone. If I claim that I have to come into your house to kill you in self-defense because you bought a gun that I claim that you are planning to use on me, and in the course of me breaking into my house you either turn out not to have a gun, or you DO have a gun but do not actually use it against me even though your life is in danger, it certainly undercuts your argument for self-defense either way.
Maybe I just don’t think like a ruthless dictator, but if he had nothing to hide, why did Saddam approach the problem in a manner which made it appear that there were in fact things to hide?
I’m not aware of the quality of the Sunday Herald - perhaps a Scottish doper could fill us in?
However, this does raise some questions to which I would like answers:
What about the special super-secret intelligence the US and UK had that you needed a special decoder ring to read? How did this intel not point the armies to the location of said WMD?
Or the biological weapons lab-in-a-Winnebago thing that the Iraqis were cruising round the desert with? Didn’t Powell say they’d got found one the other day?
Where oh where are the terrifying Iraqi Death Ships that were roaming the high seas, packed to the gunwales with pure evil?
Disclaimer: I am really, really fucking glad that Hussein is gone, but I really wish it had been justified differently - internationally sanctioned, based on human rights abuses, etc., rather than cynical, spurious bulshit scare tactics used on a traumatised public.
maybe, just maybe cause he had at least two or three enemy neighbors who would have been absolutely happy to invade his country had they known his army/weapons weren’t nearly what he claimed they’d be.
The Sunday Herald is quite a respectable paper, jjimm.
Because he was a ruthless dictator and that’s how ruthless dictators do everything. Dictatorships generally aren’t known for their transparency and free exchange of information.
Also, even if there are weapons of mass destruction that we just can’t find, wasn’t the argument for invading immediately based on reducing the chances of these weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups who could use them against civilian populations? Seems to me that the chances are greatly increased now that the country is in anarchy.
Wouldn’t it have been smarter to take more time to gather intelligence before we invaded, so that we could have swooped in on any WMD sites and kept control of them? As an added bonus, we could have continued inspections and made the rest of the world happy as well, even if they didn’t work and we ended up invading after all. Sigh.
Ruthless, stupid dictator??
All he had to do was boilerplate some “certificates of WMD destruction” and he could have avoided the war which turned him into a non-dictator.
If he had WMDs and destroyed them, all he had to do was show some documentation to that effect. Oh, and then let the UN inspectors have free reign .
He didn’t choose that option, knowing he was about to be deposed/killed.
That was one hard headed dictator. Or one with something to hide that was so important to keep hidden he lost everything to try to keep it a secret.
Must have been a bitch of a choice for him.
You mean a politician lied? :eek:
I am shocked and disgusted. In other news, Pepsi is better than Coke.
Lib since we invaded another country, many people died, we’ve spent millions on this, I’d hope that it warrents a little better than a shrug and ‘politicians lied’.
damn right…
I raise my hand as one of the people who never bought - nor cared for - the “Saddam has WMD’s” line.
I WILL raise my hand, however, as someone who does not becry the war, as I recognize that Iraq has violated the UN sanctions against it, on numerous occasions, even if it didn’t have WMD’s.
In my opinion, the focus on Weapons of Mass Destruction is a fallacious argument on both sides of the spectrum.
It was, however, SPOOFE the main one that Bush et al spouted. Not only did he have them, but their use against the US and it’s allies was imminent.
and that was the basis used to tell the world why it was necessary for the US/coalition to immediately invade Iraq.
saying now (or even then) that there were other reasons doesn’t address the issue raised by the OP.
“If he had WMDs and destroyed them, all he had to do was show some documentation to that effect.”
Newsflash… you cannot prove a negative.
When the request is ‘prove you don’t have something’, then that request cannot be met by any means. Iraq could have been destroying their weapons live on television and the US would have been saying “They still have more hidden”, “They’re just trying to fool us again” and “Those aren’t real WMDs, the real ones are hidden”
When it comes to proving something, the something that must be proved is “Does Saddam Hussein have WMDs”, the parties saying he does have the burden of proof.
Anything else and you can justify a new American justice system.
Me: “Duke, you murdered Thelma Thumper”
Duke: “Prove it”
Me: “No Duke, you must prove that you didn’t murder Thelma”
(and at the same time, prove you’re not a witch, by drowning in Salem bay)
Only at the absolute last resort, should something happen, such as blatant obstruction. Then, send in the army, and you better find some fuckin’ WMDs.
But now, We MIGHT find some WMDs, but that is unlikely. A far cry from “If we don’t move NOW NOW NOW, Saddam’s gonna nuke New York and use chemical weapons on our soldiers”
Sure, Saddam is gone, and all is good, except for the fact that Iraqi money is now worthless, the Iraqis pillaged many government buildings (which is A-OK to Dr. Strangelove in the Defense department) and various Iraqi museum employees and other friends began to take artifacts out to sell them to people. We’ll ignore the suspicious disappearing act that occured on the way to Baghdad, that was most likely ‘running away’, but the Iranians say the US made a deal to get Hussein out of Iraq (one rumor: Belarus) in order to get power. Have no doubt about it, if Saddam and his sons would have left on March 17th, then who knows what would have happened? although i’m sure that with the urgent WMD threat, we’d have to step in. 
Where is Iraq going to be in four years? will any of us goddamn care? or will Iraq become another damn dictatorship or an Islamic Republic, that breeds terrorists that will come for Americans and Israelis?