US: 'Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction'

The BBQ Pit
21

Well the problem with me, as well as many other people is all the loose ends and the questions that the questions raise.

He either had the wmd or he didn’t.

If he had them, we should have found them, or made damn sure that once we blew his ass up we could find them quickly. Getting the world on our side should have been a top priority, and IMO the public relations were totally bungled. I’m not one to believe that all these mobile bio-weapons facilities (what is the James Bond?) even exist. If he had them we would have had a hell of a lot more concrete evidence on their whereabouts. If we had evidence we should have found a way to get the classified information to the people that needed it, instead of pathetically trying to convince people that some model airplane made out of balsa wood and held together by duct tape was actually a threat. They needed to find a means to an end, and that was about the most sorry ‘means’ I’ve ever seen.

If they needed justification for regime change, they should have gone with human rights violations, not WMD, because they would have at least been telling the truth, and had more overhead to exaggerate. This whole thing is about exaggeration of course, and it was flying on both sides, but there’s a difference between stretching the truth, and outright lying, and I would have rather been guilty of the former then the latter.

I bet your asking what I would have done. I would have sat there and fantasized about jumping off a cliff and instantly solving my problems, because you couldn’t pay me to deal with this shitball of a conundrum. After it was time to face reality, I still may have jumped off that cliff. What to do, what to do. France and Russia are in bed with Iraq with some potential oil deals, and Russia is owed some 5 billion for arms, so they won’t be of much help. I could try and set a deadline 60 days from now, but that gives the clever people 60 days to wiggle out of it. I can’t get them to sign an ironclad agreement, because they aren’t that stupid. Should I try and stretch the truth to astronomical proportions to make them look bad, or would that just make me look bad? How the fuck does one rally popular opinion to illegally dispose a bloody dictator?

Fuck this, and fuck Saddam, he could have ended this in 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 00, 01, 02, and 03.

That cliff is starting to look good now.

Bush & Co, actually fuck that, Rumsfield & Co thought they could slip this one by a ignorant public by beating the 9/11 drum, and if they aren’t held accountable then they’ll have succeeded.

If no WMD were in Iraq, then wtf was Saddam thinking? He is a vicious motherfucker, but he ain’t stupid, what was his fucking deal? If he didn’t have them why didn’t he just cooperate?

Now they are saying it wasn’t about the WMD, but the ‘Nuclear mujahadden’? Talk about moving the goal line.

This whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I don’t even know who to believe anymore.

22

So where’s the outrage? Where are the mobs of angry peasants, armed with pitchforks and torches, marching in a surly mass towards Castle Rovenstien? If they get away with this shit, it will only be because they have correctly and exactly measured our most salient charcteristic as a people: we are stupid.

As a pessimist, its pretty much what I expect. I would be tickled half to death to be proved wrong.

Keep your eye on John McCain. He’s an honorable man, and if he takes a bite out of GeeDubya, the trajectory of the shit will intersect the locus of the fan.

23

The scary thing is, that aparently, history does repeat itself, except that this time, the gross overestimation and/or lies are now used to actually start a war.

I’ll reserve judgement about it all until the suspicions in the article are confirmed, but most sane people knew all along that the WMD reasoning was just a pacifier for the American people, and perhaps, the rest of the world, should GWB give a shit about them on a good day. The even more ludicrous claims of strong ties between Al Queda and Saddam’s Iraq are of the same caliber. If one’s a cynic, one could say that liberating the Iraqi people probably wasn’t too high on the priority list either.

Ah well, been there, done that, debated to death. No one’s going to convince the other side right now: it’ll take a few decades for a broad recognition that while this war had a partially favourable outcome (i.e. a removed dictator), it was started for the wrong reasons, if the reasons given by the US government were anything to go by.

Much like a certain war in South-East Asia, a couple of years ago.

24

Give me a break. The anti-war people don’t get to pick what specious argument the pro types will be advancing today; we just get to refute it. When you have one side saying “Why?” and the other saying “because…” that’s not a situation where both sides can be equally guilty of a “fallacious” focus. If your arguments are weak or false that’s not our fault.

I would say something about your tired “they violated UN sanctions” stance but you’d just get out from under it and move the target again.
I’ve come to the realization that no amount of arguing will ever change most peoples’ minds about the war, because it all comes down to one fundamental ideological difference. It seems that it can all be boiled down to your belief or lack thereof in the idea that war should be an absolute last resort. It seems that many pro-war types can be satisfied with half-baked justifications because they don’t consider war to be something to be avoided at all costs the way it seems that many anti-war types do (and that I do). Why go to war? To get rid of Saddam (and I’ll not argue that that isn’t a laudable effect of this war), sure, but not the way it was done. Not without any respect for international order. One quote from Bush on the eve of the war really made me sick, he said something like we had to go to war because of Iraq and Hussein’s deliberate defiance of the international community. Later in the same speech he said that he was prepared to take us to war even if every other nation was against it. I mean, come on. But that doesn’t bother most pro-war supporters, it seems, because they aren’t as horrified by the war itself as I am.
Ehh… sorry. Got a little off track there. Anyway I’m glad this thread hasn’t (yet) become yet another exercise in kneejerk teeth-gnashing and finger-pointing.

World Eater doesn’t know who to believe after all this, but at least we should all have a pretty clear idea of who not to believe.

25

Turns out they’ve been in Italy the whole time polishing their brass…

26

How bizarre! What an interesting article, Particlewill. I hope these poor guys get to go home soon.

27

This is just more bait & switch by Snake Oil Shrub’s Used Car Lot.

So now we won’t have 3000 specialized U.S. weapons inspectors looking literally anywhere they desire for WMD. How convenient! Why would Bush want WMD found right now. If we were not able to find them right away, let’s make the announcement at a more opportune time.

Who knows, maybe the day the unemployment rate in the United States reach 7% would be good fortuitous time for Bush to announcement that we had “found” “what appears to be” “evidence” of WMD in Iraq.

Or maybe the late January 2004 right before the New Hampshire primary. How about that patriotic day July 4th just before the Democratic Nat’l Convention.

Actually any day next year before November 2, 2004 would be a great day for the Bait & Switch Boys to make a big deal out finding WMD under that one rock that somehow we forgot to look under earlier.

This reminds me of Richard Nixons’s “Secret Plan” to end end the war in Viet Nam.

28

more news: (you have to fill out a quick zip code thing, just lie like i did)

Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq
Task Force Unable To Find Any Weapons

short story, the team set up to find the WMD is finding Jack, and Jack left town, and so will the team, supposedly to be replaced by a bigger one.

29

Ahem: the same or similar report appeared in the Financial Times on 3 May: see first page of this thread where I quote extensively from it.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=181918&perpage=40&highlight=colloun*%20Financial%20Times&pagenumber=1

30

That looks like it was posted while internet service was killed at my house, and with just the net at work i got behind, and with finals coming up, i am still behind reading threads, so sorry for missing.

31

No problems mate, I’m only puzzled by the dual reporting. Not sure if it’s the same sourcing or not.

I would guess these are “official” trial balloons to see what the reaction is.

32

Didn’t I say that WAY up there?

33

Yes, indeed. Now it has appeared in two continental papers, w/o notice or comment in the States as far as I can tell.

34

Yep. It’s floated overseas to see if it gets picked up here.

If not, then it’s safe to bring it up here as the expectation is now safely built that it’s a ‘non-story’.

If it explodes here then the administration can just deny it and claim they’ll find those dang WMD any day now!

35

This is the part I don’t get. He loses a war and agrees to have UN inspectors ensure that the WMD he had were destroyed. They stay for a while then get the big boot out of the country. Sanctions are levied, he still refuses to cooperate. Then, Bush & Co. place a huge army on his doorstep, ready to pound him into dust, he still refuses to cooperate. He sat there, played games, giving a little bit here and there, never fully cooperating with the inspectors even after letting them back in.

Why the fuck would he do that if he had destroyed all the WMD? It doesn’t make any sense, no sense whatsoever, something was going on in Iraq, something important enough to Saddam to risk getting 2000lbs of TNT dropped on his head. Either that, or he was just immensely stupid.

36

Over and fucking over again.

Saddam had to appear to be a mean dude to keep his neighbours from invading.

  • If he up and proved that he was completely defenceless, he risked attack from Iran and Syria.

  • If he dodged a bit, his neighbours wouldn’t risk attacking him.

What he didn’t plan for, though, was a bunch of complete whack-jobs in the White House who disregarded their own intelligence agencies in regards to Saddam’s actual capabilities.

37

I’m glad I read the thread through - I was tempted to skip ahead to the end and just vent my spleen, but it turns out someone already said exactly what was on my mind. . .

38

Right, the risk of attack from Iran and Syria was just so much higher and more immediate than the risk from the 100billion dollar army that has travelled half way across the globe to point it’s guns at him. :rolleyes:

The inspectors were there to check out WMD, not conventional arms, of which he could have as much as he wanted. They were not there to prove him defenseless, they were there to prove he didn’t have weapon systems X, Y, and Z.

39

Cheesey try to follow along. The risk for Iraq from Iran, Syria, (and quite possibly Turkey as well) was quite real and would be still there after they’d proven no real capability to protect themselves. The threat /possability of being gassed, etc was a hellava deterent to those neighbors. Do you really suspect that post declaring, “no, I don’t have anything here’s the proof”, that those countries would have still stayed back?

hell, we fucking armed SH in the first place to help protect him from Iran.

40

You fucking idiot. By that stage, it was clear to everyone in the world that Bush was going to invade no matter what.