They found centrifuges? :eek: Perhaps you have a cite for this assertion? All I ever saw were a few old parts for a centrifuge rotor. That’s neither a WMD or even evidence of an WMD program. You do know that civilian reactors, of the sort that Israel bombed in the 80’s, also require enriched uranium, and that several countries are building their own enrichment plants for this purpose ? A few rotor pieces are nothing to get your short hairs twisted into knots over, unless they’re accompanied by credible evidence of an actual weapons program.
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They didn’t find anything for refining uranium to weapons-grade, just a few few dusty parts left over from 10 years ago. Even the Bush Adminstration gave up on that claim quicker then you. After being laughed at on the trailers, Bush found out that WMD or WMD claims required proof- not wild supposition.
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Every time you post “liberals” this and “liberals” that you end of sounding like some foaming mouthed John Bircher. Liberals, Moderates and even some Republican Senators have shown great concern of the WMD claims made by the Bush adminstration (I guess they are liberals too). Only the die hard Bush supporters think that the WMD claims were not way off base.
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“The reason for the invasion was regime change.” Not according to Bush, Cheney et al in speeches before the UN and Congress. The imminent threat of WMD’s was the primary reason provided. This has been well cited. Only after the abject failure to find ties to Al Queda (although Cheney was claiming them up to 3 weeks ago) or any WMD’s, WMD programs, or even any documents of the non-faked variety has lead to numerous attempts at revisionist history.
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“The reason for regime change was because Saddam was not cooperating with the inspection regime.” What a riot, the inspectors were in the country when Bush started his drumbeat for War Now, regardless of what the world thought. The inspectors’ work was so vital, that when Clinton bombed Iraq for non-compliance he was a traitor wagging the dog. Search my name and “wag the dog” for numerous Cites on this.
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"Centrifuges and plans are, and mobile bio-labs can be, used to create WMDs. " How about a Cite for this, as even Bush gave up on those trailers and crude 10 year old broken parts.
“So did everyone else”. Really? Seems most of the world though otherwise, as you remember the UN and many of our long term allies knew he did not and wanted to keep the inspectors in Iraq to prove it on way or another. Many of our former allies said the evidence was weak at best and trumped up at worst- and were proven right. There have been no WMD’s found, No WMD programs found, No ties to Al Queda or 9-11 found, No strong ties to terrorists found (unlike now, ironically ehough).
So, based on your lack of Cites to back up your fantasy as facts approach, and abuse of the one outdated one you did have, your admiration of december seems to well placed. :rolleyes:
Here is a Cite (fancy that!) on WMD’s and Iraq:
That’s it? The best their handpicked guy could do-- Hey maybe he was bluffing? So much for all that evidence George claimed they had. I wish I could play Poker against him- I would end up with the keys to the White House.
But wait, there’s more:
He was scheming! They don’t have proof, of course, but once we stopped monitoring him and lifted the sanctions-- oh wait we weren’t about to do any of that. So in other words: He might have done something down the line- because he sure would have liked to have that stuff. That’s what gets you invaded these days?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25416-2003Sep30.html
There is more there about why he might have been bluffing and maybe just maybe he might have had some dual use precuror chemicals. Read the link.
Pathetic, isn’t it? The best they can come up with is thought crimes. Saddam was thinking* about bad things.
Wait, don’t give Ashcroft any more ideas or we’re all fucked.
Too late.
Really??? it appears here that some one didn’t get the memo.
You misspelled Shodan in your italicized segment above.
Hope this helps.
Enjoy,
Steven
pssst - I was going for * subtle*
Thats what I said! In answer to the question “If he ain’t got them, why won’t he prove it”, thats exactly what I said, he was bluffing! Bluffing! My opinion is now entirely in congruence with the Administrations report which means…which means…well, that has to mean…
Omigod. I’m full of shit?
Oh no, Mr. B, oh no. Don’t think about the castor beans in the pantry. Don’t think about the castor beans in the pantry.
Jesus H., Mr. B don’t you have any tinfoil in that Godforsaken place you live? We’ll send you some, defending yourself from psychic surveillance is crucial!
Remember: the thickness of the foil is not as important as correctly folding the creases of the hat (always counterclockwise!) and correct longitudinal alignment (on the magnetic north-south line for maximum security from telepathic intrusion).
Jeez, guy, I’m amazed they haven’t podded you already. You must be pretty hard to find.
If no WMD are found by Jan 1, 2004, anybody that votes Bush is a fucking schmuck in my book.
Scylla, you might as well eat that crow now, because they ain’t gonna find shit.
Actually I’d like to revise that.
If by the first day of the new year, we have no more evidence of WMD then we do today, would that effect your vote Scylla?
Sigh.
I wouldn’t expect or want anybody to eat crow. It’d just make this godawful, needless war more divisive than it’s already been.
I never thought Iraq had WoMD sufficiently threatening to the security of the US to justify invasion, war and occupation. Once Bush committed us–and lots of other people–to the insanity I hoped I was wrong. It’s not exactly reassuring to suspect your government doesn’t have the faintest clue what the fuck they’re doing. The implications of being right in this case went WAY beyond personal ego. I’d much rather be wrong. I’m often wrong about lots of things, so it wouldn’t a real shock, y’know?
We aren’t gonna find WoMD. The justifcation was false for the need to go to war, immediately and in the teeth of world opinion. Saddam was a monster but Iraq was not an ovewhelming threat to us. At the most charitable interpretation, the war was ill-conceived and no realistic plans made for stabilising the region. And my country did it.
Realizing that is more nauseating than eating road kill, crow or otherwise. What I’d really like is some reasonable plan–and consensus, regardless of partisan politics–on how to salvage the mess.
Send lots of porn and beer?
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I must be missing the joke, because I have no idea what you mean.
::Think carefully Scylla::
Ummm. If that would be clever and ingenious of me, than that is exactly what I mean.
On the other hand if it would be bad than I wouldn’t mean it.
Since I don’t understand what you’re saying I think that covers the bases.
That depends. Would what you are suggesting be a good thing for me to admit to, or a bad thing?
As always, Veb, Well-spoken.
Me too. And I gotta admit, it’s a stumper. Which is why our leaders should have had the sense not to invent excuses to go into Iraq to begin with. But let me list a few, along with their obvious drawbacks:
- Let the Shi’ites - the majority - rule Iraq.
Plusses: it would solve the problem of how to get out. We’d give the country to them, and skedaddle.
Minuses: The Sunni and Kurd minorities wouldn’t be too happy. The Kurds would feel downright betrayed, and they’d be right about that.
- Turn Iraq into a one person, one vote democracy.
Plusses: it would make us feel really good about ourselves, for a little while.
Minuses: it’s basically #1, only we hold the wool over our own eyes.
- Make Iraq into a federation of three semi-independent provinces.
Plusses: If it worked, it would make everybody happy.
Minuses: the balance is tricky. If the provinces are too independent, then Turkey gets unhappy with what it considers a free and independent Kurdistan on its border, and quite possibly invades. If they’re not independent enough, then the Shi’ites might still wind up ruling the whole country. And in between, things might degenerate to civil war anyway.
- *Divide Iraq into three completely independent states. *
Plusses: for a moment, everybody’s happy.
Minuses: see how fast Turkey and Sunnivale partition Kurdistan.
- Now that Saddam’s gone, return Iraq to Sunni control.
Yeah, right.
Minuses: after having had ‘their’ country taken away from them, they’re gonna be sore winners once they get it back. Plus, that might result in Saddam’s coming out of hiding and returning to power.
- Give it to the Saudis.
Plusses: they might just be able to rule Iraq dispassionately, and be an honest referee of its internal squabbles. I fully expect they’d be willing to invest in infrastructure in return for oil revenues and the additional control of world oil prices that this would give them.
Minuses: first of all, nobody’s gonna even consider this one seriously. Second, if it worked, it would turn the Saudis into pretty much the controllers of the price of crude.
- *Blow it all up and walk away. *
Plusses: well, it would get us out of there.
Minuses: destroying a country in order to save it is so thirty years ago.
- Don’t go away mad, just go away.
Plusses: again, it would get us out of there.
Minuses: anarchy and civil war can be even nastier than Saddam.
Stuffing the genie back into the bottle won’t be easy. There is another option I"ll toss out just for consideration:
9. Place Iraq under unconditional U.N. control and authority.
Plusses: We have zero credibility now but maybe the UN’s broader base could craft a workable compromise. Any solution would have at least reasonable support from member nations to back it. This is really just a variation of your #8–dump it and walk away–but at least there might be hope of eventual order.
Minuses: It’d be humiliating for the US and therefore possibly politically unsaleable domestically. The solution would be slow in coming and like any “solution by committee”, wouldn’t really please anyone; just be marginally palatable to buy time.
I want to go back and focus on the centrifuge in the garden for a second, because I think it will serve to illustrate a massively important point that I would like to make.
Or maybe I’m just pulling my own crank.
Anyway.
Shodan has shown up and said “what about the centrifuge.”
I simply said that the centrifuge does not illustrate the scale George Bush describes.
Others responded to it with things like this:
Than a cite showing an alternative hypothesis for why no WMDs was shown by elf6c, but apparently only for ridicule.
and Minty seconded the comment:
I’ll also note that I was defended by a couple of people that I’ve argued over this topic before when I deprecated Shodan’s argument.
No offense intended, but it felt a little bit like being patted on the head for good behavior (as Mr. B also seemed to sense.)
I think these things typify a major problem that is occuring on these boards in political threads.
If it’s a lefty thing, the righties have to attack it. If it’s a righty thing the lefties have to attack it.
The responses seem automatic.
I do not think that the centrifuge in the garden vindicates Bush. Nonetheless, I think it is an important find.
My conclusion of the centrifuge parts (and I think it’s valid honest and reasonable) is as follows.
These parts are supposedly the difficult to replace parts and they were hidden deliberately and carefully so that they could be recovered and a centrifuge could be made to enrich uranium.
They show an instance of deception of the kind Bush has described. They show the desire to preserve or acquire the capacity to create a nuclear weapon.
By itself this single instance is not conclusive. A single bullet found on a floor does not mean there’s an arsenal hidden in the basement.
But it’s an important piece of evidence. I think the trick is to not make more or less of it than deserves, but to peg it at the appropriate level.
Unfortunately we have one side trying to make it seem like more than it is and the other side trying to make it look less, or nothing.
On a board dedicated to fighting ignorance we shouldn’t be defending positions but trying to assign this piece of evidence the merit it deserves.
Similarly deprecated is the hypothesis that Saddam was intentionally decieving the world as to his WMD capability.
I believed, and still believe that Bush, Blair, Powell and Rumsfeld were sincere in their assertion that Saddam posessed WMDs.
Others may not. I believe that there are sound reasons to think that, but I always readily concede that there are sound reasons not to. It is however definitely a possibility. Given that that possibility is true the Saddam as deceiver hypothesis does a very good job of describing subsequent behavior of all the parties concerened in this war.
A good hypothesis covers evidence. Now bearing in mind that a hypothesis if far from a theory and even farther from a fact, I would state that in the strict sense of a hypothesis it is a very good one.
Instead of being ridiculed this hypothesis should be measured and evaluated.
People who feel that Bush is a clear deceiver would be right to criticize me if I was not open to the possibility. They would be right to do so. Yet, these same people who would criticize closed-mindedness in others automatically reject alternate hypotheses.
It appears that what I thought was going to happen back last year was wrong. It appears that we will not find widespread WMDs. In fact the possibility for finding any is diminishing.
This report tomorrow should be very important.
Trying to beat up this report tomorrow will serve no useful purpose. Trying to make more of the evidence it describes (if any) than is warranted is similarly without purpose.
It’s easy to caught in a rhetorical argument, promoting or defending a position. It’s difficult to try to give these things the proper weight.