Ideally, one would want complete certainty. However, considering that
How does one get certainty when you are being hindered in your investigation by the very people you are investigating?
I would say that the burden of certainty was really Saddam’s. His burden to show the world, with certainty, that he neither possessed nor was trying to develop, WMD. His burden to show compliance with UN resolutions. The inspectors were there to ‘inspect’ his progress, not to be sleuths.
So much for innocent until proven guilty, eh?
“Well, Sarge, the suspect was being rude and belligerent, so we had to shoot 'im.”
rjung:
Saddam’s no innocent. He’s a guilty prisoner who was refusing to check in with his parole officer.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Well, if you wish to beat the analogy to death, parole violations are not generally met with guns blazing.
elucidator:
They are if, when the officers come to take the guy back, he’s defended by heavily armed guards (and, as it turned out, armed himself).
Chaim Mattis Keller
Nope, it don’t. Only either that he (or his representatives in his administration that he entrusted to evaluate it for him) evaluated evidence as being iron-clad that most of the rest of the world knew enough to still be skeptical about, or that he misrepresented its strength to us.
As to others claim of that maybe he misrepresented for our own good and that such makes it better … I am sure that Hitler believed he was doing things for the good of the world … believing that don’t make it so or okay. I do not accept the concept of “the noble lie”.
And as to the hijack of independent counsel. Just represent it accurately. The repubs always wanted it kiboshed. Clinton’s debacle brought the dems to the same conclusion. The intent was good but it was miswritten and by then too late to save what is still a needed thing.
He’s got you there, elucidator. Saddam was armed to the teeth with WMDs. Didn’t you know that?
Why, no, I thought that David Kelly guy was still searching, searching high and low, going to need another six months and some millions of dollars. I understand O.J. is there as well, searching for the real killer…
You mean those “vast stockpiles” were all stuffed into that little bitty hole?
Desmostylus:
Huh? That’s not at all what I was talking about in that message. What I was saying was that it would not have been possible to take Saddam to task for his violations - which didn’t need to be actual WMDs but merely neglect in accounting for the destruction of the ones he previously owned (the metaphorical parole violations in the messages I’d been responding to) - without the use of armed forces. He had an army defending him at first, and when he was found, he had a loaded pistol and 2 AK-47s in that orange taxi.
Chaim Mattis Keller
One could skip the analogy game and get to the biscuit.
It’s true that certainty is ideal. It’s also true that a threat-free enviroment is ideal. It’s just as simplistic to expect total certainty as it is to expect being totally threat free.
Both of these ideals are made unacheivable by a number of unavoidable aspects of reality.
Because of this, there’re grave judgements that have to be made as to what the appropriate balance between these two is. To this end we, as a nation, have our established intel agencies, CIA, DIA, etc, to wade through the vast amounts of data available. Not only do these agencies amass this data, most importantly, they also verifiy and analyze the data.
A central objection in this whole foreign policy venture is the use of political appointees to redundantly perform the work of highly trained, career professionals.
As the Nigerien documents and various other reports and revelations show, not all data is equally reliable.
It seems self evident that in affairs this large and this grave extreme care should be taken with the entirety of each decision making process. Some say that this need for care is the reason that the Pentagon’s OSP was created.
Unfortunately, the Admin apparently gave emphasis to the wrong analyses.
The subsequent plans suffered from this emphasis.
The Pentagon ignored the previous planning done by CENTCOM and the State Dept for the eventuality of Hussein’s defeat made new plans for the conduct of the war and the peace.
Jay Garner went so far as to ask for the director of the Sate Department’s Future of Iraq Project, Tom Warrick, to be involved. Despite the desire of Garner and the willingness of Warrrick, Warrick was not included.
Despite the warnings in assessments sent by the CIA and the State Dept, key members of the Admin’s Iraq invasion planners referred to some of the violence and elements of the post war chaos as unforseeable.
The number of troops used was insufficient to secure numerous weapons sites, (and thus secure whatever banned weapons may’ve been located there, thereby making America safer).
Etc
The question is whether or not the Admin actually believed Iraq presented the threat they said it did or whether the “highlighted” certain elements to sell the case for the invasion.
While there’re certainly grounds for thinking this to be the case, it does not justify our foreign policy venture in Iraq. It’s the UNSC’s problem.
The defense of the US is the US’s problem
The American need to “take Saddam to task” stemmed from the threat Iraq presented to the US.
W/o the threat
YMMV.
Aaagh!
I’m not sure what happened. It just posted itself.
While there’re certainly grounds for thinking this to be the case, it does not justify our foreign policy venture in Iraq. It’s the UNSC’s problem.
Iraq’s mere “neglect in accounting for the destruction of the [banned weapons] he previously owned” is not sufficient justification for strecthing thin our military capacity, expending many tens of billions of US taxpayer’s dollars, nor thousands of casulties. It just don’t see the “vital national interest”.
The defense of the US is the US’s problem
The American need to “take Saddam to task” stemmed from the threat Iraq presented to the US.
W/o the threat Iraq presented to the US all of Hussein’s “denial and deception” is merely a matter for the UNSC to deal with as they see fit.
YMMV.
SimonX:
Once again, I wish to stress that that’s not the point of what I was saying in that message.
Please (not just you, but everybody) take that message as if a new thread began with rjung’s response to Cheesesteak invoking the “innocent until proven guilty” principle of US law in regard to Saddam.
Chaim Mattis Keller
President Bush, Speech to the United Nations General Assembly, September 2002:
What’s your point here, Walloon? That Bush obviously lied?
Or are you trying to claim that Bush didn’t lie, because there really were WMDs, based on Bush’s own statements?
Either way, it doesn’t look like you’re adding anything that’s in any way useful.
(Long sigh.)
Desmostylus, you seem to never grasp the simplest of points, or at least pretend not to. In this case: often it was not necessary for U.N. inspectors to find WMD, when Iraq itself, after repeatedly denying it, admitted in 1995 that it had produced tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents, in violation of the Gulf War agreements.
Only in 1995 did Iraq declare its offensive biological weapons program, after publicly denying its existence for four years.
Only in 1997 did U.N. inspectors discover evidence of production completed on prohibited missiles in 1992.
Only in 1997 did Iraq declare an additional 187 pieces of specialty equipment used to produce deadly chemical agents.
Only in 2003 when confronted by U.N. inspectors, did Iraq turn over the “Iraqi Air Force” document that contradicts Iraq’s chemical weapons declaration — by disclosing an additional 6,500 bombs with 1,000 tons of the blistering agent mustard gas.
The March 7, 2003, report of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) concluded that about 10,000 additional liters of anthrax were not destroyed and may still exist.
So, in other words, it was not true of the U.N. inspectors that “Every single report prior to the war said they found no evidence of WMDs.” That is false. Do you understand the point now?