my point is though, that I don’t understand how anyone can make the argument that we should not have went over there, after seeing the jubiliant Iraqi’s partying in the streets for the first time in most of there lifes because the didn’t have to worry about the fedayeen or some other police force coming to cart them away for subversion.
we were totally justified in what we did, and I think that we will reap many benefits from this. the world has gotten to see what kind of people we are. someone above said something about our military not treating the iraqi pow’s with beds of roses or some such stuff. We have probably feed more of the Iraqi army is the last 3 weeks that the Iraq government did in the last 6 months. most of the pow’s captured praise the US and Coalition forces for being VERY humane to them and trying to provide them as much comfort as you can in the desert in the middle of a war.
Sometimes the vB software will suck in your post, and only then tell you something didn’t work. When the board is slow, I’ve had as many as 3 copies of a post result from a single click of the submit button. When something odd happens, it’s best to reload and check the thread before resubmitting, as the “last post” indicator doesn’t always update properly.
This isn’t “Every little thing.” It’s THE VERY JUSTIFICATION FOR THE WAR. The United States claimed it had a cause to invade IRaq and kill a whole bunch of folks because Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. That was the stated reason. Since then not one iota of solid evidence has been produced to suggest that stated reason was true.
Now, maybe your standards for starting wars and killing people are lower than mine, but I would like to think that if the USA is going to start a war, they should probably produce some EVIDENCE first. So far, there has been no evidence produced. In fact, the USA has been caught trying to foist off false evidence.
Step back from this a moment and think about it; doesn’t it bother you that a country would start a war for a stated reason without producing any solid, tangible facts that the reason they used had any truth to it? If there’s no standard for coming up with a valid casus belli, then what’s to stop the USA from invading anyone? Or what’s to stop anyone from invading anyone? If France invades England, is that okay with you? Hey, England has weapons of mass destruction.
It sure as hell matters to the rest of the world. This may come as a remarkable shock to you, but outside the United States, it is not just assumed that the USA is always right, tells the truth, and looks out for everyone’s best interests. It is the opinion of most people who are not Americans, based on a very large amount of objective evidence, that the USA will start wars and support dictatorships as long as it suits their own interests. And it worries them that the USA appears to be willing to start a war under false or flimsy pretense. It’s the rest of the world that gets bombed, ya know.
the thing is: starting a war to obtain a regime change (and this is what it was if no WMD’s are found) is illegal under international law. No matter if you win or not, it’s still illegal.
Not only that but we were lead to believe that there was an immediate danger and there was proof but it was too sensitive for us to know about it :rolleyes:
first i would like you to cite evidence that america was trying to plant false evidence, becuase i read everything i can about the middle east and don’t remeber reading anything like this, plus the ap or other news networks would have a field day with this (especially the bbc) and they haven’t even mentioned it.
and you are misinterpreting the intention, of course england has wmd’s, so do we, and so do a bunch of other countries, india, pakistan, russia, china, etc, etc, but only iraq (and perhaps a few others) would use this on innocent civilans, instead of using it for defense types measures. just because we didn’t walk into iraq and pick up the first stone on the way and find some sort of “concrete” evidence (a term that is highly debatable on what qualifies as “concrete”) you assume that it is not going to be found.
then you guys seem to forget that the un’s own reports showed they had wmd’s at one point in time, and the inspectors that were there (both recently and in the past) were unable to account for any of them. and who says that they are willing to give up all their sources just because saddam is no longer in power? there are still powerful people (saddam himself included) that are un-accounted for, maybe we fear that the sources are close enough to some of these people to still have a risk to themselves if they were revealed.
i don’t understand you guys, it has been 3 weeks!! and most of that time our guys were more worried about making sure their buddies and themselves didn’t get their asses shot off, or taken capture, or they were worried that the false surrenders were going to continue, or the van with the pregnant lady is going to blow up, or they were trying to restore calm to the rioting iraqis (and before anyone says anything, remember that they are rioting for joy, not civil disobedince) to be able to properly search for weapons.
I was thinking of small stores of chemical and biological agents – perhaps as small as individual vials holding just a few ounces each. Nothing explosive. I don’t think Iraq had a bunch of C&B weapons stored in any one place. That would have been too tough to control and conceal.
My opinions on Iraqi nukes: from what I can tell at my armchair (no cites), Saddam Hussein wanted nukes, and attempted to get materials from time to time (not the uranium-from-Nigeria BS) so that his scientists could start working on nukes. Nothing much seems to have come from these efforts, however.
Okay, so Iraq had WMDs at one time. So what? Is it now justification for war that a country “had WMDs at one time”?
The claim - this was just four weeks ago, you know - was that Iraq had WMDs NOW, ready to use, and that there was a real danger they would be used. Not that they once existed, or that traces of them might be buried somewhere.
Look, is Saddam Hussein a nice guy? No, he’s an evil bastard and I hope he’s dead. Did Iraq use chemical weapons on innocent people? Yes, they did do that. Did Iraq invade its neighbours? They sure did, twice. Would I trust Iraq with chemical or nuclear weapons? Hell, no. But the point here is that The United States lied to start a war. It’s frightening if you aren’t American. And maybe even if you are.
I agree with squeegee, and the point remains a valid one: regardless of what we actually discover on the ground in Iraq now that the war is over, citizens of the US (and the world, for that matter) ought to have an opportunity to inspect the “secret evidence” that supposedly led the US to declare war in the first place. Now that the regime is overthrown, I cannot see how presenting this evidence could possibly endanger anyone’s life or otherwise threaten US intelligence-gathering in the region. The game is up, now; it is time to lay the cards on the table.
Even if it turns out that this evidence does not lead US inspection teams to WMDs in Iraq – because, for example, those weapon systems have been so skillfully hidden – we should nevertheless be privy to its contents; it is the only way the public can hold its leaders accountable.
As an aside, I must say that it seems striking, given the claims made by the US government regarding the quantity and quality of evidence they had amassed against Iraq, that they haven’t been able to turn up a single chemical weapon or biological agent. Even granting that they have a large area to cover, it’s certain that they prioritize those sites that they believe most likely to contain something and check them first; and even so, they’ve still come up empty-handed.
Bush said we had proof, that is why we were invading. The object of our military mission against Iraq was to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction. Bush was the one saying every little freaking thing about Saddam’s WMD.
Sorry but I am going to have to ask for a CITE of that. Some of the missiles were shot down in Kuwait were thought to be Scuds, but AFAIK never confirmed by the CENTCOM.
i don’t understand how we lied to start a war? We went over there for a regime change, we told people that was our goal, the wmd’s were one of many reasons to do this.
Isn’t there any sense that yea, while America should not become the world police order, we are big enough and strong enough to help out people that desperatly need it? isn’t that basically what we did in afghanistan? yea the taliban posed a clear and present danger to the us and our allies, but the same could be argued about saddam and his allies.
and i am not saying that they only had wmd’s “at one point in time”, if it was only at one point in time, then they should be able to tell us what happened to them. if they kept volumed and detailed information on the people they executed, including who they were, when they were executed, and even how they were executed, for anyone to say “we’ll how can we expect them to account for it all” just goes to show you how dangerous to us this regime really was, because if they can’t account for it, who is to say that some terroist doesn’t know have it?
anyone who reads a paper every once in a while can see for themselves SOME of the evidence… why would they have thousands of chemical suits and gas masks and nerve agent antedotes, and hidden weapons, and trucks turned into mobile chemical and biological delivery systems, and all the other stuff?
read some of the un reports that gave the list of the thousands of pounds of anthrax, or serin nerve gas and say to themselves “we’ll just becuase we can’t find it now doesn’t mean they still have it. if we can’t find it they PROBABLY got rid of it”. well PROBABLY doesn’t help me feel comfortable when i put my daughters to bed at night.
and the evidence everyone keeps citing was that they had the weapons SOMEWHERE in the country. I defie anyone reading this thread to cite one interview, press release, or even conjecture from a government official that even claimed we knew WHERE the wmd’s were in the country.
Anybody notice that the 55-gallon drums of “pesticides” wereemblazoned with the well-known French chemical company?
Lets review the export records of this company…I would not be too surprised that R-P was selling precourser chemicals to Iraq for years.
Actually, MegaDave, this debate could be easily resolved if the US government would simply reveal the evidence it claims to have. If you believe so strongly that your claims would be validated by that evidence, then why on earth would you object to such a simple and straightforward demand on the part of the US public?
Dave, your memory cannot possibly be that short. The stated casus belli was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It was not “one of” the reasons, it was the primary reason.
The USA claimed to have evidence of this. Some of those claims turned out to be lies, such as the fictional delivery of uranium from Nigeria. The rest were mostly circumstantial evidence and a large chunk of “Secret evidence” that the US claimed could not be revealed, in order to protect sources.
Well, where is all the evidence? Not only has none of the “secret evidence” been revealed, but the Administration just stopped talking about it. The various items of circumstantial evidence have led to the discovery of precisely 0 (zero) chemical or nuclear weapons.
Baloney. The Taliban was actually harboring a band of brigands and pirates who actually attacked the United States and were planning to do so again. There was real, pressing reason to believe they presented a danger to the USA. The same cannot be said of Iraq; there is no evidence to suggest Iraq was either planning an attack or was harboring al-Qaida or any like organizations.
Furthermore, the USA DIDN’T LIE ABOUT AFGHANISTAN. We all saw the World Trade Center blown up. The evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind it, as well as being behind a number of other attacks, was convincing and logical, and was supported by objective evidence that was actually found in Afghanistan. It was proben beyond any reasonable doubt that al-Qaida was in Afghanistan and was being harbored and supported by the Taliban. Harboring pirates, brigands and terrorists that present a threat is a long-standing legal justification for war. There was real, proven, justifiable cause for the invasion of Afghanistan.
So here we have Colin Powell showing that the U.S. has such well-honed intelligence on Iraq’s illegal programs that he can trot out a bunch of spiffy spy satellite photos showing alleged nasty stuff at “close to” 30 sites.
But – surprise, surprise – when we actually get troops on the ground, we suddenly can’t find a WMD site anywhere. One would imagine that, if we could photograph Iraqis doing Bad Stuff once, we could do it again. Or did Saddam Hussein borrow a Super-Mega-Maxi-Laser from Dr. Evil and shoot down our spy satellites? Maybe I missed the news articles about that one.
Or maybe – just maybe, mind you – the Bush Administration has been talking out of its ass all this time…