I’m all for it, but obviously they won’t do it. It would be logistically impossible.
It doesn’t matter what you or other Americans choose to “recognize.” The fact is that the UN Charter is a fully ratified treaty and is recognized as law both internationally and domestically. The invasion violated international law whether Americans like that law or not.
Chalabi is a name I’ve heard entirely too much lately. Chalabi praised by the Pentagon for all the intelligence he has facilitated and supplied from “dissidents”. Chalabi being helicoptered into South Iraq along with 700 bodyguards, courtesy of the US Army. Pictures of Chalabi looking combed, greased and Presidential. Did I mention praise from the Pentagon for all the vital and invaluable intelligence he provided?
I’d just as soon not hear about him for a while.
I don’t think the allegation that Saddam was paying for suicide bombers was ever proven (do you have a cite that it *was?).
Even so, that would not constitute an imminent danger to the US, but only to Israel.
We have slow hamsters here. You get used to it after a while. Some days are better than others.
Just to keep things straight…
It was Paul Wolfowitz that admitted that.
Randy
Sadaam was paying the families of successful suicide bombers.
This could be real bad news.
I know this was rumored to be the case but do you have a cite that it was actually confirmed?
So the terrorists are Palestinians but the US chooses to invade Iraq instead? I suppose now the invasion then gives all countries who sympathise with Iraq and Muslims in general the right to attack the USA and its interests and even its friends. Great thinking.
No. Just an example of state sponsored terrorism.
Good question. This is a fascinating article and a new perspective. Thanks Dave for bringing it up.
If I understand the ramifications of the article correctly, this is what I think it means:
[scenario}
Saddam Hussein is chafing under the restrictions applied to him after the first gulf war. He wants those sanctions gone, and he wants to humiliate the US. He comes up with a bold plan to do both.
What Saddam does is send out double agents and misinformation in droves. All this misinformation points to a large and ongoing secret weapons program, a weapons program that does not exist. The evidence is both compelling and confirmed from multiple sources.
Saddam knows the US will have to react to this information.
What he is hoping for is that the US will overreact in a very big way, and make a big deal about all these WMDS. He hopes that we will go into the UN and lay it on the line.
He hopes the UN will take it seriously and send in weapons inspectors.
After a long drawn out process the weapons inspectors will find nothing because their is no weapons program.
The US will be humiliated. The US will look bad. It will look like the US is fabricating evidence and propagating lies against Iraq.
Iraq will have proved its innocence through the weapons inspectors in the forum of the UN.
Iraq can then counterattack in the UN. It can claim it’s being villified, and that lies are being perpetuated to maintain the sanctions. Having proved compliance and innocence and having smeared the US’s integrity on the subject, Iraq can then argue very strongly that the sanctions are an act of unwarranted hostility and should be totally lifted.
End result. No sanctions. US humiliation. Saddam is free to do what he wants
[/scenario]
It’s actually a pretty good scenario.
If in fact this is what happened the only problem with the scenario is that it worked so well. Saddam would have wanted us to be very confident in our accusations. He would have needed that for the scenario to work. What he failed to consider was the possibility that it would work so well that we’d invade.
Now, there are some problems with this scenario, some big problems. In spite of this, I like it in some ways because it answers a lot of questions and accounts for behaviors that are otherwise pretty inexplicable. It does a good job of covering the facts of what happened.
Certainly this bears further investigation . It’s something to think about and keep an eye on.
Now, I’m not sure how Dave Simmons gets from this article to this:
But I’m not too troubled. There’s quite a crowd around here that would argue that the close approach of Mars is Bush’s fault and a call for impeachment.
Good question. This is a fascinating article and a new perspective. Thanks Dave for bringing it up.
If I understand the ramifications of the article correctly, this is what I think it means:
[scenario}
Saddam Hussein is chafing under the restrictions applied to him after the first gulf war. He wants those sanctions gone, and he wants to humiliate the US. He comes up with a bold plan to do both.
What Saddam does is send out double agents and misinformation in droves. All this misinformation points to a large and ongoing secret weapons program, a weapons program that does not exist. The evidence is both compelling and confirmed from multiple sources.
Saddam knows the US will have to react to this information.
What he is hoping for is that the US will overreact in a very big way, and make a big deal about all these WMDS. He hopes that we will go into the UN and lay it on the line.
He hopes the UN will take it seriously and send in weapons inspectors.
After a long drawn out process the weapons inspectors will find nothing because their is no weapons program.
The US will be humiliated. The US will look bad. It will look like the US is fabricating evidence and propagating lies against Iraq.
Iraq will have proved its innocence through the weapons inspectors in the forum of the UN.
Iraq can then counterattack in the UN. It can claim it’s being villified, and that lies are being perpetuated to maintain the sanctions. Having proved compliance and innocence and having smeared the US’s integrity on the subject, Iraq can then argue very strongly that the sanctions are an act of unwarranted hostility and should be totally lifted.
End result. No sanctions. US humiliation. Saddam is free to do what he wants
[/scenario]
It’s actually a pretty good scenario.
If in fact this is what happened the only problem with the scenario is that it worked so well. Saddam would have wanted us to be very confident in our accusations. He would have needed that for the scenario to work. What he failed to consider was the possibility that it would work so well that we’d invade.
Now, there are some problems with this scenario, some big problems. In spite of this, I like it in some ways because it answers a lot of questions and accounts for behaviors that are otherwise pretty inexplicable. It does a good job of covering the facts of what happened.
Certainly this bears further investigation . It’s something to think about and keep an eye on.
Now, I’m not sure how Dave Simmons gets from this article to this:
But I’m not too troubled. There’s quite a crowd around here that would argue that the close approach of Mars is Bush’s fault and a call for impeachment.
I’m still waiting to see some confirmation that Hussein ever did that. Have you got a cite handy?
Alternative scenario: some nitwit in the Pentagon dreamed up this scenario, and floated it by way of leak.
Hoped for reaction: “Why, yes! That certainly expains why our top-notch intelligence teams were flummoxed and clueless: they were taken in by a devious and cunning Saddam! Yes, that must be it!”
Most likely reaction: “Huh?”
Reaction it deserves: “After such a grueling experience, you need to relax. Spend more time with your family. Years.”
To cite the OP “… they utterly failed to exercise due prudence in starting a war on scant evidence and in that process pissed off almost everyone that we need to help us with the effort to reduce terrorists’ resources.”
The announced target was international terrorism and they have gone off on a tangent with a huge, complex and costly venture based on either faulty or faked information. This looks more and more like the most costly red herring in recent history. Or maybe not so recent.
In their efforts to justify this Iraq thing they have tried to tie Saddam in with the Al Qaeda group, and thus Osama bin Laden (remember him?), on no evidence whatever as far as I can see. If that isn’t incompetence then it is chicanery, either of which is grounds from dismissal.
It seems to me that the amount of money spent just to date on the Iraq affair would be a good start toward funding an all-out effort to get other nations to stop supporting terrorists, among other things. Maybe some of it could hire people with some new ideas on how to make Israel safe without antagonizing all of their neighbors at the same time because that seems to be a serious sticking point.
I obviously don’t have all the answers as to what should be the terrorism solution, but then I don’t make the big bucks to have one, do I? I do think the Bush crowd has made our situation worse by alienating allies and certainly not gaining any points among the Arab states who could possibly actually help do something about terrorists.
I suppose that ought to be “grounds for dismissal” but what do I know?
Good Lord; the guy had gold plated toillets, while miliking the sanctions to gather support from the Middle East (“Look!, I´m being opressed!”) I don`t think he would had been particulary stressed for the status quo.
Scylla:
Good lord, man. Have you been taking crazy pills?
First off, I realize that there are partisans out there who would condemn Bush no matter what. There are also partisans out there who would defend Bush no matter what. But neither of these groups give the rest of us carte blanche to just throw our critical facilities out the window. In other words, I accuse you of an implied ad hominem; you’re implying that all those critical of the administration are unreasonable. I honestly wish you would just drop it and address the issue instead.
Secondly, I knew somebody would try this. I knew it. Your purely speculative scenario, which has no evidential support whatsoever, is not particularly reasonable; on the contrary, it’s a weak and extremely far-fetched attempt to justify a course of action that is clearly self-defeating. The mere idea that Hussein and his government would be publicly trying to get the sanctions lifted while, at the same, secretly trying to prevent the sanctions from being lifted, is absurd on its face. The idea that Hussein sought to provoke the UN to send in more inspectors is equally absurd; inspections only provide more opportunities for spying on his military programs, the absolutely last thing he wanted.
No, Hussein sought to have the sanctions lifted without further intrusive inspections. It would be idiotic to try to accomplish that by purposely misleading the US government into thinking that he was actually hiding weapons and programs, which would have had the exact opposite effect.
You promised me earlier that if no “WMDs” were found come Thanksgiving you’d change your tune and join us over here on the dark side. You stated that publicly, on this message board. I intend to hold you to that promise; and November’s right around the corner, baby.
Scylla:
Good lord, man. Have you been taking crazy pills?
First off, I realize that there are partisans out there who would condemn Bush no matter what. There are also partisans out there who would defend Bush no matter what. But neither of these groups give the rest of us carte blanche to just throw our critical facilities out the window. In other words, I accuse you of an implied ad hominem; you’re implying that all those critical of the administration are unreasonable. I honestly wish you would just drop it and address the issue instead.
Secondly, I knew somebody would try this. I knew it. Your purely speculative scenario, which has no evidential support whatsoever, is not particularly reasonable; on the contrary, it’s a weak and extremely far-fetched attempt to justify a course of action that is clearly self-defeating. The mere idea that Hussein and his government would be publicly trying to get the sanctions lifted while, at the same, secretly trying to prevent the sanctions from being lifted, is absurd on its face. The idea that Hussein sought to provoke the UN to send in more inspectors is equally absurd; inspections only provide more opportunities for spying on his military programs, the absolutely last thing he wanted.
No, Hussein sought to have the sanctions lifted without further intrusive inspections. It would be idiotic to try to accomplish that by purposely misleading the US government into thinking that he was actually hiding weapons and programs, which would have had the exact opposite effect.
You promised me earlier that if no “WMDs” were found come Thanksgiving you’d change your tune and join us over here on the dark side. You stated that publicly, on this message board. I intend to hold you to that promise; and November’s right around the corner, baby.
I heard this several times on the news - so I belive it is true. It’s mentioned in this
article. Unfortunately it’s not in english.
** tchocky77**,
Is it your assertion that attacks on Israel by Palestinians whose families received compensation from Hussein are sufficient justification for the $billion a week we’re spending in Iraq?
We’re invading because Iraq is car-bombing Iraqi expats in Iran and giving money to the families of deceased suicide bombers?
These payments are much different than state-sponsored-terrorism. Apparently, Iraq did engage in many act of state sponsored terrorism; however, most of it was directed at Iraqi expats in Iran who were rallying against Hussein. Using charges of state sponsored terrorism to justify the invasion of Iraq means that we’re justifying the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that they were terrorizing another state sponsor of terrorism, Iran.
Doesn’t provide much light to show what advantage the US gets out of this operation taht is projected to cost at least scores of billions of US taxpayer’s money.
This is sufficient for you?
It is very unlikely that Iraq sponsored any terrorism against the western world. And the payment to sucide bombers was meant to help the widdows. Basically it was a political act to gain support in the arabic world and piss of the west. Defenitely no sponsoring of terrorism. So here is no reason for the invasion. Dig deeper.