Yes, I hear he was really starting to hurt from the reduced flow of ivory backscratchers.
You know, a lot of shit was blown up without proper record keeping during the first gulf war. Perhaps that’s why Bush had to rely on bogus stories to get his little shindig started. Or do you have a more plausible explanation as it relates to the OP ? All this obfuscation about what happened to the WMD’s isn’t terribly relevant to the issue at hand.
Yes, and the same inspectors that confirmed their existance also confirmed the destruction of 98% of them, because they were the ones that destroyed them.
Between the end of Gulf War I and 1998, the inspectors found, confirmed and destroyed the vast majority of Saddam’s banned weapons. This is a confirmed fact that never seems to make it into the “but we know he had weapons” argument.
In fact, as far as I can tell from news reports, there are NO cases of weapons confirmed to exist and yet not destroyed prior to 1998. What we have is weapons presumed to exist and never proved to have been destroyed. And that is an entirely different thing.
Considering that he didn’t get to finish his inspection, and was reporting that Saddam was cooperating at the time the war started (abiet reluctantly), this is sort of a non-fact.
“We searched half of the room and didn’t find everthing that was there”…
What is especially problematical is that the US Govt kept giving Blix “inteligence” about where to look for WMD and he kept finding that there was nothing where US intel said there was something. Were they wasting his time on purpose, do you suppose? Or were there just not as many actual weapons as Bush was insisting?
thereby proving that either he is not the reckess madman that Bush pretended, or that he didn’t actually have the weapons that where “known” to exist.
Cite?
Far as I know, there have been NO WMD found, no labs, nothing except two empty artillery shells that COULD have held chemical weapons but tested negative for them. And a lot of news reports of possible finds in big bold type that are retracted in the fine print a few days later.
- Destroyed by weapons inspectors after Gulf War I.
The 2% of weapons that they believed to exist but never found or destroyed simply never really existed, or were actually destroyed by the bombardment of Gulf War I but never ‘confirmed’ destroyed.
In a corrupt 3rd world dictatorship, how surprising would it really be to learn that 2% or even 5% of items listed in some bill of sale or manifest never really existed except on paper? That the money for them had been funneled somewhere else and the documents doctored to hide the theft.
Now you have inspectors go around and read these pieces of paper and track down the hardware and destroy it and they find and destroy 98% of it but they just can’t seem to find that last 2%. Sure, pretending fraud could be a clever way to divert weapons to a super-uber-secret WMD cache. But it could also be just, well, fraud.
Do you have a cite for this?
I’ve seen this before, but never used it because I haven’t had a cite to go with it.
ThanX in advance
Sorry, I missed this story. Can you provide a link?
As to the OP, I am afraid that probably nothing much will come of this. I say this because I have a fairly low view of the ability of my countrymen to engage in nuanced thought. The spin by the administration is just too good.
The 98% number is a quote from Scott Ritter, a former UN Weapons inspector.
and here is a much more detailed explanation of the case for most of the weapons being destroyed between 1991 and 1998. It has links to UNMOVIC documents, but It does not contain an estimated percentage destroyed figure.
Self-admittedly? Whoa - I missed that. Got a cite?
Arg, hit quote on the wrong post. I meant to reply to this:
Yeah, the Bush quotes relevant to the issue involved dodging and non-answers.
Even Fleischer was more staright forward.
Anybody else reminded of Zeigler?
The Wilkinson statement has been retracted. But I still think the Bush administration ignored the evidence. In fact, you don’t even really need to think so, it’s been stated from a number of sources that the administration wanted to go to war with Iraq immediately after 9-11, with no evidence to connect Iraq with it. So I don’t think the administration suddenly became the paragons of reasoned and honest decision making.
I think the important thing is that previous speeches claimed to know exactly where facilities were, eg to the point fo claiming to have satellite photos of factories and the like.
The issue isnt whether something ever gets found, the issue is that its become pretty clear that there no way the extent of programs claimed was anywhere near a reality. These kinds of programs need people, facilities, materals, and the like, it cant easily be all put into a trailer and hauled off as some suggest.
I think the only real question is how much it was incompetence, groupthink, lying or whatever. I suspect it was a bit of everything myself.
Otara
Somehow, everyone who hates Bush seem to want to inscribe a vein of malicious intent on his actions. I, for one believed that WMD would be found by now. Alas, that is not true and as I predicted (during the gulf war debates of this forum) by the middle of this month, spin control will initiate.
Now, keep in mind that the President had some heavy issues to resolve and not altogether popular in the onset. We actually rallied around him when the go signal was finally made. We supported his actions, trusted his reasonings and generally approved of the results and accepted the loss that was inevitable but were relieved at its minimalization. We did so because not to support our leader and the troops (at that time) was unpatriotic and devisive. That time has past and an accounting is now due.
Put on the President’s shoes at 4 or 5 months ago. He had the opportunity to remove from this world a despot unloved except by the most evil of men. This man was a potential threat, a clear and present danger to both the US and world stability. He is firmly entrenched and nothing short of an invasion can remove him. He is bluffing the world and the world is folding its cards. Given this situation, I think it would not have been prudent to back down. I still believe that doing nothing wouldve been the bad thing to do. If Bush made a mistake, he did so on the side of safety and as ridiculous as this may seem at face value, it was safer to invade Iraq than to let Saddam stay as its leader.
Everyone is directing their attention at Bush and his sources and advisors even before the invasion. I remain with my convictions on this, This is about Saddam, not about America or Britain OR their intelligence sources.
Oh well, getting conned is one of the dangers of investigative reporting. AFAIR, it’s not supposed to be one of the dangers of listening to the state of the union address.
X: This man [Saddam Hussein] was a potential threat, a clear and present danger to both the US and world stability.
A potential threat is not considered to be enough to justify invading another country. If you are not being attacked or in desperate and immediate danger of being attacked, you’re not supposed to attack just because the other guy is dangerous. There are a lot of potential threats out there, and a lot of dangers to stability. Starting a war is not usually a smart move for making things more stable.
He is firmly entrenched and nothing short of an invasion can remove him. He is bluffing the world and the world is folding its cards.
Actually, the world was making him submit to detailed weapons inspections. And so far, nobody has been able to show any evidence that he was in fact “bluffing the world” by concealing forbidden weapons.
*Given this situation, I think it would not have been prudent to back down. I still believe that doing nothing wouldve been the bad thing to do. If Bush made a mistake, he did so on the side of safety *
It isn’t honest mistakes I object to so much; it’s deliberate lies (not to mention incompetence). If the Administration had said “Look, we think the guy might have some really bad stuff and we think it would be safer to go in and kick him out now”, and then came back saying “Whoops! Can’t find any seriously dangerous stuff, I guess we erred on the side of safety”, I wouldn’t be so upset.
But they told us for months that we were in imminent and deadly danger from Iraq; that they knew where the weapons were; that it was irresponsible and potentially suicidal to wait any longer before invading. So the invasion took place (during which time some vulnerable sites, including nuclear facilities, remained unsecured and were even entered by looters), and nobody has yet been able to find any of the weapons that they kept assuring us were there, much less any indication that such weapons really posed the immediate and catastrophic threat that they kept warning us about.
and as ridiculous as this may seem at face value, it was safer to invade Iraq than to let Saddam stay as its leader.
Cite? As unspeakable as Hussein was (or still is, since I haven’t heard he’s dead), I don’t see how we’ve necessarily guaranteed ourselves increased safety just by removing him. Invading and occupying a country has plenty of dangers of its own, and some of them are just as bad as evil dictators.
No one has yet explained to me how a strict policy of containment, backed by the threat of overwhelming military force (and the occasional use of less-than-overwhelming force), constitutes “backing down” (or, to use the more popular pro-war term, “appeasement”). No one has yet explained to me how it was more dangerous to tolerate the presence of an impotent Saddam than it was to create a power vacuum in which non-contained threats like al-Qaa:ada and Shi’ah fundamentalism can flourish. Do you have an opinion on either of these questions?
I hear more and more these days about how the Second Gulf War was justified because we removed an evil man and a despot from power. We certainly did. If this were a proper justification for war, however, we’d soon find ourselves engaged in hostilities with well over half the planet, including some of our vital allies. Heck, in the past we’ve made it a policy to install evil depots in foreign countries when we didn’t like the results of a particular election.
I will believe that Bushis sincere in his altruistic quest for international liberation the day that he stands before Congress and argues for an invasion of Turkmenistan. I will also be very, very concerned that an altruistic quest for foreign liberation is allowed to control US foreign policy. Fortunately, I doubt this day will ever come.
The CIA and the chairman of the NIC believe that we have generated a whole new recruit base for al Qaeda et al, AND dramatically increased the chances of Hussein and/or Baathist transferring chem/bio weapons to someone who would use them against the US.
In addition, we have lost track of components for radiological bombs. Potentially, we have lost track of various banned WMDs.
The invasion of Iraq: [ul]
[li]increased the number of terrorist;[/li][li]increased these terrorists’ anger and frustration with the US; [/li][li]increased the likelihood of them getting their hands on dangerous weapons;[/li][li]and, increased the chances of them being used against the US.[/li][/ul]
This is obviously some strange usage of the word “safer” that I wasn’t previously aware of.[sup]*[/sup]
** D. Adams*
Spinsanity, a site that I respect quite a bit, has just weighed in on the Bush quote. They seem to think it’s false:
http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2003_07_06_archive.html#105763593301178378
Scroll down a bit to get to the quote. According to Spinsanity, Fox News Channel has reported that Ari Fleischer called the quote “an invention”.
They point out that it would have been translated from English to Arabic and back to English, and relayed by a non-impartial party. What the angel Gabriel thinks of the quote is not reported.
I think that the invasion of Iraq probably reduced the number of terrorists (as so many of them went to go fight for Saddam and have since gone to their maker). Andrew Sullivan has pointed out that it also makes attacks against the US mainland less likely, as the terrorists now have a target in their backyard that is pretty easy to get into: US-occupied Iraq. Think of Iraq as a lightening rod for terror.
I’m not sure it increased their chances of getting their hands on dangerous weapons (I take it you mean WMD), as things like the terrorist-controlled ricin factory in Northern Iraq are now kaput. You should remember that ricin was starting to pop up in Europe among Muslim terrorists. That factory was the likely source. Whether or not Saddam gave his WMD to Islamic terrorists before or during the war is unknown. I fear that he may have, but there’s no evidence, one way or another.
As for increasing the chances of WMD being used against the US, I don’t think anyone doubts that the desire to use WMD against the US has long been present among Islamic terrorists. The question is only their ability to get their hands on them. The ricin source is now gone. Again, it depends on whether or not Saddam had the chance to hand off his arsenal to terrorists.
So, all in all, Saddam being gone probably made the US mainland safer. It all depends on whether or not he gave WMD to terrorists. If he didn’t, there’s no question that we’re safer, as North Korea-style blackmail is now impossible for Saddam. His people are safer, as Saddam’s regime was murdering something like 30,000 people a year (and all of the civilian casualties during the war amount to a few months of Saddam. Yes, it’s a very cold calculus, but if you’re talking about saving lives, you’ve got to take these sorts of things into account). If Saddam did give away his weapons, then we aren’t safer short-term, but the ability to make more WMD is gone, which makes us safer long-term.
Democrats can cheer the fact that Senator Carl Levin is investigating these matters.
:rolleyes: (I try to avoid using these things but sometimes they’re so damned appropriate.)
Senator Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is doing a fine job of separating the administration from the “intelligence community.” Apparently, those doe-eyed administration “policymakers” were duped by the spooks.
How does Levin know that the “policymakers” weren’t informed? And here’s Levin, clowning around on the NewsHour last month:
Is it just me, or shouldn’t the phrase “intelligence community” be replaced with “administration”?
For those of you who missed the NewsHour tonight, Mr. Levin continued the fun, blasting the “intelligence community,” and saying something along the lines of “I spoke with Condoleeza Rice – she said she had no idea about any faked intelligence.” Well, that settles it then!
Now, everything I’ve read, before and after the invasion, says pretty much the exact opposite. The intelligence community were highly skeptical. The hawks in the administration were pushing this war from the git-go. If you have some info we don’t have, please do share, Senator Levin.
But thank you Senator Levin. I’m sure Rumsfeld, Pearle, Wolfowitz, et al. are quaking in their never-seen-combat boots about now.
[sub]And with Democrats like you, who needs Republicans?[/sub]