Zoe said:
And which would also tend to indicate that the stuff found its way there through post-war looting. Saddam had no incentive to hide or destroy material that was tagged for monitoring by the U.N.
Perhaps I misundestood. I’ll take your word for it. My apologies.
No, friend, it’s worse than that. This is a thread about WMD’s. It’s right there in the OP and the thread title. Info about things that *aren’t * WMD’s is irrelevant, as you must well know, making it very difficult to see your posting of a list of scrap metal as anything but simple obfuscation. You were, and still are, as fervent a supporter of the “Saddam’s got WMD’s!” school of “thought” as this board has known, so it’s understandable that you’d still be trying to buttress that view somehow. Understandable, but transparent.
When come back, bring *honest * argument. Or at least relevant facts. You’re still batting .000 .
This thread is also about the report the World Tribune was using. In discussing it (and I’m the only one around here who bothered to find and link to the U.N. source document), I said that the report did NOT prove WMD had been shipped out, but it did show that questionable material was leaving Iraq, and that facts about Saddam’s weapons programs were still being discovered. That is totally within the bounds of this discussion. It’s not my fault that you don’t want to hear it.
I must say that it takes a lot of creativity to try to turn things around and claim it is those of us on our side of the debate who are trying to have it both ways rather than that it is Bush’s blind supporters who are trying to have it both ways. What we are arguing is perfectly consistent:
(1) There have been no WMDs found in Iraq so far. This means that the Bush Administration either lied and deceived us or they deceived themselves. (Or they were deceived by the intelligence community, but since there is plenty of evidence that the Bush Administration took the evidence further than many in the intelligence community felt was warranted, it is hard to buy this.) Of course, it is still possible that some WMDs will be found in the future but there is little doubt that, even if that were the case, the extent of the WMD stocks would be significantly less than the Administration claimed to know were there. (I suppose another interpretation is that there were significant stocks that were shipped out to another country before the war but the evidence for this is nil and it raises other questions.)
(2) The Administration has done a shitty job of securing and guarding sites that could have conceivably contained WMDs, as evidenced by the fact that various things that are not WMDs have been taken from these sites since the U.S. occupation and ended up in various other places. Thus, the Administration is either incompetent (i.e., we are lucky there didn’t turn out to be WMDs since they would have probably been more likely rather than less likely to end up in the hands of terrorists because of the U.S. invasion) or the Administration was lying to the extent that they actually knew the WMDs didn’t exist and thus there was nothing to be secured.
If you have another interpretation of these events that makes any sense, I’d be happy to hear it.
Except for a shell full of Sarin, and a few mustard gas shells.
This is an excellent point. If, as it appears, tagged materials were flooding out of Iraq AFTER the invasion, then the U.S. did a terrible job of securing those sites. After all, they knew where the tagged material was - it was in UNMOVICs inventory, tagged, sealed, and located.
I hope you’re not seriously trying to sell a few rusty relics from before GWI as some sort of vindication for Bush’s WMD assertions.
Everybody pretty much assumed there were probably still some old shells from the 80’s lying around in the desert. That’s a long way away from the claims that GWB made about fresh stockpiles and ongoing weapons programs.
As a matter of substance we have not found any WMDs.
Or that there was ample evidence to believe that it was likely that Iraq retained some WMDs. The assessment that Iraq had some WMDs was fairly widespread, (and possibly intentionally promulgated by Iraqi policies as well.)
The quantity and the quality of said WMDs was surely contested though. The threat to the US from these WMDs was certainly exaggerated though.
Hopefully, it was only tagged materials.
As I’ve posted elsewhere previously, this invasion of Iraq has made it more likely that whatever WMDs Hussein had would end up in the hands of al Qaeda. The Bush Admin has done a grave disservice to the world in general and the US specifically.
Not essentially; it’s about the rag’s misrepresentation of it, a misrepresentation you’re repeating by mixing reports about scrap metal with Weapons of Mass Destruction. Since you apparently can’t be bothered to scroll up and read the OP, here’s the relevant excerpt:
Clear enough, isn’t it?
To repeat, information about things other than WMD’s is irrelevant, and your insistence on discussing them anyway is obfuscatory.
Where’s your acknowledgment of the other, more plausible possibility - that they already knew those sites didn’t *have * to be secured?
That is a matter of opinion.
Sorry to nitpick you Sam, but no one’s found a shell full of Sarin. At most, they’ve found a shell that contained the two agents which, when mixed together, produce Sarin. We’ve yet to hear whether those agents were fresh and nasty, or degraded nearly beyond recognition like the contents of the mustard gas shells.
Clinton Bush and Kerry all said that Iraq had WMD, I don’t see what the problem is, and see this post as the typical, lets start with the premise I want, and try to find facts to support it.
That they were all wrong?
You’re of course right. I suppose that there is some way of seeing this tragedy in a positive light. In some way it might be a good thing that whatever WMDs and WMD components Hussein may’ve had are now more available than ever to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
I’ve just no idea what way there is of seeing this increased avalability of ‘the world’s deadliest weapons’ to some of the world’s deadliest and least deterrable people. I’ve no idea how it might be a good thing.
If you’ve got a moment, could you please explain how it is not a grave disservice to the world in general and the US in particular to increase the probability that WMDs will fall into the hands of mass murderers intent on killing Americans, Westerners, Saudis, Kuwaitis, etc.?
This is very understandable. The problem doesn’t lie with who said that Iraq had WMD. Looking there wouldn’t reveal the problem. To see the problem, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
In the report discussed in the OP, it is alleged that UN inspectors said Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after the war.
However, UN inspectors did not say that Saddam shipped out WMD before war and after the war.
In addition the evidence cited by the article provides examples of sensitive facilities being completely dismantled down to the concrete foundations and removed despite US efforts to secure the sites. Since the entire sites themselves were removed it means that the sies were not secured. This means that US efforts to secure these sites were inadequate. The efforts to secure these sites were inadequate due to poor planning.
The post started with a falsehood and then facts were provided.
I wonder if that was a typo on someones part putting the article together
Thats a surface to air missile , the same one that brought down Francis Gary Powers U2 , and various a/c in the Vietnam war among other wars. Makes me wonder how they went from "enhanced rad levels , to this SAM.
Declan
Repeat after me: “Meh.” “Mmmmeh.” “Mmmnnmeh.” 
That’s dismissing.
Even if there are some unanswered questions about Iraq’s weapons (I don’t think major discoveries of any sort are forthcoming), the WT article doesn’t provide them. It takes a few quotes and makes up a different explanation for them and neglects to explain how Saddam got rid of his WMD after his army was beaten and he was in hiding. Who did this for him? But like I said, I think we can easily dismiss the article as a source without even going that far.
It doesn’t take “a lot of creativity”, it takes a lot of annoyance. Suppose the worst, suppose “mistakes were made” about WMDs. Where is the damage? Bush whacked Saddam, which is a very good thing. Why are you screaming as if Bush kicked a puppy or something? Just remember, “Saddam had to go”.
The only reason WMD are so scarce in Iraq is because of US and GB unrelenting military pressure to Saddam since 1991. He was scared. He wanted to stay in power. He let his weapons programs wither in hope to get a break. He didn’t get a break. He was pulled out of a rathole and humiliated. What’s wrong with that?
I know from previous exchanges that you don’t like to be reminded about obvious things. However, I’m sorry to say that reading your posts I constantly get an impression as if you keep forgetting the most obvious facts. Therefore, another reminder: Iraq invasion is only one part of the War on Terror. Main purpose of the War on Terror is elimination of terrorism, not elimination of Iraq WMD. Elimination of Iraq WMD is only a corollary to the War on Terror. It looks more and more likely that it wasn’t accomplished by the invasion. It was accomplished by the unrelenting threat of invasion in the previous 12 years.
When terrorists will be eliminated, there will be no danger of them getting hold of WMD. As long as terrorists remain active, there will always be a danger of them getting hold of WMD.
US war strategists decided that they are not going to fight this war on Terror around Iraq, but that they are going to go right through Iraq and in fact make Iraq their base of operations in ME. You got better ideas?
What’s wrong with it is that we killed several thousand people- including hundreds of Americans- for no good reason. It was an illegal, non-defensive war predicated on a lie.
This is complete nonsense. The war was sold as a necessary preemptive strike against an immediate threat to the US. There weren’t any “terrorists” in Iraq until after we invaded. The invasion of Iraq was not related (at least officially) to the so-called “War On Terror” which by the way isn’t really a war but a catch phrase.