It will depend on what happens between now and then. I imagine the picture will be clearer as to the WMDs, and I will be able to judge it.
If the picture is not clearer, I will assume it is being deliberately obfuscated, and assume the worst.
But in light of the ongoing tribulations still existing in Iraq, the nationbuilding and turmoil, I think until Thanksgiving is a reasonable time to give Bush to prove that his charges were well-founded.
If he cannot, then I will assume they were not and were deliberately fraudulent.
How do you know? Isn’t this just your personal opinion?
Do you have personal experience or knowledge of uncovering banned substances from overthrown tinpot dictators?
Seriously, he had warning. He had time. He had experience hiding stuff. He had huge resources at his disposal.
I would think he could make them very difficult to find quickly.
I don’t think he could make it so difficult that an intensive 6 month search would still come up empty. If he had them, they would either find them, or what happened to them.
That’s why I have set my standard at about 6 months.
What may I ask is your standard?
It appears to me that your standard is that we should have stumbled upon them immediately as if they were lying all over the place.
I think that’s unrealistic, because if he does have them, we know for a fact that he hid them at least well enough to evade the inspections, right?
That suggests we won’t just stumble on them but it will require an effort.
ISTR, we ‘knew’ where to look. Remember Powell showing the satelite photos and all?
“stockpiles” and “tons” aren’t easy to move/hide. especially since you have to be careful about how they’re moved (we can assume that if they were moved, they were done in such a way so that they didn’t create a massive spill, since that’d definately been found). and we were in fact watching (via satelites and spy planes, drones etc) for large scale movements. it needed to be more than two guys driving a jeep.
I’m also relying on interviews I saw w/Blick & team members about the types of stuff they had to search, that there were gizmos (that’s the technical term ) that would detect traces of certain chemicals and so on. and the assumption that facilities to make, create and store such stuff is not like erecting a pole barn in your back yard, and needs to have some care, planning, etc. (again we were watching)
re claims I’ve heard about tons of sand under which they can hide it etc, well yea, except there has to be a means to get to it in order to hide it and presumably to get it out again - so you’re talking roads, landmarks, etc.
why do you pick Thanksgiving?
That should be about two months more than is reasonable, thus extending every benefit of the doubt, but also because Thanksgiving is an easy to remember date.
That way when I triumphantly point out on Thanksgiving about how wise I was to wait, and say I told you, and generally rub all your noses into it, I can just refer back to it and you will all remember.
On the other side of the coin, if I’m completely wrong I can say I’m travelling for the Holidays and unable to post, thus avoiding having to make an embarrassing concession.
Given that we’ve got the run of the country and every possible resource available, in terms of number of people looking, lack of obstacles etc, 7 months seems excessive to me. Back when there were UN inspectors there right after GWI didn’t they find stuff (pretty quickly?) evne tho there weren’t very many inspectors (vs. how many folks we have available to be poking around) and SH was actively playing shell game?
anybody got handy links to how the inspections went way back when??? Bueller??? (I’m off to the jail, then have to run errands w/number one son, then off to 2nd job, then it’s date night w/SNookie, so the earilies possible time for me to have any length of time to be poking around on line is Saturday, and I have this deep abiding need to pull the Nelson voice “ha-ha” on Scylla … )
Nope, but then again, who does have “knowledge of uncovering banned substances from overthrown tinpot dictators”? The UN Inspectors, if anyone, dontcha think?
Anyways, not my main purpose for writing this.
This may seem a bit nieve to everyone, but maybe someone can explain this to me.
The USA’s Higher-Ups are convinced that Saddam has thousands of barrels of Sarin. They betting on this pretty heavily. Due to their intelligence (assuming there was some actual, viable intelligence, and it wasn’t just the administration trying to convert the micro to the macro), they believe that it’s being stored at this huge complex 25 miles northeast of Baghdad.
They’re so sure of this, they are willing to start a war (and a long occupation) based on this information.
Now, with the huge assortment of spy planes, spy satellites, recon drones, infiltrated SpecOps teams, Iraqi sympathizers, and the like…why wasn’t the site watched?
I find it impossible to believe that they couldn’t keep track of just one truckload of this stuff. Let’s face it, this is their main justification for the war. How could they not choose just ONE truckload to follow?
We have a hellova lot more people and resources devoted to investigating the source of the anthrax mailings here in the United States, and we still haven’t found it after more than a year.
So you admit that George W. Bush is so unconcerned about the threat of Iraqi WMDs that he gives it less attention than a piddly domestic terrorism case? :eek:
Or are you saying that the anthrax mailings are an even bigger threat than Iraq’s “world-threatening” WMDs? Gosh, maybe we need to take more drastic steps, such as placing the entire state of New Jersey under quarantine…
Scylla will have his wish, you can bet on it. The bar has been lowered, once again, to a point where it need only be fallen upon. For now, we are looking for a weapons “program”. Ah, yes. A “program”. Given the rigorous standards of the Usual Suspects, what could possibly allay thier skepticism? Damn near anything. Documents for instance.
I could do it myself, with a bit of help. Search the net for info on, oh, say, VX nerve gas. Theres a University close by, shouldn’t be too hard to find a knowledgeable collaborator. Cobble it together. Perhaps go to the trouble to translate it into passable Arabic (can Collounsbury be bribed? Probably. Failing that, blackmailed…). Find a hacker geek at the local junior high, break into an appropriate Iraqi computer, download. Send co-conspirator to claim the reward offered, they access the hard drive, and voila! Proof positive, or at least sufficient to the need, standards for proof being what they aren’t. Beauty part: total deniability. They won’t know they’ve been had because they don’t want to know they’ve been had.
elucidator predicts: documents will be found. They will be believed, friend Scylla will be relieved of the merest nagging doubt.
The Leader is good. The Leader is right. Trust the Leader. Go back to sleep…
I agree with Scylla on this one. The point about UN rules was weak, but it was not a lie like the connection to al Queda and WMDs.
I’d also say that Bush is unlikely to manufacture WMDs. Because there would have to be a significant amount to do so and that would go missing and everybody would suspect it and I think Bush has finally realised that he now gets caught when he lies.
“I really hate those fucking revisionist historians, cause, you know, I like to call them revisionist historians. he he. <<smirk>> Cause, they are kinda big words. You know. The ones that smart people use”
You know what? It likely isn’t even going to matter. They’ll find something, even if its something made up by some Iraqi hoping to suck up to the US. By those desperate to believe, it will be believed. It won’t matter. There will be a half-assed investigation, coming to no conclusion, because the Pubbies would rather nail thier peckers to a tree and set the tree on fire. And it won’t matter.
What will matter? That our kids are still there, a year from now, with no end in sight. They have no idea why they’re there, and niether do we. The slogans start to sound thin after a while, the patriotic bluster gets weak, when our people are dying by ones and twos, in petty ambushes and suicide bombings. When all the money that could have gone for schools, and roads, and health care for our elderly is getting sucked out by Count Iraqula. Billons and billons of dollars pissed away, and Lord only knows how many young lives snuffed out.
And for what? Where is the glory in “liberating” people who hate your guts and only want you gone? You think food stamps and welfare is expensive in America? Wait till you see the cost for Iraq. Sure, there may very well be an economic recovery in America. But enough of a recovery for full employment in America and in Iraq? I don’t much believe in miracles.
A year from now, no one will care how we got into this shithole. The only thing that will matter is that we’ll still be in the shithole.
What really pisses me off is that when they find ANY evidence of WMD, which they most likely will, even if it is a can of Raid. That will be used as justification of the whole war. Not quite the clear and present danger of Colin Powells UN presentation, where he told us all that they knew where the weapons were and that they were pointed right at us.
He’d have us believe that the Iraqi looters possess the secret of total annihilation of nerve agents. The process yeilds no residue whatsoever, and can be carried out under field conditions. If we manage to capture the guys who did this, we’ll be able to shut down our own nerve agent incinerators and save the taxpayers millions !
"ANGLE: Let me ask you about the weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence communities, the intelligence committees, rather, are now investigating, or at least looking at the intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Does this come down … as credibility … who talked about this intelligence?
RICE: It’s simply revisionist history for people to suggest there was no reason to believe the Iraqis had WMD … the U.N. report in which they talk about large quantities of missing anthrax … you only have to go back to 1998 when the Clinton administration used military action … because they were worried about WMD there. The fact is there is a long intelligence record with many many data points that suggest that the Iraqis not only had WMD, intended to conceal them … and were making efforts to improve their capabilities. That’s a long history … I’m often struck that people said we should have connected the dots to 9/11. But you have thousands and thousands of dots about the Iraqi program … and you’re not supposed to connect those dots … I think its revisionist history."
I think there is some credibility to the idea that all the leftover WMDs were simply looted and sold to terrorist organizations like al Quaeda. After all wasn’t it just recently mentioned that Bush now believes that they will strike with WMDs in the next two years?
Credibility means the ability to elicit belief. If you believe it, or if Bush believes it, then yes, there is some credibility. That doesn’t mean there’s any evidence, or any reason for that belief.
) that would detect traces of certain chemicals and so on. and the assumption that facilities to make, create and store such stuff is not like erecting a pole barn in your back yard, and needs to have some care, planning, etc. (again we were watching)