Blix is late to the story.

CentCom and Condy Rice have been saying as much for the past several weeks.

Don,

Any comments about the Iraqi doctors admitting that the sanctions regime had nothing to do with dead Iraqi kids? A number of folks who you (or perhaps some other "Don") are wondering what is your response on THAT issue.

Me, I don't have a dog in that hunt -- just letting you know.

MG

DON! You miserable portside puker! WE really don't give a rip about what Blix says, now do we? You CONVENIENTLY ignore UNSC restrictions on Programs - AND - conveniently ignore any evidence regarding restrictions on stuff like the stuff to make the stuff. Are you one of those who thinks they were making hydrogen to float balloons? SillyLITTLEman...
I NOTE with interest, that Uday is negotiating, and Saddam has a problem with drooling a lot. Of course, if I were in charge of a WMD program, I guess I'd just fess right up and take my licks with the rest of the morons, wouldn't I? Wouldn't you?
Why did I ask that question?

I've heard neither CentCom or Condoleeza Rice say any such thing, Don. Care to cite your source?

Why would anyone expect the head of Iraq's unconventional weapons program admit to such a thing, anyway? No, he wouldn't be tourtured to death like he would have a few months ago, but he'd still be in a lot of trouble.

Don? Don?

Uh.

These guys were trounced by our military and the only way they can possibly get back at us is by using the same old tactics they have always used:

Trying to make us look like fools on the international playground.

Just because the war is over doesn't mean that the war is over. There's even an expression, which I forget right now, which goes something along the lines of capturing victory from the jaws of defeat.

oh, Don??

:)

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh never mind.

Oh never mind.

And the presence of mobile bio-chem production laboratories doesn't indicate anything to Mr Blix? Obviously not. That must be why the UN was unable to resdolve the matter for a dozen years and more. Or did that have more to do with the percentage commission that the UN was taking out of the Iraqi food for oil programme?

Ever since Blix got set aside he's been whining like a two year old. I think he should look into having that pickle removed from his bum.

Simon Barnett:

And the presence of mobile bio-chem production laboratories doesn't indicate anything to Mr Blix? Obviously not.

He thought they were ice cream trucks.

The source for the administration's comments on the matter come from two directions:

* CentCom, when it said it no longer believed there were stores of Weapons of Mass Destruction out there, and announced that it would cease active searching for them forthwith. That was about a month ago -- you can find the source in the archive.

* CentCom earlier, during the war itself, when it gave the OK to local area commanders for the troops to take off their NBC suits. Commanders just don't Do that when they think there is a clear and present danger of WMD use within their TAO. It would defy just about every NBC SOP in the regs! As Dubya suggested, watch what they Do, not what they Say.

* Condoleeza Rice, along about two weeks or so ago, in a source cited in the discussion from the Sunday Herald, and another from Australia cited by one of the contributors. In that discussion, she allowed as how the administration would be "amazed" if they actually found Any WMDs within Iraq. She went further to acknowledge that the active search phase for Weapons was over, and that the Inactive (one presumes) Search Phase would henceforth be for things that were Not Weapons.

I am making None of this up.

Now, when the military command says there aren't any, and the National Security Advisor says there aren't any, if ol' Blix chimes in later on and agrees, this is Hardly News, is it?

Sidebar issues may be ignored altogether. This discussion is about WMDs -- not every other post hoc rationale invented under the sun since Powell's speech in February.

There is no "presence of mobile bio-chem laboratories" to discuss, save for the solemn prounouncement that there are These Trailers that the military kept under wraps entirely for a month, but their only specific pronouncement thus far is that they Could have been used as biological (not chemical -- chem labs don't need fermenters) weapons production facilities. Problem is, They Just Simply Don't Know if that's true or not. Neither does anyone else, since they have not seen fit to allow anyone else near them. Eventually, one supposes.

The personal attacks are jejeune and content-free.

I know -- it's just Got to be galling for you True Believers. Just a few weeks ago, y'all were Confident As Hell that *Weapons* of Mass Destruction "will be found" in quantity in Iraq. As the story has developed during the past several weeks, your Faith has not been rewarded very well. Even as the administration and the military abandoned the position, y'all have hung right in there, lacking evidence, lacking anything other than your now impossible to defend initial assertion.

Now, get it right:

There have been No WMDs found in Iraq -- not by anyone -- since we attacked. None. Not anywhere.

There have been No precursor materials found that are linked with WMD production. None. Not anywhere.

These "mobile laboratories" are now the Not Weapons y'all have shifted your entire belief structure to, but there are problems with that discussion, and even the Military Experts have had nothing definitive to say about them.

Leaving you now with what you've always had in this discussion topic: Nothing.

By now, a reasonable person should be getting used to it.

And if Blix wants to join his voice with that of the administration in noting that No WMDs are present, that shouldn't be reason for y'all to complain or to take issue with his take on the matter.

It really is How It Is. It's what the administration types have been saying for weeks! How is it that y'all don't believe what they say Now, when y'all have been so willing to believe everything they said Earlier -- all those weeks ago?

It's Strange -- truly!

Just can't Let Go Of It, huh?

Don! You truly amaze me. What kind of glasses are you wearing when you read this stuff? And I mean, any of it? You expect that we should believe ANYTHING you say, but you should be able to believe whatever it is you want to believe? No matter the source? Give me a break, here. The Mobile LABs? They were for chocolate shakes, Don. Do you believe that? I said it Don! Don't believe it? Fine. How about they were for blowin' up party balloons. You believe that? Right. They were forbidden by the UNSC sanctions, Don. Believe that.

Don, you don't need to make any of this up, because you hedge the truth. None of the things you cite are implied to mean that there are not or never were, weapons of mass destruction. They are implied to mean that none have been found.

Go back and review the articles yourself. You can use it to justify it if you want, but they're not saying what you imply them to suggest. Not only because that is not what they say, but (at least in the case of Dr. Rice) that kind of statement would contradict what she has previously said. At least once on Meet the Press, she stated that both she personally and the administration believe that they will be found. I happen to agree.

And by your logic, Don, why was SH playing cat and mouse? If there was nothing to hide, why smack the hornet's nest? Just give the inspectors the run of the place and be done with it. How galactically stupid!

By the way, if I wanted to attack you, you'd have known. I'll do it sometime (in print) so you can tell the difference. Take a joke.

Don's Double Standard in effect again: Iraq doesn't have to prove that germ labs aren't used for making germs, but the US has to prove that they were. Iraq doesn't have to prove it destroyed all its weapons, but if the US finds any, it has to prove it didn't plant them.

By Don's logic, a plant used for making VX and filling warheads with it, but with no actual filled warheads in the plant, is a Not Weapon and Doesn't Count.

Don,
I'm not about to follow you around, and follow up on your cites. I think it's kind of a worthless activity, since you seem to ignore any cites that some of us put in here, just to back up what we're saying. Do you think we just make this stuff up? I'm not about to attack you, personally, anyway. It's your arguments I'm going to attack, and I'm going to do it relentlessly. Live with it.
OBTW - Before you think you've slipped a fast one over on anyone...

I'm not going to go any further into your rant than point number 1.

CENTCOM? Might have been a month ago, I don't believe it, but my understanding, even back then, was that they were going to be hangin' in the 'hood for at least another 30 days. And forget this BS of it being a month. It wasn't a month ago. But, like I said, I'm not going to follow you around.

JM:

Do try not to take a general sort of post personally. It just gets ya all het up to no particular purpose.

One of the things you learn, after watching the DeeCee Spinners in action for a while, is how to read the stories as they change. When they start to backtrack from Certainty and get all wishy-washy in their pronouncements, you may rest assured that there is a Sea Change in the wind.

It is now Known beyond peradventure that All of what had been the High Priority sites for WMD storage and/or production have been gone over long since. Several times, in fact. We are well along the lower priority sites -- so far along that we don't even bother searching them out any more, if what the CentCom folks have been saying is True. (It must be, else why would they say it?)

Nothing found. Not anywhere.

It was Known ere the war started that the Special Ops teams had been tasked with finding and sequestering WMDs within any place in Iraq.

Nothing was found for them to sequester. Not anywhere.

It is Known that the initial Chemical Weapons Exploitation Teams that traveled with the forces during the attack wandere hither and yon, testing every cockamamie story that came up Anywhere.

None of the stories proved out. Not one.

It is Known that the $200k reward for Any Iraqi to lead us to Any WMD site, Anywhere in Iraq has been widely promulgated the length and breadth of the nation.

Nothing from that either.

It is Known that the emphasis of the Non-Search would be to find Non-Weapons. Well, that's certainly easier, since clearly there are far more Non-Weapons than there are Weapons. But that isn't what the initial discussion was Ever about, is it?

And still such as y'all Cling to the initial story, when others have abandoned it long since?

Makes no damned sense at all!

The DC Spinners have been careful not to explicitly state what they now know for a Fact, clearly enough. That would be to admit the earlier error -- and in spinning, one simply doesn't Do that sort of thing. One carefully builds up Alternative Stories, tests the waters carefully, gets the stream of discussion to change to Something Else Instead.

Rather like what's been happening thus far, yes? Shoot -- you wouldn't even Recognize what's being said about WMDs now compared with what was said back in February.

Then:

* WMDs were the biggest reason to go to war.

* WMDs were the CAPD for all peace-loving nations in the world.

* We just Knew that Iraq had WMDs all over the place, ready to deploy or give to terrorists anywhere under the sun.

Now:

* WMDs weren't really all That important. Getting rid of SH was Far more important. Or was it Liberating the Iraqis? Or perhaps Making A Strong Statement in the Middle East? It all sorta changed, once the WMDs improvidently failed to materialize.

* WMDs are not the CAPD -- materials that Might (but might not) be used to make WMDs are the Key Matter for discussion instead.

* Iraq really might have had WMDs (no one ever now says that they Know for a Fact it really Did have them at the time) but they cleverly hid them, or maybe sent them to Syria, or maybe destroyed them just Days Before The Invasion (or perhaps during the invasion itself). There were a couple of other suggestions as well that slip by me at the moment.

Doesn't it make ya wanna chuckle just even a Tad? This whole WMD story has been spun so many ways since 2/03 that y'all ought to be dizzy just from the angular momentum of it! And yet it carries on even now, with No evidence, No administrative strong support for it, No military concern over it -- just nothing at all to back it up!

Mere spin is one thing.

You folks have become self-spinners! Now *that's* a feat unheralded in PR History, near as I can tell.

Go figure.

As for why SH did what he did, who knows what's in the mind of a paranoid? It really doesn't matter, though. What does matter is whether or not there are any WMDs out there.

Got any to discuss? One? No? Then what's all the sturm und drang about, really?

(As for the personal attack threat, take your best shot. I am quite entirely indifferent to such matters. I have never sought the approval of Fools in the past, and am unlikely to start doing so now. All I have is your words on a screen, and all you have is mine. The personal stuff is inevitably mere conjecture -- and never either accurate nor telling. But if it pleases you, have at it. It'll make you feel just All Sorts Of Better, one supposes. And isn't that really what all these discussions are all about in the first place?)

Don, I don't need to attack you personally when I have a plethora of your hopelessly insulated, palpably absurd opinions to attack.

But, I must ask you, why is it so much easier to believe, after all we've seen, after all that has been documented historically about Iraq, SH and his sons, that the US is the one that has acted suspiciously? And I'm not saying that you do, but you give the appearance that your opinion is that Saddam Hussein, certainly not the poster boy for honesty, is more trustworthy than an American President. (liberal or democrat) And therein, that even if, as you say, there are none, that somehow we were duped because they were lying to us rather than they were mistaken.

I mean, honestly, all other things being equal, if your life depended on one of two things:

GWB: He has 'em

SH: I don't

Would you REALLY choose Saddam Hussein?

If Iraq has/had no WMD, then why isn't Saddam, his sons, or the Bathists screaming to Al Jeezera and the UN about the US not finding anything? It is too quiet over there; something is still be conjured up secretly in the background, probably with the knowledge and help of the French and the Russians.

If Iraq has/had no WMD, then why isn't Saddam, his sons, or the Bathists screaming to Al Jeezera and the UN about the US not finding anything? It is too quiet over there; something is still being conjured up secretly in the background, probably with the knowledge and help of the French and the Russians.

Don -
Question - How many lines did this last post of yours run? 100 lines?

I'll tackle one issue with you, and one issue only. The rest of what you are spewing is so much superflous stuff.

You somehow manage to keep avoiding the inevitable by all means available - just answer the freakin' question, Don!

Did the UNSC sanctions PERMIT SH to have a mobile facility such as the one that OFFICIALS claim is a Mobile WMD Lab?

A ONE word answer will suffice, Don.

One word. YES or NO. Until you come up with that answer, shut up, and stop gummin' the rest of this stuff to death.

Don? Don?

They haven't backed off on the argument as much as you might like, Don.

http://usinfo.state.gov/cgi-bin/washfile/display.pl?p=/products/washfile/latest&f=03052108.nlt&t=/products/washfile/newsitem.shtml

johnymozart - You didn't cut and paste that, did you? LOL...

Don,
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here. Computer Glitch, right? Keyboard suddenly failing on you?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Come on, Don. Take your sandal-thumpin' like the guy I know you are. I don't want to have to pester you to death about a simple YES or NO question in each and every post that you do a hit-and-run raid on, now do I?

Hey, great link, Tbox! Gracias.

OBTW - And this is for ALL -

I'm going to just suppose here for a moment, but bear with me... These were deemed to be sophisticated MOBILE labs. Equipment in these trailers was built in 2002 AND 2003. I'd say Powell was right-on when he addressed the UN on this VERY issue.

WTF did he need mass quantities of WMD for, when he could produce it from miniscule amounts of 'seed', that could be buried in a 6x6 inch container in the middle of the freakin' desert? Don't need a big sign that says HAZARDOUS MATERIAL, all we need is a GPS coordinate.

Think about it, Don.

Don is a sophist and a liar.

I defy him to produce a quote from an Administration official saying that WMD were all over Iraq.

Here is the 2003 State of the Union Address. Nowhere does the President say Iraq was possessed of any WMD. What he says is that they are "unaccounted for". Every single time.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/sotu.transcript.8/index.html

Here's a money quote:

"From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them. "

From January 2003. And lo, there they are in Iraq.

Yep. Bush didn't know nothing and made everything else up.

CRAP, Gabriel! You deflated the hydrogen balloon!

DON! OH DON!

I got my left sandal ready!

dons an america hater.

everyone on this globe but the U.S. is trustworthy.

we are the real bad guy's.

saddam didnt kill whole villages with chem weapons.

and yes he would beleive saddam over bush.

any other questions?

man that don is long winded about not much at all.

tighten it up don, be more succinct.

of coarse that would be hard to do when your trying to patch together a rope a dope of half truths.

Don , you take things out of context and reorganize to suit your stuppidity. For example, Rice said that she would be surprised, yes. But what u fail to mention is the fsact that she felt perhaps these weapons were already destroyed right before the war and the rest moved to another country.

Frankly, who cares what that lttle weasle Blix thinks, he has been fooled before. Blix, Koffi Annan nd the rest are self serving idiots, probably have been payed off by uday. And let us not forget about that other waepons inspector, the one that propositioned little girls. He was adamant at first then changed his mind after receiving money from somebody.

I am tired of these terrorists, cruel dictators, etc., they all need to go bye bye for whatever the reason. And..... they will

sorry about my spelling and typing....long day

mark,
we overlook lot's of stuff (speling and grammr) EXCEPT when we're in school, which is generally when Don is pontificating about mostly nothin' at all.
School's out.

School BELL!

Don! I ain't enjoyin' this much. Why don't you answer my freakin' question so we can move on to something with a little more meat to it?

Don,

YOU are late to the story!

Some of us here have been sayin' as much for the past several weeks.

NOW. I responded to your opener. Will you reply to my closer?

WHY did I ask that question?

Why is there air?

Another example of Don's sophistry I forgot to mention. He's been making much of the fact that no Iraqis are finding WMDs for us despite our blandishments--but he also says that Iraqi defectors are only telling us what we want to hear, because of those same blandishments.

Special pleading and sophistry...

It's not nice of Don to leave you hanging like that, Dave. I can't resolve all of your doubts, but I can answer one of your questions:

Air is released from molten rock within the Earth, and brought to the surface by volcanoes. Some of our atmosphere collected when the planet was still cooling, and worked its way up to the surface of the molten Earth in tiny bubbles. A tiny percentage is brought by comets and meteors. Ordinarily, solar solar radiation would drive air away, but the Earth's molten iron core, which it still has thanks to its large size, creates a protective magnetic field that deflects the radiation.

I'm afraid that this is probably not the same reason that you asked a question of Don. But now you know why there is air.

You know Gabriel... there's goin' to be a reeallly special place for your kind in MY Heaven. In lieu of 72 virgins (forget all the rest of the shit on the plate), what (MAIS OUI !) can I offer you? And before you go leapin', don't say GAS !

OBTW - I liked it...

May. 25, 2003

The Point | U.S. has gained little if Bush lied about reason for war
By Mark Bowden
For The Inquirer

It has been two months since the United States and Britain went to war against Saddam Hussein, and coalition forces have yet to discover convincing evidence of the weapons programs that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair said were its primary cause.

Some of those who supported the war beforehand did so solely on the basis of ending tyranny. The mass graves found throughout Iraq, and widespread stories of torture and atrocity, come as no surprise to those who had studied or endured the Baathist dictator's regime. Those who opposed the war for any reason ought to be doing some soul-searching about the kind of horrors they were prepared to leave in place.

But it is true that Hussein represented only one of many thuggish regimes, and that the United States is not about to go to war against them all. I supported this war because I believed Bush and Blair when they said Iraq was manufacturing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons in the hands of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that shared Hussein's hostile designs made such a threat a defense priority - or so the argument went.

Early this month, the U.S. military announced that it had found three mobile laboratories that were most likely designed to manufacture chemical or biological weapons, the types of labs that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell referred to in making his argument for war before the U.N. Security Council. The discoveries were suggestive but hardly convincing evidence of the specific, tangible threat repeatedly outlined by the President. With the authors of Iraq's illicit-weapons program now in custody, we should expect to see soon, or to have seen already, the facilities and stockpiles we and most of the rest of the world believed Hussein possessed.

They may yet be found, but it is beginning to look as though the skeptics in this case were right. If so, I was taken in by this administration, and America and Great Britain were led to war under false pretenses.

Events have moved so swiftly, and Hussein's toppling has posed so many new pressing problems, that it would be easy to lose sight of this issue, but it is critically important. I can imagine no greater breach of public trust than to mislead a country into war. A strong case might have been made to go after Hussein just because he posed a potential threat to us and the region, because of his support for suicide bombers, and because of his ruthless oppression of his own people. But this is not the case our President chose to make.

Truth in public life has always been a slippery commodity. We expect campaigning politicians or debating journalists to pitch and spin. Facts are marshaled to support arguments and causes; convenient ones are trumpeted and inconvenient ones played down or ignored. This is the political game.

But when the President of the United States addresses the nation and the world, I expect the spinning to stop. He represents not just a party or a cause, but the American people. When President Bush argued that Hussein possessed stockpiles of illicit and deadly poisons, he was presumably doing so on the basis of intelligence briefings and evidence that the public could not see. He was asking us to trust him, to trust his office, to trust that he was acting legitimately in our self-defense. That's something very different from engaging in a bold policy of attempting to remake the Middle East, or undertaking a humanitarian mission to end oppression. Neither of these two justifications would have been likely to garner widespread public support. But national defense? That's an argument the President can always win.

I trusted Bush, and unless something big develops on the weapons front in Iraq soon, it appears as though I was fooled by him. Perhaps he himself was taken in by his intelligence and military advisers. If so, he ought to be angry as hell, because ultimately he bears the responsibility.

It suggests a strain of zealotry in this White House that regards the question of war as just another political debate. It isn't. More than 100 fine Americans were killed in this conflict, dozens of British soldiers, and many thousands of Iraqis. Nobody gets killed or maimed in Capitol Hill maneuvers over spending plans, or battles over federal court appointments. War is a special case. It is the most serious step a nation can take, and it deserves the highest measure of seriousness and integrity.

When a president lies or exaggerates in making an argument for war, when he spins the facts to sell his case, he betrays his public trust, and he diminishes the credibility of his office and our country. We are at war. What we lost in this may yet end up being far more important than what we gained.

All right. The first thing I did was check to make sure you had a 'legit' looking email address. You're good to go.

I'll start right at the top, because I suspect that although you agree with what's said in this article (I'm not going to bother checking it out, however), it sort of irks me that you couldn't just say it, and own it, and point us at the article.

No one is naive enough to believe everything that comes out of a politician's mouth. I do however, trust the President of the United States and his Cabinet to make informed decisions based on information that does not need to be revealed to each and every citizen.

What was described to the UN, by both the President and Colin Powell has been found. They said Saddam had mobile germ labs, and that is what was found. This article claims that the President lied. He did not lie.

Why did you post this article? What is there to talk about?