Ok, let me start the ball rolling here by saying, in all fairness, where are they?!? Now, before I get leaped on from all sides, I think it is fair to say that the majority of people, including myself, expected to see much more than we have seen.

This is, of course, not to say that I don't believe they don't/didn't exist. There was plenty unaccounted for, and still unaccounted for, I might add. But are we still entertaining the idea that they are hidden in Iraq? Or have we moved on to the far more sinister idea that they were moved elsewhere? There certainly was enough time. Or were they destroyed?

Just saying the threat was overstated and that they don't/didn't exist leaves too much unexplained, particularly the behavior of the regime prior to the war. In addition, it would contradict much of what we know about Saddam Hussein and his plans for the Mideast.

I'm all for being patient here, but why the secrecy? Let's see the documentary evidence.

Let me tell you what chaps my ass. Thank you. What chaps my ass is how really, really bad our intelligence has been.

I don't think its a question of bad intelligence. The PNAC crew saw a window of opportunity and sent US troops through it. Iraq has the largest oil reserves on the planet under its desert. A rogue dictator who was no longer cooperating with the West stood in their way. He no longer does. Result.


No WMD and no link to 9/11. Well, less of a link than the US itself, which seemed to be where the 9/11 pilots obtained their training. So what were the reasons for the Iraq invasion again?

Show me a WMD found in Iraq.

Show me ONE.

Can't do it can you?

Was Saddam a bad man? Definitely.

Did George Bush lie in order to accomplish his personal agenda? Definitely.

Has his lying come back to bite him in the ass? Defintely.

Sorry folks. Admit it now. George Bush is bad for America and the World.

um, G ... you kind of totally missed the point.

let's go slow: do you admit that the Saddam Hussein regime killed many, many Kurds (the article says as many as 100,000) with weapons of mass destruction (e.g., chemical weapons)?

if you admit that, then you admit that Saddam had WMD, and that Bush was not a liar.

if you do not admit that, then you are in the baleful company of Holocaust deniers and their ilk.

sooo - which is it?

nikita demosthenes : 'the Saddam Hussein regime killed many, many Kurds'. That is beyond question. Also beyond question is that Donald Rumsfeld, current US Secretary of Defense, had personal meetings with said murderous dictator.

Also a matter of record is that George Bush the elder was involved in the shipment of arms to Iran.

Furthermore, with regard to the deployment of chemical weapons by Iraq, check this from
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm:

"Rumsfeld?s December 19-20, 1983 visit to Baghdad made him the highest-ranking US official to visit Iraq in 6 years. He met Saddam and the two discussed ?topics of mutual interest,? according to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. ?[Saddam] made it clear that Iraq was not interested in making mischief in the world,? Rumsfeld later told The New York Times. ?It struck us as useful to have a relationship, given that we were interested in solving the Mideast problems.?
Just 12 days after the meeting, on January 1, 1984, The Washington Post reported that the United States ?in a shift in policy, has informed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the 3-year-old war with Iran would be ?contrary to U.S. interests? and has made several moves to prevent that result.?
In March of 1984, with the Iran-Iraq war growing more brutal by the day, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad for meetings with then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. On the day of his visit, March 24th, UPI reported from the United Nations: ?Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz (sic) on the Gulf war before leaving for an unspecified destination.?
The day before, the Iranian news agency alleged that Iraq launched another chemical weapons assault on the southern battlefront, injuring 600 Iranian soldiers. ?Chemical weapons in the form of aerial bombs have been used in the areas inspected in Iran by the specialists,? the U.N. report said. ?The types of chemical agents used were bis-(2-chlorethyl)-sulfide, also known as mustard gas, and ethyl N, N-dimethylphosphoroamidocyanidate, a nerve agent known as Tabun.?
Prior to the release of the UN report, the US State Department on March 5th had issued a statement saying ?available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.?
Commenting on the UN report, US Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was quoted by The New York Times as saying, ?We think that the use of chemical weapons is a very serious matter. We've made that clear in general and particular.?
Compared with the rhetoric emanating from the current administration, based on speculations about what Saddam might have, Kirkpatrick?s reaction was hardly a call to action.
Most glaring is that Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq as the 1984 UN report was issued and said nothing about the allegations of chemical weapons use, despite State Department ?evidence.? On the contrary, The New York Times reported from Baghdad on March 29, 1984, ?American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name.?
A month and a half later, in May 1984, Donald Rumsfeld resigned. In November of that year, full diplomatic relations between Iraq and the US were fully restored. Two years later, in an article about Rumsfeld?s aspirations to run for the 1988 Republican Presidential nomination, the Chicago Tribune Magazine listed among Rumsfeld?s achievements helping to ?reopen U.S. relations with Iraq.? The Tribune failed to mention that this help came at a time when, according to the US State Department, Iraq was actively using chemical weapons. "

WMDs. The puzzle continues. Did they have them? I suggest those in the country at the time of their deployment would have the most informed viewpoint. Can we know the unknowable? Maybe Donald can tell us.

Theodooulos: Of course it was all about the oil!

This has all been discussed before but I guess we have to repeat ourselves to people who don't understand basic economics.

When we do get at Iraq's oil, we will not take it, we will buy it at the market price. We could have bought it from Saddam by accepting his word and dropping the sanctions, like the French wanted to do. And then we wouldn't have had to spend all these billions in waging war and rebuilding Iraq. But it was all about the oil, right?

I'll preface this by describing myself as in favor of the war.

I do think that the tendency to cite the atrocities against the Kurds as proof of Iraq's possession of WMDs rather misses the point. I don't know that anyone, outside the most lunatic fringe of the left, has ever claimed that Saddam never had chemical weapons -- rather, the lefty mainstream asserts that he destroyed them all after the first Gulf War.

I wouldn't rule out the possibility that various WMD assets were moved to Syria or hastily dumped/destroyed during the war. I'm intrigued, though, by a theory I've been hearing to the effect that the unaccounted for WMDs were the result of a fraud perpetrated on Saddam: to wit -- Iraqi officials in charge of chemical and biological weapons production in the '80s lied about the volume of that production to enhance their reputation and save their necks. When weapons stocks were destroyed and accounted for after the Gulf War, naturally only actual stocks were accounted for. When anyone inquired about the "missing" materials, the answer was an uneasy shrug -- no one wanted to acknowledge, much less take responsibility for, the lie.

Saddam, meanwhile, didn't destroy his WMDs out of some spirit of altruism. He knew that, so long as his knowledge and production base was preserved (and the production base was readily convertible from legitimate industrial chemical and biological facilities), he could produce chemical and biological weapons to his heart's content when he needed them someday, and the heat was off. Chemical weapons have a limited shelf-life anyway, as do some biologicals, so there was no point in going to great lengths to hold on to stuff that was going stale anyway.

The lack of cooperation on the part of the Iraqis with the UN inspection process was driven by standard-issue totalitarian secrecy, concern that too much cooperation would be a sign of weakness, a desire to conceal the preserved knowledge base, and concern that someone might find the leftover weapons stocks that they thought they still had, but couldn't account for. Anything the Iraqis intentionally did to encourage suspicions that they might have WMDs, they did in the simple spirit of brinksmanship, hoping to seed fear amongst their enemies.

All of the above is speculative, but I think it hangs together well enough to potentially be the truth, and it makes a lot more sense to me than the lefty assertions that Bush and Blair's administrations knowingly lied. If they really, knowingly, made the charges up out of whole cloth, and knew the skepticism they were going to face from the UN and other global opposition, why the hell not throw in some doctored evidence? I think it much more likely that they would have pieced together fragments of knowledge, that they misweighed due to what their intelligence assets were telling them -- that the Iraqis had a functional WMD production infrastructure, and themselves believed that they still had some lying around somewhere.

In any event, I still consider Syria the first likely suspect, but I find the above theory making more sense every day.

Regarding our support for Iraq in the '80s -- The fact is that we supported a lot of unsavory characters and outright butchers during the Cold War, towards what was perceived as the greater good of the fight against Communism. Moreover, the Islamic fundamentalist Iranians were perceived as the major threat in the region, and Saddam's secular dictatorship was seen as a bulwark against them. I don't think the fact that our hands are dirty with regard to Saddam invalidates any actions we later took against him. If anything, our support for him in the past morally obligated us to remove him once no other priorities induced us to rationalize tolerance of his brutality. We helped make the monster. We were obliged to destroy it.

Another leading reason for my support for the war was simply that it dealt with a regional threat that we were ultimately going to have to face, and wasn't getting any weaker. France, Russia, and Germany were merrily helping Iraq circumvent trade sanctions, and maintaining pressure to get them lifted entirely. I have every confidence that they would eventually have succeeded, that Iraq would have been able to rearm, and that it would have again threatened its neighbors, probably with some sort of WMDs to support it. When that happened, France, Russia, Germany, and the rest of the UN would have again called upon what they view as their dumb muscle, i.e., the US, to deal with the problem. Doing so then would have involved greater cost in lives and cash than doing so now.

The fact is that Iraq was at least as much of a threat and nuisance to us as Milosevic's Serbia was to Europe, and that he was brutalizing far more people. France, Russia, and Germany, however saw economic potential in supporting Saddam, whereas Milosevic brought nothing but an annoying refugee problem to the table. Their loyalty as friends and allies extends only as far as their self-interest, and thus, bombing the people of Serbia to strongarm them into deposing their leader gets framed as a humanitarian cause, while ousting the Stalin of the Middle East gets framed as unilaterialist bullying.

Umbriel,

There may be some in the blogosphere that accuse the opposition to Iraqi liberation of insisting that WMD never existed, but there is a more telling failure on the part of the opposition:

Their consistent failure to acknowledge that WMD production capability can be concealed in the open, since WMD, especially chem and bio, can be produced on "dual-use" production lines. As such, the presence of those production lines, plus a demonstrated willingness to develop and use WMD's, constituted an unignorable threat.

That is the disingenuity of which I accuse the opposition.

No credible intelligence service at the UN, in Europe, or the US suggested that WMD precursors and production capability had all been accounted for and destroyed. Yet the opposition acts as though only the US made these claims.

By now, most nerve agents would have deteriorated, unless they were stored in a proper facility designed to prevent their chemical breakdown. Mustard gas would be intact, but for that very reason it is unlikely Saddam would have pursued them -- too difficult to conceal.

The REAL question is not the weapons, but the ability to design, develop, produce, and conceal them. I defy ANYONE to demonstrate that Iraq had destroyed those capabilities prior to March, 2003.

MG

Umbriel, great post.

This is the kind of thinking that I think applies here, which is why I kicked the hornet's nest at the beginning of the thread. In that way, I find Saddam Hussein a victim of his own totalitarianism. However, while speculative, it injects a great dose of reality. This is far more plausible to me than people who are sophisticated enough to create a knowing lie about WMD, but then too stupid to plant evidence to keep themselves from looking bad. It doesn't make any sense, and that's why I think we should still be concentrating on if anything left could have been sent to Syria.

MG, also great post. :)

I didnty care about WMDs to begin with. I thought that was a dumb idea to begin with. Bush should have just said, Saddam is trash, that is why we are getting rid of him. That would have been reason enough for me.

The remarkable thing about the war in Iraq is that the expected positions of conservatives and liberals seem to be reversed. The liberals generally are for doing the "right thing" for the world, not just for the U.S. The conservatives (not the compassionate one's) typically don't care that much about the third world, taking the position that we should take care of ourselves. The third world doesn't care about us, does it? The liberals think this is selfish and short-sighted.

In Iraq, the conservatives say "Look, we did something good!" The liberals say "Hey, you fooled us into thinking that was selfish!"

I can understand the argument about whether the administration lied, but I cannot understand how an intelligent person could argue that the war was not a good thing. In part, I think some liberals' knee-jerk reaction is caused by the suspicion that the conservatives enjoyed it.

Johnboy,

Man of today's "liberals" aren't really liberals, that is, they aren't primarily concerned with individual liberty. Rather, they are concerned with state power, and often the overturning of state power by building international organizations with state-like powers.

Hence, many "liberals" are more concerned about placing the UN at the center of any discussions about Iraq, than about the best policies for Iraqis.

More broadly, the traditional European labels "liberal" and "conservative" don't translate well into the less ideological United States. Those labels don't mean the same on the west side of the pond.

MG

These articles and/or commentators indicate either implicitly or explicity that there never were any weapons of mass destruciton in Iraq:

http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/tucker/03/hersh.html

http://melbimc.nomasters.org/news/2003/05/47133_comment.php

http://globalfire.tv/nj/03en/politics/the_wmd_lie.htm

http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_iraq_weapons_of_mass_destruction_scandal.php

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2003%20Opinion%20Editorials/May/20%20o/The%20missing%20WMD,%20By%20Gwynne%20Dyer.htm

http://slate.msn.com/id/2083760/

http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/agitation/iraq/wmdupdate.html

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j062503.html

http://www.gibbsmagazine.com/Where%20are%20the%20weapons.htm

http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/07/13/blairmad.html

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/betweenthelines/archives/2003_06_17.html

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6985/oilwar.html

http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/philly/iraqwmd.html

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0317/cotts.php

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h061103.html

http://www.pushhamburger.com/jackson.htm

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/07/267917.shtml

I believe it is fair to at least ask these commentators if they do deny that WMD ever existed. If they do deny that WMD ever existed, I believe these commentators are, quite literally, Holocaust deniers (i.e., deniers of the mass ethnic cleansing of Kurds undertaken by Saddam and "Chemical Ali").

but Who is in the graves, when did they die, and
WHO killed them ?? That's what Needs to be
answered. They don't know How Many were killed in
91' before, during, or After the war. That
highway of death we caused looked mighty nasty and
then there was the rebellion that was put down and
the Iran war and Kurdish rebellion. Did Turkey
kill any Kurds or anyone else ?? Maybe Saddam
killed everyone including what US munitions did
and his sons. Could blame them All on him and
wash our hands. get some Facts..

VF,

My brother was at the "Highway of Death" in '91. What he saw was a "Highway of wrecks" and not enough bodies to account for all the vehicles.

The "real deal": USAF bombs the head and tail of the convoy, giving the soldiers a chance to get out of their vehicles. Then the vehicles get pounded.

Just thought you might like to know, so you can quit undercutting your credibility with misleading allusions.

MG

Wahey! The USAF should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize! What humanitarian tactics! A less questioning military force would just bomb the hell out of anything moving, such as allied tanks. Hmm, brings to mind the UK tank strafed on a second pass by a US A-10. Observe http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2901515.stm

Lance Corporal Gerrard said: "All this kit has been provided by the Americans. They've said if you put this kit on you won't get shot.
"We can identify a friendly vehicle from 1,500 metres [4,921 ft].
"You've got an A-10 with advanced technology and he can't use a thermal sight to identify whether a tank is a friend or foe. It's ridiculous.
I felt I was going to burn to death. I just shouted 'reverse, reverse, reverse'
"Combat is what I've been trained for. I can command my vehicle. I can keep it from being attacked.
"What I have not been trained to do is look over my shoulder to see whether an American is shooting at me."....
"There was a boy of about 12-years-old. He was no more than 20 metres [65.6 ft] away when the Yank opened up. There were all these civilians around.
"He [the pilot] had absolutely no regard for human life. I believe he was a cowboy. He'd just gone out on a jolly."
He added: "I'm curious about what's going to happen to the pilot.
"He's killed one of my friends and he's killed him on the second run."

A perhaps more objective viewpoint:
http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2003/04/01/story260189641.asp
?Unfriendly? US pilot hits British tank crews
By Jim Caldwell
THREE wounded British soldiers have described how they survived an attack by a US A-10 Thunderbolt anti-tank aircraft that killed one of their troop and destroyed two armoured vehicles.
One survivor criticised the US pilot for showing ?no regard for human life? and accused him of being ?a cowboy? who had ?gone out on a jolly?. The US A-10 aircraft circled and came around for a second attack.
Another survivor said he stumbled out of the burning wreckage of his light tank and waved frantically to the American pilot to try to halt his second attack.
The so-called friendly fire incident, 40 kilometres (24.8 miles) north of Basra, left one soldier missing, presumed dead, and another in intensive care on RFA Argus, the British forces? hospital ship in the Gulf.

Misleading allusions indeed. Use that phrase to the families of the above victims. I'm sure they will be conciliatory, and not at all outraged that their loved one is a victim of a combination of American arrogance and carelesness.

So the road to Basra was strewn with fewer corpses than the amount of burnt out vehicles would suggest. It's merely a question of accounting. If the above is typical of how the US treats its allies, no wonder its enemies are so belligerent. The road to Basra happened. Don't excuse it. Above all, don't cite it as an example of US humanitarianism


umbriel - great post, not.
///If anything, our support for [Saddam] in the past morally obligated us to remove him once no other priorities induced us to rationalize tolerance of his brutality. We helped make the monster. We were obliged to destroy it.///
Yeah baby: repeat until entire planet has been reduced to rubble. You are disappointed that the UN failed to support the US invasion of Iraq. Maybe you aren't disappointed. The fact is, you convinced 1 person as to the justness of your cause - Tony Blair. He had no mandate to invade Iraq, the majority of the British population were against the war, but he was the US fig leaf. Of course, I'm forgetting the Solomon Islands etc. Way to humiliate Colin Powell.
I'm sorry, I have to repeat your text, its too good not to and would serve to justify any terorist attack on the US.

///I don't think the fact that our hands are dirty with regard to Saddam invalidates any actions we later took against him. If anything, our support for him in the past morally obligated us to remove him once no other priorities induced us to rationalize tolerance of his brutality. We helped make the monster. We were obliged to destroy it.///

Lovely. Condone genocide. Fund it even. Provide it with the means of murder. Award it political approval. When the state-sponsored terrorism has outlived its usefulness and the mass graves are full, become outraged as to what has transpired and suggest to domestic voters that such brutality has been directed at them (wail about 9/11) and probably will be directed at them in the future (it must never happen again). Get multi-billion dollar approval for war to grab oil reserves. Do not pass Go. Do all the above with a Secretary of Defense that has shaken hands with Saddam and a straight face. Wonder why entire planet holds you in contempt.

To a large extent, the whole, "show me the WMD" is an attempt to change the subject. The issue was Saddam's lack of compliance to UN resolutions, at least in a legal sense. It was his responsibility to show that the WMDs and the programs for creating them, were dismantled. Not ours to prove he had them.

Besides which, if Bush lied about the WMD, then one has to also blame Clinton. He had been saying, even prior to 1998 that Saddam had them. You also have to blame French intelligence, Russian intelligence, China, etc. all 15 members of the UN security council.

All this costant harping on WMDs does is reflect poorly on the liberals and lefties who in theory are more concerned with dictatorships and abuses of human rights against other folks than the present administration. What the left is saying, in effect, is that Saddam should still be free to murder, torture, rape and rob the Iraqi people. It displays a moral hypocracy that is not going unnoticed.

dirk--

One pilot on one sortie out of thousands tragically either screwing up or hot-dogging hardly provides a fair illustration of the conduct of the majority of the US armed forces or its people, whatever stereotypes might be tossed around by some understandably upset survivors of his mistake/misconduct. Heaven knows no British troops or pilots have ever committed "friendly fire" errors. If there are real training or doctrinal weaknesses that make the US more prone to such errors, as opposed to simply possessing a disproportionate amount of firepower, then they should be addressed. I've not seen any clear and objective articulation of that, however.

I stand by my assessment of the US's obligation to "slay our monster" A lot of compromises were made in the course of the cold war. The UK and the rest of NATO acquiesced in these compromises, so long as they felt they suited their purposes. Europe provided more arms to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war than did the US -- and profited nicely in the process I'm sure. Compromises continue to be made in fighting Islamist terror, in terms of how much pressure gets applied and where. It's offensive to me, though, to hear those who pretend that the motives of those nations opposing the invasion of Iraq, particularly France, Russia, and Germany, were the product of their warm humanitarian spirit, and concern for the well-being of the people of that peaceful nation and their benevolent ruler. They merely sought to protect political and economic investments that they had callously made in a brutal regime. Thus they not only opposed toppling Saddam militarily, but undermined whatever effectiveness sanctions and other alternatives might have had, by facilitating the corruption of the Oil-for-Food program, among other things. All about oil? Sure... all about European investment in an oil producing country under brutal and expansionistic rule. That callous self-interest, of course, gets a free pass from those whose envy and resentment of American prosperity induces them to wink at any corruption or atrocity, so long as it aligns itself against America.

nikita -

I confess I didn't look at all of your links, though I sampled quite a few. Most didn't discuss Saddam's pre-Gulf War chemical arsenal at all. Those that did acknowledged the reality and their use, and simply assert that Saddam had been disarmed after the Gulf War. While there are obviously some out there (and posting here) willing to weave whatever conspiracy theory is necessary to demonize the US, I can't think of any "Kurdish Holocaust Deniers" that I've seen in the mainstream press, or even in those links.

I do agree that much of the "Bush Lied" rhetoric does seem to oversimplify the issue -- asserting casually that "Iraq had no WMDs" while brushing aside the complexities. Unfortunately, oversimplification in policy debate is hardly unusual or novel...

umbriel: well said.

i suppose i might have better made my point thusly:

suppose everyone now saying in a simplistic way, "Where's the WMD?" and "Was there ever any WMD?" and "Bush lied about the WMD," had been around to say similar things after WWII.

"similar things," I believe, would have been:

"Where are the gas chambers?" and "Were there ever gas chambers?" and "Roosevelt lied about the gas chambers."

Such commentators after WWII (of which there were some - they are typically called "Holocaust deniers") have been roundly discredited. My point, of course, is that the "Where is the WMD?" crowd is cut from the same cloth - and should be roundly discredited too.

Lastly, I think it is fair to hold the "Where is the WMD?" crowd's feet to the fire in this sense. If they are going to question the failure to find WMD, they need to quickly acknowledge that Saddam did have WMD before (see all the dead Kurds...). Their failure to quicklyi acknowledge this point, in the same article in which they question the existence of WMD, is at least very misleading to the reading public. And some of the more radical lefties, when pushed, stick to the radical line that there was never an WMD, EVER. Indeed, I believe more would stick to this line, except that they get obvious glee from pointing out that Rumsfeld shook Saddam's hand in the 80's. Of course, the reasonable realpolitic nature of my enemy's enemy is my friend is apparently beyond them.
And, more basically, I have not seen any responsible report that ever said that WE ever gave any WMD to Saddam. Coventional arms, yes, But never any WMD.

Nikita,

Well said!

The "culpability" of US cooperation with Saddam's regime, if one really wants to use that term, is thus:

In the mid'1980's, Iraq was slowly losing its war with Iran. It was a war Iraq started. Saddam's megalomania and narcissism (a la Hitler) had hiim portraying his attack on Iran as defending Sunni Islam from the revolutionary zeal of the "not really Muslim" Shiite Iranians.

After initial gains, Iraq and Iran got into a long battle of attrition. Years of fierce fighting had placed almost the entirety of the front lines on Iraqi soil. The Al Faw peninsula was in Iranian hands. The Shatt al Arab waterway was closed to Iraqi traffic. Basra was partly besieged. Iraq's wealth and talent was dissipating in the trenches of the front line. Iran was coming close to winning, and establishing its supremacy in the northern Gulf.

The Iraqs had developed chemical munitions, likely with Soviet assistance. At this point, American involvement occurred. We armed Saddam with the most powerful thing he needed: accurate intelligence about the location of Iranian reserves.

In the ensuing weeks, Iraqi forces used chemical munitions on both front line positions and concentrations of forces in reserve. The result was very high Iranian casualties and a restoration of the Iraqi situation.

That is the context and content of American assistance. Iraq did not recieve substantial amounts of weaponry -- its tanks, aircraft, artillery, small arms, etc. are all of Soviet make. Those who would condemn American support to Saddam had best be able to calibrate their condemnation to the historical situation AND to the relative support Saddam received from other nations. Otherwise, they are guilty either ignorance or the logical fallacy of "special pleading".

MG

Excuse the length of this post

umbriel

Mistakes are made in modern warfare and certainly were in this conflict by all parties. I don't believe that all US personnel were as careless or stupid as that A-10 pilot who came round for a second pass. It is the number of mistakes and the fact that they are still occurring months into the invasion that vexes me, and I suggest it is due to on-the-ground US military policy. Half the British forces killed during the first three weeks of the invasion were due to US ordnance. My beef is that these men died fighting a war that was instigated to get Dick Cheney's fat snout in the trough. You speak of training or doctinal weaknesses. I would suggest that the US approach to situations during this invasion has been shoot first, questions later, let God sort 'em out. This policy I would imagine is to safeguard the lives of US service personnel, and would seem to have alleviated casualties during the fire-fights in the first few weeks. The Brit troops
, having had decades of experience entering and patrolling urban areas often containing hostile residents, use a rather less confrontational and more cooperative approach to moving through and occupying territory e.g. not entering Basra for 4 days to minimise civilian casualties. In the long term, this approach will save British lives. The US forces are occupying areas more loyal to Saddam, but still would benefit from a less aggressive approach to their perilous activities. Shooting 8 Iraqi policemen isn't going to win hearts and minds. Firing bullets into angry crowds neither. If there ever was a time for shock and awe - I don't believe there ever was time for such an arrogant concept - this ain't it

nikita - you state

///And, more basically, I have not seen any responsible report that ever said that WE ever gave any WMD to Saddam. Coventional arms, yes, But never any WMD.///

MG: you state

///Iraq did not recieve substantial amounts of weaponry -- its tanks, aircraft, artillery, small arms, etc. are all of Soviet make///
From http://hnn.us/articles/1283.html
"A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I shall submit for the Record, shows very clearly that the United States is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in 1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases. "

Products from Honeywell, Union Carbide and other US firms were discovered by UN inspectors pre-Iraq invasion. The amount of weaponry is not a measure of the degree of culpability. The charge is guilty or not guilty. The US is guilty of arming Saddam with WMD and tacitly approving of their use. Chemical weapons were deployed from helicopters during the suppression of the Kurds.

Take a look at this from
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm

"Throughout the period that Rumsfeld was Reagan?s Middle East envoy, Iraq was frantically purchasing hardware from American firms, empowered by the White House to sell. The buying frenzy began immediately after Iraq was removed from the list of alleged sponsors of terrorism in 1982. According to a February 13, 1991 Los Angeles Times article:
?First on Hussein's shopping list was helicopters -- he bought 60 Hughes helicopters and trainers with little notice. However, a second order of 10 twin-engine Bell "Huey" helicopters, like those used to carry combat troops in Vietnam, prompted congressional opposition in August, 1983... Nonetheless, the sale was approved.?
In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State Department?in the name of ?increased American penetration of the extremely competitive civilian aircraft market??pushed through the sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to Iraq. The helicopters, worth some $200 million, were originally designed for military purposes. The New York Times later reported that Saddam ?transferred many, if not all [of these helicopters] to his military.?
In 1988, Saddam?s forces attacked Kurdish civilians with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters and planes. U.S. intelligence sources told The LA Times in 1991, they ?believe that the American-built helicopters were among those dropping the deadly bombs.?
In response to the gassing, sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the US Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most US technology. The measure was killed by the White House.
Senior officials later told reporters they did not press for punishment of Iraq at the time because they wanted to shore up Iraq's ability to pursue the war with Iran. Extensive research uncovered no public statements by Donald Rumsfeld publicly expressing even remote concern about Iraq?s use or possession of chemical weapons until the week Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, when he appeared on an ABC news special.
Eight years later, Donald Rumsfeld signed on to an ?open letter? to President Clinton, calling on him to eliminate ?the threat posed by Saddam.? It urged Clinton to ?provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.?
In 1984, Donald Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the world?s attention to Saddam?s chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh communication from the State Department that it had ?available evidence? Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing.
Washington now speaks of Saddam?s threat and the consequences of a failure to act. Despite the fact that the administration has failed to provide even a shred of concrete proof that Iraq has links to Al Qaeda or has resumed production of chemical or biological agents, Rumsfeld insists that ?the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.?
But there is evidence of the absence of Donald Rumsfeld?s voice at the very moment when Iraq?s alleged threat to international security first emerged. And in this case, the evidence of absence is indeed evidence. "

i referenced this article in an earlier post. Maybe you were too busy to read it.

So the US supplied Iraq with WMDs, the means to deliver them and information on potential targets. I'd call that more than complicity. That's encouragement. However, there is no evidence found by UN inspectors or the personnel now occupying Iraq that the WMDs still existed prior to the invasion. What happened to them? This question must be answered. According to US and British intelligence and the information gathered by UN weapons inspectors, they were probably destroyed. 90-95% of the actual material has been accounted for by UN weapons inspectors. We didn't need to invade Iraq and kill thousands of Iraqis to establish that fact. Despite what GWB said to Congress as a justification for this war, the presence of WMDs and the charge that Saddam was directly implicated in 9/11were not the reasons for this war. The largest national oil reserves on the planet were to be piped out of Iraq, and Saddam was in the way. Do you think if Saddam had the capability to deploy WMDs against Western nations at 45 minutes notice, the claim parroted by Tony Blair as a reason for the invasion, that we would have found evidence of such capability after months of occupation? Of course we would have.

A majority of US citizens (70% last I heard) believe Saddam was directly involved in 9/11. Why? Because it suits the Bush administration to propagate that false information. Well, they all look alike, don't they, and they don't like us, and look, the guy's got previous, he's got form. It must be him. Here are some of the things the Bush administration has said to persuade US citizens that 9/11 is a valid pretext to invade Iraq
from http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0924-03.htm
'
September 2002: Rumsfeld said he had five or six sentences of "bulletproof" evidence that "demonstrate that there are in fact Al Qaeda in Iraq."
When a reporter asked if there are linkages between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Rumsfeld answered, "Yes." Asked "Is there any intelligence that Saddam Hussein has any ties to Sept. 11?" Rumsfeld left the question wide open, saying, "you have to recognize that the evidence piles up."
Asked to name senior Al Qaeda members who were in Baghdad, Rumsfeld said, "I could, but I won't."
In that same month, Rice said that while Saddam was not being accused of directly planning 9/11, "there are clearly links between Iraq and terrorism. . . . Links to terrorism would include Al Qaeda."
In October 2002, President Bush gave a speech in which he said, "We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.
"We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America. . . . Confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror."
In his February presentation to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell warned of the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network."
In the most cynical moment of all, after launching the invasion, Bush on March 21 wrote a letter to the heads of the House and the Senate that said: "The use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."
On May 1, when he announced the end of "major combat operations" (more US soldiers have now died in the occupation than the invasion), Bush proclaimed: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001. . . . The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of Al Qaeda. . . . Our war against terror is proceeding according to the principles that I have made clear to all: Any person involved in committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this country and a target of American justice." '

///Of course, the reasonable realpolitic nature of my enemy's enemy is my friend is apparently beyond them.///
So siding with the Nazis versus the Commies would have been reasonable? It could have happened had Hitler not declared war against the US in 1941, his single greatest error. The US, along with other democracies, was firmly opposed to the Soviet Union's government model and worried about its imperial desires in Europe. The true horror of the Holocaust was revealed post VE day, and so would certainly have prevented any such alliance. 'Reasonable' you say. US firms were doing business with Nazi firms until war broke out

nikita you say
///And some of the more radical lefties, when pushed, stick to the radical line that there was never an WMD, EVER///
Anyone who says that is ignorant. I don't know anyone who believes that, and if I did I wouldn't associate with someone with such a dim worldview. Who are these people, and why are you listening to them? That's poppycock, like the reasons cited by GWB for the invasion of Iraq. Where are the WMDs? How was Saddam linked to 9/11? Did he harbour terrorists? Were the 9/11 hijackers trained in Iraq? It was Florida, wasn't it. Jeb Bush should be in Camp X-Ray for aiding and abetting.

My statement that US firms did business with the Nazis and that the US may have chosen to side with them had they not declared war may be regarded by some as contentious. Regard this, from
http://www.lpdallas.org/features/draheim/dr991216.htm

"On October 20, 1942, the US Alien Property Custodian, under the "Trading With the Enemy Act," seized the shares of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), of which Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder. The largest shareholder was E. Roland Harriman. (Bush was also the managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, a leading Wall Street investment firm.)
The UBC was established to send American capital to Germany to finance the reorganization of its industry under the Nazis. Their leading German partner was the notorious Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who wrote a book admitting much of this called "I Paid Hitler."
Among the companies financed was the Silesian-American Corporation, which was also managed by Prescott Bush, and by his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, who supplied Dub-a-Ya with his name. The company was vital in supplying coal to the Nazi war industry. It too was seized as a Nazi-front on November 17, 1942. The largest company Bush's UBC helped finance was the German Steel Trust, responsible for between one-third and one-half of Nazi iron and explosives."

Nazi iron and explosives were used by the Luftwaffe to rain death on Britain for years. 50 years later the actions of the Bush family are still resulting in the death of British citizens. Are they still chippy from the Revolutionary War? Or is making a fast buck their primary concern, no matter who dies?

A Camel Pox on all you liberal whiners. I'm sure someone can Google up the total infrastructure costs that Saddam had invested (obviously to include Intelligent bodies to do the research) of a disease that has proven over thousands of years to be of no danger to humankind. Why? Why study such a thing? Why spend millions? Ummm. Like I said - the neighsayers can dream up all kinds of excuses for Saddam, but the fact is - 'dual-use' means exactly what is says.

The 'neighsayers'? Swift would argue thay are the noblest of us all.

Swift? Didn't he play for the Celtics?

Dirk,

Can you describe the legality of the transfer of biological agents to Iraq? That is, did the transfer occur within the framework of any international agreements?

Your example of Prescott Bush and 1942 is relevant to today how?

You claim that the only relevant criterion is whether or not ANY trade / transfer occurred, NOT its extent, use, legality, etc. That, sir, is
extremely questionable.

In US tort law, damage awards are commonly distributed based upon an estimate of percentage responsibility. For situations where a tangential involvement is clear, but of limited relevance, damage awards are often zero.

In US criminal law, an accomplice can face penalties comparable to the actual actor. However, not every person tangentially related to the crime will face charges, as the prosecutor can assess which participants are convictable.

Your "on or off" analysis is contrary to American jurisprudence, and I suspect it is also contrary to most (all?) modern systems of jurisprudence.

In the meantime, stew in your vile hatred, spew your bile, and don't bother asking yourself if your worldview needs work. I don't care, because THE CUBS ARE IN THE PLAYOFFS!!!!

MG

MG

Gramps and his associates profitted from an immoral war in which British citizens died. I'd say relevant

The question I was referring to requires a yes/no answer. Like these questions:

Did the US supply Saddam with WMDs?
Was the US administration aware of subsequent WMD use by Saddam?
Was GHWB in the loop over Iran/Contra?
Did he lie about his involvement to the US people?
Have the current Bush administration lied to the US public about the reasons for the Iraq invasion?
Given that the two cited reasons for the Iraq invasion, the imminent threat to Western nations by Saddam's possible WMDs and the direct link between Saddam and 9/11, are false and were known to be such, did GWB mislead the legislature and the US people when citing them as reasons for the Iraq invasion?
If the current administration argues that they were wrong about the reasons, should they be deemed incompetent for allowing hundreds of US citizens to die for no reason?
Was the invasion of Iraq therefore immoral?

The answer to the above questions is yes

I'm asking questions, not 'spewing bile'. Do you not like the answers?

Clinton was asked a simple yes/no question about sex with Lewinsky. He lied, and was pilloried relentlessly by political opponents, and eventually impeached. GHWB and GWB have both lied to the US people over matters that have resulted in the death of thousands of people, many of them US citizens.
Clinton was 'undone', as it were, by the stained dress. If he'd spent $87bn of US taxpayers money getting it dry-cleaned, would questions have been asked? Too right.

If I were to ask you whether you'd like me to buy you a beer to celebrate the Cub's achievement, would you answer "I'd like 65% of a beer". Or would you have already annexed my beer, smashed up my bar-stool and then insisted that I pay for the damage?

dirk You are obviously spewing 65% of your beer - the other 35% is affecting your brain in a bad way. Hug the toilet a bit longer, would ya?

Capn

Well I'm not going to offer you a beer. You're just plain rude.

dirk Rude? I beg your pardon! Your analogy sucks. How's that?

dirk How about I spell it out for you, you jerk.

You said - ...and the direct link between Saddam and 9/11... is patently WRONG. NO ONE, including the President has ever said there was a direct link. So. YOU are lying. How do you like that? And I say to you - PROVE that you are NOT LYING.

Capn

Would you say that you have an egregious personality?

dirk I don't have to defend my personality at all. You are accusing the President and the Administration of lying. Is yours egrigious? Why don't you answer the question with an answer, instead of questioning my personality? Because you cannot answer the question? Get a grip. I haven't enough time to address the serious issues of the day much less the time to play silly word games with the likes of you. Yours is a backwater argument, and I called you on it...

'I haven't enough time to address the serious issues of the day'

Or even my previous post Sept 27 7.20pm detailing quotes from members of the GWB administration including GWB. Check them out - they're egregious.

dirk Prove that yours are not.

Senore Storm Cloud

Yikes, what a latter you've worked up. First time I have witnessed a coniption fit

Gramps and his associates profitted from an immoral war in which British citizens died. I'd say relevant

By that argument, the entire left movement was against the WWI until Hitler screwed his good pal Stalin and thus was guilty and responsible for the holocaust ;)

The question I was referring to requires a yes/no answer. Like these questions:

THe left never answers yes and no questions with yes or no. It is always "Yes, but..."

Did the US supply Saddam with WMDs?

No proof of that have ever come out, only slurs, slanders, i.e. bullshit
The virus examples you mention were sent to a university by the CDC under the auspices of medical research. It was probably bullshit by the Iraqis but .. who knows

* Was the US administration aware of subsequent WMD use by Saddam?

Which time? It seems there were lots? Which administration?

* Was GHWB in the loop over Iran/Contra?

Was he? got proof? Were you?

* Did he lie about his involvement to the US people?

Did he? Did you?

* Have the current Bush administration lied to the US public about the reasons for the Iraq invasion?

I haven't seen that? What lies did he tell

* Given that the two cited reasons for the Iraq invasion, the imminent threat to Western nations by

The imminent threat" myth has been throughly debunked. Read the speech, He never said there was an imminent threat, he said we CAN NOT WAIT for it to become an imminent threat. If you are going to make an argument "CHECK YOU FACTS" and at less read the damn speech, man. Oooh, I getting lathered too ;)

* Saddam's possible WMDs and the direct link between Saddam and 9/11, are false and were known to
be

For me the jury is still out on Iraq and 9/11, there is a lot of circumstantial material that I won't get in here (otherwise my response will got to 20 pages). He never said there was a link, again, read the docs, not someones summary of them. They mentioned support for the Answar I Islam (sic) terrorist group and the Mukhabarat (Iraq intel.). And A I I is part of Al Qaeda.

* such, did GWB mislead the legislature and the US people when citing them as reasons for the Iraq
invasion?

I don't see that.

* If the current administration argues that they were wrong about the reasons, should they be
deemed incompetent for allowing hundreds of US citizens to die for no reason?
Was the invasion of Iraq therefore immoral?

First of all, did you give a shit about the US soldiers that fought, please, my bullshit meter is reading way off scale.

* The answer to the above questions is yes

only in your parallel universe where physics is different ;) ie. no

* I'm asking questions, not 'spewing bile'. Do you not like the answers?

no, you're not, you are just shovelling stuff that someone else fed you without looking for yourself.

* Clinton was asked a simple yes/no question about sex with Lewinsky. He lied, and was pilloried
relentlessly by political opponents, and eventually impeached. GHWB and GWB have both lied to
the US people over matters that have resulted in the death of thousands of people, many of them
US citizens.

He lied under oath. When you or I do that we go to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $87 Billion dollars ;)

And you haven't proved he lied beyond the shadow of a doubt. Clinton's guilt was proven in a court of law. The difference sounds clear to me.

* Clinton was 'undone', as it were, by the stained dress. If he'd spent $87bn of US taxpayers money getting it dry-cleaned, would questions have been asked? Too right.

* If I were to ask you whether you'd like me to buy you a beer to celebrate the Cub's achievement,
would you answer "I'd like 65% of a beer". Or would you have already annexed my beer, smashed up
my bar-stool and then insisted that I pay for the damage?

I wouldn't buy you a beer, I don't know you.

Bush and his people clearly implied the Iraq was linked to 9-11.

They hinted at it. They PURPOSEFULLY used vague or ambiguous terms. but it's clear what they wanted americans to think! just a few months ago americans were polling very high that Saddam was involved with 9-11.. why do you think they thought that? because they were misled by the propoganda from the Bushes. Now we see the emporer has no clothes, and a majority of americans don't want him back in office after the end of next year.

They also implied imminent threat, an example of which were references to time periods before Iraq might have nuclear weapons (we now know there was NO nuclear program)

with regard to clinton: it's just a simple FACT that nobody goes to jail even for false testimony regarding their sexual behavior in a civil lawsuit. I see this LIE repeated over and over, and it's just flat out wrong. If you don't believe me, then read the testimony given by former REAGAN adaministration justic department prosecuters and many federal, state, and local prosecuters who all said that is not the case. It is NOT the case that when a witness lies under oath or gives false testimony about sexual behavior in a DEPOSITION in a civil case that they are always prosecuted, nor that they go to jail. NO NO NO. There is common sense built into the judicial system, just not among the house republicans. Notice how the Senate totally stopped that process? It was out of hand. High Crimes and Misdemeanors? We might yet find some among the bushies if it's clear they lied to the american people AND congress to gain support for this war.

Afghanistan was fine. But IRAQ had nothing to do with al-qaeda and we could have fought a better war against international terrorism if we had devoted the time, money, materials, people, alliances, and efforts toward al-qaeda and other groups. Saddam was contained Evil but contained. and yes, our intelligence was obviously horrible wrong or we would have some smoking guns!

It's because Bush and the cronies believed the bullshit lies by guys like Chalabi and others who wanted this war for their own advancement. Where are the programs? how about the warheads? well how about the labs and production facilities? what about those mobile labs? hmmmmm where is ANY of the stuff colin powell referenced when he address the UN?

it's nowhere to beseen. It's gone faster than the stock Bush sold through insider trading.

In his errors a man is true to type. Observe the errors and you will know the man.

Love can damage more than you can heal with drinking.

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