WMD... revisited, again!

Politics International Politics
21

Well, the other possibility is that Hans Blix is lying. Somebody is lying though as to whether Iraq let UN weapons inspectors back in or not after 1441 was adopted.

[color=blue]George Bush: “. . . he did not let us in.”[/color]

[color=red]Hans Blix:[/color] "Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field. [color=red]The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt. [/color]We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good. The environment has been workable. . .

We have now an inspection apparatus that permits us to send multiple inspection teams every day all over Iraq, by road or by air. . . ."

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/Bx27.htm

22

Oh, spook…

I think you know what Bush meant. Look, I know that I am usually a stickler for literal meanings… but in this case, the record is open and everyone knows that Saddam did let the inspectors in (mighty generous of him to do so, don’t you think?). But as Blix stated very clearly, Iraq still failed to comply completely with the clear terms of 1441… and in this case, I’m fairly certain that Bush meant just that… we all know he sometimes jumbles his words.

You don’t seriously think Bush was lying about this, do you?

23

For my good friend, spook (and Rascal and Wolf too):

[quote]We’ve reached an intriguing moment in the saga of evil regimes and weapons of mass destruction–their presence or absence, and the uncertainty zone between.

In Iraq, the U.S. and the United Nations had reason to believe that Saddam Hussein–having invaded his neighbors, harbored terrorists, tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of his fellow Iraqis, gassed the Kurds, plundered his country, and set a standard in the Middle East of fascist brutality to rival Hitler–was still pursuing weapons of mass destruction. A U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam’s regime. Now the recent U.S. point man for the weapons search in Iraq, David Kay, is saying it looks as if maybe Saddam didn’t have any WMDs. At least not significant stocks, at least not that we’ve found. Mr. Kay’s best guess is that Saddam only thought he had a WMD program.

This is now taken in some quarters to mean we should have left Saddam alone, because even if maybe he thought he was pursuing WMDs, he wasn’t, except maybe in his own imagination, at least not at the moment we deposed him.

Meanwhile in North Korea, officials of Kim Jong Il’s regime earlier this month ushered an unofficial U.S. delegation into their nuclear reactor complex at Yongbyon, and invited a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sigfried Hecker, to examine what was apparently a sample of plutonium–that’s nuclear bomb fuel–contained in a jelly jar.

This is taken, usually by the same crowd critical of the U.S. war to remove Saddam, as supporting evidence in the argument that we cannot remove Kim because, among other things, he does have weapons of mass destruction.

One might be tempted to conclude, then, that our only window for intervening in the quest of a threatening, terrorist-linked regime dabbling in WMDs is in that precise time window when there is irrefutable evidence that the rulers are developing WMD capability, but before the wares are ready to be handed out to terrorists or brandished in jelly jars as a “deterrent” to extort concessions from the free world.

[color=red]You can read the rest here:[/color]

opinionjournal.com/columnist … =110004614[/quote]

24

And for this the US attacked?
Please. If this is the best that you can do, then I expect you do start an preemptive strike campaign against a worse offender:

(Stolen from the Internet, but beats re-writing it):
I would like you to consider the one nation that has been condemned by the UN Security Council (including the US) not 16 times like Iraq, but 84 times. Its current leader even had a UN Security Council resolution condemning his role in killing civilians (UN SC Res 101; 24 Nov 1953). This nation remains in total violation of 67 Resolutions since 1967 for war crimes. These include acts of aggression, annexation of foreign land, deportation of civilians, illegal colonization of foreign land, killing of civilians (17,000 civilians killed in its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 according to the AP), destruction of civilian property and repeated occupation of foreign lands. It also includes the brutal massacre of over 1,000 civilians in Beirut, overseen by this nation’s current leader (UN SC Res 521; 19 Sep 1982). In the year 2002 alone, this rogue nation has had 4 UN SC Resolutions condemning it, and it remains in violation of these as well (UN SC Res 1397, 1402, 1403, 1405; 12 Mar, 30 Mar, 4 Apr, 19 Apr 2002).
Understand that these are not UN General Assembly Resolutions, which are non-binding. They are Security Council Resolutions, which are legally binding and which the US government has approved.

No, this nation that has violated more international laws than any current country and has never once been punished militarily or faced sanctions, is not Iraq. Its America’s ally, [color=red]
Israel
[/color].

25

Oh and by the way,
The UN Charter and Resolution 1441 specify how UN resolutions are to be enforced. Article 39 of the Charter says: "The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression and shall … decide what measures shall be taken, in accordance with Articles 41 or 42 … "
Article 41 provides for non-military sanctions, Article 42 for military sanctions, as methods of enforcement.
States are not to take enforcement into their own hands, but agree to act only when the Security Council so decides. When there is no clear international agreement in the council, neither military nor non-military sanctions shall be used.
Now one could argue that “military sanctions” doesn’t exactly sound like the “Shock and Awe” plan of a tactical missile landing on Iraq every five minutes for two full days. It does sound more like a blockade, for example. But nevermind. If the shoe doesn’t fit, change the foot.

26

Excellent post!

The stench of hypocrisy, and lack of trust created by such extreme U.S. particularism is the crux of the problem for the United States.

We want the UN/We don’t need the UN is just one recent of example of this. Among others: support for other despotic regimes in the middle east (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia for starters) while exploting Saddam’s ruthlessness as reason for invading Iraq; insisting countries open up their markets yet slapping non-tarrif barriers on imports. The list goes on.

Of course, supporters of such U.S. hypocrisy, and their unbelievably dumb refusal to acknowledge that there is anything wrong is almost childlike in its stubborness.

Such support is expressed, quite craftilly I hasten to add, in such overly simplistic terms as “the situation is different, why can’t you lot not get that?” Be very cautious when listening to or reading such drivel. As I mentioned before, these statements are “literally factual but imply facts that are simply not true.” (See Clinton’s trial for more on this)

By the way, I read that Lockhead Martin are now back in the black, but of course, that has absolutely nothing to do with the current US administration’s eagerness to invade Iraq.

Dunc

27

For that and all of the other reasons already identified a million times. In any event, the discussion is focusing on the WMD argument and 1441. Naturally, I am not raising the other justifications now.

[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]Please. If this is the best that you can do, then I expect you do start an preemptive strike campaign against a worse offender:

(Stolen from the Internet, but beats re-writing it): blah blah blah Isreal evil Arabs/Palestinians saints… [color=red]
Israel
[/color].[/quote]

Wolf… please tell me you don’t think Isreal is actually a worse offender than Saddam’s Iraq was. Now, if you agree that Iraq was a much worse offender than Israel, then you must realize that the only reason Israel has so many resolutions passed against it is because the UN is a shit organization in which a bunch of authoritarian regimes go thru the motions of practicing democracy and the UN is merely a stage upon which they criticize Israel and the US. I mean, come on, the UN late last year was considering a resolution on religious intolerance that omitted any mention of anti-Semitism!

The UN is a freaking joke… unfortunately, it isn’t a funny joke.

28

i don’t recall the clarian call by the US or GB including in any significant way anything other than the claim that Saddam posed a threat to the US and Mid East regional security. Sure, it was mentioned that Saddam was a cunt, but that was barely on the radar of warring.

As far as Israel, I am only using your own argument. Iraq has been shown not to have been the threat that the “coalition” cried wolf over. Judicious application of the law keeps us from anarchy or a disintegration of international cooperation. You can’t have it one way for Iraq and another for anyone else.

And from Noam Chomsky:

[quote]If some miraculous conversion took place and the people around Bush decided: OK, we really are interested in democracy, in human rights, there are actions they can take instantly. I mean why support murderous, brutal dictators like Islom Karimov in Uzbekistan, who is sort of comparable to Saddam Hussein.

And this is not just United States. I mean Britain just withdrew its ambassador from Uzbekistan because he had the honesty to point out that the dictator, who Britain is supporting, is a murderous, brutal tyrant who, in fact, I think it was his example, boils his opponents to death, you know, in boiling water. Yeah, that’s our conception of democracy and human rights. [/quote]

I love to see the Republicans these days scrambling to clutch at the “But he was evil,” mantra. Even if they find a suitcase of mustard gas, it will hardly constitute going to war. And he was just one of many “evil” leaders.

Interestingly, Chomsky (who is brighter and better informed than either me or Tigerman) feels that the US actions are parallel to those of Imperial Japan and its thinking.
Noam Chomsky interview

29

Noam Chomsky? hah hah hah. The man is only popular among those who read books like political science 101 and diplomacy for dummies. I can see why you find him so intelligent.

Guess what? Diplomacy involves numerous factors. Uzbekistan is a problem yes but what are the alternatives? Invasion? Would you like us to invade? Just because we invade one country does not mean that we have to invade all to be what you and Noam would no doubt view as consistent.

Iraq unlike Israel was a threat to its neighbors. Israel is being threatened by its neighbors. Hence the difference between US support for Israel and its refusal to support UN initiatives. The only unilateral invasion was in 1982 when Israel went into Lebanon to clean up the border area. We have done this in Afghanistan for the same reasons.

Israel is also a democracy with 20 percent Arab population that is protected and even in the West Bank reporters are allowed to go in and report to their fill on Israeli atrocities with staged photos of wailing Palestinian women and shrieking Palestinian children. Now that the BBC has finally been slapped and deservedly so, I want to know when reporters will be slapped for reporting and photographing staged incidents? This seems to be a bit out of bounds of journalistic integrity as well. AND in comparison with other Arab nations and the Palestinian authority, reporters can print negative news about Israel without being beaten up, threatened or expelled.

Finally, for those who continue to believe in the UN, I would say only one thing: the organization is made up of nondemocracies who use it in much the same way the Palestinian authority uses Western journalists to spread its propaganda. Are we really to accept the votes of African dictators and those in Uzbekistan as has been mentioned over the US and Israel? It is a worthless organization that I know very well personally from having done an internship there. How many of these supporters know the first thing about how the UN works? I doubt any otherwise I would not be reading this mindless drivel. Learn something about this organization and how it really works before spouting off.

In the meantime, continue reading and quoting Noam Chomsky rather than reading and studying up on these issues. It is like ordering a Dominos pizza as opposed to learning to cook for yourself. Just open the box and there are all the political ideas and theories laid out for you to eat with the great simplicity of the ingredients. Bon appetit.

30

This is the real connection to 9/11. After 9/11 we came to realize that we couldn’t let the Middle East keep festering in its dysfunction and hatreds. It was breeding anti-Americanism and terror. With Iraq in particular, business as usual was becoming increasingly difficult. Throughout this discussion we have assumed that there was a simple, viable alternative to war with Iraq, the continuation of the status-quo, i.e., sanctions plus the almost weekly bombing of the no-fly zones. In fact, that isn’t really true. America’s Iraq policy was broken. You have to contrast the dangers of acting in Iraq with the dangers of not acting and ask what would things have looked like had we simply kicked this can down the road.

I had been comfortable with the “Saddam-is-in-a-box” argument during the 1990s. But by the latter part of the decade the policy was collapsing. In 1996 Saddam invaded the Kurdish safe haven of northern Iraq, re-establishing his power in the area. In the next few years he repeatedly defied U.N. inspectors and busted sanctions. His neighbors

31

Read Bush’s speeches from 911 on. He spoke frequently of encouraging democratic reform in the Middle East. It was obvious for several reasons that reform in Iraq was a prerequisite to reform in the region. This was all explained… I was discussing this well before the invasion on these very fora. It wasn’t a secret.

Nonetheless, it is a shame that the Bush administration failed to emphasize to a greater extent the need for reform in the region and the necessity of beginning in Iraq. However, I find it utterly amazing 1) that so many of Bush’s critics seem completely ignorant of Bush’s policy in this regard and 2) that the critics now berate the plan, given the fact that for years the bash-the-US crowd blamed US policy for the deplorable conditions in the Middle East. On the one hand Chomsky is critical of US backing of one authoritarian leader while lambasting actions/policy that has the potential to end the careers of so many other authoritarian leaders. That, IMO, is inconsistent.

As FS has pointed out many times, one policy cannot fit every situation. Its wonderful to have such lofty principles… but in the real world, there are dilemmas sometimes, and in those situations the lesser evil is often the best of several unappealing choices.

Apparently so. However, you have quoted David Kay in trying to support your argument. But David Kay has stated clearly that the threat may have, though different than what we anticipated, actually have been greater than what we believed … due to the corruption and disintgration of the Iraqi regime. That’s right. Kay has now stated that Iraq might have been even more dangerous than we thought, but for different reasons.

Of course we can. The UK has WMD… but it is hardly a threat to its neighbors, and certainly not a destabilizing force in Northern Europe. Thus, why would we apply the same policy to the UK that was applied to Iraq?

NO.

I’m not scrambling. Go back and read my postings… I argued multiple reasons for ousting Saddam. And Saddam was NOT merely “one of many evil leaders”. He was exceptionally evil and very dangerous.

Oh please. Are you going to start equating Republicans with Fascists next? Please tell me you won’t be that silly.

32

Bravo Tigerman:

Yet, one point of difference. Bush and at least the Neocons, of which, I increasingly consider myself one of, have ALWAYS laid out the plan of attack and not only because of wmds. THE MEDIA chose this as the issue, and to some extent the administration was compelled to answer in this regard, but it was the MEDIA and not the Bush administration which made so much of this and now they are using their issue to beat us up on when it was as I have said repeatedly, an issue of say 20 to 25 percent importance to me. I do not believe that Syria has wmds but I would fully support regime change there now regardless. I am only disappointed that we have to wait until for sure after any election and maybe it will never happen.

Iraq as predicted is going very well. We know this because the media goes from issue to issue. This shows how much is going well and how many problems have already been solved. We unlike the media, never claimed to be able to make it perfect, only to give it a new beginning. Would the Lefties also like to have perfection used to rate their efforts on the crime, welfare and education issues? It has been 40 years and no improvement despite 7 trillion dollars. Shall we discuss this before the measly 80 billion that we are budgeting for Iraq and Afghanistan for four years? No real ammunition there. Afghanistan is the trouble spot, but we never claimed that we would be able to bring democracy and total respect for human rights there. We only claimed that we would be able to deny it as a base for the enemy.

33

Well I forced myself to read through that Chomsky drivel. I wonder has anyone who likes Chomsky ever ever EVER taken a course in logic, philosophy, economics, history or political science AND by this I mean normal courses not under the umbrella of Womens studies or Latino studies or the development of third world held back by evil Amerikkka abetted by JEWZ?

Here is something from the other side. Can Chomsky be believed when he is as frequently caught making up or misquoting shit that would make Michael Moore blush? I mean how is it that we have all these shrill debates that are never proved and in fact are frequently disproved about Bush and Blair and their evil attempts to mislead world public opinion and then we have these eggregious errors ala chomsky and moore accepted at face value? What next REAL Elvis sightings, aliens from another planet who just want sex, drugs and rock and roll?

frontpagemag.com/Articles/Re … p?ID=11902

34

Here is one example of chomsky drivel. Read my comment under Chile. Hello Noam? It has been proved that the US was not responsible for Chile, but why let facts bother you now?

Second, how is it that Noam is always prefaced by the title well informed? Seems that Wolfman has been sucked into the typical brand awareness message that Noam and supporters so carefully have crafted. Want to talk about getting sucked in by a message. Had you used any other statement, i.e. well intentioned, I would not have noticed but you used Well Informed. This is one of chomskys key marketing positions, and he does market himself, and you have spit it out like a little baby. What do you smoke for cigarettes, Marlboro Lights? So typical of the uneducated consumerist generation. Keep reading like chomsky claims to want you to do and you may learn something. After all, I regularly read zmag. Never been convinced by it, but I do read it. I think you may need to read some serioius sites like the atlantic, econmist, foreign policy, foreign affairs, etc. dont you?

Take, if you go south of the U.S. border, there’s something called the other 9/11, not in the United States, but south of the border. The other 9/11 is September 11, 1973, when operations supported and backed by Henry Kissinger among others, led to the bombing of the presidential palace in Chile, the overthrow of the parliamentary government and the killing, by conservative estimates, of about 3,000 people. It’s probably maybe, twice that. Three thousand people in Chile is the equivalent of, counterpart of 60,000 in the United States. If 60,000 people were killed on September 11th, our September 11th, do you think that people would notice that? Yeah, they would. But when we do it to them, it’s like you know, a mistake

35

Hi girls!

Ah well, there you have it again: complete refusal to accept that there is anything wrong with extreme particularism with regard to U.S. foreign policy. You lot in support of the right don’t need to convince me that it is “dilemmas” or life in the “real world” that requires such policy: you should be striving to convince the undeterribles that are patiently planning their next big spectacular strike in the United States.

You guys should be listening, rather than spouting off such drivel. There is a real problem here and the United States are in it deep.

Dunc

36

Yet another bomb goes off in an Israeli bus:

chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/2378227

This one killed at least 10 Israelis… but, I know, they happen so often we just don’t even see the headlines… if they even make it in the headlines…

I wonder if the UN will pass any resolutions… of course they will… just as soon as Israel retaliates…

37

[quote=“David Kay in testimony before US Congress”]Let me begin by saying, we were almost all [color=red]wrong[/color], and I certainly include myself here. Sen. [Edward] Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction. I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war – certainly, the French president, [Jacques] Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq’s possession of WMD. The Germans certainly – the intelligence service believed that there were WMD. It turns out that we were all [color=red]wrong[/color], probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.

cnn.com/2004/US/01/28/kay.transcript/[/quote]

Can we now finally put the absurd notion, that Bush lied, to rest? Bush was wrong because the intelligence was wrong. And Kay stated in his testimony that the administration did NOT pressure the intelligence community.

Here is an article that is critical of Bush for not admitting yet that the intelligence was flawed, and strongly critical of the Democrats for politicizing the issue:

usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed … rkee_x.htm

More testimony from David Kay:

[quote=“David Kay”]In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441.

Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities – one last chance to come clean about what it had.

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

cnn.com/2004/US/01/28/kay.transcript/[/quote]

38

Smith: Do you really not know who Noam Chomsky is?

Tigerman wrote:

It would seem the the US has WMD and has shown itself to be a threat to its international neighbors. Justified pre-emptive attacks? Everything is relative.
Why does no one go to the root? Why are Americans so hated by the Islamic world?

39

Bush lied, Cheney lied, Rumsfeld lied, Wolfowitz lied, Powell lied, and Rice lied about the nature and scope of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction arsenal.

I’ve been arguing that point here at Forumosa and its predecessors since August, 2002: http://forumosa.com/3/viewtopic.php?t=6804&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Mid-level intelligence professionals in the C.I.A., D.I.A., State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, I.A.E.A. and and UNSCOM (eg. Scott Ritter) have been saying that since the late nineties so Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz created their Office of Special Plans to circumvent them.

Political appointees like Tenet and Kay say what serves the interests of the people who appointed them.

40

President Bush has completely altered US policy toward the Middle East. Soon after 911 President Bush became the first US president to endorse a Palestinian state, provided the same would be peace-loving and democratic. Bush has called for reform in the middle east.

Here is an excerpt from a speech he recently gave re his policy in the middle east:

[quote=“President Bush”]Our commitment to democracy is also tested in the Middle East, which is my focus today, and must be a focus of American policy for decades to come. In many nations of the Middle East – countries of great strategic importance – democracy has not yet taken root. And the questions arise: Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom, and never even to have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it. I believe every person has the ability and the right to be free.

It should be clear to all that Islam – the faith of one-fifth of humanity – is consistent with democratic rule. Democratic progress is found in many predominantly Muslim countries – in Turkey and Indonesia, and Senegal and Albania, Niger and Sierra Leone. Muslim men and women are good citizens of India and South Africa, of the nations of Western Europe, and of the United States of America.

Yet there’s a great challenge today in the Middle East. In the words of a recent report by Arab scholars, the global wave of democracy has – and I quote – “barely reached the Arab states.” They continue: “This freedom deficit undermines human development and is one of the most painful manifestations of lagging political development.” The freedom deficit they describe has terrible consequences, of the people of the Middle East and for the world. In many Middle Eastern countries, poverty is deep and it is spreading, women lack rights and are denied schooling. Whole societies remain stagnant while the world moves ahead. These are not the failures of a culture or a religion. These are the failures of political and economic doctrines.

whitehouse.gov/news/releases … 106-2.html[/quote]

Tell us.

IMO, its primarily because the vast majority of those people are ignorant, and kept that way as a matter of policy. Its convenient, and easy, for their aristocracies to blame all of their people’s woes on the US and Israel.

Look at this:

[quote]While writers everywhere complain that nobody reads anymore, analysts now provide startling evidence of that trend in the Arab world. Grasping the poor state of Arab information industries such as publishing and journalism, they say, is critical to understanding the alienation, isolation and malaise roiling the modern Middle East. “There is simply no readership,” publisher Ibrahim al-Mowallem says bluntly. “We think of this as part of a pan-Arab depression. People are not reading because they have lost hope.”

Across the Arab world, a region of 280 million people, a best seller is a book that sells just 5,000 copies. Translation of foreign works into Arabic lags far behind translations into many other languages: Five times as many books are translated each year into Greek, a language spoken by just 11 million people.

chicagotribune.com/news/loca … 8123.story[/quote]

and this, from Al Jazeera:

[quote=“Al Jazeera”]No more than 10,000 books were translated into Arabic over the millennium, equivalent to the number translated every year into Spanish.

english.aljazeera.net/english/Te … HINT=Guest[/quote]

Ask these people why they hate the US??? Why? What do they know???