WMD... revisited, again!

Politics International Politics
41

Wolf

I am very familiar with Noam Chomsky but I doubt that you are. You may have had a frisson of outrage whilst reading 911 but really…

First of all did you know that while the killing fields were going on in Cambodia, by the way the movie was aired again last night, that Noam was pooh poohing the reports of mass deaths claiming that in any change of power some are killed.

Now I find it interesting that when 2 million were actually dying Noam had nothing to say but excuses for the Pol Pot regime. Go back and check it out. Then for him to claim without proof that the US was responsible for Chile where the 3,000 would be the equivalent of 60,000 in the US makes my blood boil. After all, it is because of people like him that the US got out of SE Asia then with his support communist governments took over and killed 2 million people which was 40 percent of Cambodias population and not only that but the educated portion including doctors, teachers, etc etc. So according to his fucked up equivalences that would be like 120 million in the US given a population of 300 million but does he mention that? NO.

Then again have you ever noticed that Noam the great is NEVER interviewed by respectable news organizations but only fawning reporters from indy press? AND his interviews strangely enough are ALL Q and A? Now why is that do you suppose? Do you think it might be because he wants to control the debate and the message? How is this different from an inverted kind of censorship? Hmmmm have you ever thought of that?

So here we have a man that supported Pol Pot and excused and denied that atrocities were occuring when they actually were on a horrific scale but finds atrocities everywhere they are not in fact occuring? Where are the 7 million possibly more as in 9 million refugees that he foresaw for Afghanistan? Where are the problems he predicted for Central America which is now much better off? Where is the outrage at the actions of Ortega and Castro? Why are only deaths of those claimed to be American agents blamed? Why is it that Ortega and Castro can get Soviet aid, weapons and support and that is good and right and proper but any American material or support for OUR side is labeled as being responsible for deaths and atrocities?

Oh yes, I know Noam Chomsky. He is the refuge of intellectual psychobabble for wouldbe intellectuals who want to spout important sounding facts while ironically showing the world in the very black and white that he finds so objectionable about the Bush administration. Noam Chomsky is repeatedly wrong about his facts and sloppy with his quotes. His only equal in this regard is Michael Moore. And remember how quickly Moore backtracked on his facts when threatened. Now it is only for entertainment to make an artistic point when originally his movies and books were supposed to be studies or documentaries. Why is that? Noam is the same. He will never be interviewed by any serious media organization because he knows that rather than some blow job piece by some addled Leftie who takes it up the tailpipe while proclaiming Noam the new god he might be asked some serious hard questions about his views and about his past. Go find ANY tough question to him about any of these issues where the reporter takes him to task on zmag and let me know where to find it.

In the meantime sign me utterly disgusted by the shameless, mindless moral equivalence and nihilism of Noam and utterly bemused by his hold over earnest young sophomores at half assed universities where they are discovering truth and outrage for the first time. Enjoy your rebellious years while the last oh callow youth and then eventually get a job and start contributing to society or if you are unlucky you may find a job with an action group that will allow you to endlessly postpone your adulthood. Yes, life is confusing and difficult moral choices must be made, but why face these difficulties when you can remain a perenniel teenager with Noam to guide you. Best of all you will never ever ever have to take responsiblity for the consequences of your actions since you can always move onto the next CAUSE.

Viva la Revolucion. Pity about all the dead peasants but the future is glorious. Claba trudu. Claba Octoberskaya Revolutsia. Claba Lenin.

Also who says america is hated in the Middle East? I have not seen it in any of my recent trips. In fact just the opposite. There is a lot less anger of convenience because like teenagers who whine and complain when they know they can play guilt trips on their parents, and stop when they know that they cannot, no one cares in the administration about rage or root causes. This administration cares about accountability and they are seeing a lot more of it.

Oh you mean the media says the US is hated. Oh could not prove it by me and I have been very very open about being American here. No I am Canadian shit for me. Again, why do we have t understand their rage anymore than that of poor Indians, Chinese, Africans? Why is it that Muslims and Arabs are entitled to such rage and therefore can commit terrorist acts? Why are not blue collar workers in america who also suffer from losing jobs not allowed to go into an office and shoot people? They do, but does the media explore their rage or the root causes or are they just treated like the fucked up whackoids that they are? Wherein lies the difference?

Finally Big Dump:

Are not you somewhat ironically somewhat particularist in your views of always examining US foreign policy from a particularist angle? Just curious.

42

The facts:

“Adminstration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs . . . Insisting without evidence–yet treating as a given truth–that Saddam Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists. . . . Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities, and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments from public statements. . . . Misrepresenting inspectors’ findiings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire.”

http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/iraqintell/home.htm

43

[quote]People forget that when the Bush administration came into office, Iraq was a very unstable place. Thousands of Iraqis were dying as a result of sanctions. Containment necessitated the garrisoning of Saudi Arabia with thousands of “infidel” American troops – in the eyes of many Muslims, a desecration (cited by Osama bin Laden as his No. 1 reason for his 1996 “Declaration of War” on America). The no-fly zones were slow-motion war, and the embargo was costly and dangerous – the sailors who died on the USS Cole were on embargo duty.

Until Bush got serious, threatened war and massed troops in Kuwait, the U.N. was headed toward loosening and ultimately lifting sanctions, which would have given Hussein carte blanche to regroup and rebuild his WMDs.

Bush reversed that slide with his threat to go to war. But that kind of aggressive posture is impossible to maintain indefinitely. A regime of inspections, embargo, sanctions, no-fly zones and thousands of combat troops in Kuwait was an unstable equilibrium. The United States could have either retreated and allowed Hussein free rein – or gone to war and removed him. Those were the only two ways to go.

Under the circumstances, and given what every intelligence agency on the planet agreed was going on in Iraq, the president made the right choice, indeed the only choice.

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/op … ercharles/[/quote]

44

Does anyone still take him (or what he says) seriously? Sweet dreams …

45

Well Rascal:

Given that he said there are no wmds, I guess you are right. We should not take him seriously since there are no doubt wmds somewhere. That is what you meant to say right. I know that you are always so careful about your choice of words. Hee heee hee

46

As far as I know, yes. Have you seen reliable reports that question his conclusions?

When Dr. Kay came out and first stated that he hadn’t found stockpiles of WMD and that he doubts that we would find such stockpiles, the anti-Bush crowd jumped all over that info.

Now that Dr. Kay is further explaining his conclusions, … what, he is no longer reliable? :unamused:

47

[quote]INTELLIGENCE
Unintelligent Stonewall

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice took to the airwaves yesterday as the latest Administration official to defend the White House’s hyping of intelligence, inflating of the Iraqi “imminent/urgent/immediate/mortal threat,” and failure to find the WMD it said there was “no doubt” Iraq possessed. Rice claimed “No one will want to know more than the President the comparison between what we found when we got there and what we thought was there going in.” Yet, she repeatedly “rejected calls for an independent investigation.” Yesterday, former weapons inspector David Kay, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Democratic lawmakers said an independent investigation was necessary. Previously, the White House opposed the establishment of an independent commission to investigate 9/11, tried to stifle its funding, and delayed providing that commission with critical information.

WEAK ALTERNATIVES TO INDEPENDENT COMMISSION: Salon’s Joe Conason notes that if the Administration gets its way and squashes an independent commission, it would mean Americans would have to “entrust Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Intelligence Committee Chairman, with determining why we were misled to war.” And that raises a serious question: “how can anyone take seriously the conclusions of a committee run by a politician as deluded (or dishonest) as Roberts?” Conason notes that on CNN’s Late Edition, [b]Roberts asked “If, in fact, [Iraq] didn’t have WMD, why on earth didn’t he let the U.N. inspectors in and avoid the war? That is a real puzzlement to me.” Just days later, President Bush picked up this same line of attack saying we went to war because Iraq “did not let us in.” But, of course, Iraq did let the U.N. inspectors in

48

Alien:

Give me any and all examples of any American citizen’s civil liberties that were violated because of the Patriot Act. Hell, even one would be a good start.

Also, as to health care. If you are poor and unemployed or old and retired and cannot afford it, you already get free healthcare. It is called the Medicaid and Medicare programs. Hell, if you are an illegal alien from Mexico, all public hospitals have to treat you. It is the middle class that does not have health care now why?

Is it because it is unaffordable? Then what can we do to make it easier for small businesses to provide it? If the costs are too high, which they are, small businesses will choose NOT to hire any new workers which then leads to whining about the unemployment of the “disadvantaged.”

Or is it because the trial lawyers have driven up health care costs with frequent malpractice suits. Hell doctors in Pennsylvania as in the whole state went on strike last year to protest high malpractice insurance costs for pediatricians. In some areas, no doctors are pediatricians anymore because they cannot afford the insurance. Now who do the trial lawyers vote for? Democrats each and every time not Republicans. So you better stop whining about idealistic couldbes shouldbes whycantitbethiswaybes and make some tough decisions.

Do you support lowering the costs so small businesses can hire more workers? If so, how are you going to do it? Tax cuts? Incentives? Subsidizing their health care and pension costs?

Next, do you support caps on malpractice suits? Do you support action taken against frivolous medical claims? Do you support HMOs? Do you support tax credits for middle class families to buy insurance? Do you support cutting off medical benefits to illegal aliens? Do you support prosecution of use of emergency facilities in the event of nonemergencies?

Please advise and then we will move forward but FREAKS is not going to cut it with these complicated issues of which you clearly do not have an indepth understanding.

As to 911 intelligence, I can think of several reasons for not having said committee. First, will it be partisan? Second, what interests will it serve? Third, will it compromise intelligence on al Qaeda and ongoing operations against them? If for example, you start talking about how you know things, one can often guess where the informatiion came from and it also reveals your investigation priorities and methods to the enemy. What are your true motives for such an investigation? Do you TRULY believe that the Bush administration was behind it in cahoots with the Mossad to be able to implement a Fascist program to remake the world, take over Iraq’s oil and abuse your civil rights?

Again, where and when have these civil rights or constitutional rights abuses occured, with regard to whom and why and were matters rectified or not?

I think you may find your debate falls apart when the emotionalism is subtracted and the lack of facts fails to buttress it.

49

Alien,

That silly article you posted didn’t say anything about the reliability of David Kay’s conclusions.

[quote=“Alien”]Well, well…
Seems to me the most imminent threat for the US is regarding civil liberties. Oh, and health care. I suppose a lot more people die in the US every month due to insufficient health care than those murdered as international ‘terrorist victims’ in the past ten years.
Freaks! :imp: [/quote]

I was just back in the States in December… didn’t feel any less free than ever before.

And health care… Heck, I suppose a lot more people die every year from old age than those murdered as international ‘terrorist victims’ in the past ten years. So what’s your point?

50

So true. When my father practiced medicine in Pennsylvania there were 8 insurance companies that provided medical malpractice insurance to MDs in the Commonwealth. Now, there is only one insurance provider. Why? Because the legislators will not agree (due to lobbying by the trial lawyers) to put a reasonable limit on pain and suffering awards. California put a limit on it in 1975… but in Democratically controlled PA… forget about it. The insurers cannot afford to provide insurance when they do not know what the limits of liability will be (as there are none now).

51

[quote=“fred smith”]

I think you may find your debate falls apart when the emotionalism is subtracted and the lack of facts fails to buttress it.[/quote]

Oh, you mean sort of like the ‘emotional’ debate about the WMDs? Lack of facts to be sure. :moo:

52

[quote]As far as I know, yes. Have you seen reliable reports that question his conclusions?

When Dr. Kay came out and first stated that he hadn’t found stockpiles of WMD and that he doubts that we would find such stockpiles, the anti-Bush crowd jumped all over that info.

Now that Dr. Kay is further explaining his conclusions, … what, he is no longer reliable?[/quote]
I think to say Iraq is more dangerous than what they thought seems an opinion, not a fact.
Looking at the following which I posted somewhere else it appears to me the “danger-level” went down into the basement, not up:

[quote]Iraq has WMD
Iraq will sell WMD to terrorists
Iraq is actively developing WMD
Iraq seeks WMD
Iraq has a WMD program
And finally: support arguments that Iraq was planning to re-start weapons programs[/quote]

And I don’t call Dr. (in whatever field) Kay not a loudmouth for nothing. A vial of BT in somebody’s fridge is his surprising announcent? Please …
Just look as his old statements and compare them to now - see the difference?

53

Kay never said he was not a threat even after no wmds were discovered.

Second, no one is being emotional about wmds or their lack of discovery. I conceded long ago that they may not be found and guess what I still do not care because I am happy happy happy with the situation and I have seen my enemies confounded (haha) that would be Germany, France and Belgium. Look at their standing in Europe these days and then ponder the old debate about unilateral. Shall we (Rascal) also go back and re-examine not just the wmds but the discussion of unilateral America and claims by Germany, France and Belgium prior to the war and as to what they are saying today. I love the whole sidelining of this particular issue.

Besides, the media made this a debate about wmds. That was only partially of concern for neoconservatives like myself and I am quite sure we trumpeted our motives loud and clear and even on this forum at least a year before the invasion took place. If posters or those who read the newspapers choose to do so selectively I cannot help it if they think that this is and always has been about wmds. It has always been about regime change for me.

Final thought. Given all the hype about Iraq, it has always puzzled me why the US is condemned for Iraq and not Afghanistan? Not for Kosovo or Bosnia but Iraq and for Chile with no proof when a much better example exists for this kind of argument than Panama in 1989 which I find would be the truly most eggregious example of American abuse of power.

That is why I find you Lefties so hopelessly muddled. Your morality is so equivalent to the given cause of the day that no consistent predictions can be made about what you will squeal shrilly about next though I am sure that Bush, the Republicans and Americans in general will be to blame.

54

US officials knew in May Iraq possessed no WMD

Blair comes under pressure as Americans admit it was widely known that Saddam had no chemical arsenal

Peter Beaumont, Gaby Hinsliff and Paul Harris

Sunday February 1, 2004: (The Observer) Senior American officials concluded at the beginning of last May that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, The Observer has learnt.
Intelligence sources, policy makers and weapons inspectors familiar with the details of the hunt for WMD told The Observer it was widely known that Iraq had no WMD within three weeks of Baghdad falling, despite the assertions of senior Bush administration figures and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

The new revelation came as White House sources indicated that President George Bush was considering establishing an investigation into the intelligence, despite rejecting an inquiry the previous day.

The disclosure that US military survey teams sent to visit suspected sites of WMD, and intelligence interviews with Iraqi scientists and officials, had concluded so quickly that no major weapons or facilities would be found is certain to produce serious new embarrassment on both sides of the Atlantic.

55

Does not make any difference. The claim is that this was discovered AFTER the fall of Baghdad. Yes, the intelligence should be overhauled, but when every agency from the French to Germans believed it as well, what can I say? Saddam was suicidally tricky? He was fooled too? What? Do you believe that given the knowledge that we had prior to the invasion that Saddam was not a threat?

56

nationalreview.com/hanson/ha … 300847.asp

Arguments against our efforts have already evolved precisely because of the moral nature of our enterprise. Two years ago, American leftists and most Europeans alleged that America was after oil, or sought global hegemony in its plans to take out the havens of terror. Now those same voices

57

Yes. He was not a threat.
None of his neighbors thought so, and if he were, Israel would have not waited for some fucking UN bullshit; they’d have gone in and pasted whatever they thought was a problem – they’ve done it before.
Clear?

58

Well that is your opinion. I would ask you to discuss the matter with the Israeli government, as well as the governments of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and many in Western Europe. We are slowly getting there: Pakistan suddenly investigates its nuclear proliferation, Saudi Arabia suddenly allows dissent and looks at reform, Libya gets rid of its wmds, Iraq and Afghanistan are out of the picture. Sudan is improving and at least making noises about coming to terms with its civil war and ending slavery. Gosh. What a disaster the last two years have been. That leaves only Syria (and when it is dealt with it will have to cough up Lebanon) and Iran as well as the Palestinian Authority. Not a bad start. Just think of what Bush can do with four more years.

59

While the U.S. branch of the Likud Party was obsessing over Saddam Hussein and his non-existent weapons of mass destruction, our ‘friend’, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, was busily arming the rest of the Axis of Evil Plus One with real weapons of mass destruction:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3450317.stm

Somebody else needs to be put in charge of national security ASAP because this crew is just too incompetent. It can’t pick friends and identify true threats worth s–t.

Here’s another thought: assume for the sake of entertainment that hyping the threat of weapons of mass destruction wasn’t the main strategy of the Bush administration for justifying its rushed invasion of Iraq last March, without a heavy dose of weapons of mass destruction demagoguery, the British and Spanish governments never would have been able to drag their reluctant populaces into joining the Coalition of the Gullible (COG).

60

Ah but WHEN was Pakistan arming them? Now that the US is in town in a big way suddenly there is cooperation from Pakistan. This issue has been around since Carter and negotiations and discussions and diplomacy failed to convince Pakistan to do a thing about proliferation. Now, they arrested the head of the nuclear weapons program and are clamping down hard. Now why do you suppose that is? Bush has again failed where 20 years of diplomacy have succeeded. What a disaster? Hope we get more like this.

And as to gullible, who exactly is gullible, those like yourself who call for continued “negotiations” and “discussions” or those of us who are actually delivering results and expecting compliance? By the way, did you know that “gullible” is not actually a word? If you don’t believe me, try finding it in the dictionary.

frederick p. smith v.