The Case For War Is Blown Apart

Independent UK ^ | 05-29-03

[Stone Mountain]

Possible, but I doubt it. If it came out that this administration was hiding evidence specifically to reveal it during an election campaign, that could seriously backfire. More likely, it's a case of Dem paranoia...

[Stone Mountain]

See my previous posts - I admitted that I might be wrong on this and will search sources. I do remember that we had given something to Iraq to fight Iran, but it's possible I was wrong. If you would like to help me by posting a source, I would appreciate it...

[gridlock]

...we supplied them with the precursors for biological weapons with the knowledge that they would develop those weapons...

You have a source for that whopper? Or is that just "general knowledge"?

[RightWhale]

we need to find them to have any credibility in the rest of the world.

The rest of the world understands that we are p*$$&d and crazy. They will be happy if it just ends here.

[Joe Hadenuf]

Why naive? The US currently bases "thousands of U.S. military personnal in close proximity" to North Korea, who have admitted to owning nuclear weapons (those being weapons of mass destruction) and are even more militaristic than was Iraq.

As our advanced nuclear subs roam the oceans off Korea, I think the reasons are obvious why they haven't invaded south Korea with their millions of soldiers, or why the haven't just nuked South Korea.

It's like a bad guys standing in front of your house with 10,000 guns pointed at them from your windows. I would be rather confident that they would stay on the street or move along. Do you really think they would nuke SK, knowing what the response would be?

[Stone Mountain]

Well, I was able to find this:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-30-iraq-ushelp_x.htm


Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, claiming it needed them for legitimate medical research.

[...]

The exports were legal at the time and approved under a program administered by the Commerce Department. "I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs," said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons inspector. "But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time."

[josiecat]

I also thought it was odd that we would endander 5 million people in Baghdad, especially after intelligence reports that if Hussein did in fact possess WMDs, he would probably only use them if provoked. Thank God it didn't happen.

[Stone Mountain]

...we supplied them with the precursors for biological weapons with the knowledge that they would develop those weapons...

You have a source for that whopper? Or is that just "general knowledge"?

See my previous post. I suppose that technically, we didn't know that they WOULD develope those weapons, but we apparently knew they could...

[Alberta's Child]

Explain away the chemical weapons suits, the atropine injectors, and all that stuff. Somehow, the Iraqis figured they would need them.

I don't know any details about these things (particularly the age of the equipment), but it is very possible that these things were old. I wouldn't assume that they were part of a current weapons program.

[gridlock]

Anyone who truly believes that the United States government would have placed thousands of U.S. military personnal in close proximity to Iraq if there was any chance in hell that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction" is naive.

This would come as a big surprise to the millions of US Service personnel cycled through Germany in the years 1952-92.

[Dr. Frank fan]

When our government tells us that WMDs "are what this war is about" and later says they may not have any,

No one has said that Iraq may not have had any WMDs. What some may be saying is that we may not find the WMDs which Iraq had and parade them on CNN. There is a difference.

We weren't just claiming that that Iraq once had a WMD program, we claimed that they had (I think) around 30,000 tons of them

No, we claimed that some amount of stuff was unaccounted for. Saddam was required to account for all of this known stuff according to the UN resolution. Therefore he was in violation of the UN resolution, which is all that matters for this discussion.

The weapons (or weapon precursors) we supplied them was over 12 years ago. That isn't evidence of current WMDs,

Yes it is, actually, when combined with Saddam's lack of forthcomingness. In our universe, matter is conserved unless converted to energy or changed into some other macroscopic form. WMDs seldom suddenly and spontaneously transmogrify into, say, a bouquet of flowers. The fact that Iraq had such items in 1991 means that either those items still exist, or they were destroyed. (But they didn't document any such destruction to us.) If they didn't destroy such items, and those items still existed, then either those items existed within the boundaries of what we call "Iraq", or they were transported to some other location. (But Saddam didn't provide any evidence of their transportation/export to us.) As the onus was on Saddam to document these things to us, and he didn't, the presumption had to have been that such items still existed. In any event, if those items didn't still exist at war's onset, it screams for an explanation as to why Saddam didn't simply prove to us that they no longer existed.

An exception to all this is the natural degradation which can occur in some materials. He may have had some kind of chemical/bio weapons which no longer functioned fully as intended, due to degradation, for example. But we couldn't know one way or the other about that, nor be expected to.

I don't think it's unreasonable to have the US and UK substantiate the claims they made prior to the war,

The claims they made prior to the war which triggered war were that Saddam was in violation of one or more UN resolutions. And this is not in dispute; Saddam was. Take, for example, the unmanned aircraft (drone) which was found by Blix's inspectors. Saddam was required to list all such items on the report he was required to give to the UN back in December or so. The drone was not mentioned in that December report, yet it was found by Blix in the subsequent inspections. This put Saddam in violation of Resolution 1441. That's all one needs to know. Boom, case closed.

[Stone Mountain]

From that same article:

The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It sent samples in 1986 of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxiod — used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin — directly to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at al-Muthanna, the records show.

[gridlock]

I'd give you a source, if there was one. Unfortunately the event you refer to never happened, so finding a source is tough. Google up "Manned Landings on Pluto" and you don't get a lot of hits, either.

[Prodigal Son]

This is a pointless exercise for the Left.

The war has already been debated. It has already taken place. Nothing anybody can do or say will undo it now. It is the aftermath, at this point, that is important, not the rationale behind the war.

Let's say the Left is totally successful here. They manage to stoke public outrage. The Tories and Labour are voted out. Every Republican in America is either tarred and feathered in the media or they fall on their swords.

What then? The problem of 'Iraq- the Aftermath' is still there. We can still not simply pull up stakes and leave. We must still stay in the country and make the ole democracy thing work. Can the Left do this better than the Right? Personally, I think they would make a hash out of it and the world would be an even more dangerous place than it was before we got started.

Saddam was an evil f**ker. He had to go. That whole nest of snakes over there is going to have to be dragged out into the light and have their heads lopped off. The whole region needs to be reordered. I know some people would prefer to not do this for a variety of reasons, but I'm more of a hands-on kind of guy when it comes to some problems. Wishful thinking won't get rid of a schoolyard bully and appeasement won't make this world a safer place.

That's just me though. I'm glad Saddam's gone. That's my bottom line. If the President were to ask me for a list of other despots to topple- I could provide him with one as long as my arm and I wouldn't sweat the finer points of the international legality for taking each one down...

[Alberta's Child]

And, if Iraq were to violate terms of that cease-fire or other subsequent agreements, the other parties in the war could resume hostilities.

Was that cease-fire agreement signed with the U.S., or with the U.N.?

[josiecat]

I'm pretty sure that's common knowledge, I've even seen it on network television, for all that's worth, along with pictures of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam.

[gridlock]

So this was some kind of insidious US plot? We wanted Saddam to bio-blast the Iranians? Is that it?

[steve-b]

Anyone who truly believes that the United States government would have placed thousands of U.S. military personnal in close proximity to Iraq if there was any chance in hell that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction" is naive.

The US has repeatedly placed thousands of personnel in close proximity to nations known to possess WMD (the most obvious example being Western Europe during the Cold War and South Korea from the Korean War onwards). Try another argument.

[Alberta's Child]

We have over 5500 dead due to inaction . . .

At the hands of Iraq????