[Alberta's Child]

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.

[dirtboy]

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.

Trained, well-equipped military personnel have a very high chance of surviving a chemical or bio attack. Those weapons are most effective nowadays against civilian populations, such as the Tokyo sarin attacks or the gassing of the Kurds. In other words, they're nasty terror weapons, hence the need to ensure that Saddam no longer had them, since Saddam was not willing to prove that himself.

[hchutch]

Anyone who thinks that those mobile labs were perfectly legitimate items ("baby milk factories") or that Saddam Hussein should have been left alone is TERMINALLY naive, if you want my opinion.

Those labs were NOT innocent. Their mobility alone suggests their nature was something closer to nefarious. These mobile labs were MENTIONED by the Secretary of State. Obviously, they may have been cleaned up, but gee, if it is a legit research facility, why have the thing be a mobile facility that could be shifted around? It suggests that whetever was going on in the labs was NOT something that Saddam wanted the world to find out about.

[Dr. Frank fan]

The U.S. and the U.K. claimed that the Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein and the neighboring Arab countries claimed that they did not. Hence, the burden of proof is on the U.S. and the U.K.

This reasoning would be absolutely correct if Iraq were a defendant in a criminal trial (for the crime of: possessing weapons of mass destruction) and the U.S. and the U.K. were its prosecutors. That is not the situation, however. The situation is almost nothing like that, in any way.

I remember a time when anyone who thumbed his nose at the United Nations was seen as a champion of some of the principles that conservatives hold dear.

Me too. And, isn't that what we did, thumb our noses at the UN for disingenuously failing to enforce their own phony rules? At least, that's what leftists always tell me when they say we did it "unilaterally" etc.

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.

Then you must not believe the '91 Gulf War occurred. After all: we placed thousands of U.S. military personnel in Kuwait (at least), and: we knew that Iraq had various WMDs - at least, that's what leftists always tell me; in fact according to leftists we're the ones who supplied the WMDs to some extent. Right? Well, I believe the '91 Gulf War occurred in spite of all that. I guess that makes me "naive" and you know better.

[dvwjr]

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.

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.

Sort of blows your snap assertion out of the water, doesn't it?

dvwjr

[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.

[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.

[ought-six]

"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."

Preposterous comment. We had troops staring nose-to-nose at the Russians for 40-some years in Berlin when the Russians had nukes deployed right there. Your comment that the U.S. would not put troops in close proximity to WMD is ludicrous and completely ignores the facts and history. Your comments suggest you are from some socialist paradise like, oh, Canada or some such place.