Posted on 02/08/2006 5:47:44 AM PST by yoe
Wait, don't tell me, let me guess: you believe that the anthrax was a fairly easy to make "do it yourself job" that a domestic person (probably an angry, far right wing white Christian guy) whipped up in his basement in the couple of weeks right after 9/11, taking advantage of the 9/11 tragedy in order to try to frame the Muslims, and possibly even Saddam Hussein himself. Is that more or less it?
According to Duelfer, Rice and others, it was our satellite surveillance that picked up suspicious traffic from Iraqi weapons development sites, including truck shipments, to Syria, just prior to the war.
I think it was Oak Ridge Tennessee.
Yeah, Oakridge, that is the nuclear facility. Gold is at Fort Knox!
The 'mushroom cloud' comment was that we needed to deal with the problem while it is manageable, BEFORE it materializes, not wait until we see a mushroom cloud, when we would not be able to do much about it.
That does not come off as a claim that Iraq had big stockpiles of nukes [or any nukes] ready to go off or any such thing.
What is means is that sanctions were not going to be sustained indefinitely. At some point pressure to lift them would exceed the international will to keep them on, freeing a regime which already had enough money and certainly the will to pursue such programs, to pick up wherever they had left off. It didn't matter where they left off, with just ten old shells filled with dirty chemical slush or with a multitude of weaposn programs to design everything from sprayers to disperse anthrax to long range missiles capable of carrying nukes to Europe, or with every liter of every sort of toxin or biohazard that Blixie and friends had estimated Iraq to be capable of producing and stockpiling for a rainy day. It didn't matter what they had because time was on their side and without sanctions or perhaps even with them they would ultimately be free to acquire anything they had a will to pursue and with their oil resources they would certainly have the money.
The only real alternative, since we couldn't deprive iraq of the means, was to deprive it of the will. That meant regime change. We had to cut off the head of the snake, rather than wait for it to gain strength and pray it will never bite.
Hence the need to deal with the problem before while it's still just a problem and not a total disaster. There's nothing shrill about that.
Iraq's long range missile program proved to be far in advance of our expectations going in. Unless you think Iraq planned to launch cream pies with those things, that alone should tell you what Iraq's intentions were with regard to WMD development, particularly once sanctions could be lifted. It is only prudent to treat such a program as a step towards the "mushroom cloud," for that is exactly where that program was intended to lead- it sure as hell wasn't destined to put Iraqis on the moon. The long-range missile program was most certainly "in the ballpark."
While the press never did get a keen grip on the concerns we had of a post-sanctions Iraq, it was this aspect of an Iraq still ruled by a terrorist-supporting regime, Saddam Hussein's or otherwise, being free to continue programs without oversight that required action, much more so than aging stockpiles estimated to exist by UNSCOM, etc. For those of us with a grasp of the language, we knew the numbers stemmed from estimates based on chemicals and other products Iraq had purchased but had failed to explain how they were used or destroyed. As such, these were figures that were going to err on the high end, figures representing the most Iraq could make out of materials they admitted to be in their possession. That they could just as easily decide not make anything out of those products was and is irrelevent to the issue of failing to live up to the requirements of the Gulf War ceasefire, failing to coop[erate in the agreed disarmament, and failure to return prisoners of war. Their failure to abide by the terms meant we had no way short of invasion to determine what exactly thay had decided to do with the materials and equipment in their possession, any more than we had a way to determine where those hundreds of POWs had been taken.
The administration made their concerns about the dangers of Iraq's post-sanctions plans very clear all along- it was the press that failed in their haste to focus on the more sensational "garage full o' anthrax bottles," though even if everything the UN estimated was found it would all still only fit in into a remarkably tiny space- a few truckloads. We can visualize it but evidently the press - and others- wanted to convey the idea that these things would fill a space the size of Ohio. That the press - and the antiwar crowd continues to ignore the fact that Iraq's weapons research facilities remained in place, its procurement front companies likewise remained active, and some labs and plants had indeed been fixed up or even expanded in preparation for action after the anticipated lifting of sanctions is indicative of the antiwar crowd's dishonesty, not the administration's.
It was the press and the antiwar crowd that's been shrill and hysterical- they alone have felt it neccessary to twist comments from the administration like the one about a mushroom cloud completely out of shape in order to try to be persuasive.
You mean like N. Korea or Iran?
I'm sorry, but your spin is, IMHO, pretty much pure BS. The American people were not being told that we needed to invade Iraq because they might develop things in the future. We were told that we needed to invade Iraq because of what they had right then - they needed to be "disarmed." NOT "prevented from arming."
What I do say is that I haven't seen any evidence connecting it to Iraq, and the Admin hasn't touted any. If there was any, there is no reason to think they would hide it. The only place I see people trying to link the two is here. And that is usually rank speculation without a factual basis.
Very shortly after 9/11, several different places in America got hit by WMD, which were lethal enough to kill some people and sicken several others. It's pretty obvious that you believe that Iraq had no WMD at all and had nothing to do with this. You seem pretty interested in attacking others who think that Iraq did in fact have WMD, yet for some reason you won't give your opinion on what you think the nature of the anthrax attacks was. I know you have an opinion on this, so don't be shy, because I'm dying to know where you're coming from here.
What I do say is that I haven't seen any evidence connecting it to Iraq, and the Admin hasn't touted any.
Quite true. The administration doesn't seem very interested at all in aggressively pursuing the matter of the anthrax attacks. In fact, they seem rather content with the fact that the only series of WMD attacks in American history has been more or less flushed down the memory hole completely.
If there was any, there is no reason to think they would hide it.
There are a lot of things about 9/11, the anthrax attacks, Iraq, and their link with terrorism that the administration is going out of their way to hide. They are most assuredly not even remotely close to being forthcoming about things such as the Able Danger data mining program, Mohammed Atta's travel overseas, and many other things. Nobody really knows with absolute certainty why this is, but I have no doubt there are pretty good reasons. Warfare always involves a large amount of secrecy, and that certainly hasn't changed now.
The only place I see people trying to link the two is here.
Then you just aren't looking hard enough. There are plenty of people, including some experts on the subject matter who aren't here on Free Republic who believe that the anthrax attacks were a state-sponsored event, with Iraq being the most likely culprit.
"Before we get too entangled in this "Gordian knot",wouldn't it be a fairly simple matter to send a military group there-equipped with heavy duty construction gear-and check the site out ?"
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