So, no WMD after allFollow

OK...let's see 'em.



They are.



Nope. We supported Hussein against the radical Muslims in Iran that overthrew the Shah and took something like 70 of our citizens hostage for 444 days.

In retrospect, we should have just stayed out of it and let both sides annihilate each other and save us the problem of having to eventually do it.



The UN is pretty much universally an anti-Israel entity. Someone has to stand up for Israel, the only functioning Democracy in the Middle East.



Can't argue with you there. Tera Patrick is teh HAWT!



Not to parse things unnecessarily, but Bush did say that he would hold nations whose leaders aided or harbored terrorists just as guilty as the Terrorists themselves. I don't recall that he singled out states that supported Osama or Al-Qeida. he said terrorists in general. I think that there's ample evidence to support the fact that Saddam did indeed aid and harbor Terrorists inside Iraq.



I tend to agree with you that civil war is likely unless we stay long enough to ensure that the new Iraqi Government is stable and that its security forces can handle any insurgency.

And, no, I don't think that will be anytime soon.



I'm still mystified as to how this fallacy keeps arising. We know that there was contact between Al-Qeida and Saddam's Government but that was never the basis for launching the Iraq phase of the War on Terror. Bush holds all Terrorists accountable for their actions, reserving a special enmity for Al-Qeida. I certainly never took from anything that I can remember Bush Admin. officials saying that Saddam masterminded 9/11. Bush said that he would hold those who aided or harbored Terrorists equally guilty as the Terrorists themselves, Saddam aided and harbored Terrorists, therefore Bush had Saddam taken out.

I wouldn't necessarily call that an endearing quality. More like laziness. It's not like there isn't a FAQ link on the left side of the page, or quote button in the forum thread itself (which will quote the entire post by that person, but will show you the syntax, which isn't incredibly difficult to use).

It'll make your posts 100% more readible, which is a good thing.




While we're on thetopic of citing sources...

This is twice you've made this claim. I'm reasonably certain that neither Powell nor Rice ever made the statement that Santions in Iraq were working or that Iraq was not a threat.

But if you can find a source saying otherwise, I'll be glad to check it out.

But then you said "In retrospect, we should have just stayed out of it and let both sides annihilate each other and save us the problem of having to eventually do it."
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ROFL,

our staratagy through out the world is to destabalize our enemy and turn them upon themselves. the more they fight each other, the weaker any one faction of them becomes, the more power and influence we obtain.

world domination -r- us.

we worked hard on supplying small countries in russia who were hostile to russian controll with the means of fighting mother russia.

we worked hard on supplying factions in afganistan, the TALIBAN, with the means to grind powerfull russia to a halt financially, and ensure they dont get their hands on a source of energy that would sustain them.

we worked hard on supplying factions in afganistan who were opposed to the TALIBAN with the means to fight them, and currently, they are fighting them almost solo, with only stregic firepower and logistic support from us.

we worked hard on getting iran and iraq to fight each other.

Hussin messed up when he made public his plan for a unified middle east under his rule. no way in hell would we let them unite. powersharing is NOT what this country is about. that attitude just had to go. and when we beat him out of kuwait, and he thumbed his nose at us saying he could wait.........first oppertunity we had we pointed YOUR moral outrage at him and charged......for your best interest of coarse.

we created Hussin. we created the taliban. we created the N.K. S.K. conflict that gave us vietnam. we did it to destabilize a potential threat.

not in the name of democracy, but in the name of CONTROLL and POWER.

save the people? we watched as the Hutu butchered 500,000 human beings on TV and did NOTHING. but gotta stop that mad man hussin from killing his own people..........

national security? N.K. has DA BOMB and is threatening to sell it. but wait, that will destabilize the southern tip of china......so we do NOTHING.

we ARE the evil empire. not because the people of the U.S. are evil, but becuase they are IGNORANT to the actions of their elected leaders.

wooohaaa, 4 more years.......of body bags..........those darn evil doers........

Ok. But that site takes those statements out of context, and kinda ignores conditions put on them. It (and you, and many other people), seem to miss the point that there's a difference between saying that santions are working at preventing Saddam from actually building up his forces and developing and building more WMD. It's another thing entirely to say that they are effective at the long term goal of getting Iraq to change its policies towards those two things. The only reason Iraq was *not* a threat to it's neighbors was because they were under active santions. So sanctions were "working" in that respect. But they were "not working" in terms of preventing Iraq from *ever* producing WME.

That's like saying your new anti-crime methods are "working" because as long as there is a cop on every street corner, crime goes down. It's the crime rate when a cop isn't watching everyone that matters. Presumably, we didn't intend to watch Saddam forever. At some point we have to accept that he and his government is never going to change their continual desire to build and use WMD, and take other action.



In fact, the quote that site uses to claim a contrast or change in Powell's statements, says exactly that:



He makes no statement as to exactly how many are presently in country. Nor does he say that sanctions failed to prevent Sadddam from making WMD. He only says that Saddam is determined to keep what he has (which is abundantly apparent from the 10 years of inspection history), and determined to make more (the only logical conclusion from Saddam's actions).

In the first quote, he's telling the Eqyptians that Sanctions have made the region more safe. That's not contradictory. As long as Sanctions are in place, they are safer then if they were not in place. That's what he was arguing for. He's not presenting the options of "Continuing Sanctions versus War with Iraq". He's presenting a "Continuing Sanctions versus Removing Sanctions" argument. Clearly, out of those two options, Sanctions are preferred. Since war with IRaq was not on the table, of course he'd recommend continuing them, and present them as sucessful. That's not contradiction. The option for war was not being discussed. Taking that out of context makes it seem like he's saying something he's not.

In the second quote, he clarifies this even more:



He's saying in very clear words that while sanctions are preventing Saddam from being able to build up his weapons, they have not prevented him from wanting to. In other words, Saddam will comply only as long as he's forced to. That's critical to the decision later to invade. The reaction to the Hans Blix report in early 2003 in the UN made it abundantly clear that within that body there was no desire to *ever* get Saddam to change his goals, but just to keep letting him get away with more and more. It was also abundantly clear tht eventually, the UN would have lifted those sanctions, and then we'd be left with Saddam going right back to mass production of those weapons. In a post 9-11 worls that was not something that we could afford to alllow.


The last quote by Rice says nothing that's contradictory. The author just implies that had she been asked a different querstion, she *might* have given a contradicotry answer. He's stretching a bit IMO.


It's a lot of nice seeming rhetoric, but taking a few statements out of context doesn't make a strong enough argument. One of the mistakes alot of peole make is assuming that the purpose of the Sanctions was to prevent Saddam from building weapons by keeping an eye on him. They originally were intended as a punishment imposed on Iraq until they met the terms of the cease fire agreement. Those terms required (among other things) that Iraq abandon it's WMD development and production. Iraq *never* complied with that, and so sanctions came to be the only thing preventing him from actually making more WMD. That was not what they were originally intended to do, nor should we judge their real success based on that.

Uhhh, no, Tavarde.

The only war criminal in this particular episode of the War on Terror is in jail somewhere near Baghdad and would be called "Saddam Hussein".

And I wouldn't lose a whole lot of sleep over our reputation being damaged with countries that were being bribed to the tune of billions of dollars by Saddam. Those aren't the types of friends we really need.

I do agree that rap music needs to go though. Good point.

Adiemus, not a great argument, ya gotta admit. Powell/Rice changed their stance on Iraq because they were privy to information after 9/11 that caused them to see Iraq as more of a threat. If that were true, Saddam is gone, Iraq is headed for democracy (HAHA...oops, was that out loud?), so why wouldn't they divulge that information now, after the fact? That dog won't hunt (yah, I'm a redneck, parse off).

Gbaji, nice try, not great, but nice. "Those quotes were taken out of context, blah, blah, freakin' blah..." I'll be less condescending if you can tell me how it's taken out of context when Powell says, "He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." Iraq was a paper tiger...by invading Iraq, we've given that tiger very real teeth, and we are getting bit in our collective ***.

As far as the argument goes, that he WANTED to continue WMD production, but, because of sanctions, lacked the ability, well, hell....let's go after some tinhorn dictator because he WANTS to develop WMD and not give a crap about N Korea which had (best estimate, not mine, pick a news source, any news source) 1 to 3 nuclear weaps and now that we've farted around in Iraq have increased their nuclear ******* to 6 to 9 nuclear weaps. By your argument, anyone who WANTS to develop WMD production is next on our hit list....is that seriously how you want the rest of the world to view our global policy?

I've read a good deal of your posts since I came here 2 or so weeks ago, you can talk circles around a subject (pedantic anyone? see, I read, I don't just post ;-), and when the facts suit you, you will back up your case to the hilt. I'm gonna take a guess and say you must have just woken up when you decided to post this piece of drivel to rebut me.

And now that I've thoroughly insulted someone who's got 9k more posts than me (don't take it personally, gbaji, but c'mon, that was a majorly weak-*** argument), I'm off to scrub toilets. Tata.

I know I'm gonna ***** this up.....



Agreed, hence where he says the sanctions are working, he has been forced to dismantle, he is UNABLE to rebuild.



Wrong....the later quote is only from May 2001 and is in reference to sanctions expiring in June 2001. And Powell says,"The sanctions, as they are called, have succeeded over the last 10 years, not in deterring him from moving in that direction, but from actually being able to move in that direction. The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn't have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and nuclear -- I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There's no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago.

So containment, using this arms control sanctions regime, I think has been reasonably successful. We have not been able to get the inspectors back in, though, to verify that, and we have not been able to get the inspectors in to pull up anything that might be left there. So we have to continue to view this regime with the greatest suspicion, attribute to them the most negative motives, which is quite well-deserved with this particular regime, and roll the sanctions over, and roll them over in a way where the arms control sanctions really go after their intended targets -- weapons of mass destruction -- and not go after civilian goods or civilian commodities that we really shouldn't be going after, just let that go to the Iraqi people. That wasn't the purpose of the oil-for-food program. And by reconfiguring them in that way, I think we can gain support for this regime once again.

When we came into office on the 20th of January, the whole sanctions regime was collapsing in front of our eyes. Nations were bailing out on it. We lost the consensus for this kind of regime because the Iraqi regime had successfully painted us as the ones causing the suffering of the Iraqi people, when it was the regime that was causing the suffering. They had more than enough money; they just weren't spending it in the proper way. And we were getting the blame for it. So reconfiguring the sanctions, I think, helps us and continues to contain the Iraqi regime."

This cannot be misinterpreted....this cannot be spun....ok, you can try to spin it, but you will fail.

If by "In the later quote, he's not aruging the same issue. The choice now is "keep sanctions" or "Invade Iraq" you are referring to Powell's eventual about-face about Iraq being a threat, again, wrong....it isn't about keep sanctions or invade Iraq....we kept the sanctions, why? Because they were working. Powell went from Iraq is UNABLE to attack anyone, develop WMD's, blow up a ballon much less anything else, to HUZZAAAAA, 4 MORE WARS, YESSIR, Mr. PREEE-SIDENT! And neither he nor Rice have come forward and given any sort of explanation as to why they turned 180 degrees on the matter of Iraq being a threat.

This is important....when was the last time you REVERSED your decision about anything important in your life? Seriously, think about it, something important, buying a home, marrying someone, having kids, something big, that you were, like, NO WAY, and then went in the opposite direction on it. It doesn't happen often, and when you do, you've got damn good reasons why your old way of thinking was so off the beam, ya know?



Ummm, yeah, it does. In NY anyways, if you're going with the flow of traffic, and the cop decides to pull just you over, he better have a reason in addition to you were speeding.



No, the difference is you completely dodged my question...do you want our global policy to be, If you are even THINKING about WANTING to develop WMD's, we are coming after YOU, pal. And if by "abandon pursuit" you're going to try to argue that Iraq violated sanctions by WANTING....well, hell, gimme a break, k? N Korea was, is, and will be a bigger threat than Iraq sitting in the desert WISHING he could go ahead with WMD production ever would have been.

End of story.