Quote:
Originally posted by Lanny_MacDonald@Oct 6 2004, 05:04 PM
"Vladimir Putin told Bush directly that Saddam had WMD and would use them. The President of Egypt and the King of Jordan told General Tommy Franks Saddam had WMD and would use them. Saddam built a false image that killed him in the end."
This is so much BS its not even funny.# It flies in the face of common sense.# If all of these nations were so afraid of Hussein and his stock piles of WMDs they would have agreed to the proposal the US put to the UN.# The fact that they didn't speaks volumes.#
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Who said they were afraid?
Are you going to tell us Putin didn't say what he publicly said? I haven't seen the President of Egypt or the King of Jordan denying Tommy Franks account either.
The thing you'll need to wrap your head around is the USA wasn't alone in believing what it did.
The controversy and angst arose from the sharp and bitter disagreement about what to do about it, if anything.
An interesting opinion from the BBC - not a supporter of the war - on intelligence "group think" and what Saddam did to encourage the notion he was armed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3720520.stm
The inspectors said that they needed more time, so they obviously thought they were making headway.
They had 12 years and he wasn't complying fully. Only months before the invasion, the UN passed a resolution promising "grave consequences" if he didn't. That was an escalation of global opinion although most would argue not an outright invitation to invade. Still, an uptick in concern that can't be coloured any other way. The pressure was mounting. If not because of a global belief he was a danger, then why?
No country fully complies. They follow the leadership of the super powers and when the SALT inspections were being done it was always a game of cat and mouse. If anyone is looking for a culprit to blame for this mess it is America and the Soviets. They showed the world how the inspection game was played and countries have followed suit.
Superpowers are under UN mandates - with sanctions over their heads - to disarm? Last I looked, the USA and Russia were dismantling thousands of warheads in a verifiable manner.
So don't you do a little more research when there is no conclusive proof?
Didn't you just tell us above there would never be conclusive proof? The report today, being used so effectively to club the Bush team over the head, also quite clearly verifies the subterfuge the Saddam team was engaged in.
Not excusing them by the way. There's nothing there so obviously they're idiots and morons.
Or maybe you really don't care about that and are only in it for the money? Maybe this has been the root cause of this.
Are you suggesting Iraq is currently selling oil to preferential buyers for less than market price right now?
Are you suggesting there's more money to be made in the USA economy with crude at $50 than there is at $25?
The people in power are being clubbed over the head right now - as they were before the invasion - about economic issues. If they'd steered clear of Iraq and kept oil at $25 a barrel - right where OPEC wants it - the prospects of the Bush team being re-elected would be a whole lot safer right now. According to you, people need to be in power to profit.
Your multi-layered conspiracy theory fails to take into account factors external to the Iraq debate, such as China's oil imports rising 40% in the last 12 months and the supply demands of India plus the Yukos affair in Russia and plummeting Venezualian production.
If I'm not mistaken, Iraq is actually producing right now as much or a little more oil than was the case before the invasion, in spite of sabotage. The stronger the insurgency in Iraq, the more work Halliburton gets to fix things they've already done once before.
By the way, if "they" decided to invade this place under the pretext of WMD, knowing full well there was nothing of the kind there, wouldn't it have been smarter to wait until closer to the next election, say in March 2004 instead of March 2002, so they wouldn't be exposed as a fraud before the voters went to the polls?
I know, this is all just another conspiracy theory that I'm clinging to, right Cow?
If that's what you think, who am I to stand in the way? It's a free country and that works both ways.
The only thing I've said is they're idiots and morons. I'm freely admitting they're far from the geniuses they'd need to be if you were right.
Remember to mull that over the next time you fill up your Durango.
If I couldn't afford to drive it, I wouldn't do it.
Cowperson