When the Chief US weapons inspector...

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally posted by Looger@Oct 6 2004, 04:50 PM
Captain Crunch,

i agree that saddam was not cooperating with the inspections.

but why give him ammunition? why sabotage UNSCOM?

they gave him enough time to bury all the evidence.

every lengthy scott ritter interview i've ever read has the underlying premise that if america had let him do his job he would have caught saddam red-handed.

america did not let him do his job.

Because Saddam Hussein was not complying with the weapons inspections and infact dictating terms to the UN, UNSCOM was already pretty much compromised. Personally if I was Bush Senior of Clinton I would have had troops on the ground after the first Saddam refusal. You give him the choice.

Allow the inspections to go unobstructed or we'll tear your country about without your permission and kill you. Thats why I'm not a diplomat.

Your right the UN and the American's blew this.

The UN by not being more forceful in making Iraq comply. The American's because they let the scenario go on way to long, and they compromised the inspectors.

[Lurch]

misconception. the war worked pretty much fab. the after war effort has been dismal.

Holy damn, that is a bizarre statement. They are one and the same. If the goal of the war was to make the US safer, make the region safer or whatever, it is very clear that seizing some territory is not all that important. No offence to yourself, but to me, this shows a military centric attitude that admires the execution of a initial battle plan and the deployment of some fancy killing toys in an efficient manner. Makes for good TV, but does little wrt achieving any of the actual aims of the war. My take is that the initial attack went well, the war is still ongoing and is doing miserably from about week 2 onwards. The only way you can say the war went well is if you narrow down the aim to toppling Saddam's gov't. If the war had any broader goals, it has failed.

Weapons inspections weren't working because Saddam was only allowing them to see what he wanted to see.

Dither over protocol all you want; I won't dispute Saddam made the inspection process hard. Nonetheless, the core goal was to keep Saddam from obtaining said weapons. As such, it seems the mission was accomplished. I came out a realist in that worldview test, and I guess it's showing up on my take here. Results are all that matter, and the UN got results despite difficulties and doubts along the way. The US has yet to get results despite throwing I don't know how many times the resources at the problem, so I call it a failure.

[arsenal]

UNSCOM and Iraqi Chemical Weapons:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/wo.../cw-unscom.htm

Anyway, it seems I could be wrong.
http://traprockpeace.org/kamel.html
It has an interview with Kamal, Saddam's brother in law, and weapons program guy. In this interview he states that all weapons where destroyed.

But why did it take Kamal telling the inspectors of this place, before they found it.
If Saddam was actually planning on destroying everything, then he should of
been up front.

[edit]
I am talking about the VX gas plant.
[/edit]

[Lanny_MacDonald]

"How would you know the inspections and sanctions worked?"

And how would you know they didn't? Because the Bush administration said so? The inspectors said that they needed more time, so they obviously thought they were making headway. The proof has been in the pudding all along as things turned out. No weapons have been found and the belief that Hussein had the capablility to manufacture his own weapons was greatly exaggerated.

"He never complied fully. There was no open transparency. There were no independent interviews with Iraqi scientists and their families in an outside country as required by UN mandate, as one example."

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.

"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. There are more sources that say Hussein was a paper tiger and had no stock piles of weapons than there are that say he did. The US intelligence community said there weren't any, but that didn't stop the government from jumping to a bad conclusion because of the word of one source (Chalabi). The fact that they fabricated a gran illusion to try and pursuade the rest of the world again speaks volumes. They were looking for an excuse to invade Iraq and tried to start an avalanche with a snowflake.

"We can see now there was no "gathering threat" but there was no corroboration there wasn't either, which appeared to be a goal of Saddam."

So don't you do a little more research when there is no conclusive proof? Especially when you're talking about billions of dollars and thousands of lives? 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. It appears that we are down to two reasonable explanations, as all others are falling by the wayside in droves. It's either the US is looking for a large base to work from in the region, or they are in for the money. Do they really need a series of bases to keep the peace in the region like Iraq affords? Probably not. How about the other angle? Who is doing really really well because of this conflict? What is the price of crude again? Seems more logical and inline with the character shown by the Bush administration than the idea of them wanting to create "harmony" in the region.

I know, this is all just another conspiracy theory that I'm clinging to, right Cow? Makes no sense at all. Remember to mull that over the next time you fill up your Durango.

[Looger]

bottom line, as soon as america sabotaged UNSCOM, that's it, man.

you are voted off the island of insanity that is the right to any future intervention in iraq, as voted by world opinion.

that line was crossed with dire consequences for all the world. the stakes are much higher than where iraq's oil money goes.

this one's for all the marbles, boys and girls, this issue right here.

the belief of conditionless moral superiority.

i'd even go so far as to say american foreign policy seems bent on making enemies wherever possible.

there's a lot of anti-americanism in the new wave of european far-right extremism, and though many think the climax of that pan-europe movement was surpassed when jorg haider was chucked out of office and jean-marie le pen (sp?) did not win in france, it is alive and well in no small part to american international belligerence.

will we see white christians blowing themselves up in macdonald's?

sounds a little extreme but many things that can be done to turn the world against america have been done. the seeds are sewn.

[CaptainCrunch]

QUOTE
misconception. the war worked pretty much fab. the after war effort has been dismal.




Holy damn, that is a bizarre statement. They are one and the same. If the goal of the war was to make the US safer, make the region safer or whatever, it is very clear that seizing some territory is not all that important. No offence to yourself, but to me, this shows a military centric attitude that admires the execution of a initial battle plan and the deployment of some fancy killing toys in an efficient manner. Makes for good TV, but does little wrt achieving any of the actual aims of the war. My take is that the initial attack went well, the war is still ongoing and is doing miserably from about week 2 onwards. The only way you can say the war went well is if you narrow down the aim to toppling Saddam's gov't. If the war had any broader goals, it has failed.

There are mutiple phases to any war. The initial buildup of equipment, supplies and people. The actual execution of the war plan. the post game or post war phase. The initial buildup was handled very well, the actual warplan was executed very well with very little in the ways of casualties on the allies side. the post war phase has been a disastor plain and simple. All of the pre-war requirements for entering the postwar phase were met.

Thats how I think, and yes it might be millitary centric, but so be it. If the American's had come up with a proper post war strategy this whole debate would be about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, and the failure of the allied intelligence community and not what it is now, where the American's are suffering more casualties in the post war scenario, where the American Military is being investigated for its mishandling of prisoners, where the American's are struggling with a terrorist threat.

QUOTE
Weapons inspections weren't working because Saddam was only allowing them to see what he wanted to see.



Dither over protocol all you want; I won't dispute Saddam made the inspection process hard. Nonetheless, the core goal was to keep Saddam from obtaining said weapons. As such, it seems the mission was accomplished. I came out a realist in that worldview test, and I guess it's showing up on my take here. Results are all that matter, and the UN got results despite difficulties and doubts along the way. The US has yet to get results despite throwing I don't know how many times the resources at the problem, so I call it a failure.

I don't get how you can say that the UN got results. Thier weapons inspections were incomplete, they had gaping holes in thier inspection requirements, and they refused to put thier footdown. They also mismanaged thier own food for oil program by allowing it to become a cash for oil program, a program put into place to pressure Hussein into coming clean on his development programs. My question is that the inspections had taken 14 years with no conclusive end in sight. How much time were we going to give him 20 years, 30 years, do you want to take the chance that this guy might have had a program going, and we would only find out when a gas warhead fell on his own people or Israel?

The search for the weapons of mass destruction was one of the key points with the UN negotiated cease fire on Iraq, since Saddam never lived up to his word, its not unreasonable to assume that eventually his time would run out.

Like I mentioned before, a lot of the failures here has to do with the world wide intelligence community, did he or didn't he have these weapons, we didn't know, but its better to be sure then not sure.

I honestly believe that the American's were heavily surprised by the lack of evidence when they got to do thier own inspections. However on a counterpoint

It took the UN 14 years to look for any kind of evidence, logically in my mind the American's should have an equivalent amount of time to reach thier own conclusions, its only fair.

The fact that the American's didn't even attempt to fabricate thier own discovery of WMD especially in an election year tells me that they are honestly surprised by the failure of the the CIA, the FIS, the DGSE and even the UN intelligence community.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally posted by Looger@Oct 6 2004, 05:17 PM
bottom line, as soon as america sabotaged UNSCOM, that's it, man.

you are voted off the island of insanity that is the right to any future intervention in iraq, as voted by world opinion.

that line was crossed with dire consequences for all the world. the stakes are much higher than where iraq's oil money goes.

this one's for all the marbles, boys and girls, this issue right here.

the belief of conditionless moral superiority.

i'd even go so far as to say american foreign policy seems bent on making enemies wherever possible.

there's a lot of anti-americanism in the new wave of european far-right extremism, and though many think the climax of that pan-europe movement was surpassed when jorg haider was chucked out of office and jean-marie le pen (sp?) did not win in france, it is alive and well in no small part to american international belligerence.

will we see white christians blowing themselves up in macdonald's?

sounds a little extreme but many things that can be done to turn the world against america have been done. the seeds are sewn.

Wouldn't you have to say the same thing about the German's French and Russians who sabatoged a program meant to pressure the Iraqi government into coming clean. In this whole scenario even the global community dosen't have a moral high ground.

Even the UN allowed itself to have its own sanctioning program corrupted.

Are the American's at fault. Absolutely, they came across as dishonest when they set the justification for the invasion, they came across as bumblers for thier handling of the after war action.

Nobody can hold thier head high over this

[Looger]

Captain Crunch,

true, but if you notice, the three countries you mention, france, germany, and russia, were the three most vocal aboot the anti-invasion stance.

there is plenty of blame to go around, yes.

the big question is what have the american public learned? have they figured out some cause-and-effect yet?

[Cowperson]

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.#

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

[Lurch]

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?

Maybe I'm just being simplistic, but it seems to me that the US has a LOT of influence in the UN. If the US was bringing evidence to the UN, twisting arms behind the scenes, etc. wouldn't this maybe, just maybe, represent US desires as much as 'an uptick in global concern'.

[arsenal]

The US does not have alot of influence in the UN. No more than the 6 or 7 other nations that have veto power. If the US had such power, they never would of had to get a UN resolution passed with "selective" writing in it, that leaves itself to interpritation.

A resolution would have been drawn up, clearly stating that Iraq not complying with the UN inspectors, would result in an invasion.

The problem is the UN wont act. It is turning into another League of Nations. Where appeasment is preferable to action. This is fairly evident by both Iraq, and the troubles in the Sudan.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally posted by Lurch@Oct 6 2004, 07:17 PM

Maybe I'm just being simplistic, but it seems to me that the US has a LOT of influence in the UN. If the US was bringing evidence to the UN, twisting arms behind the scenes, etc. wouldn't this maybe, just maybe, represent US desires as much as 'an uptick in global concern'.

U.S. influence in the UN is overblown, they have no more influence then any of the other major nations, and on the security council where one veto kills all your influence of wealth dosen't matter

[troutman]

Why Bush was too busy to find WMDs: