Steve (as 41oo) wrote:"The basis on which we went to war was not the intelligence, it was UN resolution 1441, that Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction on his own people, he was given a final opportunity to comply and he didn't do that."
I have been invited to an informal evening with Bill tomorrow night. I will have a diplomatic cold. (Actually have to be somewhere else). But Mrs Steve is attending and will be giving Bill a letter from me.
Lets just look at that single sentence above. It makes 4 points.
1. The basis on which we went to war was not the intelligence.
Now this surprises me. I honestly thought I heard Blair say something about wmd. How did he know this? From personal experience? Perhaps a little holiday to see the Ziggurat when he was a boy? He knew it from the intelligence reports he was receiving. He didn't like the sound of what he was receiving. Saddam had wmd and had to be stopped...all based on intelligence reports.
Hmmmm...I agree with Steve on this one.
Quote:2. It was resolution 1441. This is not true either. 1441 only provided for "serious consequences". It did not say failure to comply will result in war. It specifically did not say war will result from non compliance because it was drafted to gain the widest possible support. In fact it was passed by all 15 members of the security council including Syria, who specifically voted in favour to ensure another resolution was necessary before war was authorised.
1441 did NOT say that war would be avoided, either. It said "serious consequences". I would think that is exactly what happened.
Quote:3. He was given a final opportunity to comply. Wrong Bill. We withdrew the inspectors who were keen to continue their work. They reported progress with the Iraqis. They wanted more time. We did not give them that time because we had to withdraw them for their own safety before the bombing started.
Iraqi weapons inspection timeline
Explain to me where exactly the inspectors were given the opportunity to do their jobs.
Quote:4. Saddam failed to comply. Wrong again. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. He had complied with everything that was asked of him. Except of course the 48 hours ultimatum to get out of Iraq. Was that reasonable? Did Saddam issue a 24 hour ultimatum to Bush to leave America and turn the US over to the control of the lawful Iraqi authorities?
No, he failed to comply with resolution 1441. That's evident by the fact that a coalition of allied forces invaded Iraq.
Had Saddam accepted the ultimatum, he and his family could be sipping margueritas somewhere instead of where they are now. I was a perfectly acceptable alternative. As for Saddam asking for Bush to leave....well, Saddam didn't have the most powerful army in the world at his beck and call...
Quote:As for the REAL reasons for the war, I heard Kevin Phillips interviewed on the radio 2 days ago.
His belief is that the real reasons were
1 Security of energy supplies
2 Geopolitical imperatives. In particular anxiety should America lose their controlling influence over Saudi Arabia through revolution.
3 Personal angst between the Bush and Hussein dynasties.
And (my view) Britain had the first two in common with the US. 3 Blair was keen to cement the anglo american alliance "to pay the blood price". [nb not his blood of course] 4. Blair thought the removal of Saddam would open the door on the mid east peace process.
I, too believe that oil is responsible to a certain degree, but Saddam posed a real threat to world peace and security. Now, he no longer poses a threat to anyone.
My buddy Boortz had a good analogy this AM...
Quote:OK .. let me try to create a little scenario for you. Let's say that NASA scientists together with experts from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California suddenly discover that there is a 15-mile-wide asteroid heading for the earth. If that asteroid strikes the earth millions of people will die. The president of the United States orders a very expensive crash program to develop a response. Billions of dollars are poured into an all-out project to develop and launch a dozen nuclear-tipped rockets toward the asteroid to destroy it before it crashes into the earth. To fund the project billions are taken from various social projects. People suffer. The deficit blossoms. A debt is created that our grandchildren will have to pay.
The project is successful. The missiles score a direct hit on the asteroid and it is blasted into thousands of smaller fragments. Unfortunately some of those fragments are still large enough to cause severe damage and kill hundreds of people when they crash into the earth.
Later, after the danger is past, we discover that the NASA scientists who originally warned of the threat from this asteroid made a little mathematical miscalculation. The asteroid was actually going to pass harmlessly between the moon and the earth. We now know that all of that money was wasted. Not only that, but those people who died when smaller fragments hit the earth would still be alive today if the asteroid had just been left alone.
Who do we blame here? Do we blame the president? He was acting on the information available to him at the time. He had no real choice but to trust that information. To ignore the warnings of the impending strike could be to pass a death sentence on millions. You can't condemn the president for acting on information that he, and the rest of the world, thought to be correct.
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has survived an assassination attempt when gunmen opened fire on his entourage, a security official in his office says.
