THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

To not face that truth, despite your belief of whether or not we should have gone, is to hide from reality.

Cycloptichorn

Actually, ican, The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States claims evidence of increased contact between Iranand al-Qaeda, not Iraq and al-Qaeda.

The report explicitly states that it found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, and that there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no cooperation.

Responding to a presidential tasking, Clarke's office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, titled "Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks." Rice's chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda. The memo found no "compelling case" that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks

Responding to a presidential tasking, Clarke's office sent a memo to Rice on September 18, titled "Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks." Rice's chief staffer on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, concurred in its conclusion that only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda. The memo found no "compelling case" that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks.

In this restricted National Security Council meeting, the President said it was a time for self-defense. The United States would punish not just the perpetrators of the attacks, but also those who harbored them.

The report of the commission's staff "said that bin Laden 'explored possible cooperation with Iraq'
...
We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.'"(Walter Puncus and Dana Milbank, Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed, Washington Post Thursday, June 17, 2004).

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.

About your non-sequitur about Zarqawi's al Qaeda training camp in northern Iraq, discovered in 2002, actually, as far as can be gleaned from the murky evidence available, the "training camp" to which you refer belonged to Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish outfit. ...

As NBC News reported, "Long before the war, the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself - but never pulled the trigger." In June 2002, the Pentagon drafted plans to attack a camp Zarqawi was at with cruise missiles and airstrikes. The plan was killed by the White House. Four months later, as Zarqawi planned to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe, the Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, yet "the White House again killed it." In January 2003, the Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the White House killed it.[3]

According to NBC, "Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case [to the UN] for war against Saddam."[4]

Sources:

3. "Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind," NBC News, 3/02/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=56811.

4. Ibid, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=3382691&l=56811.

Bah! You conservatives and your rose-colored glasses. Do you even acknowledge that mistakes were made?

[yes]

At all?

[Yes]

Do you acknowledge the reports that wmd and nuclear material have gone missing SINCE we invaded Iraq?

[Yes]

That we don't have a clue where they are anow?

[No, I think we have several clues they are in Syria]

Do you really feel safer because of this?

[No, I feel safer because many al Qaeda are dead; many more are getting killed; and so many al Qaeda are concentrated in Iraq instead of being widely distributed in other non-al-Qaeda-harboring nations.]

Do the conservatives on here feel the only way to respond to a threat is with force? If not, then what are some other ways we COULD handle situations such as Iraq? And why didn't we use any of those methods?

Saddam Hussein saw his life as an unfolding epic narrative, with retreats and advances, but always the same ending. He would go down in history as the glorious Arab leader, as the Saladin of his day. One thousand years from now, schoolchildren would look back and marvel at the life of The Struggler, the great leader whose life was one of incessant strife, but who restored the greatness of the Arab nation.

They would look back and see the man who lived by his saying: "We will never lower our heads as long as we live, even if we have to destroy everybody." Charles Duelfer opened his report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction with those words. For a humiliated people, Saddam would restore pride by any means.

Saddam knew the tools he would need to reshape history and establish his glory: weapons of mass destruction. These weapons had what Duelfer and his team called a "totemic" importance to him. With these weapons, Saddam had defeated the evil Persians. With these weapons he had crushed his internal opponents. With these weapons he would deter what he called the "Zionist octopus" in both Israel and America.

But in the 1990's, the world was arrayed against him to deprive him of these weapons. So Saddam, the clever one, The Struggler, undertook a tactical retreat. He would destroy the weapons while preserving his capacities to make them later. He would foil the inspectors and divide the international community. He would induce it to end the sanctions it had imposed to pen him in. Then, when the sanctions were lifted, he would reconstitute his weapons and emerge greater and mightier than before.

The world lacked what Saddam had: the long perspective. Saddam understood that what others see as a defeat or a setback can really be a glorious victory if it is seen in the context of the longer epic.

Saddam worked patiently to undermine the sanctions. He stored the corpses of babies in great piles, and then unveiled them all at once in great processions to illustrate the great humanitarian horrors of the sanctions.

Saddam personally made up a list of officials at the U.N., in France, in Russia and elsewhere who would be bribed. He sent out his oil ministers to curry favor with China, France, Turkey and Russia. He established illicit trading relations with Ukraine, Syria, North Korea and other nations to rebuild his arsenal.

It was all working. He acquired about $11 billion through illicit trading. He used the oil-for-food billions to build palaces. His oil minister was treated as a "rock star," as the report put it, at international events, so thick was the lust to trade with Iraq.

France, Russia, China and other nations lobbied to lift sanctions. Saddam was, as the Duelfer report noted, "palpably close" to ending sanctions.

With sanctions weakening and money flowing, he rebuilt his strength. He contacted W.M.D. scientists in Russia, Belarus, Bulgaria and elsewhere to enhance his technical knowledge base. He increased the funds for his nuclear scientists. He increased his military-industrial-complex's budget 40-fold between 1996 and 2002. He increased the number of technical research projects to 3,200 from 40. As Duelfer reports, "Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem."

And that is where Duelfer's story ends. Duelfer makes clear on the very first page of his report that it is a story. It is a mistake and a distortion, he writes, to pick out a single frame of the movie and isolate it from the rest of the tale.

But that is exactly what has happened. I have never in my life seen a government report so distorted by partisan passions. The fact that Saddam had no W.M.D. in 2001 has been amply reported, but it's been isolated from the more important and complicated fact of Saddam's nature and intent.

But we know where things were headed. Sanctions would have been lifted. Saddam, rich, triumphant and unbalanced, would have reconstituted his W.M.D. Perhaps he would have joined a nuclear arms race with Iran. Perhaps he would have left it all to his pathological heir Qusay.

We can argue about what would have been the best way to depose Saddam, but this report makes it crystal clear that this insatiable tyrant needed to be deposed. He was the menace, and, as the world dithered, he was winning his struggle. He was on the verge of greatness. We would all now be living in his nightmare.

We did use them. We tried cutting and running. We tried containing. We tried policing. We tried negotiating. We tried sanctions. They didn't work. All those actions merely encouraged terrorism or postponed terrorism to murder our grand children instead of us.

Failure to relentlessly exterminate, without interruption, all Iraqi based, murdering resistance to the rebuilding of Iraq.

Failure to point out that slandering our military (in 1972 or in 2004) is a traitorous act.

Really?

Not a single terrorist attack on America has been linked to Iraq.

Iraq DIDN'T have any WMD. The president's own commissioned report says that Iraq 'was a waning threat.' Doesn't that mean that our earlier attempts WERE working?

... the ultimate purpose of said sanctions were to remove Iraq's capability to threaten other countries, and this, undoubtedly, was done!

The hard facts show that our containment was working.

You create much more resistance by adopting such an attitude. Your failure to realize this fact betrays your lack of understanding about how resistances are formed, how insurgancies are maintained, and how guerillas can win in the face of unbelievable odds.

Quote:

Failure to point out that slandering our military (in 1972 or in 2004) is a traitorous act.

It's never a crime to tell the truth, whether you agree with the person telling it or not.

Main Entry: 2slander
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English sclaundre, slaundre, from Old French esclandre, from Late Latin scandalum stumbling block, offense -- more at SCANDAL
1 : the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation
2 : a false and defamatory oral statement about a person -- compare LIBEL
- slan·der·ous /-d(&-)r&s/ adjective
- slan·der·ous·ly adverb
- slan·der·ous·ness noun

Shouldn't your beef be with the intelligence agencies and not the administration if this is how you feel?

It was the intelligence that was wrong, not the administrations handling of it.

Is it your hypothesis that all that intelligence said that Hussien did not have WMD's? If so, why would so many world leaders believe he did? Why would UNSR 1441 have been necessary?