Poll: over 40% of Canadian teens think America is "evil"

In other words, work at being misunderestimated.

bill : excellent point ! hbg

...appear where you are not expected.

And how old is that book? I wonder how he Sun Tzu would have written it with modern weapons including nuclear bombs? I'd prefer to read a book on "The Art of Peace."

Ehmm .. I just gave you a list of countries that were on the Security Council at the time, and were also not convinced.

The only SC countries that were convinced were the US, the UK, Spain and Bulgaria.

I dont know how that would fit anyone's definition of "everybody else".

Considering the conclusions of even a man like David Kay (a Republican favourite when he was sent to Iraq to find WMD) that there most probably were no WMD in Iraq at the time of the invasion, I would also suggest that the Canadian PM actually didn't so much ignore the evidence given - but estimated it at its right value. Unlike Rumsfeld and Cheney, apparently.

I mean, we're not asking for clairvoyance. We're just wishing you'd listened better. I remember that session with Powell at the UN. The pictures he showed, supposedly proving that here Iraq had been storing WMD, here they had recently been moved, etc. Those pictures were dissected and declared inconclusive here in the papers back then already. Politicians expressed their surprise at the low quality of the "evidence" Powell brought. We're not making this up two years later - it was in the papers, right then. If you didnt see it, review your reading material rather than flailing around at us in anger.

Nimh, while you normally give a very good argument, this one is baloney. At the time of the invasion, David Kay was saying unequivocably that the WMD were there. So was (almost) everybody else. I really don't want to have to post all those quote from people that have already been posted. It was only AFTER the invasion when the inspectors could get back in there that the missing WMDs were ever an issue.

You certainly wanted to say:
At the time of the invasion, David Kay - the UN Chief Weapons Inspector from 1983 to 1992 -was saying unequivocably that the WMD were there.

No Walter, the very day we fired the first shot into Iraq, Kay was still convinced the WMD existed. It was only after Baghdad was secured and they could get back in there that any doubts arose.

Well, okay, so you are quoting the Vice President of Science Applications Internatinal Corporation (SAIC) David Kay.

<sigh>

That (the bold part) is not true, Fox, and we've already shown you example after example here.

The doubts did arise BEFORE the invasion. Doubts about whether we really knew for sure about the WMD were expressed before we went to war. They were voiced by the German government, the French government, the Canadian government, the Head of the UN weapon inspections team, etc. You have seen a quote here of the German counterpart of Powell, a reference to what the Canadian PM said, all before the war started, right in this thread. Those doubts were one of the main reasons a majority of SC members did not want to approve the UN resolution the US were pushing for, which would authorise it to go to war.

You cant rewrite this part of history no matter how much you would like to. Not "(almost) everybody else" agreed that we knew Saddam still had WMD. Of the SC states, only the US, UK, Spain and Bulgaria were sufficiently convinced.

Now about Kay. Here you are just plainly misreading my post. I know that Kay at that time was still convinced the WMD would be there. Thats why the Republicans were so glad when he was assigned to the last full-out effort to find evidence of WMD in post-war Iraq: he would surely find them - he wanted to enough!

My point about that, if you read my post again, was that the fact that even he did not find them in the end, proves that the Canadian PM, when before the invasion started he already doubted the Iraq WMD case, was pretty much right! Apparently, he was probably not so much ignoring the (purported) evidence, as you said, but assessing it better than the US government.

I mean, come on. Even Kay now knows that there were probably no WMD anymore. We point out to you that some people (the Canadian PM, the German foreign minister) already said that they werent convinced there were any, back then. And you retort that the only way they could have said so was by "ignoring all the evidence"? Weren't they proven right? Didn't the Senate commission just conclude that it was the US government apparatus that totally misread the evidence?

So let me summarise this again for you.

1. A number of foreign governments - BEFORE the war started - publicly expressed their doubt about the US assertion that it had convincing evidence of Iraqi WMD and the threat they posed.

2. We already mentioned two explicit examples - the German government and the Canadian PM.

3. You claimed that the only reason they could have said, BEFORE the war started, that there was no convincing case about Iraqi WMD threat, must have been that they "no doubt ignored all the pre-war evidence"

4. But LATER missions like Kay's did indeed show that Iraq probably didn't have WMD anymore by the time the war started. Kay is on record saying so. And the Senate commission has just concluded that the purported "evidence" was indeed (as many abroad back then already suspected) flawed and exaggerated.

5. Considering what even Kay and the US Senate know NOW, the assertions Germany, Canada etc. already made BACK THEN about the lack of convincing evidence turn out to have been pretty much on-target, no?

6. I.e., you blame us for retroactively demanding some kind of impossible "foresight" from Bush - namely, that he should have realised back then already that the intel was too weak. But that foresight apparently WAS shown back then already by a number of other governments - US allies, in fact. So it wasnt all that impossible, apparently, was it?

Well I don't wish to continue to repeat myself Nimh as you obviously have your mind made up. I believe I'm right. So let's just agree to disagree on this one.

"Well I don't wish to continue to repeat myself Nimh as you obviously have your mind made up."
ROFLMAO ha ha ha ha ha ha......

Well, instead of repeating yourself, you might try addressing my arguments?

You claim that it was "only AFTER the invasion [..] that the missing WMDs were ever an issue".

We have given you several examples of people who made it an issue BEFORE the invasion, and of times at which the issue was played out (eg, when the US was trying to rally support for the additional UN resolution it was envisaging).

Your response thus far has been that
- it was just one German minister (when it was the foreign minister, speaking for the government as a whole)
- the Canadian PM must have been wrongly informed (when in fact he was envisaging the lack of WMD we are now confronted with)
- that Canada wasn't on the Security Council (at which I mentioned all the countries that were on the SC, and also weren't convinced)

and ... am I missing something?

I mean, it's simple enough, this. You say something did not exist at point A; we show you examples of something widely existing at point A. Then what?

I think you're splitting hairs Nimh. My opinion has consistently been that (almost) all members of the U.N., (almost) all members of the Clinton administration and the Bush administration and (almost) all members of Congress, and (almost) all members of the U.N. authorized inspection teams believed that Saddam had WMD prior to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. I am qualifying with 'almost' in this context to allow for the stray comment expressed here and there that in no way contradicts the overwhelming aggregate opinion in this matter.

The fact that no stockpiles or hard evidence of WMD were found AFTER the invasion does not in any way negate the (almost) universal opinion of the existence of WMD BEFORE the invasion.

There remains, however, the true die hards who maintain that because no stockpiles or hard evidence of WMD were found AFTER the invasion, that the Bush administration lied about it BEFORE the invasion. I simply don't understand this kind of denseness or intellectual dishonesty, whichever it is.

It is the height of intellectual dishonesty to continue to insist that "(almost) all members of the U.N.," and "(almost) all members of the U.N. authorized inspectionn teams believed that Saddam had WMD prior to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq." It has been pointed out to you repeatedly that these people were saying they did not know. Your characterization of "the stray comment expressed here and there" is either willfully ignoring the storm of objections raised at the time, the disbelief which greeted Powell's attempt to construct a causus belli in his U.N. presentation--or, you are incredibly ignorant. This site was full of almost nothing but this subject at the end of 2002 and in early 2003. Your pigheaded insistence on claiming that a majority of the world believed this is unsupported, and you continue to assert as much with providing any evidence. If, as you claim, the majority of the United Nations believed this, why did the administration feel obliged to send Powell to make the case? Why did he fail? Why was the invasion carried out without U.N. support, if your claim is true? You're whistling past the graveyard.

Thanks, Set.

I suggest you guys read through the many quotes collected on the SNOPES site:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

Jesus you're dense. Everyone quoted on that Snopes site is an American. The people here have repeatedly asserted that those in other nations said they did not know, or did not believe that Hussein had WoMD. This constitutes your proof? Do you really think something so facile supports your contention that "(almost) all members of the U.N." believed Hussein had WoMD?

Geeze, how can you be so dense. I'll give you a little clue--the United States does not constitute the entire world, and most of the world justifiably resents the narrow, parochial view which extrapolates American ideas to a global basis.

Once again, what proof do you have for your contention that "(almost) all members of the U.N." believed that Hussein had WoMD? You've so far failed to provide any such proof.

I have no issue with you on the Clinton/Bush/Congress thing. I have an issue with the "(almost) all members of the U.N." thing. Mostly because its not true. Hence why an overwhelming majority of the Security Council members wanted the inspections to continue, and let the US know that they wouldnt vote for the kind of authorisation of war the US had initially wanted to bring to it.

Apparently, Fox feels that the expressed opinions of Americans are sufficient to extrapolate what the world believed then.

And that isn't so?