1
   

Who's at fault here?

Forums: International News
Email this Topic • Print this Page
 
 
Tantor
 
  1  
Reply Sat 11 Jan, 2003 11:21 pm
cicerone imposter wrote:
Your assumptions about Saddam's launching of WMD doesn't have the spector of reality. Who, when, and where is he going to use it? If he uses it against Israel, he'll be history for sure. c.i.


Saddam has already launched WMD against his own people. His army conducted a campaign of chemical attacks against the Kurdish town of Halabja and other towns in the region. Are you claiming that this did not happen, that it was not real? Saddam also launched chemical attacks on Iranian troops. Is that unreal, too?

Cicerone, everybody knows that Saddam Hussein has already used his WMD on multiple occassions. How is it that you argue that he will not use them when he already has? How do you reconcile reality to your assertion?

How do you know that Saddam has not already used his WMD against America? The anthrax attacks that followed Sep 11 have never been resolved. Can you honestly say that Iraq did not make that attack? Can you claim that Iraqi agents or their terrorist friends are not holed up in the DC area with a barrel of nerve gas waiting to release it on Saddam's order?

Tantor
0 Replies
 
Tantor
 
  1  
Reply Sat 11 Jan, 2003 11:26 pm
cicerone imposter wrote:
Now that GW is going after Saddam, I'd like to put on a little wager that Saddam is going to outlast GW junior. Wink c.i.


My guess is that GW will be back running eight minute miles on the Hike & Bike trail in Austin long after Saddam has been hung, Mussolini style, from the crossed swords victory monument in Baghdad.

Tantor
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 11 Jan, 2003 11:36 pm
Tantor, That's old history. Anything new? After Saddam and his henchmen have claimed that have no WMD, one sure way to lose what support he has for no war will change in a micro-second if he uses it. c.i.
0 Replies
 
Tantor
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Jan, 2003 01:25 am
Huh? Do you mean that if Saddam has a demonstrated history of using WMDs that the truth expires after a while and reverts to your assertion that he would never use them?

Tantor
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Jan, 2003 02:09 am
Tantor,

Re the anthrax the burden of proof rests with you. Nobody needs to proove Sadaam didn't do it. You need to proove that he did (if you want to make that assertion).
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Jan, 2003 02:45 am
roger wrote:
There seem few outside the United States with much reticence to point out any and all things American which they perceive to be defective. If Tantor's statements are accurate, I'm surprised they are not being more graciously received.


Maybe few people but most governments avoid it if they can.

I think Tantor is right about the military aspect but discounts the fact that we need verbal support because on some level this administration wishes to avoid having our ability to topple a government be seen as the reasobn it was done. Support is very needed if we are to avoid making "might is right" appear to be a policy, military suopport is probably more harm than good but it's a stronger sign of support than is verbal support.

To end my mini rant I'd say military support is needed for moral support.
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sun 12 Jan, 2003 01:04 pm
Tantor, We're talking about "CURRENT EVENTS." The UN inspectors have been in Iraq for on a few weeks now looking for WMD. Iraq's 12,000 page declaration states they have no WMD. Get with the program! c.i.
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Wed 10 Mar, 2004 04:13 pm
Re: Who's at fault here?
Tantor wrote:

Come the first half of February, we'll be going to kick Saddam out and find the WMD's ourselves.

Tantor


When you said this I remembered to mark this prediction to be called on.

Do you think this is still correct?
0 Replies
 
Tantor
 
  1  
Reply Wed 10 Mar, 2004 04:32 pm
Re: Who's at fault here?
Craven de Kere wrote:
Tantor wrote:

Come the first half of February, we'll be going to kick Saddam out and find the WMD's ourselves.

Tantor


When you said this I remembered to mark this prediction to be called on.

Do you think this is still correct?


Craven,

I'm very surprised that we have not found WMD stockpiles. My guess would have been that we would have found them this time much like we found them last time in Gulf War 1, sitting on the tarmac next to the Iraqi jets, waiting to be loaded.

We know that there are tons of WMDs unaccounted for. Iraq admitted to possessing tons of them after the first Gulf War, the disposition of which is still unknown. My guess is that there were more than Iraq admitted to. They have to be somewhere. My guess is that they are buried in the desert. Mustard gas is viable for a long time. It may be a long time before we find them.

There are some anecdotal accounts from Iraqi army officers of small missiles carried by the Saddam Fedayeen which the bearers claimed were chemical weapons. It's hard to build a case out of these stories though.

Kay did report that there was a network of laboratories for making chemical and biological weapons. He just didn't find their product. It's kind of like finding apple trees without apples. My guess is that there are apples about.

I don't think this story is over. The amount of material we are talking about would fill a large swimming pool. It's not that hard to hide, especially when half your country is desert. And Saddam was fond of burying things.

Tantor
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Wed 10 Mar, 2004 04:37 pm
Any idea on when you'll think this issue will be over. I want to know when to revisit it.

P.S. If it's any consolation I also remember my own disproven suspicions.

On the "Iraq Questions"thread (which you also participated in) back in 2002 I said that I suspected that some chemical weapons had been retained.

I didn't think there would be any serious threats and just stockpiles of non-weaponized chemical weapons but its seems even that isn't the case and if anything will be found it will be on an even more insignificant scale.

Anywho, call back in a month, year, 10 years?

BTW, back in 2002 you were saying how easy it is to hide, I remember at least 3 or 4 posts saying something to that effect. Now you are saying it's hard to hide.

Which is it? Or, what has changed?
0 Replies
 
Tantor
 
  1  
Reply Wed 10 Mar, 2004 06:00 pm
Craven de Kere wrote:
Any idea on when you'll think this issue will be over. I want to know when to revisit it.

P.S. If it's any consolation I also remember my own disproven suspicions.

On the "Iraq Questions"thread (which you also participated in) back in 2002 I said that I suspected that some chemical weapons had been retained.

I didn't think there would be any serious threats and just stockpiles of non-weaponized chemical weapons but its seems even that isn't the case and if anything will be found it will be on an even more insignificant scale.

Anywho, call back in a month, year, 10 years?

BTW, back in 2002 you were saying how easy it is to hide, I remember at least 3 or 4 posts saying something to that effect. Now you are saying it's hard to hide.

Which is it? Or, what has changed?


Well, Craven, I'm in a bad position for meaningful argument here in that I'm requiring the people who rebut my argument that there was WMDs to prove a negative, to prove there never was any WMD. That's obviously impossible.

I still think the WMDs are easy to hide, with the caveat that the Iraqis are so sloppy I would think they would do a bad job of it. For example, when they buried that MiG interceptor but left the tail fins sticking out of the dirt. If they were hidden it seems likely somebody would have talked by now, although the hiding could have been done by a handful of people who have kept quiet.

I would have guessed that our rapid advance in the war would have caught the Iraqis with their WMDs half-deployed. I would have thought that our aircraft would have caught some trucks hauling WMDs on the road and shot them up or found the weapons abandoned by the road when our troops surprised them. The fact that we haven't found any tells me they never tried to deploy them.

I'd like to see some evidence that the Iraqis destroyed their chem and bio weapons. Surely somebody can show the sites where this happenned, if it did, and examination can confirm it. Otherwise, it seems like an open ended issue.

Tantor
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Wed 10 Mar, 2004 06:04 pm
Seems like you ear mark it for one of those "unresolved mysteries". Open-endedly open.

So maybe a more specific query can close this case:

Do you think the claims that Iraqi WMDs posed a clear and present threat to the US are, in retrospect, misplaced? Or is that also open?

Insofar as we don't have definitive info on the fate of all the weapons you are right. But wouldn't you also say that any Iraqi WMD at this juncture would not be the threat it was made out to be?
0 Replies
 
Tantor
 
  1  
Reply Wed 10 Mar, 2004 07:51 pm
Craven de Kere wrote:
Seems like you ear mark it for one of those "unresolved mysteries". Open-endedly open.

So maybe a more specific query can close this case:

Do you think the claims that Iraqi WMDs posed a clear and present threat to the US are, in retrospect, misplaced? Or is that also open?

Insofar as we don't have definitive info on the fate of all the weapons you are right. But wouldn't you also say that any Iraqi WMD at this juncture would not be the threat it was made out to be?


I think it's unknown whether Iraqi WMD posed an immediate threat. I believe they posed a threat in the long term.

Iraq certainly had the capability to manufacture them. The amount of biological agent required to make an attack on American cities is very small, suitcase-sized. Iraq had the will to use them. Iraq supported the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Laurie Mylroie makes a circumstantial case that Saddam was the sponsor of other attacks on US assets overseas. Saddam had a fondness for terrorists, giving them refuge in Iraq. He had covert contacts with Bin Laden.

All these things lead me to believe that Iraq presented a threat. It seems likely that eventually Saddam would use the terrorist connections he had cultivated to deliver an unconventional weapons attack against America.

The problem with my argument is that it is based on probability, rather than certainty. It's something like betting the pot on a poker hand that you think is best, but don't really know. If you win, does that mean it was the right decision? If you lose, does that mean it was wrong?

I'll have to admit that I would have liked a better casus belli, one that would be indisputable when the firing stops.

Tantor
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Thu 11 Mar, 2004 10:47 am
I definitely wanted a better casus belli. Especially because using WMDs in a case when WMDs are a legitimate concern will be problematic in the future.

But I do disagree that we are talking about probability rather than certanty.

IMO, you are talking about possibility with some arguments for why you considered it probable.

I certainly didn't consider it probable at all.
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Thu 11 Mar, 2004 10:57 am
tantor's quote, "I think it's unknown whether Iraqi WMD posed an immediate threat. I believe they posed a threat in the long term." Using this kind of logic, we'd better take action against all our allies with a preemtive nuclear strike, because they "may" pose a long term threat to our security. bah humbug!
0 Replies
 
Tantor
 
  1  
Reply Thu 11 Mar, 2004 12:00 pm
Craven de Kere wrote:
I definitely wanted a better casus belli. Especially because using WMDs in a case when WMDs are a legitimate concern will be problematic in the future.

But I do disagree that we are talking about probability rather than certanty.

IMO, you are talking about possibility with some arguments for why you considered it probable.

I certainly didn't consider it probable at all.


It's true that the current state of affairs makes it more difficult to take action against WMDs in Iran and North Korea.

Iraq had already tried to assassinate former President Bush and supported the first attack on the WTC. That moves Iraqi-sponsored terrorist operations against the US from "possible" to "probable" in my view.

Tantor
0 Replies
 
Tantor
 
  1  
Reply Thu 11 Mar, 2004 12:05 pm
cicerone imposter wrote:
tantor's quote, "I think it's unknown whether Iraqi WMD posed an immediate threat. I believe they posed a threat in the long term." Using this kind of logic, we'd better take action against all our allies with a preemtive nuclear strike, because they "may" pose a long term threat to our security. bah humbug!


It's a false analogy. Our allies have not attacked the US, as Iraq had. They had not tried to intimidate the US by attempting to assassinate a former President. They had not supported an attack on the American homeland. They had not attempted to shoot down our tactical aircraft on six hundred plus occassions during peacetime. Iraq did all of these things, belligerent provocations that signalled its hostile intentions.

Tantor
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Thu 11 Mar, 2004 12:08 pm
When did Iraq attack the United States? I must have slept through that one.
0 Replies
 
Tantor
 
  1  
Reply Thu 11 Mar, 2004 05:06 pm
Setanta wrote:
When did Iraq attack the United States? I must have slept through that one.


Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, got his false identity from Iraqi intelligence. The FBI considers Iraq the sponsor of that attack.

Iraq also sent an assassination team in a car packed with explosives to assassinate former President Bush when he made a post-war tour of Kuwait.

Iraq on 600+ occassions in the late 1990s and into 2003 attempted to shoot down US aircraft patrolling the No Fly Zones in Iraq.

Laurie Mylroie in her book, "The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks: A Study of Revenge" makes a circumstantial case that many of the terror attacks against Americans overseas, such as the African embassy bombings, may have been sponsored by Iraq.

Tantor
0 Replies
 
Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Thu 11 Mar, 2004 05:13 pm
The notion that Ramzi Yousef was working for Iraq and not Al Quaeda has never been established and relies on some pretty convoluted theories.

This is why the US has never alleged this connection theory that perpetuates itself around the internet.

But yes, he did have a fake Iraqi passport. If that were to serve as an indictment against nations American complicity in such acts abounds.

Ramzi Yousef sponsorship theories remain in the realm of unsubstantiated speculation.

The claim that "The FBI considers Iraq the sponsor of that attack" is patently false.
0 Replies
 
 

Related Topics

The "naked revolution" at Belarus' workplaces - Discussion by Walter Hinteler
Russian FSB describes its Tsarnaev letter to FBI - Discussion by gungasnake
Who Really Cares About the Palestinians? - Discussion by Advocate
Accomplices in Destroying UN Member - Discussion by Advocate
Israel Court Rejects Delay In Settlement Evacuation - Discussion by BumbleBeeBoogie
Germany's President Resigns in Scandal - Discussion by Pamela Rosa
6-year-olds working in gold mines in Mali, says Human Rights Watch. Would Newt Gingrich approve? - Discussion by BumbleBeeBoogie
Palestinian Solidarity Campaign disrupts Israeli Concert. Yeah!!! - Discussion by izzythepush
Tunesia, Egyt and now Yemen: a domino effect in the Middle East? - Discussion by Walter Hinteler
"The assault on the 'Mavi Marmara' was wrong, and a gift to Israel's enemies" - Discussion by Robert Gentel
Outrage as gay pair get 14 years' hard labour - Discussion by tsarstepan
 
  1. Forums
  2. » Who's at fault here?
  3. » Page 4
Copyright © 2024 MadLab, LLC :: Terms of Service :: Privacy Policy :: Page generated in 0.04 seconds on 11/13/2024 at 12:35:42
▲ ▼