msolga wrote:msolga wrote:Asherman wrote:... If, if, if, if ........
All these "ifs" are no excuse for invading a country that has not threatened you with war or invasion.
Nor will they change the stated reason for the US invasion of Iraq: Iraq's supposed hidden weapons of mass destruction.
Since you seem to have missed it...
We still hear this claim that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This is aside from the point that both our CIA and British intelligence indicated that there were prior to the spring of 03, and even after democrats started accusing the US military and the Bush administration of allowing hoodlums to "loot" 400 tons of the kinds of high explosives used in implosion bombs. In real life of course, nobody "loots" 400 tons of anything; that stuff got hauled off to Syria in 18-wheelers during the extra half a year which the UN, Jake Shellac, Hans Blix et. al. provided Hussein with prior to the operation.
Now, nobody uses implosion-bomb explosives to load up 308 or 22-250 ammo for groundhogs on the south 40. You use that stuff to make atom bombs with, and there is irrefutable evidence at this point that North Korea, Iraq, and Libya were cooperating on some sort of a scheme which would have ended up with atom bombs on the tips or rockets based in Libya and pointed at Europe and North America. Muammar Khadaffi basically gave up on all that, handed the **** over and renounced the whole deal after the consequences of it were explained to him.
Now, again aside from all of that, there is overwhelming evidence connecting Saddam Hussein with the anthrax attacks which followed 9-11 including poisoning the US senate office building with anthrax.
Moreover, it does not take hundreds of tons of that stuff to create havoc. The sum total which was used was a few teaspoons full. In other words, a lifetime supply of that sort of thing for a guy like Saddam Hussein could easily amount to a hundred pounds worth, and I guarantee that I could hide that in a country the size of Iraq so that it would not be found.
The question of whether or not Hussein had 1000 tons of anthrax powder is simply the wrong question. The right questions are, did the guy have the motive, the technical resources, the financial wherewithal, the facilities, and the intel apparatus to play that sort of game, and the answers to all of those questions are obvious.
The first case of anthrax after 9-11 (Bob Stevens) showed up within miles of where several hijackers stayed JUST BEFORE 9/11, a very unlikely coincidence considering that they could have stayed anywhere in the country.
The last previous case of anthrax in a human in the United States prior to 9-11 had been about 30 years prior to that.
There are other coincidences. For instance, the wife of the editor of the sun (where Stevens worked) also had contact with the hijackers in that she rented them the place they stayed.
Atta and the hijackers flew planes out of an airport in the vicinity and asked about crop dusters on more than one occasion. Indeed, Atta sought a loan to try and modify a crop duster.
Atta and several of the hijackers in this group also sought medical aid just prior to 9/11 for skin lesions that the doctors who saw them now say looked like anthrax lesions.
Basically, you either believe in the laws of probability or you don't. Anybody claiming that all these things were coincidences is either totally in denial or does not believe in modern mathematics and probability theory.
While the anthrax in question originally came from a US strain, it isn't too surprising that Iraq might have that strain since that strain was mailed to laboratories around the world years earlier.
Nonetheless, it was highly sophisticated, and went through envelope paper as if it weren't even there; many thought it to be not only beyond the capabilities of Hussein but of anybody else on the planet as well including us. Nonetheless, later information showed Husseins programs to be capable of such feats:
http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html
Quote:
In a major development, potentially as significant as the capture of Saddam Hussein, investigative journalist Richard Miniter says there is evidence to indicate Saddam's anthrax program was capable of producing the kind of anthrax that hit America shortly after 9/11. Miniter, author of Losing bin Laden, told Accuracy in Media that during November he interviewed U.S. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay in Baghdad and that he was "absolutely shocked and astonished" at the sophistication of the Iraqi program.
Miniter said that Kay told him that, . That would make the former regime of Saddam Hussein the most sophisticated manufacturer of anthrax in the world." Miniter said there are "intriguing similarities" between the nature of the anthrax that could be produced by Saddam and what hit America after 9/11. The key similarity is that the anthrax is produced in such a way that "hangs in the air much longer than anthrax normally would" and is therefore more lethal.
Basically, the anthrax attack which followed 9/11 had Saddam Hussein's fingerprints all over it. It was particalized so finely it went right through envelop paper and yet was not weaponized (not hardened against antibiotics). It was basically a warning, saying as much as:
Quote:
"Hey, fools, some of my friends just knocked your two towers down and if you try to do anything about it, this is what could happen. F*** you, and have a nice day!!"
There is no way an American who had had anything to do with that would not be behind bars by now. In fact the one American they originally suspected told investigators that if he'd had anything to do with that stuff, he would either have anthrax or have the antibodies from the preventive medicine in his blood and offered to take a blood test on the spot. That of course was unanswerable.
The basic American notion of a presumption of innocence is not meaningful or useful in cases like that of Saddam Hussein. Even the Japanese had the decency to have their own markings on their aircraft at Pearl Harbor; Nobody had to guess who did it. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, is like the kid in school who was always standing around snickering when things went bad, but who could never be shown to have had a hand in anything directly. At some point, guys would start to kick that guy's ass periodically on general principles. Likewise, in the case of Saddam Hussein, the reasonable assumption is that he's guilty unless he somehow or other manages to prove himself innocent and, obviously, that did not happen.
At the time, the US military was in such disarray from the eight years of the Clinton regime that there was nothing we could do about it. Even such basic items as machinegun barrels, which we should have warehouses full of, were simply not there. Nonetheless, nobody should think they would get away with such a thing and, apparently, Hussein and his baathists didn't.
Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War" documents some of this:
Quote:
'Cheney?s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, quickly questions the wisdom of mentioning state sponsorship. Tenet, sensitive to the politics of Capitol Hill and the news media, terminates any discussion of state sponsorship
with the clear statement:
Quote:"I'm not going to talk about a state sponsor."
'Vice President Cheney further drives the point home:
Quote:
"It's good that we don't, because we're not ready to do anything about it."
