The Invasion of Iraq was Justified - From Another Thread

Brandon

The old old arguments about wmd are worn out. And your side lost. When will you just accept that they were never anything but an excuse, a fig leaf of legitimacy, to cloak a war policy that had been decided upon in the W camp even before he was elected?

"If a policeman frisks a criminal because there is a 25% chance he has a gun on him, the fact that he ultimately doesn't find it certainly doesn't mean that he shouldn't have frisked him."

Oh come off it Brandon

We were told 100% certain that Saddam had wmd.
And we didn't frisk, we bombed. Illegally invaded Iraq, deposed the President and killed his two sons. Thats heavy frisking.

The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that contradicts nearly every prewar assertion made by top administration officials about Iraq.

Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, said Hussein's ability to produce nuclear weapons had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."

The findings were similar on biological and chemical weapons. While Hussein had long dreamed of developing an arsenal of biological agents, his stockpiles had been destroyed and research stopped years before the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Duelfer said Hussein hoped someday to resume a chemical weapons effort after U.N. sanctions ended, but had no stocks and had not researched making the weapons for a dozen years.

And why do we know all this now?

We had waited a month or two over and over for 12 years. Satellites are hardly omniscient. They can't even see the ground on a cloudy day. Had the lying murderer Hussein been continuing to perfect the weapons, and we really don't know when he stopped doing this, there would have been very serious danger.

McGentrix wrote:

And why do we know all this now?

The question presumes that simply since ISG was created after the invasion, this information was not known prior to the invasion. THe properly accented question should be

And why do we know all this now? Because THEY didn't want us to know it before the invasion, since the majority of Americans' justification for throwing their support for the invasion was based on the imminent fear of being attacked again, this time on a (more) massive scale. In effect, fear was used to subvert popular opinion to accept an otherwise unacceptable and unnecessarily disproportionate course of action.

And the answer to Brandon9K argument that reasons we were given doesn't matter, is that what separates a true democracy from a pretend-democracy is the transparency of the government towards their boss, the populace.

No, my accent was placed correctly. Out of curiosity, when you said "Because THEY didn't want us to know it before the invasion,", who is "THEY"?

Quote:

No, my accent was placed correctly. Out of curiosity, when you said "Because THEY didn't want us to know it before the invasion,", who is "THEY"?

Why, the current administration, who knew very well that the evidence for the WMD case in Iraq was shaky, and went ahead anyways.

Cycloptichorn

Are you basing your accusation to Cycloptichorn based on the answer to the question you posed?

I do agree with the answer, even though I am not cycloptichorn, but thanks for the confusion, and compliment.

(edited for clarification)

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

Adrian wrote:

Brandon

The proliferation of WMD is a serious concern and one that needs to be dealt with.

There are institutions through which to do this.

Saddam was a bad guy who did bad things and needed to be dealt with.

Again, there are institutions through which to do this.

This war would be justified if the US had gotten a UN resolution. They didn't.

Nothing done after that point can be justified. Even if it eventually results in good.

Ends vs Means.

We gave the institutions 11 years. They failed. Just like the behavior of the now exitinct League of Nations. Since there is grave danger posed by WMD, and there might have been a time window of opportunity before he perfected the weapons, we acted. We ought never to give other countries a veto power on our right to defend ourselves. Anyone who is in grave danger and sits there impotently arguing points of law is a fool. Anyway, what is the point of a body that threatens grave consequences for non-compliance, but doesn't enforce its declarations?