The US, UN & Iraq III

Blatham, do you mean 'the hippy dippy weatherman'?

remember who he was/is?

George Carlin.

Weather report for South of the border:

Chili today, hot tamale.

and enchilada in my soul

er...

Weather currently sunny sw breeze 20 deg 1002 mbar moon rises and sets and then comes round again, mbar did anyone say minibar? could do with a beer...

Now WHAT happened to all those REAL internet warriors that we had on a2k just before the Iraq adventure? I'm thinking in particular of Percy. Why so quiet now. Or were they banned or shot or something?

I've wondered that too, Steve, particularly about Timber.

I do miss timberlandko, a voice of reason in the quagmire.

BillW

Agree

That's the problem. Too much agreement. We need a good wholesome war, its been almost 2 months since we had one. Somalia anybody?

Or football? (Beckham/Barca, Ronaldinho/ManU, Schmeichel/ugh!, yuck! )

Summer reading for the seriously political:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0871138549/qid=1054833607/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-9186574-9811043

Hush Steve, I'm sure Bush would comply and Blair would think, "He wouldn't lie to me twice, would he!"

I dare you, catch him telling the truth - betcha can't.

Well, Tartarin, football is serious - and can lead to war, not referring to a war after the "did-the-ball-really-really-cross-the-line-final", but to the one between San Salvator and Honduras in 1969 (?).

Since tart's offerings always present information along with opinion, tempered with humor, I find her posts very interesting. More so than a number of others. Innuendo doesn't have quite the same effect. And personal attacks always seem tinged with bitterness.

Douglas Feith testiified that there was a special intelligence unit set up to gather intelligence and present it to the Pentagon. This intelligence unit was composed of 2 - 6 people, and he denied that anything was slanted to give Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz the information they wanted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/05/international/worldspecial/05PENT.html

U.S. chemical experts of the 101st Airborne Division examine a pod that may have been intended as a delivery system for a chemical-biological agent

Where are Iraq's WMDs?
The message was plain: Saddam's weapons of mass destruction made war unavoidable. So where are they? Inside the administration's civil war over intel

By Evan Thomas, Richard Wolffe and Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK


June 9 issue ?- George Tenet, the director of Central Intelligence, was frustrated. For four days and nights last winter, some of the most astute intelligence analysts in the U.S. government sat around Tenet's conference-room table in his wood-paneled office in Langley, Va., trying to prove that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to America. The spooks were not having an easy time of it.

ON FEB. 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell was scheduled to go to the United Nations and make the case that Saddam possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. But the evidence was thin?-sketchy and speculative, or uncorroborated, or just not credible. Finally, according to a government official who was there, Tenet leaned back in his chair and said, "Everyone thinks we're Tom Cruise. We're not. We can't look into every bedroom and listen to every conversation. Hell, we can't even listen to the new cell phones some of the terrorists are using."

Tenet was being truthful. Spying can help win wars (think of the Allies' cracking the Axis codes in World War II), but intelligence is more often an incomplete puzzle (think of Pearl Harbor). Honest spies appreciate their own limitations. Their political masters, however, often prefer the Hollywood version. They want certainty and omniscience, not hedges and ambiguity. Bush administration officials wanted to be able to say, for certain, that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of chem-bio weapons; that he could make a nuclear bomb inside a year; that he was conspiring with Al Qaeda to attack America.

And that is, by and large, what they did say. On close examination, some of the statements about Saddam and his WMD made by President George W. Bush and his top lieutenants in the months leading up to the Iraq war included qualifiers or nuances. But the effect?-and the intent?-was to convince most Americans that Saddam presented a clear and present danger and had to be removed by going to war.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/919753.asp

Also: Related Story - ?'Why Rumsfeld Is Wrong'

http://www.msnbc.com/news/920238.asp

You're one up on me there Walter. Where is Schmeichal going?

Either second row or he says 'Good Bye', since Seaman ...

Walter -- the local basketball team won big last night in a big league game and the fans are going nuts. Psychologist from one of the big hospitals was commenting on the radio this morning that this was so GOOD for people to go nuts and "express themselves" after a game, and "get rid of stress" having "concentrated a healthy hatred on the other team and its fans"... I was remembering futbol games and barely escaping with one's life after the final "GOL!!" Only in America is hatred "healthy" and GOOD for people!

Tartarin

Balls and testosterone go together. Despite your young looks, you ought to know that.

From the BBC (my comments in capitals)

The US has rejected calls for the return of UN inspectors to hunt for Iraqi weapons. WHAT POSSIBLE REASON FOR THIS?

But it has said it plans to widen the search, by interviewing low-ranking officials and relying on interrogations of alleged war criminals.

A small team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is due to arrive in Iraq on Friday to check on looting of atomic materials, but the US has barred it from visiting all but one site at a nuclear research complex south of Baghdad. SURELY IT WAS SADDAM WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BAR WEAPONS INSPECTORS, NOT THE US.

US Defense Department officials quoted by Reuters news agency are insisting that US troops accompany (JUST LIKE THEY INSISTED SADDAM DID NOT DO) the UN inspectors at the site, and that the visit sets no precedent for a future role in Iraq for the IAEA. NO ROLE FORE THE IAEA = AMERICAN 2 FINGERED SALUTE. JUST WHAT IS GOING ON?

While I can't claim to know the reasons, I can think of at least two that are plausible and likely...

1) The US might not be able to (or might not want to have to) guarantee the safety of said inspectors.

2) The US might reasonably have serious questions as to whether UN inspectors have the same goals and interests as we.

Scrat

You gave two reasons.

When are you posting the -by yourself- promised "plausible and likely" ones?