The US, UN & Iraq III

Refuses beers! I don't believe it. c.i.

" India's ruling Hindu nationalists are under pressure both from military and political circles to turn down a request from the United States to deploy Indian troops in war-ravaged Iraq, sources said. Some diplomats here said the delay of more than a month to respond to Washington's request could amount to a "polite" refusal by New Delhi to send more than 10,000 troops to Iraq."

If we can't fine Weapons of Mass Destruction just change the name to "tools of mass murder."
"President George W. Bush flew over Iraq on Thursday, en route home from a busy week of diplomacy in Europe and the Middle East, and again asserted that the ousted government of Saddam Hussein had hidden "tools of mass murder." And he declared confidently that they would eventually be found.

dys, "The tools of mass murder" was our military against the Iraqis. c.i.

Just something to ponder...

Is it more important that the US govt concentrates on reforming the Iraqi government and infrastructure with only a minor side effort to continue looking for WMDs,

or

The US govt should be putting a major focus on finding the WMDs and only place a minor effort into fixing the infrastructure and getting a govt setup?

McGentrix,

I think teh pojnt many are making is that the case made about the WMDs suggested that we would not have to spend much effort at all in locating them.

The US administration stated in no uncertain terms that they knew (not suspected, heard of but KNEW) that there were WMDs and that they had proof (that couldn't be disclosed).

The question is not about how much effort the US should spend in finding them.

The problem is that many feel that the US overstated the WMD case to gain support for the war.

What do you think? Do you think the US exaggerated the threat of WMDs? Do you think a "musroom cloud" (in way of a smoking gun) was imminent?

Yes I think think the case for WMD was exaggerated. As for the mushroom cloud theory, all I can say is that we now KNOW that no terrorist organization will be getting any WMD's from the Hussein regime.

I also feel that the WMD do and did exist, which I get the feeling that many people don't. I also think that WMD were not the only reason that we invaded Iraq, but that is what the Media picked up on the most. I can honestly say that I have the faith that our government has the interest of the country at heart. Again, I feel that there are many people who do not feel the same way I do.

Finally, I think that the case for finding the WMD has approached mythical proportions and no matter what should happen, some people will not be satisfied.

McGentrix,

"The Media" did not hype the WMDs. The Bush Administration used it as a casus belli because all the other reasons, no matter how justified one might think they are, did not give the US even a little legal cover.

The use of WMDs as a casus belli was a legal necessity.

As bad as Saddam was/is we can't allow any nation to decide that another leader is so bad that a nation should be invaded. Were that a rule and were other nations able many would use their hatred for Bush to justify invading us.

Bush's only legal cover was the WMDs and he exaggerated it.

I too long believed that WMDs existed and still exist. But I'm starting to think that the WMDs, id any, are in quantities and a state wholly incompatible with the rush toward war.

Blair said the WMDs could be ready to use in a matter of minutes. Apocalyptic scenarios were bandied about.

Regardless of whether there were WMDs or not it seems the case was overstated.

A common war whoop was "we will not allow this nation to be held hostage by the worst people with the worst weapons"(not verbatim, by memory).

It appears that we were not as threatened as we were led to believe.

You might not care about the WMD angle in light of the other reasons to go to war in Iraq but the WMD question was the only one that gave us a mandate.

Without overplaying the WMDs there would be no war.

And it was certainly not the media doing it. It was the US and the UK.

NIMH wrote a very good response to this, I'll ask him if I can quote it to avoid having to type myself.

Way to go, McGentrix, you are on the party line. Just yesterday one of the robo-reporters on Fox was putting out the the word that maybe it the MEDIA which emphasized those weapons (er) Tools 0f Mass destruction and not the White House.

Oh, yes, it's time once again to blame those pesky liberal media types for the distortion of our wonderful unelected, demi-semi-selected(that's less than half) President.

Oh yeah, I remember now, it wasn't the President and Vice-President and Colin Powell deeply intoning the IMMEDIATE THREAT to our security because of the tons, oh never mind.
====

I hate to tell you, but we only know this IF the President was wrong or lying or both. If what he said before the war was true we better make damned sure we find all the tons of stuff, else guess where they will wind up?
But if he was lying or wrong or just making stuff up so we could launch up, well, then we don't have any worries at all do we?

Unless we start listening to his next speechs with a bit more jaundiced ear,
and lose all faith in the democratic system because of a Presidential lie.

(Oops... That's really supposed to happen only if you remember that other Presidential lie.)

I'm going to go stare out the window.

Joe

X X X

What we can be pretty sure is that some terrorist regime is getting WMD's from us right now -- we just haven't called them "terrorist" yet, not until the money is in the bank...

Steve - I suspect you are pulling my leg, but if not, what am I to do to help someone that dumb?

I think most of us are pretty clear on the subject of biological and germ weapons in Iraq. Those inspectors didn't spend all that time there just to look at the sites. And I think most of us are pretty clear on Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. But that's not the discussion.

What we did - no matter what they tried to call it - was to invade another country only on our say-so. And then to try to justify it by twisting around the WMD. And we got caught in our lies. The media was fed its information by the WH, and is only now beginning to do the questioning.

And while I am no Frankophile, the stand on France got twisted too. France and Germany had declared their opposition to this incursion from the beginning, and had offered reasons why, and alternate suggestions. They stood by their positions, and then, afterwards, a rather juvenile president called them names.

Tonight, I heard Senators Lugar and Biden both state that they thought the WMD position had been hyped, and that the only real way out in rebuilding Iraq was to get international help, otherwise, it didn't seem so rosy. Now why should any country want to come in and offer help at this point without receiving something in return? And the WH is obviously reluctant to share the spoils of war with anyone, including the Brits. So it seems to me that we have a problem. And that is part of why producing evidence of impending danger from Saddam's WMD is such a necessary thing now. Without it, who and what are we?

Scrat, just bear with me, I'll get the hang of simultaneous cumulative iterative processes soon enough. As soon as I've figured out this time business.

Regarding media hype of WMD, Scott Ritter (Unscom chief weapons inspector and most outspoken whistle blower) has long insisted that Iraq was "fundamentally disarmed" between 1991 and 1998.

Unscom executive chairman Rolf Ekeus stated in May 2000 that "in all areas we have eliminated Iraq's WMD capabilities fundamentally."

But a search of the Guardian/Observer site (considered left of centre) gave 6932 articles mentioning "Iraq" this year, 913 for "Iraq and WMD", 12 for "Ritter" and 2 for "Ekeus".

The Independent (again considered left/anti war) gave the figures 5822 905 24 and 4.

Neither Newsnight (BBC "heavyweight" current affairs), BBCTV news or ITN news interviewed Ritter at all this year. But war supporters Richard Perle Ken Adelman and James Rubin were interviewed "endlessly". George Entwistle editor of newsnight when asked why they had not interviewed Scott Ritter said "I don't particularly have an answer for that; we just haven't"

-- info from todays Newstatesman

Craven is right. None of the real reasons for invading Iraq (even to get rid of a nasty dictator -not high on GWB's list of priorities but a reason with which many people can sympathise) was ever supported by International Law.

So they highlighted where Saddam was in breech of the law i.e. his failure to disarm absolutely of his WMD as required by various UN resolutions, exaggerated the situation, and then took it to its logical conclusion, i.e. the invasion that Bush desired from the outset.

The only people who should feel misled or betrayed by the failure to find WMD in Iraq are those who actually thought WMD was the real reason for the invasion and not (as it most clearly was) just the excuse given for public consumption to start a war.

ZOUNDS . . . the emperor has no clothes ! ! !

Oh cruel truth, oh wicked reality . . .

I'm so disillusioned . . .

Now we know why the emperor wears his parachute harness, even when he is on the ground....

"Believe me, just like Iraq has WMD, I have balls" - Too bad, no one can seem to find them

posted this on another thread, but it ought to be included here as well...

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/documents/02931077.htm

ZOUNDS . . . the emperor has no clothes ! ! !

Oh cruel truth, oh wicked reality . . .

I'm so disillusioned . . .


lol Setanta, do I detect a note of sarcasm here?

steve

Thank you kindly...those are significant figures. I think they suggest two important tendencies in modern media:

1) Increasingly, marketing strategies are being brought to political discourse (positioning - Bush the brave fighter pilot, Sadaam the baby killer; repetition of message, etc). These aren't hit and miss techniques, they've been honed by marketers over more than half a century. The right has clearly understood this, and has gotten very well organized to utilize these techniques. Richard Perle and Ann Coulter are ubiquitous because they understand that the media is a voracious vacuum that will fill up with something...so they fill it with their voices.

2) modern media, increasingly under corporate control is functioning exactly as one ought to expect. There seems to be two main components to this. First, that it is functioning increasingly as a facilitator for corporate interests. Why wouldn't it? Secondly, because news outlets are increasingly falling under the wing of typical bottom-line operational values, they are falling away from the classic moral agent role of 'afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted' and towards a role of 'give em what they want for as cheap as possible'. So, foreign bureaus disappear. And...this is the one I find most worrisome...because it is much cheaper to simply act as a receipt point for pre-packaged 'news' than it is to have teams of investigators digging through mounds of paper or doing series of possibly valueless interviews, the press is increasingly becoming a glorified stenographer for those who have power, money, and access.