The US, UN & Iraq III

It was a pre-emptive strike folks, you can't do this and then say, "Oops, I goofed - they destroyed them to make us look bad". Get real!

z
UH.... UMMMMM.....SORRY, HAVE A NICE DAY

I'm pretty sure no one refutes that at one time Iraq had WoMD (chemical/biologic) and used them against the Kurds and Iran. I'm also pretty sure the US has chemical/biologic as well as nuclear WoMD and has used them. In both cases the issue is intent. Finding trailers that might or might not have been used for manufacture of said WoMD is not, in itself, a defense of preemption. The bill of goods sold to Congress/ US citizens/UN/The World was that Iraq had immediate availability for use/attack of other nations. The attack on Iraq was illegal by UN standards and by defining internal US legality is simply avoiding the issue. If Iraq passed legislation defining the US has having WoMD to justify preemptive attack on the US, we would have been the first to decry its "illegality." This claim of preemption as justification is, at best, a smoke and mirrors dance of justification for a policy that allowed no alternatives. That the US was going to invade Iraq regardless of WoMD/ regardless of findings of the UN and regardless of any world opinion is obvious.

My apologies for having misunderstood the tenor of your first statement--i considered that in writing "Iraq DID have" you referred to the point at which we launched this war. In that you apparently are saying that any given point before the war, Iraq did, i will concede that.

I leave my criticism of your second statement as it is.

wooo

set/sophy bust up

could get messy, but no WMD of course, we are all civilised here (except

well me of course

I didn't catch the whole thing, but there was a news item on t.v. a moment ago about the intelligence report stated they have no proof of chemical weapons in Iraq dated before the Iraq war. c.i.

WASHINGTON - The Defense Intelligence Agency last fall could not pin down the location of any chemical weapons facilities in Iraq (news - web sites) but had no doubt about the existence of programs designed to produce chemical and other weapons of mass destruction, the DIA's director said Friday. "We could not specifically pin down individual facilities operating as part of the weapons of mass destruction program, specifically the chemical warfare portion," Jacoby said at a joint news conference with Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., and Stephen Cambone, the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s intelligence chief.

This is not exactly the information that Bush/Rumsfeld/Powell presented to either Congress or the UN. Someone lied. Any guesses?

yep--
dys said--I'm pretty sure no one refutes that at one time Iraq had WoMD (chemical/biologic) and used them against the Kurds and Iran.
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I'd have to trawl back eight or so pages to find the comment which led me to state the obvious. Someone made it appear that WMDs were a figment of W's imagination.

And, of late, I am increasingly interested in where they are, how long they've been there and if they were hidden, moved, destroyed or what???

Walter,

I stand corrected. Thanks.

I don't think the EU is evil. I will be fascinated to watch the process of assimilating many new members while, at the same time the nations of the EU attempt to work out a constitution. Will it be a confederacy of sovereign states or a sovereign union of states?

I think that many Europeans tend to see the United States as a rather unruly and hardly suitable candidate for membership. We , of course, are a spectator, not a candidate.

Oh Yeah, well i'll bet our lunatic fringe can kick ass on their lunatic fringe . . .

Steve,

Have you ever been to Chile? Do you know much about its history? I have spent several years there and evidently have a very different view than you. Pinochet led a military intervention that rescued Chile from an incipient revolution and civil war. He ruled for a period of transition and handed over power on the date he promised, leaving the strongest and fastest growing economy in South America.

Overall that record is a good deal better than that of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.

Holy mackerel!

quick recap....Rumsfeld said "We know where the WOMD are" and then he listed several specific locales. The exact quote was entered here several days ago.

sofia

You've already bought the PR line on those trailers, saying there ARE 'mobile bioweapons labs'. This isn't by any means established.

The fellow quoted on the last page mentions the 'press reports' which describe the trailer. If you type in "trailers Iraq" or some such combination on google news, you'll get the recent press. BUT it all refers back to the same initial CIA source(s). In other words, there aren't a lot of press hounding about and writing good reportage...they are just repeating. Check it out.

George - I know a number of Chilean families who would most likely disagree with you. And we, of course, were instrumental in getting rid of Allende and installing Pinochet. And he wanted to hang on as long as he could. You take a very charitable view of a man who committed as many atrocities as Saddam Hussein (there are many familes of the disappeared still living in Chile). And the economic situation in Chile did not come about under his benevolent rule, but has been occurring since they managed to elect a whole new political body.

What is difficult to understand is why the WH has not recognized Chile before this, given that their economy is one of the best and most stable in South America.

Setanta - at this point we ARE the lunatic fringe.

This from MSNBC: Pentagon intelligence does not support WMD claims.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/923165.asp?vts=060620032055

The following was posted an hour or so ago in the NYTimes. I've cut and pasted the opener of a longish article:


Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use
By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD


American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.

"Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion," said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on condition that he not be identified. He added, "I am very upset with the process."

The Bush administration has said the two trailers, which allied forces found in Iraq in April and May, are evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding a program for biological warfare. In a white paper last week, it publicly detailed its case, even while conceding discrepancies in the evidence and a lack of hard proof.

Now, intelligence analysts stationed in the Middle East, as well as in the United States and Britain, are disclosing serious doubts about the administration's conclusions in what appears to be a bitter debate within the intelligence community. Skeptics said their initial judgments of a weapon application for the trailers had faltered as new evidence came to light...

Okay - so what do you suppose will be the next step? We have a little problem here, like saving face in a big way. But with more and more legitimate sources disclaiming the WMD, and with Iraq not going so smoothly, and Afghanistan very rough, and no Osama, no Saddam, no mullahs - what's the next alibi? And will it be swallowable?

Tartarin

Thank you kindly. We'll all recall what Bush said about the trailers just two or three days ago.

How many times do folks have to be lied to, or manipulated, before they begin to think maybe they are being lied to, and manipulated.

blatham, Those who want to believe what this administration keeps saying will not investigate the media on their own. They can't handle the truth! c.i.