The US, UN & Iraq III

I would expect people to understand the facts and acknowledge them, rather than painting with broad strokes in an effort to lay blame for everything government does at the feet of a man they despise.

I don't blame Bush for the content of the education bill. I do blame him for signing it. He is accountable for allowing it to become law, but not for coming up with every idea therein. The notion was put forward above that everything that has come out of this legislature has been Bush's idea. That's absurd on its face, and the Kennedy education bill was just one handy example of why.

well, you be interested in a stable and viable iraq, i'll be more interested in a stable and viable america, one which can not be so if the lies continue to build up by the current administration.

and how dare you call the efforts of the US military in iraq a "concerted effort" to find wmd when the bushevik adminstration pulled entire units of inspectors and investigators hunting for wmd from iraq last month. even judith miller of the ny times, the imbedded reporter with these units called into question the removal from iraq of the unit she was with. and this was the reporter who initially broke the stories on the military's belief that wmd existed.

we destroyed a soveriegn nation and scattered its people to the wind all because they were allegedly capable of hitting the US within 45 minutes with wmd, and now since we can not find them and have reduced the personnel looking for them all that you can say essentially is "whatever."

all i see from your attitude is an inclination to drop down the memory hole anything that discomforts your position.

i recommend that you change your avatar to an ostrich. it will suit you better.

Re: a

I have 100% certainly that you exist, but 0% knowledge of your location. :wink:

Look, you can reasonably argue that we should know where they are or what happened to them. (I would disagree, but it would be a reasonable complaint.) But given the reams of information from past inspections and other independent sources, I simply don't think you can reasonably argue that the WMDs don't exist. The question is not whether they are, but where and in what condition.

And if you actually believe that Saddam destroyed them all, had no stockpiles and no programs to develop any, then explain for me what motivation he had to hide that fact from the world. I can't believe that he would keep from us a fact that would have kept him in power and ended sanctions.

I agree with Scrat about the education bill -- it was meant as an olive branch handed to the Democrats which worked to an extent (some believe, to too much of an extent!) There was no way Bush was going to insert the voucher system into that bill as that would have destroyed the detente he was feebly attempting to establish.

I believe discussing the existance or non-existance of WMD in Iraq futile at this moment and to try and make any reason out of Sadaam to be difficult (he wasn't working with a full deck) and why he would or would not protect his regime could reveal him as extremely stubborn or pathetically foolish.
Maybe both!

a
Gelisgesti is a series of zeros and ones in cyberspace. That is an acceptable truth
That you know otherwise is a manufactured truth upon which you base a false series of justifications.

"We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press.

yet the US military are sending home the units to find them?

if the adminstration was serious about finding wmd they would have the aforementioned areas searched the same way the british bobbies scoured the fields where the lockerbee plane bombing debris landed.

Scrat -- I don't believe WMD's (least of all non-existent WMD's) join chat rooms. Maybe that's why you can't prove they're there? Perhaps you should get out and about more?

It's the old shell game with Rumsfeld and reflects on his personal credibility (which I don't believe he's ever possessed anyway). If it's true the units to find the weapons are being sent home, that's certainly a sign the administration is going to take a different path in justifying the war. Good luck.

a
WMD=WIPE MY DUPA

Gel, thanks -- I needed that this morning. But would you come over an clean the coffee off my laptop keys?

Kuvasz



There indeed was a concerted effort to find the WMD's. However, I can only conclude that the administration has finally come to the conclusion that they do not exist despite the rhetoric to the contrary.
I would also suggest that you try to keep the discussion on a civil level. If you have that ability. Sarcasm is not appreciated.

Well, i have been reading here, there seems to be a lot of different ideas on all the views of the war and the administration who decided we needed to go to war.
I hear a lot of people talk, and I read a bunch of papers on current events. Coming to this conclusion, I cannot see where any one of these people's arguments from any direction, shows us proof there was an urgency to get over there and stop Sadam instantly!
What has happened is that hundreds and hundreds o f people have died, and almost none of them were in the decision makeing group that said we had to go to war right now. No one has found any nuclear or biological weapon, and even if they wanted to have them, I just cannot believe they were anywhere near ready to do that. And I cannot see why a big country like ours would have any trouble finding that out.
I have a mind myself and I have an opinion: I really think that the intelligence showed us that a weak Iraq could be captured right now, and manipulated to be what the conquerer wanted. But you have to be a cold, hard hearted greedy government to come in on a small country of people who were already victims of a greedy dictator.
Bush and Blair had to know that many of the Iraqis would die. How could they care, when they did what they did.
Some people here are arguing that Saddem needed to be moved anyway. I think that is what Bush said too. but I am with Tartarien, there should be someone to pay for the wrong they done. If the other people in this country have to pay fines, do service or do "time" for their deliberate acts that were lies, why not set the example with the top?
I don't want to be one of those guys who joins our military and is SO trained to fight and be a Victor, that I lose sight of all the reasons why I am going there and doing that.
I dont care nothing about starting any argument with people here who like Bush and his party. Some of them have some good ideas. but mostly it is the will of the people that can get good things done.
I do not think Bush is counting the people. Sorry, I do not think he counts some at all.

updated 11:30 a.m. ET August 1, 2003 Kay asks politicians, public to be patient There's progress. And then there's "progress." David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector who is leading the CIA's weapons investigation, says his team is making progress in the search for weapons of mass destruction. But it hasn't found any yet. CNN says Mr. Kay – who has been in Iraq for a month and a half – said that "it's very likely that we will discover remarkable surprises in this enterprise." Kay concedes it is theoretically possible that Iraq did not have banned weapons, but he says, "That's not what I believe the evidence we're seeing is going to lead us to." Kay asked politicians and the public to be patient while the search continues. But some Democrats are having none of that. On Wednesday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, chided White House officials for what he sees as a retreat from their original assessment of the Iraqi threat by pointing to evidence of weapons programs, rather than to actual weapons. (This change in position was also apparent in Mr. Bush's press conference on Thursday, when he said he was confident that evidence of Iraq's weapons "program" would be found, but said nothing about the actual weapons themselves.) "Programs don't do it. Programs cannot be fired, programs don't get somewhere in 45 minutes, programs are not weaponized, and it was weapons that we were told about," Mr. Rockefeller said. And after the hearing on Thursday, Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, said "It's looking more and more like a case of mass deception. There was no imminent danger, and we should never have gone to war." Kay says he is counting on Iraqis to help him find the WMD. But two stories in The Washington Post point to the difficulties he faces. On Wednesday the Post reported that administration sources have told it that Kay and his team are having trouble finding scientists to support its prewar claims that Iraq was pursuing an aggressive program to develop WMD.
No matter the circumstances, all of the scientists interviewed have denied that Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program or developed and hidden chemical or biological weapons since United Nations inspectors left in 1998 ... The White House, for instance, has cited the case of nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi, who recently dug up plans and components for a gas centrifuge that he said he buried in 1991 at the end of the Persian Gulf War. The White House has pointed to the discovery as a sign of Hussein's continuing nuclear ambitions, but Obeidi told his interrogators that Iraq's nuclear program was dormant in the years before war began in March.

Certainly if the scientist had to "dig up" the plans, one could assume they weren't exactly in current use!

Don't forget, too, Au, that gradual switch in vocabulary chez Bush. Used to say: we'll find WMD's. Now says: we'll find a WMD program. Remember?

I keep thinking he'll sooner find a white supremacist "program" in his own backyard to remove all but whites from the US. And then too, about half the voters in the US have a "program" to keep Bush out of the White House after December 2004!

Aha, tartarin - they found a white supremacy church in Louisiana. Funny story. Seems a car crashed into a storefront that presented itself as a home goods store. When the car crashed into it, what it brought down were stacks and piles of literature and material on shelves, all violently white supremacy. Place was actually a white supremacy church. The guy who ran it had been a supreme leader in the Klan, and a friend of David Duke. Moving ever closer to Washington. I mean, we're discriminating against Catholics by way of William Pryor, against a lot of other groups with all the prayer meetings in Ashcroft's and other offices - why, what should we do, Sister Anne? Get the trees ready.

What should WE do, Sister Mamaj!

Nuke Duke? Crush Bush? Smash Ashcroft? Whammy Rummy?

I dunno. Some PEACE and quiet would be a nice change.

The reports I heard today, fleetingly, about Afghanistan were horrific. Neglect. Violence. Desperation.

Ah, what a tangled web we weave...

when is it sarcasm to help a friend?

here ya' go au.

Now, isn't all this interesting? http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1011460,00.html

Might this zesty and refreshing and revolutionary political world witness another "coalition" forming, one which George Bush himself might, without help from a Canadian speech writer, christen the "axle of righteousness". The four members will give press briefings to fill us all in on what's going down - London, Washington, Jerusalem and Rome.

Ah. Anglo-America's answer to dangerous fundamentalism in the Middle East...

JFC