Bush supporters' aftermath thread II

Oh yes! I remember Kay. He was an UNSCOM inspector. And head of the "Iraq Survey Group".

And what exactly did he say re Iraqi possession of WMD?

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which he led, a fact-finding mission sent by the coalition and not by the UN - exactly what your source says.

from wiki.

I think Foxy is confusing the UNSCOM and the UNMOVIC missions....

At least :wink:

I agree that I was not making a distinction between the two groups. However, you'll have a hard time proving to me that both groups believed Saddam had WMD prior to the invasion. Remember that the UNSCOM group had not been allowed to do a whole lot of inspecting of anything after 1998 and right up to the end reported that Saddam used all manner of deception, delaying tactics, and other measures to keep the inspectors from doing their jobs.

A briefing from Hans Blix
http://www.meforum.org/article/176

David Kay was the chief UN weapons inspector 1991-1992:
http://www.npr.org/programs/wesun/transcripts/2002/dec/021229.hansen.html

David Kay professes intimate knowledge of what the UN inspectors were doing from 1991 to 2003
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2003/david_kay_10022003.html

David Kay's bio
http://www.potomacinstitute.org/aboutus/staff/kay.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kay

Bringing things up to date:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200401/pollack

Then in the U.K. Telegraph there is this little unsubstantiated blurb that apparently didn't develop any legs. It's not about the WMD inspectors, of course, but if true, it could raise some imteresting questions:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/16/woil116.xml

Having been around the block a few times, I don't find your last link very hard to believe. It would not be surprising at all, considering everything else we know about what went on with oil for food, the U.N. in general, and the corruption that runs rampant.

From my previous post:



This should read: ". . . .you'll have a hard time proving to me that both groups did not bleieve Saddam has WMD prior to the invasion. . . . "

Tico's metaphor is fantastic in my book, wolf-criers. To follow yours Snood; one would have to consider Saddam on parole for wife beating at the very least; and any violation found during such a search by a parole agent would result in his a$$ being sent up to the big house, which he was. Apologizing for the pre-convicted wife beater's violations of his parole is despicable in light of his previous crimes. Think long and hard about whom you're defending before continuing to defend him.

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"... just in case you've never noticed the Burke quote in my sig-line. Aren't you a superhero yourself? Unless I've mistaken a memory with someone else; I think you are… and you are doing yourself a disservice to defend the like's of Saddam Hussein.

Have you ever heard of "too little too late." Sure he may have given the appearance of complying when the weapons and programs were already moved or hidden. After years and how many resolutions of playing cat and mouse, and evasion and lying, I think the time for talking and negotiating was already past. But instead of "rushing to war" as some have accused, I think the Hussein regime simply had too much time to hide the evidence. We virtually telegraphed when we planned to cross the border months ahead of time. Also, "unilaterally" is not an accurate term. Do we need to list all the countries again that signed on?

Before the war in 2003 Hans Blix told the UN that they could find no evidence of WMD but they needed more time. There was no reason to rush to war before exhausting the process. http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/14/sprj.irq.un/

We could have easily given them more time and in the end would have found out there was no WMD in Iraq without loss of life from all sides.

About the little blurb, unsubstantiated is right.

Arthur Ventham was an inspector with the private Cotecna S.A. .

Cotecna responded (and proved) afterwards that Ventham was a disgruntled former employee who had been fired earlier.
Had all been in the papers a year ago ... ...

Only the buzz from visiting a Martini bar in the neighborhood of my prospective new neighborhood, to check the price and quality of their girly Martini's could explain my rationale for revisiting this tired hyper-polarized subject. To answer your question, OE; is it not reasonable for a complainant to assume the police are going to do nothing after they reporting the same crime for over a decade? Under what light do you find it acceptable that the U.N. Security Council completely ignores utter lack of cooperation under direct threat? In 1998 the U.N. left Iraq claiming even if they were allowed to continue inspections (condition of ceasefire), they would be a total sham. Saddam remained out of compliance until the United States had once again positioned itself for war, and only then did they once again, for the umteenth time feign compliance with resolutions.

Never, did they follow the demand to fully disclose their arsenal nor had they followed the other directives from year's past. But that's cool with you? It's OK for a mass-murdering despot to keep an entire country hostage, even in defiance of a decade of attempted diplomacy after being given a second chance after using WMD repeatedly against civilian populations and invading his neighbors? Really? The President of the United States eventually decided enough was enough, after watching the same cat and mouse game of deception that his predecessor acutely recognized but failed to adequately address and finally decided to hold the mass-murdering bastard accountable for a decade of deception after a couple of decades of disgrace and degradation of a whole country of people and you want to hold him in disdain for doing so? Get a grip. All of you all need to get a grip. Mourning the actions against a mass-murdering-monster constitutes comfort to same and if not treasonous, is most certainly disgusting to the extreme. The sombitch had to go, and thank goodness someone finally had the stones to see it through. Those defending the sovereign rights of the ruthless tyrant need to take a long hard look in the mirror while considering that which he is defending. Disgusting, to say the least. When faced with a mass-murdering despot we can choose to something or nothing. The latter proved conclusively to be beneficial to no one so we should all join hands and give thanks to the few leaders who chose to do something and the many patriots who are right now seeing it through.

If we went to war everytime a country ignored UN resolutions, we would forever be at war with some country. http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa_iraq02.html

The resolution question in and of itself was not so significant that it justified going to war at the time we did it before exhausting the process of the UN inspections and the UN deliberating over it. Moreover those were UN resolutions not US resolutions and they required a full UN decision.

Thankfully, more Americans have now been persuaded that the war was a mistake than they were previously. That don't help the disaster which is now Iraq but maybe it's something. (or not)

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/10888

It is estimated that 50,000 or more Iraqi citizens, many of them children, died from lack of proper medical care and malnutrition during the 12 years of UN sanctions, and the inspectors were continually reporting that Saddam was thwarting them from doing their jobs at every turn. I believe there had been no serious inspections since 1998. (One source said 50,000 a year died during that 12 years.)

The Saddam tapes currently being released, albeit slowly, are providing more evidence that Saddam had no intention of complying with the UN resolution and new information about his intentions re WMD. Remember that Saddam and his family and cronies were not suffering in the least under the sanctions and he was enjoying enormous personal profits.

This morning they were showing scenes of Bahgdad, a modern city with busy freeways, people going about their business, headed in for work, smiling and engaged in animated conversations. I think history will show that the continued sanctions coupled with a Saddam Hussein regime were infinitely more cruel than the war has been and the outcome will be impressively good for the Iraqi people.

I am weary of this discussion. If you all want to keep fooling yourselves, go ahead.

A steady litany of doom and gloom, pessimism, criticism, and negativity is indeed wearying to normal people.

Speech We'd Like to Hear From an Academy Award Winner
By Dennis Prager

Here's a speech we would like to hear from an Academy Award winner:

I thank you for this wonderful award. Receiving an Academy Award gives the recipient an almost unique opportunity to speak to hundreds of millions people around the world, so I would like take this once-in-a-lifetime moment to say this:

First, I want to thank my country, the United States of America. Every one of us here has this country to thank for enabling us to live lives of unprecedented freedom and unimaginable affluence. Too many of us forget that no other country in history has offered such opportunities to people in our profession or in any other profession, for that matter.

Second, I want to thank the men and women of the armed forces of the United States. While we bask in freedom and spend a good part of our lives going from party to party and award show to award show, tens of thousands of my fellow Americans are confronting a menace to our world as great as that fought by previous generations fighting Nazism and communism.

At the same time, I also want to apologize to these troops for my profession not having made even one motion picture about any of the heroic American fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq. This country is fighting a war, Hollywood. You may think this war is unwise, waged under mistaken, or even false, pretenses. And as an actor in Hollywood, you are overwhelmingly likely to hate this commander in chief. But even the men and women of Hollywood must recognize that America is fighting the worst people of our time, people who hurt every group Hollywood claims to care about -- minorities, women, gays -- people who engage in the sins Hollywood most professes to oppose -- intolerance and violence -- far more than anyone else on the planet.

In another era, when what many have labeled "the greatest generation" fought the German Nazis and the Japanese fascists, Hollywood made movie after movie depicting that great war and our great warriors. And Hollywood showed freedom's enemies as the cruel and vicious people they were. We have not produced one film yet depicting this war in positive terms or one depicting this generation's enemies of freedom as the cruel and vicious people they are.

In fact, the only nominated film about people who slaughter children at discos, blow up weddings, and bomb pizzerias and buses filled with men, women and children is one that attempts to show these murderers in God's name as complex human beings. Just imagine how the Academy would have reacted 60 years ago to a film depicting Nazi murderers as complex human beings. We have descended far.

We in Hollywood walk around thinking we are very important. That is why this year's nominated films for best picture are largely pictures with messages, pictures that relatively few people actually see. But although Hollywood was always concerned with politics, we have let ourselves be taken over by those for whom their message is more significant than the primary purposes of film -- to illuminate life and to entertain. Yes, entertain.

You know, entertainment is actually a noble pursuit. Life is difficult for almost every human being on earth. And if we can offer people an elevated way to divert their attention for a couple of hours from their troubled child, their marital tensions, their ill parent, their financial woes, we have rendered the world a greater service than by making another message-film against racism in America, the least racist country in the world.

My fellow actors, we walk around feeling that we are very important. But we do so only because we confuse fame with significance. We do have more fame than any other human beings in history. Far more people have heard of any actor here tonight than of any of the discoverers of any medication saving billions of lives, of any teacher of the disabled, of any nurse tending the aged, of almost any national leader.

But the truth is that, as noble a calling as acting can be, all we do is make-believe: We portray other people, and we speak words written by other people. Everyone knows our names, but almost no one knows us. All they know are the characters we play.

Thank you again. I hope I haven't ruined your evening.

You've probably ruined the evening for DTOM if he's read this. You've certainly not ruined mine.

Something else we're not seeing in the MSM:

IRAQ: THE UNTOLD TRUTHS
by Ralph Peters
March 7, 2006 -- BAGHDAD

AMONG the many positive stories you aren't being told about Iraq, the media ignored another big one last week: In the wake of the terrorist bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, it was the Iraqi army that kept the peace in the streets.

It's routinely declared a failure by those who yearn for the new Iraq to fail. But an increasingly capable Iraqi military has been developing while reporters (who never really investigated the issue) wrote it off as hopeless.

What actually happened last week, as the prophets of doom in the media prematurely declared civil war?

* The Iraqi army deployed over 100,000 soldiers to maintain public order. U.S. Forces remained available as a backup, but Iraqi soldiers controlled the streets.

* Iraqi forces behaved with discipline and restraint - as the local sectarian outbreaks fizzled, not one civilian had been killed by an Iraqi soldier.

* Time and again, Iraqi military officers were able to defuse potential confrontations and frustrate terrorist hopes of igniting a religious war.

* Forty-seven battalions drawn from all 10 of Iraq's army divisions took part in an operation that, above all, aimed at reassuring the public. The effort worked - from the luxury districts to the slums, the Iraqis were proud of their army.

AS a result of its nationwide success, the Iraqi army gained tremendously in confidence. Its morale soared. After all the lies and exaggerations splashed in your direction, the truth is that we're seeing a new, competent, patriotic military emerge. The media may cling to its image of earlier failures, but last week was a great Iraqi success.

This matters. Not only for Iraq's sake, but because standing up a responsible military subordinate to an elected civilian government is the essential development that will allow us to reduce our troop presence in the next few years. Much remains to do - and much could still go wrong - but I, for one, am more optimistic after this visit to Baghdad.

More HERE

That has been reported - the USArmy made some press releases that the Iraqi Army Takes Over Baghdad Battle Space. (To be seen on tv as well.)

And on the very same day a top Iraqi general was killed by a sniper.