OMG! Hell Just Froze Over!!!

Pretty weak, Brandon. The Germans in the 1940s had access to chemical weapons and didn't use them. The term evil madman is meaningless in this context. In short, you are just articulating your inchoate fears, not any evidence to support your contention.

Setanta wrote:

Pretty weak, Brandon. The Germans in the 1940s had access to chemical weapons and didn't use them. The term evil madman is meaningless in this context. In short, you are just articulating your inchoate fears, not any evidence to support your contention.

Are you, then, asserting that even if Saddam Hussein had obtained, say five, nukes, or had produced very potent bioweapons, the world would still have had little to fear from him? If you can, please give me a definite yes or no answer to this.

Brandon9000 wrote:

Setanta wrote:

Pretty weak, Brandon. The Germans in the 1940s had access to chemical weapons and didn't use them. The term evil madman is meaningless in this context. In short, you are just articulating your inchoate fears, not any evidence to support your contention.

Are you, then, asserting that even if Saddam Hussein had obtained, say five, nukes, or had produced very potent bioweapons, the world would still have had little to fear from him? If you can, please give me a definite yes or no answer to this.

I am asserting that you don't know how he would have behaved. Hussein is known to have used chemical weapons against the Persians in the Iran-Iraq War, during which war the Persians used chemical weapons against Iraqi troops. That is no basis upon which to assert without substantiation that he was "an evil madman" who would without question have threatened the world. Once again, you are voicing you inchoate fears. You are trying to put me in the position of disproving your wild assertions--i'm not obliged to do so, but if you expect to be taken seriously, you need to be able to prove your assertions.

I'm not saying that had Saddam Hussein possessed these weapons, something awful would have happened without question, I am saying that it's not unlikely. Do you mean that you can't reach conclusions on anything but certainties?

Had Saddam developed serious doomsday weapons, the world would have paid a terrible, terrible price.

Brandon9000 wrote:

I'm not saying that had Saddam Hussein possessed these weapons, something awful would have happened without question, I am saying that it's not unlikely. Do you mean that you can't reach conclusions on anything but certainties?

You may not be saying that now, but you were certainly saying it when you wrote:

Quote:

Had Saddam developed serious doomsday weapons, the world would have paid a terrible, terrible price.

No fair changing the terms of your argument when you get in a tight spot, Brandon.

I consider it to have been a remote possibility. Saddam was a survivor. Keep in mind that he lived in a hole in the ground for months to avoid capture after the invasion. He was not the type of character to have blithely or stupidly put his head on the block. When he was firing missles off at Israel during the Gulf War, he used no womd warheads--he just wasn't that stupid.

So, while a possibility, i consider it to have been a very remote possibility. A further problem i have with this is that the same standard is not applied to other nations which could be alleged to pose the same threat--such as North Korea. North Korea, of course, could put up a real fight if we attempted to invade, and they have no petroleum.

Your argument doesn't cut it. If we didn't know if Hussein had womds, and specifically nukes, then we were running the same risk as we would in an invasion of North Korea. If we knew that Hussein could not launch nukes, then the argument that we needed to invade because he possessed them was a knowing lie.

From a cynical point of view, we could invade North Korea today, fairly safe in the knowledge that the Kim Jong Il regime doesn't have the delivery system to hit the United States. But, of course, they also don't have the second largest proven light, sweet crude petroleum fields in the world.

Setanta wrote:

Your argument doesn't cut it. If we didn't know if Hussein had womds, and specifically nukes, then we were running the same risk as we would in an invasion of North Korea. If we knew that Hussein could not launch nukes, then the argument that we needed to invade because he possessed them was a knowing lie.

From a cynical point of view, we could invade North Korea today, fairly safe in the knowledge that the Kim Jong Il regime doesn't have the delivery system to hit the United States. But, of course, they also don't have the second largest proven light, sweet crude petroleum fields in the world.

We inaded Iraq precisely to stop them from obtaining nukes or serious bioweapons. That's exactly the reason we invaded.

As for North Korea, it would be insane to invade a country that posseses the option of replying with nukes, and particularly one that's crazy enough to do it. Who needs a delivery system? They could obliterate South Korea, or the attacking American naval fleet, etc.

Iraq and North Korea are not comparable, because in the former case, we felt we had to to stop them from acquiring serious WMD. North Korea already possesses serious WMD.

We inaded Iraq precisely to stop them from obtaining nukes or serious bioweapons. That's exactly the reason we invaded.

As for North Korea, it would be insane to invade a country that posseses the option of replying with nukes, and particularly one that's crazy enough to do it. Who needs a delivery system? They could obliterate South Korea, or the attacking American naval fleet, etc.

Iraq and North Korea are not comparable, because in the former case, we felt we had to to stop them from acquiring serious WMD. North Korea already possesses serious WMD.

Presidential Letter
Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate




March 18, 2003

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

I imagine you'll find unsurprising my disagreement with your assessment of the "Mission Accomplished" speech. You may read into it whatever you wish, however, what it said to me was that while one battle in a long, multi-front war, a war against a new kind of enemy, had been won, that enemy was far from defeated and the war which that enemy had thrust upon us continued and would continue untill that enemy had been rendered without the will, means, or ability to wage war against us.

The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001 and still goes on.

The events of 9/11 provided but catalyisis; they did not create the condition of hostilities between The US and Saddam's Iraq, they underscored the dire and urgent necessity of addressing and removing the clear and present danger of the ongoing and building threat posed by Saddam's Iraq in its association with and support of international terrorism. It is a fiction of those who for whatever reason are opposed to Bush and/or the US that the resumption of hostillities with Saddam's Iraq was in any other wise connected with the events of 9/11 - and a tedious, specious fiction at that.

RUSSERT: Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?

CHENEY: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that he [Mohammed Atta, 9/11 ringleader] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.

Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point. But that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.