WMD in Iraq? Nah, nothing to see here, move along...

POSTED BY: lynchaj
UPDATED: Sunday, March 8, 2026 22:49
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SERGEANTX

Friday, June 3, 2005 3:35 PM

Saddam was never a dire or grievous threat to the United States. He may have been a threat to his immediate neighbors and they should have been the ones to deal with him. We should have kept the focus on minimalizing the terrorist theat and dealt with Iraq when and if they ever did become a threat.

Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but we had plenty of the 20/20 variety last election and still voted for the SOB. What gives?

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

SIGNYM

Friday, June 3, 2005 4:18 PM

You are missing some important parts of history. The UN inpsectors left Iraq in 1998, but returned in 2002 and 2003, so the sites were not left alone for the entire times from 1998 to the invasion, when you imagine that mischief might have been afoot. In the second inspection, the UN was monitoring and inventorying the sites in question, having been granted access to previous off-limits sites (like Sdaddam's palaces) and there was no indication of chemical or biological weapons "programs", let alone the "huge stockpiles" that we were warned about. The UN inspectors- having accounted for all the previously monitored dual use equipment- were forced to leave by the imminent US invasion just before they were about the certify Iraq in compliance Certification would have allowed Russia and France to sign huges contracts with Iraq. The contracts had been drawn up and were just waiting to be inked.

What the UN report refuses to say, for political reasons, is that the equipment went missing AFTER our invasion, when lawlessness and looting was rampant. Many stories have come out about the lack United States security at depots like Kadhimiyah, where equipment, advanced explosives etc. - with UN tags and seals still on it- were stolen out from under our noses. This was not Saddam's doing. The equipment is out there- nobody knows where- but the loss of equipment happened after Saddam was overthrown.

HERO

Friday, June 3, 2005 4:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
We should have kept the focus on minimalizing the terrorist theat dealt with Iraq when and if they ever did become a threat.

Ah, the traditional American approach to conflict. Ignore them till the buildings (or ships, and I say ships cause Clinton showed us one burning ship does not a threat make) are in flames. Then bitch and moan because 'we didn't do anything to stop them'. Bush decided that, for the immediate future, we should adopt a more proactive policy.

Quote:

Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but we had plenty of the 20/20 variety last election and still voted for the SOB. What gives?

What gives is that people see things differently from you. Like you said: 20/20 vision and they still chose Bush. I suggest that using their 20/20 vision they saw that Bush did not lie, the war was justified, and the Democratic plans like surrender first beg for terms later, is just not good for America.

Alot of anti-Bush voters (which are a seperate breed from Democrats in general and Kerry voters in particular) have seen the truth and chosen to turn away. It didn't start during the last election, during the war in Iraq, or after Sept. 11, 2001. They've been doing it since the days after the 2000 election. They could not and can not accept that result and have used every opportunity since to delegitimize the Bush Presidency and undermine American policy.

H

SIGNYM

Friday, June 3, 2005 4:40 PM

Iraq was not only not a threat to the United States, it was not a threat (except as a conventional military power) to its neighbors. The information that the Bush administration chose to scare us with came from sources that had already been discredited. In one case, the whole uranium yellowcake document had been shown to be a forgery by Joe Wilson. (The document was missing a large number of current signatures, but was ostensibly "signed" by people who had been out of office for 10 years, or with misspelled names. It was a shockingly sloppy forgery- but nobody has followed up on who actually created the document. Why not??) In the case of chemical and bioweapons, the informant- Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri- had already been discredited by the CIA and DIA. Bush chose to misrepresent these facts because they did not fit in with his plans. Yet people continue to cite the (let's be generous) "errors" as if they were truth.

EDITED TO ADD: It's hard to delegitimize something that had no legitimacy to begin with.

HERO

Friday, June 3, 2005 5:15 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Iraq was not only not a threat to the United States, it was not a threat (except as a conventional military power) to its neighbors.

Depends on what a threat is. Aside from active participation in terrorism such as funding suicide bombers in Isreal and efforts to kill George Bush (the first one), Iraq also launched daily attacks on US and British planes seeking to peacefully enforce the UN sanctioned and Iraq agreed to no-fly zone. Further, any chemical and biological weapons, which we and the rest of the world, believed they had, could have been provided covertly to organizations for use agaist the US or Isreal. (Oh, and Al-queda, they had that camp in the north and that big high-ranking guy they caught in Baghdad right after the war, he was there for "medical treatment", sure Iraq's not allied or affiliated with Al-Queda, they just get together for beer and to watch football. Maybe the his cousin marries Osama's brother, or they all went to highschool together or were in the same frat.)

Then there is the mass murder. It has been well established that certain acts hurt not only the direct victims, but indirectly hurt all of humanity. Segregation is a good example. Terror is another. Saddam's systematic murder, torture, and rape of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis caused terrible harm to Iraq, the arab world, and humanity in general. It needed to be stopped and that alone justified the war, despite the fact that the scope was not revealed till after (the same scenario occurred at the end of WW2, when we found sufficient independant cause for war with Germany, just from their attempted genocide of the Jews and other people they didn't like).

Lets not forget the political undermining of the western alliance that occurred during the '90s as Iraq used its illegal oil revenues to corrupt the UN and divide America from many of its traditional European allies. Thats as aggressive an act as any Saddam undertook (sametimes the first shots in a war are diplomatic, not military), and in retrospect, a course he should have pursued prior to the original invasion of Kuwait.

Quote:

EDITED TO ADD: It's hard to delegitimize something that had no legitimacy to begin with.

Thanks for making my other point. Bush-haters cannot accept the legitimacy of the 2000 election, so their opposition to the war has always been grounded in opposition to Bush. Thats why so many of those (particullarly Senators and John Kerry) arguing against Bush find themselves contradicting statements they made in 1998 supporting President Clinton's decision to bomb various countries including Iraq and Serbia.

H

SERGEANTX

Friday, June 3, 2005 5:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
What gives is that people see things differently from you. Like you said: 20/20 vision and they still chose Bush. I suggest that using their 20/20 vision they saw that Bush did not lie, the war was justified, and the Democratic plans like surrender first beg for terms later, is just not good for America.

If it were simply a matter of seeing things differently I suppose I could accept that. But I think most Bush voters knew exactly what was going on and just didn't care.

I think Bush and the neo-cons tapped into the nationalistic emotional needs of people desperate to regain 'pride' in their country. They concocted fantasies that fit those emotional needs and people bought into them eagerly. The pesky details of the truth weren't something to be bothered with.

And anyone with the gall to bring up the glaring inconsistencies in their fantasies was simply labled an 'America Hater'. It's a clever ruse, but a ruse none-the-less.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

SIGNYM

Friday, June 3, 2005 5:46 PM

Quote:
Further, any chemical and biological weapons, which we and the rest of the world, believed they had

The rest of the world did not believe Iraq had WMD. UNMOVIC certainly didn't. You keep mistaking Bush's massaged message for the truth.

Quote:
Then there is the mass murder. It has been well established that certain acts hurt not only the direct victims, but indirectly hurt all of humanity

Are you referring to the mass murder by chemical weapons that we made possible by our shipments to Iraq?

Quote:
Lets not forget the political undermining of the western alliance that occurred during the '90s as Iraq used its illegal oil revenues to corrupt the UN and divide America from many of its traditional European allies

Let's not forget that American companies accounted for more illegal oil purchases than all other nations combined.

Quote:
Thanks for making my other point. Bush-haters cannot accept the legitimacy of the 2000 election, so their opposition to the war has always been grounded in opposition to Bush.

Actually, I was referring to an illegitimate war. In order to have a pre-emptive war, you must be able to show imminent threat. The so-called threat was based on informants and forgeries that had already been discredited.

Oh, and BTW- I knew months before the invasion that Bush was lying. There is no 20/20 hindsight here. It had all to do with the timetable that things were moving on. I tried convincing my Senators, Representative, and co-workers. Well, at least my colleagues have the sense to realize that I was right.

SIGNYM

Friday, June 3, 2005 5:58 PM

Quote:
In addition, how do you know that those dual use capabilities were not being used to produce WMDs? No one knows for certain, the UN admitted as much and most indicators were they were making WMDs.

UNMOVIC was within three weeks of certifying Iraq as compliant. If you want to know about the specifics, you can google up Scott Ritter, the ex-Marine inspector, for his viewpoint. They had already investigated all of the sites, some of them mulitple times- there really was nothing there to see. You can cling to your paranoid fantasies if you want, but I suggest that you move along.

HERO

Friday, June 3, 2005 6:08 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Are you referring to the mass murder by chemical weapons that we made possible by our shipments to Iraq?

Nope, I was refering to massacres by secret police, torture chambers in Baath Part buildings, dragging children from their beds to rape them in front of their fathers, thousands of "missing" Kuwaiti citizens who failed to be returned after the 1st war, big holes filled with bodies, maimed Iraqi Olympic athletes, etc. I wasn't referring at all to the thousands who died because Saddam used his weapons of mass destruction on them. Weapons he had, and used, creating a record upon which the world could reasonably rely that if he chose, he could and would use them again. Thanks.

Quote:
Actually, I was referring to an illegitimate war. In order to have a pre-emptive war, you must be able to show imminent threat. The so-called threat was based on informants and forgeries that had already been discredited.

Oh, and BTW- I knew months before the invasion that Bush was lying. It had all to do with the timetable that things were moving on. I tried convincing my Senators, Representative, and co-workers. Well, at least my colleagues have the sense to realize that I was right.

Or wrong, you did good. Advocate for your point of view. Lobby your elected representives. Make phonecalls, make a sign and shout from the rooftops. Enjoy those liberties, here. Cause if you'd tried that in Iraq before the war, you'd have been lucky to survive, and the female members of your family, lucky to have avoided rape, mutilation and murder for what you did.

Bush began making the case for war a year before it happened. But militarily we needed to go before summer cause otherwise we'd be waiting too long (into mid to late fall). Why too long? Cause we were afraid that if Saddam had another 6 months to prepare, our troops would have been exauhsted (you can only sit so long at the staring gate), his would have been better prepared, thousands of innocent Iraqis would have been murdered, and what weapons of mass destruction he had would have been ready to use.

Up until the last it all could have been avoided. An innocent Saddam could have capitulated and sparred his country invasion.

H

JASONZZZ

Friday, June 3, 2005 6:22 PM

Bit confused about what I read in the article here.

Did I miss it? but did the article say over what period or when did these things go missing? moved?

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