Iraqi WMD's non-existence still confounding some buggers!
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Friday, September 14, 2007 17:16
VIEWED: 19028
PAGE 9 of 27
Quote:No
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
the administration would never have focused on this issue if they didn’t believe it completely. That makes a lot of sense.
IT
DOESN'T!
It makes sense that they used it as the public reasoning for the war, assuming things would go better than they have been, and could've made up other excuses that we'd all buy later, as a sucessful campaigne would have been widely accepted, no matter the nefarious reasons for it's beginning (or so they thought, IMO).
They are no Boyscouts; Boyscouts are always prepared. They weren't.
'Believed it completely', I'm dyin' heah Chrisisall
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Quote:
There were other things that justified the war in my mind and probably in the minds of many key policy makers in the administrations, but the WMD issue was seen as the strongest argument to make as the CB to the public. And this was Fletch2’s point, that the administration would never have focused on this issue if they didn’t believe it completely. That makes a lot of sense.
How about... they focused on the issue because it would scare the crap outta the public? Because they thought the war would be a success and everybody forgives a success? Wow. You still haven't figured it out. 
You just can't face the emotional turmoil of realizing that you've been lied to by someone you've been taught your whole life to respect. You have so much invested in what you think America is like that it's preventing you from seeing the truth. And if you saw the truth, you'd feel like a displaced person; the feeling of "home" would be gone. :sad face:
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Always look upstream.
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"You had a point of view based largely on cynicism, distrust and outright hatred of Bush administration, more than any kind of real knowledge ..."
You couldn't be more wrong. There were many contrary facts that were in the news. It wasn't about guessing, or hatred, or trusting anyone in Hussein's government.
It started with the hasty exit from Afghanistan, with bin Laden still on the loose and Bush not thinking about him much, anymore. (And bin Laden says hi, just to remind us that he's still there. :waves hand:)
The 'yellowcake' SOTU, Powell's flimsy UN presentation, the aluminum tube fiasco the US DOE said could never used for centrifuges, Bush's continued escalation of demands on Hussein as he (Hussein) kept meeting UN requirements - and as the window for a good-weather war closed, the UN inspections finding nothing, and Bush arbitrarily creating a new timetable, Bush's own description of it as a 'preventative' war - these are only a few. The final nail was the sheer fact that the US military was NOT prepared for chemical or biological weapons and that, in the Bush scenario, he was prepared to send them into harm's way and take thousands of casualties from those 'massive stockpiles' of WMD just waiting to go.
Think about it. Does that make military or political sense to you ?
I was not in doubt that the US was being carefully groomed to turn and aim at Iraq for reasons divorced from 9/11, GWOT or WMD.
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And now, I have to get on with my (already full) weekend.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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Quote:Except that the evidence that existed wasn’t even nearly as strong as you suggest. Most of Rue’s and Signym argument is based on cynicism and mistrust. That’s not evidence at all. There wasn’t any strong evidence one way or another. A good part of what’s generally given as evidence against WMDs in Iraq doesn’t really even qualify as evidence.
Originally posted by chrisisall:
I plead guilty to leaning according to a propondererance of evidence- not first-hand conclusive proof.
And yes, I think the administration was sure that they would find WMD’s in Iraq. Much like Rue and Signym, they were certain of what they couldn’t possibly have known. But the likely existence of WMDs in Saddam’s Iraq was the consensus, not only among those who were in favor of the war, but among those who were against it.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:Another key point of disagreement; I believe that Bush wanted the war, and one of two things happened,
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:Quote:There were other things that justified the war in my mind and probably in the minds of many key policy makers in the administrations, but the WMD issue was seen as the strongest argument to make as the CB to the public. And this was Fletch2’s point, that the administration would never have focused on this issue if they didn’t believe it completely. That makes a lot of sense.
Originally posted by leadb:Quote:This is a key point of disagreement: the sole reason I did not scream loudly at the start of the war was -only- due to the threat that Sadam had WMD; nothing else justified the war, imho. Of course, the real question is what was there a significant portion of the US public who felt the same way; harder to say. But it seems to me that there were a goodly number of folks in that leaky boat.
Originally posted by Hero:
And the WMDs were only one issue in the multi-issue cause for war that the administration presented. If we had ten good reasons and 1 bad one, then the war is still good.
1) he deliberately suppressed information which did not support going to war.
2) he made it clear that what he wanted was information to support going to war, and this failure in leadership led to him being presented biased information.
Neither 'looks good' for Bush, and the former borders on the illegal. The latter might support him 'believing it completely'; however, then he failed to learn the lesson of the need to get all perspectives appropriately represented to achieve the best solution. I personally do not think he 'believed it completely'; I believe he simply recognized it as the best way to ram through the initiation of the war.
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Quote:I don’t disagree with that. But the mistake I think you’re making is in assuming that this necessarily means he had malicious motivations. I don’t think so at all. I think he believed, as did many in his administration, that Iraq had WMDs and was a potential threat, which in the years preceding 9/ll was not considered tolerable given US/Iraq relations. And in the absence of certainty, he felt an obligation to his office and his country. I can respect opinions that disagree with the war or with the reasons for going to war, but this desire to portray Bush as some sort of evil villain that was desperate for war is just far too sophomoric.
Originally posted by leadb:
Another key point of disagreement; I believe that Bush wanted the war, and one of two things happened.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:Not all all. I had to ask myself- and you should too- why, with Blix so near the finish line and no evidence whatsoever that Saddam had missiles that could reach us... what was so terribly urgent that invasion couldn't wait for another three months?
Most of Rue’s and Signym argument is based on cynicism and mistrust.
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Always look upstream.
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Quote:Wait for what? Iraq had the UNSC in its pocket. It led weapons’ inspectors around by their ears for a decade. The truth is that weapons inspectors in Iraq never had any credibility in the eyes of the administration. But that’s not evidence that there were no WMDs in Iraq – it’s just evidence that the administration didn’t trust the UN to find them, which quick frankly, I can’t blame them, given the UN's track record in Iraq.
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:Not all all. I had to ask myself- and you should too- why, with Blix so near the finish line and no evidence whatsoever that Saddam had missiles that could reach us... what was so terribly urgent that invasion couldn't wait for another three months?
Most of Rue’s and Signym argument is based on cynicism and mistrust.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
No, weaponized anthrax is sporulated. It's relatvely easy to grow anthrax in a liquid medium. What's difficult is collecting and purifying the spore from the "goop" and milling the spores dwon to individual particles. Also, you need to apply an anti-static coating to the spores otherwise they clump together and settle out too quickly. At one time I knew the preferred particle size (it was in the micron range) but have since forgotten.
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Always look upstream.
Well we built a bomb with 1940's technology while under strategic bombing and the main reason it wasn't used was out of fear that it could be too effective. It seems hard to imagine that Saddam couldn't do the same 50 years later.
Weaponising something to the level of a battlefield weapon is far far more complex than making a crude device. Things like antistatic coatings improve the effectiveness of the device but they are not essential.
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Finn
Your arguments make little sense before the attack, and none at all to explain US action after. If the administration was SO sure there were WMDs that constituted such a DIRE threat - why didn't they secure the sites where they 'knew' the weapons were ? Why didn't they start looking for weapons until months later, and then only under pressure ? Why didn't they invite the UN in to help find the weapons after the war ?
Nope, your arguments don't make sense at all, Finn.
And you have yet to explain mine away. You just keep mis-characterizing them as conjecture, as if that was an actual argument. That the aluminum tubes couldn't be used in centrifuges was technical fact. That the 'yellowcake' claim was an outright lie was a fact, as outlined at great length in the Senate Report. The same is true for the supposed connection between Hussein and al Qaeda. That the military wasn't equipped for a CBW war was reported by the GAO. That Bush kept shifting the goal-lines for Iraq to avoid war was reported on the WH website.
I invite you to substantively discuss these facts. But if all you do is more handwaving, then I see no point in further discussion.
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."
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