Where are those WMD?

[JackC]

Originally posted by luckydevi

I find it ironic how the left asked for patience before the war, but now are screaming for WMD.When it fact its only been a week since the war has been acknowledge as being over.

That's a tired argument my friend. The Bushies said Iraq had them and they knew they had them. Now they have full access to the entire country. They should be able to find them pretty quickly don't you think?

[The Wicked Wop]

I figured this argument would start up again before to long. I like most am a little bit suprised that we havn't found anything concrete (I thought someone under arrest would have given up something by now). We can dispute the facts about trace readings, pesticides, and the possible use of mobile labs, but the there is no disputing that the Iraqi's had 100's of new bio-chem suites, and anybody suggesting they had them because they feared we would use such weapons is insane.

I'm still confident that we will find such weapons, we must still must remember that the US search teams are still undermanned as we speak, and the process of clearing sites is not as quick as one might think.

The one thing that I'm not really suprised at is that we found no such weapons at the most suspected sites......why, because there obvious sites and if they had been their the previous inspections would have found them unless......(some of you may be forgetting)or course they are buried, which adds more fun.

Regardless this is an unwinable dispute untill the US gives up their search and says we were wrong, or when we do find such weapons......then of course the argument will start up again debating if they were a threat or not.:shootinth

[Tarhog]

Originally posted by gbear

Kilmer,

I thought they tested where the scientist said they destroyed the chems, but they couldn't find any of the traces they expected to find.

We found an 18 wheeler? Oh no, all they needed was 2 of those to take over the world. Seriously, finding one that matches what Powell said and not finding the anthrax lab within actually comes a whole lot closer to doctored or manipulated intelligence.

As for the Chemicals, are you referring to the ones they think turned out to be pestisides? That's not exactly WMD.

What was the contract you mentioned? I missed it being out of the loop a little while in MN and St. Thomas. Those little snipets of news provided by the hotel don't quite constitute being informed and I don't have time to watch 10 hours of news on TV while I wait for what interests me :cool:

Rebuilding...we aren't doing anything to put in place a legit government. We're placing a yes sir government in place. The government services like police forces still seem to be in short supply through much of the cities. Water is good and important. I'll give you that one, but I haven't seen anything about setting up systems or for that matter fixing permanent systems. We're still trucking it all over the place aren't we (maybe not, again I haven't seen anything)? It seem like the only permament parts we've worked on thus far are oil fields. Now if it were your country, where would oil fields rank on your priority lists? I'm sure you'd just be overjoyed to know the US has awarded those contracts first thing.

Come on gbear, in fairness, you nor I really know what 'they' are doing yet. Its too early. To say they're doing nothing is false and unfair. Would you prefer a 'no sir' government? They are being very careful in my estimation. Many here harp on past diplomatic/strategic 'errors' where we put into power pawns who are subservient to us, but do not serve the interests of their own people. This could easily happen again here if we do not carefully and deliberately ferret out Baathists, Shiite extremists, and opportunists who do not have a free democratic Iraq as their #1 priority. Again, just because they didn't feel the need to clear it through the NY Times first doesn't mean an incredible amount of work isn't in progress.

As for the WMD's, only time will tell. I believe it would help if we had Saddam's head on a stick as I'm sure many of those inclined to help us still fear his long arm and potential reprisals. I personally have no doubt we'll find weapons. But its ironic that it was exactly the demand for lengthy (and entirely ineffective) UN inspections that provided the opportunity and time for Hussein to get rid of and/or hide what he had. Had we gone in militarily without a useless UN effort (against the wishes of many who are complaining and accusing now) we'd have no doubt found a wealth of banned weapons. I think its an extremely lucid point that those that argued for unlimited time and patience when possible war loomed now ask 'where are the WMDs NOW?'...thats the height of hypocrisy.

[luckydevil]

It is going to take time.

[JimboDaMan]

Originally posted by luckydevi

I find it ironic how the left asked for patience before the war, but now are screaming for WMD.When it fact its only been a week since the war has been acknowledge as being over.

And the other side of that coin: the same people who spent day after day repeatedly yelling CONFIRMED! CONFIRMED! about Scuds and WMDs are now sneering at critics and claiming they knew all along it would be a long process to find these things.

[Tarhog]

Originally posted by JackC

That's a tired argument my friend. The Bushies said Iraq had them and they knew they had them. Now they have full access to the entire country. They should be able to find them pretty quickly don't you think?

It may be tiring to you, but you haven't addressed the core argument. Its hypocritical to argue out of both sides of your mouth. They may have 'access' to the country, but there are several facts you are glossing over:

1) this is still hostile territory and every time a US military unit moves into an area they risk being fired upon, then subsequently lambasted for firing back at 'innocent' civilians.

2) this is an area roughly the size of California. 100,000 on the ground may sound like a huge force, but its not. These forces are largely preoccupied with staying alive right now. That might not be your priority, but I guarantee you its one of theirs. Everything else is secondary.

Why the rush to judgement? Could it be theres an agenda here? Naaah. Didn't think so. I'm willing to wait and see. If they find nothing, I'll join you in questioning why our intelligence was in error. I'll always believe this war was fundamentally worth fighting, as it removed an enemy of the US who had, at bare minimum, real potential to export terror to US shores. But I think I'll wait until the palaces have stopped smoking to declare this a failed war based on misinformation.

[Sarge]

Patience people. Sadddam had time to hide this stuff, thanks apparently to a tip off by the frogs of when the war would start. Remember how small some of this stuff can be. One vial, ONE, of anthrax dumped off say, the Empire State building into the swirling canyon winds of New York, would be enough to jack up a lot of people. Now, in all a country the size of iraq, try to find the vial. Needle in a haystack doesn't even start. And granted, there is more than one vail, but properly dispersed, it's gonna be awhile.

As for the chemicals, let me let you cake eating civilians in on something. We, as part of our chem warfare gear, wear on our outergarments something called M-9 and M-8 paper. When chemical droplets fall on them, they turn colors, thus alerting a troop to the presence of chemicals in the air or on a surface, what kind of chemical one has encountered, dependant upon the color the tape turns. However, you can take a can of Raid and spray the stuff on you and it will turn the tape colors as well. After all, Raid and everything like it is a low dose chemical weapon. Watch a bug die when it is sprayed. It withers up and dies just like a person does with a higher dose. Chemicals test as pesticides a lot of the time. It take sophisticated tests to tell them apart. As for the where, reports are a lot of it made it to Syria. i suspect they are being paid a large portion of the millions the jr hussain withdrew before the start of the war.

[The Wicked Wop]

As for the chemicals, let me let you cake eating civilians in on something

:laugh:

[Atlanta Skins Fan]

My only hope for the New World Order is that U.S. can purchase a few hundred South Pacific islands, populate them with thousands of horny concubines and a bottomless ATM, and relieve the world of all this bluster and killing whenever we decide it's time for a regime change.

[luckydevil]

Let us not forget, many Iraqi soldiers had protective gear in case of a WMD attack

[fansince62]

how refreshing that ASF and gbear clearly reject the humanitarian grounds for fighting this war - independent of WMDS. let me get this straight, independent of WMDs, you would not have fought this war? oh.... that's right....it's about conspiracies and the highest reaches of the government lieing to us..........not murder, not genocide, not support to terrorists, not the actual use of WMDs, not invasions of free countries....

in addition to the facts Kilmer raised...the thousands of captured biochem protective suits were just fashion statements, and the scientists who engaged in weapons development were merely decorative....

let me also get this straight........12 years to control this stuff....but 4 weeks to uncover everything?.....uh huh......

[gbear]

HUmanitarian was never the reason given for going to war. Think back two months. What would support for going it alone have looked like without the WMD arguement. Your using some severe revisionist history.

That's okay though. What baffles me a little about the arguement, is that you use humanitarian reasons as your justification. Are you then going to tell me this was the most dire humanitarian situation in the world? Why Iraq?

Second question, short term have we made things better or worse?

Also, as I pointed out repeatedly, I wanted more info on what comes next. It's the long term where we have a chance to make a moral justification for this war. That's still true now. Going to war based on the info the public had always seemed correct. However, we hadn't and still don't seem to have a real plan for what next. How are we going to replace the government we hated with a better one that will be accepted by the people of Iraq?

I can't help but think religating the UN to the sidelines here is a mistake. We need the established gov to have legitmacy, and the UN would have been the easy way to do it. I've said over and over, the UN is no good as an institution for war. It's usefulness is in creating avenues for long term peace. Well, without legitmacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people and possibly the eyes of others in the middle east, long term peace isn't an available option.

I hate to see it, but I suspect it will require the new Iraqi government going against the US very publicly on a few issues before it is seen as anything but a pupet regime. I think we had a choice, a UN established gov or a gov that has to go against us atleast in the short term. I would probably has prefered the UN rout to legitamacy.

As a side note, this whole topic might be a day too early. I still have to read the Post article on the WMD mobile lab on todays front page. Though from the title, the info may not come out until sometime today. Ironic...:shootinth possible oops.

[JackC]

GBEAR,

Actually I would have supported the mission if it was sold as humanitarian. I would support a few more on those grounds too. The problem is that's not how they sold the war.

[codeorama]

I don't know if I would have supported the war if it was sold as a humanitarian effort, because there are so many other candidates and where do you stop...

But I totally agree that the war was not sold as such. The American public was scared into supporting the war and convinced that 9/11 = Iraq.

[gbear]

JackC, I might have gone along too if it were sold as only humanitarian. However, it would have taken far more concrete plans than we have seen thus far.

[fansince62]

nonsense gbear....I've made the point repeatedly: the primary reason advanced was to arrest the development of WMDs on the expectation that Saddam wold have sold them to terrorist groups. There were secondary reasons and adminsitration spokespersons addressed them repeatedly on the weekly news/interview shows. The moral grounds - ending the murder, genocide, torture, etc - were spoken to.

my point still stands. from what I can read of a balanced person such as yourself and a hysteric such as ASF, both of you would not have supported this war had there been incontravertible proof that there were no WMDs. The inevitable conclusion is that the two of you, certainly ASF, either accepted or ignored the human cost of this regime.

the fact remains that a HUGE positive outcome of this war is that the Iraqi people have been liberated. The critics are ignoring this. No matter how the tide eventually turns, this is irrefutable. They are better off now than they were before.......butchering murderers have been silenced......

now.....if your agenda is to criticize how the war was pakaged/sold - as someone else so felicitously put it - that's a different matter. BUT IT DOESN'T SPEAK TO THE JUSTNESS OF THE WAR ITSELF AND ITS OUTCOME. and that requires an in-depth knowledge of security information, humint, etc., that I doubt folks sucf as ASF and writers at the NY Times have.

[Burgold]

Fan is right. They did promote the war on multiple prongs. Before the war, they really stressed the terrorism and WMD points hard and mentioned the humanitarian side as an afterthought. Once the war commenced, they spoke much more forcefully about the humanitarian aspect. Today, they seem to talk almost exclusively about the human victory. That's because that's where the most obvious success is. There has been some terrorist evidence and lots of circumstantial evidence that makes one believe that there is/was WMD's, but so far nothing found. It will be good for us when/if these weapons are recovered. I do agree that a month is a time period that seems very long, but in reality is very short. Remember the sniper, last year? He haunted the DC area for about a month. During that month, the police were criticized heavily for not doing enough, but after he was caught, hindsight made their efforts seem remarkable and efficient.

I still don't know if the war was necessary from a US interests standpoint. There are so many countries out there doing the same or worse than Iraq. The why now, why them question bothers me. However, the humanitarian aspect of the war (which they underplayed at the beginning IMO) made me at least believe in the cause of the war. As to the criticism of the mainstream press based on the assumption that their intelligence/knowledge of what the real deal is lacking... I find that argument pretty weak. Maybe it's me, but if the government knows information contradictory to what's being reported they need to do more than say,

"They're wrong. Trust us." They owe us all information that doesn't put the troops in danger or compromise national security. Of course, figuring what that is can be very difficult

[fansince62]

Burgold...fair enough!!

one thing that bothers me.....there seems to be a predispositon on the part of some to assume that folks in power are egomanical, corporate cronies who will sacrifice the national security for personal benefit. there also seems to be a confusion between the unpredicatability of events as they unfold through the decades and this supposed venal mindset....i.e., events turn out badly precisely because corrupt people are invovled. I don't accept this argument......even though I thought the Clintonites were wildly misguided in their approach to foreign policy and did a lot to undermine the morale and effectiveness of the military....I never thought any of them charged with managing national security were corrupt from the pov of ignoring core security matters for personal benefit. they mismanaged it...but they weren't evil people out to manufacture personal enrichment at the expense of your family and mine

[Burgold]

I really think the assumption of corruption started with Nixon. I think people really lost a lot of faith when they learned of watergate and more importantly the wire tappings. This then, got followed up by the reporting of all sort of pay offs (lobbying type payoffs), Clinton who tried to use his power to avoid the witchhunt, and Bush who seems to use it to award his industrial friends. Most people I know have a love/hate-trust/trust them only as far as I can throw them attitude towards politicians in general. On the other hand, I think people still generally trust the individuals... However, if you lump politicians together there is a presumption of slime and grease which is as unfair as when people lump all the media together and proclaim a united liberal agenda.

[Atlanta Skins Fan]

Obviously I have a specific problem with the power brokers in the Bush team, but the fundamental problem is in our system itself.

It takes an immense amount of money to be elected to national office, and most of these guys don't have that kind of cash to start with. As a result, they are forced to get contributions in order to run a campaign. Some of this, such as most individual $100 contributions, are innocuous enough, but the big cash comes from people, companies and pressure groups who expect a return on their investment. (In many cases, these big contributors give money to both parties, ensuring they will have a politician in their pocket either way.)

The other fundamental problem is the winner-take-all approach to Congressional seats, which virtually eliminates the possibility of minor-party candidates being elected to national office. The result is a very tired, very corrupt two-party system with no one in Congress who can offer an alternative platform. In this way, parliamentary systems that enable representation by minor parties are superior.

Obviously our electoral college is also antiquated, though it will rarely swing an election against the popular vote as it did with Bush/Gore.

Unfortunately, changing our system is difficult to impossible, since it requires Constitutional amendments (such as for federally funded national elections) that would have to be passed by current members of Congress, who might feel threatened by such change. I do think a solution could be found via a grandfather provision in such amendments, but even here, existing members of Congress would be pressured by their existing financial backers not to pass such amendments.

It hasn't helped that what little campaign finance reform that has passed Congress is defective to begin with, and then has been struck down frequently by the courts on "free speech" grounds. The latter is brutally ironic, since it's free speech (the will of the people) that is being frustrated by big money in politics.

[stratoman]

Again AFS, you have the freedom of choice to move to most any country you choose, so if you feel this country has such a corrupt governmental system...move to country that better fits your ideology..:puke: