Before anyone forgets, WMD's revisited...

[Hueij]

From this article in the NYTimes, dated Sept 16:

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix now believes Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago and that intelligence agencies were wrong in their weapons assessment that led to war.

In an interview with Australian radio from Sweden, Blix said the search for evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons would probably only uncover documents at best.``The more time that has passed, the more I think it's unlikely that anything will be found,'' Blix said in the interview, which was broadcast on Wednesday.

"I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed almost all of what they had in the summer of 1991,'' Blix said.

Well, any comments? Looks like the UN wasn't that wrong after all when it decided not to participate in your little war...

[MichaeltheGreat]

I suppose permanent sanctions would have been a fine solution - punish the Iraqi people, while Hussein found enough "cooperative" states, including some in Europe, to ignore sanctions and help Hussein build more palaces and memorials to himself.

Or the UN could have just abandoned sanctions and proclaimed to the entire world "We have neither the means nor the will to enforce our resolutions, but by all means, continue to pay dues and we can go through the motions."

Seriously, how long would you have continued the charade?

[lord of the mark]

you conveniently left out this part

'Blix, who spent three years searching for Iraqi chemical, biological and ballistic missiles as head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said Iraq might have tried to fool the United States into believing it had weapons of mass destruction over the years in order to deter attack.

"I mean, you can put up a sign on your door, 'Beware of the Dog,' without having a dog," he said from his home in Sweden. '


You see the paradox is, if Sadam didnt have WMD, why not document the destruction, and why continue with non-cooperation, etc. So blixie is saying that he decided that the threat of WMD was as good as the actual possesion of them. IF Blixie turns out to be right, this is a hardly a basis for blaming the US and UK.
To finish with Blixies metaphor, if I used to have a dog, and the law has said Im not allowed to have a dog, and my dog dies, but i keep up a sign that says beware of dog, and somebody barges into my house cause of my dog, i can hardly blame them for being mistaken when they dont find a dog in my house.

[Hueij]

That's all very fine but totally beside the point...

The point is that the US and UK governments lied to us when they tried to convince us they had proof of Iraqi WMD's. Powell didn't show pictures of new palaces, he showed us the "proof" the US claimed it had. So the dog-paradox is beside the point here...

[MichaeltheGreat]

That dog don't hunt.

They lied. So what?

Do you want to have us apologize and return the country to Hussein?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Do you want to have us apologize and return the country to Hussein?

Here you go, Saddam .

[Sandman]

You see the paradox is, if Sadam didnt have WMD, why not document the destruction, and why continue with non-cooperation, etc. So blixie is saying that he decided that the threat of WMD was as good as the actual possesion of them. IF Blixie turns out to be right, this is a hardly a basis for blaming the US and UK.

They did try to document the destruction, but were not taken seriously. In any case, mere paper would never have been enough for the Bush Administration, so utterly determined to go to war. The pathetic wooden spy drones were used as evidence, despite the fact they posed no threat. The Iraqis refusal to allow spy plane flights was also used as a pretext, despite the fact that satellites made spy planes largely irrelevant, and that the Iraqis were under no obligation to agree to the flights.

[DinoDoc]

Re: Before anyone forgets, WMD's revisited...

Originally posted by Hueij
Well, any comments?

Assuming we believe Blix knows what he is talking about, why didn't Iraq provide proof of this and why is Blix only just now saying he believes it?

[Japher]

The point is that the US and UK governments lied to us when they tried to convince us they had proof of Iraqi WMD's.

That is stupid to say right after:

'Blix, who spent three years searching for Iraqi chemical, biological and ballistic missiles as head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said Iraq might have tried to fool the United States into believing it had weapons of mass destruction over the years in order to deter attack.

Sadam was the liar and he shot himself in the foot because of it... If all this BS is actually true.

[The Mad Monk]

Because Iraqis have just started to say it, and he is just saying he believes them.

[The Mad Monk]

Also, what Japher said.

[Gatekeeper]

I read somewhere that part of Saddam's posturing on WMD may have been due to his fear of Iran and Syria. Apparently he thought those two nations might take advantage of Iraq's weakness if it were true that Iraq didn't have any WMD.

Hindsight is always 20/20 ... Iraq probably would have been better off just coming clean right away and then relying on the international community to prevent its neighbors from doing to it what it did to Kuwait.

Gatekeeper

[rev]

Blix, and other inspectors, have been saying for quite some time that it's possible that Iraq destroyed any WMD they had after the first Gulf War, or in 1998. This is just the NYT covering a story that has already been covered.

What's different now, though, is that the "inspections" are now complete -- it just took an invasion and the conquering force to do it, because we were impatient with Blix's inspections (which, if you'll recall, had already shown that the "evidence" possessed by the U.S. was "junk").

It would have been a brilliant move for Bush to have stayed at the point where an invading force was in position, but U.N. inspectors still in Iraq. US force gave the inspectors some force behind their words, and inspections would have eventually shown that there was little or nothing there.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Hueij
That's all very fine but totally beside the point...

The point is that the US and UK governments lied to us when they tried to convince us they had proof of Iraqi WMD's. Powell didn't show pictures of new palaces, he showed us the "proof" the US claimed it had. So the dog-paradox is beside the point here...

The basic proof was that it was known that saddam had em, and no evidence he'd destroyed him.

OTOH, it is widely beleived that the admin had iraqi comm intercepts (besides the ones Powell played at the UN) that showed they had them. So another theory goes that even Saddam thought he had them, and so communicated, but that his underlings were lying to him.

[SlowwHand]

Re: Before anyone forgets, WMD's revisited...

Originally posted by Hueij
From this article in the NYTimes, dated Sept 16:

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix now believes Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago and that intelligence agencies were wrong in their weapons assessment that led to war.

In an interview with Australian radio from Sweden, Blix said the search for evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons would probably only uncover documents at best.``The more time that has passed, the more I think it's unlikely that anything will be found,'' Blix said in the interview, which was broadcast on Wednesday.

"I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed almost all of what they had in the summer of 1991,'' Blix said.

Well, any comments? Looks like the UN wasn't that wrong after all when it decided not to participate in your little war...

Like if Blix says it, it's gold ?

Thanks for more rhetoric and whining.