Declassified report-WMD Found in Iraq

[Victor Galis]

Re: Re: I need an answer for one "yes/no" question in the end of this post

Originally posted by Deity Dude


I honestly never heard this on FOX news. It doesn't take a genius though to look at a map and see what countries border Iraq and dislike the US more than Iraq.

Again I'm not saying he had anything or not. I'm just saying with a 6 month warning I knew we weren't gonna find anything.

So we can know he has something, but we don't notice that same thing while it's moving away? You know it's much easier to hide something that's not moving.

Well I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this. All I can say is I lived in the US thru the whole lead-up and as I tried to point out earlier there were lots of issues floating around at the time, UN Inspectors seemed to be the #1 issue if you had to pick one but it was much more complicated than a single issue or 2.

I mainly remember polls showing Dems going to beat the GOP in Congressional elections, then talk about invading Iraq started and people forgot how ****ty the economy was.

The US went into Iraq for the most part united. They went in for a multitude of issues.

Many of those reasons were pushed after the fact though. WMDs were the administration's focus until they didn't find any. There was a very gradual shift from "ZOMG! THEY'RE GOING TO NUKE NEW YORK IF WE DON"T INVADE NOW !!1!1!!" to "Iraq armed with WMD is dangerous, and even without it's better to replace a scumbag like Saddam with a democracy" to "Democracy, yay!!" The shift for the most part didn't happen until after the election.

(inspectors, attacking the no fly zone, attempting to assasinate an ex president, use of WMD's against his own people and others, brutality of his regime)

As I've said earlier. Bush had plenty of material to manufacture a casus belli, still doesn't mean it was a good idea to invade.

(US kept overlooking Al Qaeda attacks that led up to 9/11 and now Iraq was pulling similiar type things and the Anthrax attacks in Washington and New York)

If by pulling the similar types of things you mean sitting on their *** doing nothing, then yes.

and now as time has gone on the vast majority have changed thier mind about the war, which is OK, but they can't admit that they themselves were for this and now they're against it even though almost all and perhaps all of the underlying reasons/worries weren't lies.

The country is war weary and as usual everyone wants to blame someone else.

It has nothing to do with war-weariness. The war has had about 0 impact on me for example. It could go on indefinitely and I'd not be affected; however, what changed is that people had time to think. After 9/11 everyone went into knee-jerk rally around the pres/blow up some towelheads mode . The administration capitalized on this and hastily invaded Iraq while the people still found it unpatriotic to question Bush, and in their rush they neglected to put together a plan for what to do after. Anyone that seriously believed the Iraqis would recieve US troops with flowers

To play devil's advocate, I suppose a possible answer to your question could be that he seriously thought A) the lack of WMD attacks on Coalition forces, B) their failure to find any stockpiles, and C) mounting casualties from a successful insurgency would all erode American public support for the war enough for them to tuck tail and run (just like in Vietnam, a word certainly in Saddam's vocabulary), after which he would return to power.

Such a prediction would have been remarkably accurate, except for miscalculating the extent to which his own people hated him (a variable which he wasn't in the best position to determine while sitting on a gold-plated toilet seat). I don't personally think Saddam had operational WMD and hid them, but IF he did the above train of thought would have been logical from his perspective.

Actually, post war records indicate that the bit he best anticipated were his people hating him. There have been articles since (I forget which magazine) that basically say that Saddam's forces were better oriented to fight an uprising in the south than to defend Baghdad. In particular he refused to blow up bridges until it was too late because he thought he would need to counter-attack in the south Apparently he thought the Americans would repeat Gulf War I and never actually take Baghdad. Even so his plan would have worked had he picked a better hiding spot; though that might have been pretty hard. If he could have somehow dissappeared for about 5-10 years, I think he could have had lots of support given the chaos that's here now.

[Darius871]

Of course revolts in the south were anticipated; by 'his own people' I was referring to the Sunni triangle, where even in his traditional base of support around Tikrit people dropped a dime on him in a matter of months.

[RGBVideo]

Anyone that seriously believed the Iraqis would recieve US troops with flowers

IMHO the neo-conservative invididuals orchestrating the invasion like Paul D. Wolfowitz were honestly stupid enough to believe this. I'm basing this belief on the complete lack of planning on what'll happen in Iraq, post-"Victory". If they weren't presuming that we'll just be greeted with flowers after a hard, glorious and victorious struggle (just like in the movies) and that's it, you'd think they would've actually planned some details on what would happen when US forces were running the country, huh? Realistic guys within the administration like Cheney who are personally earning $$$bigbucks$$$ by being shareholders of defense contractors used their immaturity as a tool.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Arrian
Why do I bother, though? You actually contest that Bush wanted to invade Iraq and spun the "facts" such that we did? I didn't use the word lie, by the way. Spin is more accurate
.
-Arrian

According to the new Suskind book, Cheney deliberately kept Bush in the dark about the caveats and disagreemtns the CIA had about Iraqs WMDs, uranium, and AQ "links." For his part, Bush didn't do a lot of questioning.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/06/22/iraq_debate/

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Deity Dude
I'm not commenting on whether the action was right or wrong. I am just saying WMD's were one of many issues. And originally the major issue was not letting the inspectors in.

That just ignores the niggling little detail of the inspectors being allowed back into Iraq.

There were two issues that the President hammered home for invading Iraq: WMDs, and 9/11. Both were false. The Administration knew they had no evidence to back their assertions, but either actually believed they were right or figured that the war and reconstruction would go so easily that after the fact, no one would care that they were bald faced LIARS.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Deity Dude
First of all I don't watch FOX News, but it sure sounds like alot of people accusing me of being a gullbile Buspologist do.

Because you are regurgitating Bush admin/FOX News lies.

Second of all, I never said he had 100 ft long payload systems that he transferred to another country.

And what country would that be? Syria Syria and Iraq were enemy states.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by VJ
PLATO: This is old news. Old chemical munitions made before the 1991 gulf war have been found buried under the sand before. Like in this case, they were non-functional. All this proves is that the Iraqi leadership took the cease fire treaty seriously and got rid of it's WMD's the cheapest possible way.

Yeah I know....just couldn't resist getting everybody's blood running on this again!



Still, it is worth asking...Would it change anybody's mind if they found post 1991 deployable munitions that were a threat? Would it be worth the cost to hav removed this threat? Just curious.

[chequita guevara]

No.

[MRT144]

it would only be worth the cost if iraqis were bleeding oil

[PLATO]

Originally posted by MRT144
it would only be worth the cost if iraqis were bleeding oil

Yea! A "Blood for oil" post!!

[GePap]

Originally posted by PLATO



Still, it is worth asking...Would it change anybody's mind if they found post 1991 deployable munitions that were a threat? Would it be worth the cost to hav removed this threat? Just curious.

absolutely postively NO.

NO!

no

[Berzerker]

according to Scott Ritter, the CIA was using the WMD inspections to set up coup attempts on Saddam. The Iraqis figured it out and thats why they were resisting inspections they deemed to be a cover for gathering intel on Saddam's location(s). Ritter spoke of a discussion he had with a high Iraqi officer where the Iraqi told him they knew what the CIA was up to, Ritter later complained to the UN about the corruption of the inspections. And it was Clinton who pulled the inspectors out before an attack in '98...

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by Deity Dude

OK how about a what-if example:

a what if.. is that worth the lives of 40,000 innocent people?

Perhaps someone who is pre-infected themselves so it can never be traced directly back to him. Then we could have a new term: 'suicide-WMDer'

perhaps... is that enough to kill over 40,000 people?

Again, I didn't say HE DID DO THIS I said given 6 months warning HE COULD HAVE DONE THIS.

and George Bush could have orchestrated the 9-11 attacks, and the moon landing could have been faked. If all you were saying is "could haves", why post at all?

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by PLATO

Still, it is worth asking...Would it change anybody's mind if they found post 1991 deployable munitions that were a threat? Would it be worth the cost to hav removed this threat? Just curious.

No, because Saddam knew the official response of the United States to any state-sponsored terrorist attacks....

...nuclear strike.

Its a alot different than invading a country the US either A. hates (Iran) or B. seams to care less about (Kuwait)

[Berzerker]

O'Reilly is using this to "ask" people who've accused the Bushies of lying if they would now apologise. As if the existence of WMD in Iraq absolves the Bushies of all the lies they've told, or that artillery shells w/mustard gas from the Iran Iraq war is why we invaded. The cache was found near the Iranian border and may have been buried when that war ended and before he went into Kuwait.

God I'm tired of the BS, the party of God has a big problem telling the truth