Iraq actions makes terrorism risks worse ?

[Chemical Ollie]

Excuse me to to interupt the one-man show about failed UN inspections, but how does it motivate the killing of 50.000 innocent civilians (Bush's number) or 600.000 (the Lancet's number)? And how does it motivate the boycot of Dixie Chicks? Does anyone deserve an apology in retrospect, and who?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Dixie chicks should be boycotted based upon their 'music' alone.

[Chemical Ollie]

Irrelevant post deleted

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
Does anyone deserve an apology in retrospect, and who?

Hans Blix

[Chemical Ollie]

Yeah, I could agree with that

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sandman


So now he wasn't getting his implausibly skillful and dedicated 20,000 man secret police to destroy/hide all the deadly documents? You can hardly do that whilst being a year away from employing poison gas against the Kurds.

You veer between fantasies with such dizzying speed that it's hard to keep up.

The Nazis couldn't even do that dispite their reported thoroughness. Tons of documents were left.

[Chemical Ollie]

And what do we learn from that?

[Elok]

That the Nazis destroyed people much better than papers?

[Chemical Ollie]

The owens were occupated with other important stuff to burn

[Elok]

Yeah, we can assume they didn't have The Shredder, or they'd have used that on people too. Oh geez, I'm making Holocaust jokes...

[Chemical Ollie]

I'm not after Holocast jokes, I just want to know why people regard the methods in WW2 more reliable than the methods used in the current "Lancet study".

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sandman

Um, he let the inspectors back in. They found nothing.

Don't bother him with small details like that.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Oerdin

Originally posted by Sandman
Um, he let the inspectors back in. They found nothing.

Don't bother him with small details like that.

Asked and answered.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Straybow
I'm sorry that you can't keep up. I'll explain what I meant. Saddam was about a year away from Blix declaring the inspection complete. With inspectors gone and embargos lifted Saddam could then dig up the hidden records and such and get back to his WMD programs with the intent of, say, gassing Kurds (to list a historical example of his predelictions).

I wouldn't hazard a guess how long it would take to build gas shells, but from what everybody here is saying he had dual-use chemicals that were "inspected" and left behind to be put to one of those two uses.

Whatever the case, Saddam would've been free in short time to pursue whatever WMDs his heart desired. Then we'd have one more saber-rattler talking about joining the nuclear club (to keep up parity with Iran, of course).

You simply chain together various pro-war talking points with no thought or deeper understanding. Your repeated references to 'gassing the Kurds', for example.

If you knew anything about the Kurdish massacre, beyond the 'he gassed the Kurds' trope, you'd know that the overwhelming majority of the Kurds were killed with conventional weapons. The gas is hyped up for sensationalist reasons. Believe it or not, gas is not a very effective weapon. In addition, much of the gas that was used was delivered by aerial bombardment, the Halabja attack, for example. The Iraqi airforce was an empty shell by 2003, and the Kurds were under the US air umbrella. The chances of Saddam going back to 'gas the Kurds' were non-existant.

Your opinions seem to be based on fierce anti-empiricism and the primacy of legalese over practical matters. If there's no evidence, you just parrot pre-war factoids (often from 1998 or earlier), stitched together with an implausibly effective concealment operation. Never mind that no captured Iraqi official has admitted this, you just blandly state that 'most have disappeared'. Presumably only the ones that didn't know anything have been captured.

Added to this is your backpedalling on what counts as a WMD, with your claims of 'WMD programs', apparently consisting mostly of documents. I don't remember the Bush administration basing their pro-war arguments on mobile filing cabinets or presidential libraries or computers that could be readied in 45 minutes. That's because documents are not threatening and do not constitute a reason for war, at least to normal people.

But to someone who places legalese over reality, it would seem to be enough. If Saddam was pursuing non-physical WMD related activity programs, it's good enough for you. And it's so utterly vague that it's completely impossible to disprove such notions.

Given the importance you place on convoluted legalese, I'm surprised you haven't brought up the handful of antiquated gas shells that have been found. I've heard them used as a justification for the war, and hell, at least they actually exist, unlike your mythical documents. Odd how the super-skillful Iraqi secret police managed to miss them, as well.

To cap it all, presumably realising that WMD 'programs' are utterly non-threatening, you attempt to cobble together a case that Iraq would be able to quickly start cranking out gas shells, based on those wonderful, magical hidden documents and 'dual-use chemicals'. Never mind that gas shells are pretty ineffective weapons, and that Iraq's military and economy were shattered wrecks.

Finally, you make ludicrous claim that a penniless, airforceless regime could think of joining the nuclear club in a few years, totally unencumbered by the international community. What next? That Iraq was a 'short time' from putting a human into space?

[notyoueither]

Finally, you make ludicrous claim that a penniless, airforceless regime could think of joining the nuclear club in a few years, totally unencumbered by the international community. What next? That Iraq was a 'short time' from putting a human into space?

How was Saddam's regime penniless?