Kissinger says Iraq not winnable

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Where was this Kissinger guy in the spring of '03. His advice would have been more useful rhen.

Frankly it appears that Saddam Hussein did indeed obey the UN's demands regarding the destruction of chemical and biological weapons and the dismantling of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons production and research facilities, so where lies the legal basis for this war?

Flying monkeys moved the weapons to Syria

[Bosh]

At least we caught up with the people responsible.

Responsible for what? Improper weapon disposal?

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Because they didn´t want a regime change at all costs,
and rather saw the UN resolutions fulfilled than seeking a reason to go to war with him.
And obviously letting him remain in power would have been a better move in the war against terror, than the things the US government did.

OK, let's follow the logic.

Everything would've been peaches 'n' cream had the US not screwed up reconstruction, so say the critics. Who include the people who whined that they weren't getting contracts for reconstruction. The people who refused to cooperate with the US, even in reconstruction, but insisted that the US should simply hand it all over to that paragon of virtue and efficiency called the UN.

So they did want regime change, and when the war was over at very little cost of life they couldn't admit they were wrong and work with us.

That there would be a regime change after you won the war was clear to everyone.
But this was never the reason brought forth by Colin Powell and others people at the UN Security Council (and other places where they [and Tony Blair] wanted to persuade the international community that war would be justified and correct according to the UN resolutions. )

We didn't have to convince anybody we wanted regime change. We had to convince the peaceniks that efforts to force Saddam himself to change his regime were a failure.

Colins speech sounded not like a "small stockpile" but rather like several depots that contained chemical weapons.
Colin Powell gave as example sattelite phtograph of something that he called an active depot for chemical weapons (i.e. one that really contained chemical warheads) which was, according to his speech, in Taji and was only one of several (he gave the number 65) such depots
[image de-linked for space] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...es/12-350h.jpg
See also Powells speech before the UNSC:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html#12

So did your forces find any of the things mentioned in the speech by Colin Powell?
(and did your forces find any traces of the biological weapons program and the mobile facilities for the production of Anthrax that Powell also stated to be an almost sure fact)

Did you read the text? It seems not. This particular picture and text was proof that Saddam was not cooperating with inspection, and therefore the inspectors' conclusions were false.

The Iraqis were removing materials and purging the site, not turning materials over to the UN for destruction. Can you cite some source that explains where those materials went? No. Nobody can.

Can you cite for me one example of a UN inspection visit that was not subjected to interference, that found the materials the inspectors' reliable sources said were there, that they documented and then destroyed according to 1441?

Satellite images can be misinterpreted.
Lets take for example the satellite image of the facility at Taji. What is more probable?
That the Bush government just took these pictures and falsely interpreted them in a way that suited their purposes (i.e. as active depots for chemical weapons that really contained chemical weapons before the inspections)
or that this facility was really, like Powell stated, an active depot for chemical weapons and that during the war everything what was present inside could be taken out of the country, without your soldiers being able to find any traces of it during or after the war?
Well, I rather think that the first explanation is correct

Again, did you pay attention? That was history. These locations were already cleaned up without the materials being inspected. Going back there isn't going to find something the inspectors missed, not unless materials were taken back to that site after inspectors left.

We would have to find where the materials were moved to in order to find traces. The best explanation is that the dangerous materials were removed from secure containment locations to insecure dump sites where Saddam hoped to recover them at some later date.

Another speculation is that he sold some of it to Syria. Yet another is that he did destroy it once he saw that invasion was inevitable, just so he wouldn't get caught with it. We know he had the manpower and equipment necessary to leave virtually no trace. The activity shown in the slides demonstrates that.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Bosh
Responsible for what? Improper weapon disposal?

We caught the people responsible for the chemical and biological weapons programs. Yet another failure of the inspectors, who were unable to interview scientists and workers and leaders such as "Chemical Ali" and "Mrs. Anthrax."

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Straybow
No, the conditions were clear. They were to be destroyed under UN supervision. We were supposed to document the materials and their disposal.

The inspectors saw nothing, destroyed nothing, so obviously they succeeded! By that standard, so the US invasion was an even greater success. At least we caught up with the people responsible.

Incorrect. The inspectors oversaw the destruction of much of the Iraqi WMD program. However, the Iraqis went ahead and destroyed a bunch on their own before the Inspector regime began, and failed to document the process adequately, not that any of us knew that. However, by 98 it was apparently that more than 95% of their capacity was gone. There was no rational basis for continuing either the embargo or initiating a war. We did it to show how powerful we were.

[chequita guevara]

Starybow, you are aware that everything Powell said was factually incorrect, to put it nicely.

[DinoDoc]

Who the hell cares if Iraq had WMD or not? The containment regime was working.

[chequita guevara]

It was killing people, but not as efficiently as they are killing each other now.

[DinoDoc]

Point being?

[chequita guevara]

'twas a point of information

[Straybow]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Starybow, you are aware that everything Powell said was factually incorrect, to put it nicely.

That appears to be a matter of debate, not of fact.

[chequita guevara]

No, not really. There were no WMDs and no terrorist training base. Even Powell has admitted his speech was nothing more than a bunch of lies that were fed to him. I can only wonder about the stuff that he refused to let be in his presentation.

[Ned]

Originally posted by MOBIUS


Agreeing completely with Ned to the point that I mentioned both his points AT THE TIME (Told you so, told you so etc... ), and not with 'Nedsight' (a curious form of 'hindsight' where the afflicted have to wait a lot longer for the benefits to set in - three years in Ned's case!)

Not really. I was always arguing to not dismiss or to recall the Iraqi Army. Those who were here at the time should recall this.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Straybow

Originally posted by Ned
Oerdin, I think the main problem were 2) lack of US troops and 2) dismissing the Iraqi army. A greater number of US troops could have kept order better from the get go, and keeping the Iraqi Army intact would have least kept those troops on base and out of the insurgency.

Iraqi Army before invasion: 375,000
Armed insurgents: 10-20,000 (at least half foreign)

That would have little impact on domestic insurgents, and none on foreign fighters. The radicals in the Army who wanted to be jihadis would've easily dropped out or gone AWOL.

The other problem was that the US didn't dissolve the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi Army was commanded by Saddam to disperse into the population and continue the fight from there.

What we dissolved was the formal command structure, which was loyal to Saddam after many gruesome purgings.

So what? I could argue that the bulk of the resistance was and still is comprised of ex-Army. This you did not deny.

Keeping the Army on base while training them up US-style would have gone a long way to crippling the resistance in its early stages.