Confed999

If he had, I still bet he would be in power. I would have, if I were him, because I know there were allready plenty of spies there.
That, and they had seen them used.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Officer of Engineers

Trooth,

The Inspections were DESIGNED to be intrusive. Iraq HAS NO claim on the matter. It doesn't matter if Ritter Scott was a spy or not (he was - who else to be a weapons inspector). Saddam lost the war and those were the terms of surrender.

Another thing, I (as in me personally) found chems in Kuwait in the Kuwait War. They were deployed. Just that the Americans NEVER presented a mass for their deployment.

So, how easy is it for Saddam to convince us that he can do it agian?

__________________
Chimo

Trooth

OK, so there were lots of spies in there. How come they got it wrong then?
I have never denied WMD were used by Iraq. But that context was different to the one we went to war on, wasn't it ?

Confed999

Because they are just spies.
I never said you did, I was just adding to what you said before, and yes it was one of the reasons. Saddam had to prove he destroyed them, or show where they are, or show where he lied about having them. Note OoE's post above though, he had them, where are they now?

Trooth

Proving a negative comes down to definition. What exactly is a WMD? Hence people moving from having WMD, to talk about "material breach" or "intent". And hence all the flapping about from reason to reason given by the western powers before the war, and hence why no WMD have been found since. We set Iraq a very difficult task, and we did it purposely. I can see the reasons why we did it. But they are not the reasons that were spelled out by our leaders. And my leader went so far as to provide Parliament with "terminological inexactitude".

Confed999

Not a true statement, but you allready know that.
Are you sure? Here are a very few examples to help you out.

Even durring the great WMD debate nearly every speach, at the least, mentioned his victims.
"do not let us forget the 4 million Iraqi exiles, the thousands of children who die needlessly every year due to Saddam's impoverishment of his country - a country which in 1978 was wealthier than Portugal or Malaysia but now is in ruins, 60 per cent of its people on food aid. Let us not forget the tens of thousands imprisoned, tortured or executed by his barbarity every year. The innocent die every day in Iraq victims of Saddam, and their plight too should be heard." -PM Blair
"his is a regime with no moderate elements to appeal to. Read the chapter on Saddam and human rights. Read not just about the one million dead in the war with Iran, not just about the 100,000 Kurds brutally murdered in northern Iraq; not just the 200,000 Shia Muslims driven from the marshlands in southern Iraq; not just the attempt to subjugate and brutalise the Kuwaitis in 1990 which led to the Gulf War. Read about the routine butchering of political opponents; the prison "cleansing" regimes in which thousands die; the torture chambers and hideous penalties supervised by him and his family and detailed by Amnesty International." -PM Blair

I watch BBC news sometimes, and I know they've mentioned his forces have fired on US and UK forces many, many times in the no-fly zones.
"Every day this year and for years, British and American pilots risk their lives to police the No Fly Zones. But it can't go on forever." -PM Blair

I'm sure they've also mentioned his calls for, and support of, terrorism many times. In the speaches this was kept extremely brief, but here in the US they showed SH doing it on his public tv about 4 times a year for a decade.
"Terrorism and weapons of mass destruction combine modern technology with political or religious fanaticism. If unchecked they will, as September 11 showed, explode into disorder and chaos." -PM Blair

The part that got me was the unreturned Kuwaiti POWs and civilians, and the possible US POW, though.(#30 in UNSCR687) This was touched on briefly, along with the dozen or so other violations of UN resolutions.
"During the 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait, the Iraqis arrested thousands of unarmed Kuwaitis and third country residents of Kuwait. Most were released following liberation, but as Ambassador Vorontsov's report and briefing make clear, over 600 never returned. 592 of those people were civilians, and most of them were neither soldiers nor policemen. They were arrested in an organized fashion by Iraqi authorities, who should have a record of their fate. For the last ten years, their families have had no word of whether their loved ones are alive or dead." -Ambassador James Cunningham

To say your leaders only gave WMD as cause is wrong, but if the WMD issue was the only way to get rid of SH, then I'm glad they made it look so important. I don't see that as a cavalier attitude, I see it as a last resort. People like that should have never been supported, and I'm glad that the US, and many other countries, are at least putting pressure on the scum, like him, remaining in the world. I pray that pressure continues. I pray the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan get a chance to really live. I pray that we all live to see a world free of such blind hate. I doubt my prayers will come true, but I will continue to pray regardless.

Trooth

No, i don't know that. I know there were some vials of Anthrax found in someone's fridge - vials that could not have been weaponised, i know there were some "programmes" that showed "intent". I know that Iraq's missle test results showed some "overclocked" missles that could go a few KM further than they should and i know that there was half a dozen empty chemical shells found. But, even if you add all that up, you don't actually get one WMD.

My leader told me lots of things, in isolation, and he changed his subject when people refuted previous tacks he "flip flopped" around the reasons along the central theme. He did this based on the timeline of the struggles within the UN.

His contribution to producing a single coherent argument as to the threat that Iraq had managed to become (a threat remember that he became in a period of about 10 months) was to produce the "Dodgy Dossier". A dossier that has since not only been proven to be completely without foundation, but largely plagiarised off a PhD thesis obtained over the internet. The attitude and actions of my government contributed to the suicide of a well respected weapons expert and the tarnishing of the reputation of possibly the world's greatest broadcaster and journalistic organisation. Hansard now contains "teminilogical inexactitudes" thanks to my leader. The intelligence services of my country have suffered a dent in their credibility, the influence of the UN, an organisation that has in the past shown its worth at providing check and balances against unrestrained military might has been damaged and so on.

It isn't that there wasn't a case for war in Iraq (in my opinion it is related to military strategy regarding Iraq's neighbours as i have discussed). It is that if my leader is going to behave in this manner over Iraq. Which other countries is he going to be leading us into war against based on belief and conviction as opposed to cold hard facts? Since subsequent inquiries keep finding that our politicians were acting in good faith, then my leader needs to get the intelligence services back up to the standard that they were in mid 2001 - when Saddam had no WMD and had no capability to threaten her neighbours, as stated by Mr Powell and Dr Rice - rather than the shambles they were in a year later when they were happy to believe any Iraqi defector who could draw a hot water heating system using the right names for the valves and then write "anthrax production vessel" on the top of the bit of paper.

Confed999

Are you sure? The topic, and story, I recall was posted by you... Here it is: http://www.militaryaffairsboard.com/...ead.php?t=2048 there are other stories linked from here that include mustard gas finds, production equipment, and precursors.
The statements above were the cold hard facts, the WMD info, except for what Saddam admitted to, was labled intelligence and not fact. All of those statements I posted were pre-war. Now you can believe what you wish, but while you heard WMD, I heard the statements I quoted, and they are just a few. You say there was nothing other than incorrect intel to provide cause, I see incorrect intel as frosting. We all see what we want to see.

porsteamboy

Your assuming that some one gives a ****! All that **** is political smoke and mirriors!

porsteamboy

Don't go there, the whole Bush cabinet would be doing time with Martha Stewart!

porsteamboy

If they take an oath!

Confed999

It's a proven lie by a political candidate, so I care.

Try to watch the language please.

Confed999

What?

porsteamboy

Being a patriot is great, as long as your not blinded by that patriotism! There were so many flags flying after 911, no one saw Dubya a the neocons move in to take Afkanastan and Iraq! When emotions rule Government, she rules unwisley!

Confed999

One who is blinded by patriotism is a nationalist, not a patriot.
LOL figures...
I saw it. I support the removal of tyranical governments, and that has nothing to do with patriotism or nationalism. IMHO, it's sad that's political to so many.
I don't want a government without emotion, sounds ominous.

I do wonder how that speach came from what you quoted?