Where are the WMD? (long)

“SCREW THE FRENCH!


oh wait.....is that innuendous?



naaaaaahhh......SCREW UM ALL TO THE WALL!



actually tilt, they rip ole bushie when they disagree with him....like on this gun bill thing that's been goin on lately...

it's not about republicanism...it's about conservatism...they are not always synonymous...”

“If the Federalist is right, then ole George led an invasion of Iraq after the weapons were gone. That would make the invasion a very bloody farce indeed.”

“i think history will tell the whole story peddy. if they are right, we were right for going in to stop any more of that. if they are right, the french should fry(pardon the pun)...”

“The Federalist = conservative media?

Didn't you mock that concept in a previous thread?”

“It's too bad for the francophobes that all the attempts at national character assassination have been exposed for the lies they were. That story in the Washington Times about the French issuing passports to Saddam's crew doesn't even make for decent toilet paper, now, does it?

If it turns out that there were no WMD, do you think Bush will fry?

Nope! All of his supporters will develop an horrendous case of amnesia. I'm already seeing the beginnings of it. The shell game that was used to justify the invasion continues. It was telling that when the marquee name was promo'd that it definitely wasn't "Operation Get Saddam" or "Operation Neutralize WMD".

The American media seem to be every bit as forgetful. Is that simply a function of Bush's poll numbers? Will the Great Left Wing Media Conspiracy go back on the attack after Sweeps??

O Well....”

“I’d think it would be difficult to sneak weapons out of the country under the eye of the intense surveillance we had in preparation for an invasion. Especially since we were told the administration had intelligence about what they had and where it was.”

“Seems parliment is investigating Blair over the lack of WMD's...”

“The pressure is definitely on to find something. New teams going in.

At this point I'd be very careful about any new evidence. The likelihood of faked and planted evidence is going up (assuming that those trailers were legit). The fact that nothing has surfaced even with the US in control and offers of citizenship and more to helpful people speaks very very loudly.”

“oddly enough one of the points not mentioned so far is how much is needed to get bush off the hook? I for one am not going to be satisfied with a few shells here and there....”

“Good point dom.

I'm sure that the Bush boys will be providing us with a whole lot of evidence - some of it they will say couldn't be revealed too soon because they were putting it together. Knowing how much of the pre-war evidence was phonied up, we will have to look very carefully at the evidence which will eventually be presented with much hype and fanfare from the administration and the lapdog press.”

“Two weeks or so ago, at the daily briefing a Pentagon spokesman was asked about the problems of establishing a chain of custody for any evidence of WMD that might turn up --- He looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

Then he said, "Why should we need that?"”

“the evidence which will eventually be presented with much hype and fanfare from the administration and the lapdog press."
pedxing
02:44:18 PM
06/01/03


uhhmm....like the press is lapdog, they're leading the charge [at least the mainstream, elitist, liberal press which you are a lapdog for]

and secondly, would you expect anyone to present the story of the century in any other way?

nobody deny's the WMD's were used by him or all the stuff he had when the inspectors were kicked out. all the senators complaining now agreede at the time that he had them. the security counsel gave bush all the authority needed to take out hussein.”

“"the security counsel gave bush all the authority needed to take out hussein."
stratdewd
02:54:54 PM

that's one of the silliest lines the Bush boys and their backers use: They keep using that security council vogue as back up - and talking about what the security council meant by the vote. They never mention that most of the security council who voted for the renewed inspections resolution don't think their vote was intendedd to do what Bush says they intended.”

“Again Strat nobody denies Hussein used wmds. Nobody denies Hussein was using them with US knowledge and US assistance (US gave him info on Iranian troop movements while he was using chemical weapons against them).

The big issue is the moral justification for invading him over some risk that he might do something that another Republican administration helped him do once before.

The transparency of the imminent risk stuff is looking like BS - and the US media is getting dragged along here. If they are leading a charge, its a pathetically wimpy charge that makes the Husein's revolutionay gaurd look bold and heroic.”

“"Trashing our history and its icons has become the identifying
phenomenon of our national culture, what there is left of
it." --Wesley Pruden”

“Bush is trashing himself....

Bs aside Strat how many? is one going to be enough for you?”

“We'd better find tons & tons & tons & tons & tons. Otherwise it would seem that we are less safe now than before the war when we supposedly had this hard intelligence that it was inside Iraq. If the war scattered it around the world, then it accomplished what we were trying to prevent (again supposedly).”

“I was reading in the local paper this AM that bush was claiming we had found WMD's .... two lab trailers. Any more spin on that one and the world will stop turning :}”

“"Diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either
alone would fail." --John F. Kennedy”

“I'm doing my part!
Every day when I go to the office, I look for WMD.

Haven't found any yet, but I'm still looking.”

“give the inspectors more time.....

but not GW...”

“give the inspectors more time.....
stratdewd


isnt that what the UN said?”

“Don't expect a two way street here, DOM.”

“Just stay away from the Whoppers(Burgers Of Mass Destruction)”

“my point is that you people dont expect a 2 way street....

why do i always have to spell it out for ya'll....all that wit, down the drain”

“Powell was under pressure to use shaky intelligence on Iraq: report

story link

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell was under persistent pressure from the Pentagon and White House to include questionable intelligence in his report on Iraq weapons of mass destruction he delivered at the United Nations last February, a US weekly reported.

US News and World Report magazine said the first draft of the speech was prepared for Powell by Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in late January.

According to the report, the draft contained such questionable material that Powell lost his temper, throwing several pages in the air and declaring, "I'm not reading this. This is bull#&%!$."

Cheney's aides wanted Powell to include in his presentation information that Iraq has purchased computer software that would allow it to plan an attack on the United States, an allegation that was not supported by the CIA , US News reported.

The White House also pressed Powell to include charges that the suspected leader of the September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer prior to the attacks, despite a refusal by US and European intelligence agencies to confirm the meeting, the magazine said.

The pressure forced Powell to appoint his own review team that met several times with Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to prepare the speech, in which the secretary of state accused Iraq of hiding tonnes of biological and chemical weapons.

US News also said that the Defense Intelligence Agency had issued a classified assessment of Iraq's chemical weapons program last September, arguing that "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons."

However, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress shortly after that that the Iraqi "regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard gas," according to the report.”

“well there ya go....

speculation and heresay, has to be true”

“i agree with this....


Iraqis are an exhausted people. Most seem ready to give us a
chance, and we do have a shot at making this a decent place --
but not with nation building lite. That approach is coming
unstuck in Afghanistan and it will never work in Iraq. We've
wasted an important month. We must get our act together and
our energy up. Why doesn't Mr. Rumsfeld brief reporters every
day about rebuilding Iraq, the way he did about destroying
Saddam? ... America is in an imperial role here, now. Our security
and standing in the world ride on our getting Iraq right. If the
Bush team has something more important to do, I'd like to know
about it. Iraq can still go wrong for a hundred Iraqi reasons,
but let's make sure it's not because America got bored, tired or
distracted." --Thomas Friedman”

“Do you uh, Yahoo?”

“I thought you folks would have been comfortable by now with lying presidents!!! But I guess not.

We did the right thing even if we only find a tainted petri dish. The world will be a better place once terrorism is controlled and Iraq was the first stepping stone in achieving that. Give its some time, like another 4 yrs!”

“ya,its starting to look really bad.Of course the press hardly pursues this Major story.Bottom line for me,if people knew all along there was likely not to be any WMD then they should have their heads handed to them.Very shameful to say the least.We aer losing credibility fast and deservedly so.At the same time the UN is looking a lot better,no?
This govt has failed to meet its objectives in this war.
The sorriest thing is the lives lost for this increasingly apparent bogus invasion.
I would like to know how any govt official could/would justify the death of their son/daughter.Like,what did 135 US kids die for???What was the cause again?”

“.At the same time the UN is looking a lot better,no?



no.”

“135 US kids died for Bush's ego.”

“The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists," the president of the United States warned. "If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow."


The secretary of state loyally followed this hard line, defending the U.N. sanctions on Saddam Hussein: "There has never been an embargo against food and medicine. It's just that Hussein has just not chosen to spend his money on that. Instead, he has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."

Leveraging U.N. resolutions to support military action, the secretary of defense said: "The United Nations has determined that Saddam should not possess chemical or biological or nuclear weapons, and what we have is the obligation to carry out the U.N. declaration."

The officials argued that U.N. inspections weren't enough. "It is ineffectual; it is not able to do its job by its own judgment," the president's national security adviser said of the U.N. inspections regime. "It doesn't provide much deterrence against WMD activity."

The president's congressional loyalists stood behind him. "Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction," said a prominent senator, sounding a familiar theme, "but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people."

"For the United States and Britain, an Iraq equipped with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons under the leadership of Saddam Hussein is a threat that almost goes without description," said another hawk, taking aim at the split in the international community. "France, on the other hand, has long established economic and political relationships within the Arab world, and has had a different approach."

Who were the political leaders who, according to critics of the Iraq war, perpetrated this fraud on the American people by making overblown warnings about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Respectively, President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Sen. Tom Daschle and Sen. John Kerry.

They were all speaking in the late 1990s when Clinton bombed Iraq to "degrade" an Iraqi WMD capacity that we are supposed to believe disappeared in the inspection-free years that ensued, only to be resurrected as a false justification for war by the Bush administration.

The failure so far to find WMD in Iraq is a major embarrassment for President Bush, and congressional hearings into the intelligence prior to the Iraq War are welcome. But the post-Iraq debate shouldn't proceed on false pretenses: Everyone this side of famed Iraqi prevaricator Baghdad Bob believed that Iraq had WMD. In the run-up to the war, the United Nations, the "axis of weasel" (France and Germany) and high-profile Democrats all agreed about WMD.

The specific figures in Secretary of State Colin Powell's U.N. presentation about Iraq's unaccounted-for WMD came from U.N. inspectors. France and Germany didn't argue that Saddam had no WMD, but inspections could rid him of them. Clinton and Al Gore dissented from aspects of Bush's policy, but agreed about WMD. "We know," Gore said, "he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons."

The question was what to do about a dictator with ties to terrorism who for 12 years had defied the procedures set out by the world to confirm that he no longer had dangerous weapons. For the Bush administration, Sept. 11 meant erring on the side of safety, and so continuing to accept Saddam's denials and defiance wasn't an option.

As someone once warned: "This is not a time free from peril, especially as a result of the reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals. We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century." Even if the rhetoric was shrill, Bill Clinton had a point.

Rich Lowry”

“"But the post-Iraq debate shouldn't proceed on false pretenses"

That's a striking statement given that it looks like this whole invasion war was based on false pretense.
Again,would you think the objectives now achieved in iraq are worth the life of one of your kids?Would anybody be so bold to say that they would give their life or their childs life for the objective not achieved in iraq?”

“From what I've heard, there were many good reasons Bush's cabinet had to go to war with Iraq, it's just that WMD is the only reson they ALL could agree on. Too bad they put such emphasis on WMD because now it appears the administration is eating crow.”

“The main reason we went to war was Oil. 98% of the terrorists were Saudi. Many other people needed (& still do) our help for humanitarian reasons. Bush attempted to avenge his father. The war was illegal. It was not declared by Congress & was not sanctioned by the UN. On top of this, our national deficit was trashed.”

“They haven't found Saddam yet. Are we saying he wasn't in the country?”

“i agree with buddur.

cat, you're full of it...”

“Not sanctioned by the UN?? All political differences aside, I don't think anyone on this board thinks we need UN permission for anything. It's called being a sovereign power.
And if the war was about oil, why didn't we attack Venezuela, one of the top oil producing countries in the world, and closer to home to boot.”

“Logic? If its an affront to the US as a sovereign power to let other countries decide if we should invade Iraq- what kind of affront is it to the principle of sovreignity for a country to be invaded.

Or does the principle of sovreignity mean that we don't need principles of any kind?”

“Obviously, this is a "might makes right" argument.”

“WMD = Whining Moron Democrats


(Isn't 'Moron Democrat' a redundancy?)”

“Rick Lowry and many others need to get a clue: The question is not if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The question is whether the Bush gang really had rock hard intelligence to show that Iraq had wmd that were an significant and immediate threat to the US. That is what would justify the invasion.

These claims have proved to be a lie. If the intelligence was that good and the weapons were that threatening they would hav showed up by now.

When rogue nations have had wmd, US administrations have taken a variety of tacts. They have aided them, they have ignored the wmd, they have used mild sanctions... etc.”

“tissue, anyone?”

“Call it whining if you have no real opinion, that's fine. The fact remains that, for the first time in American history, we have invaded another country - UNPROVOKED.

Think about that for a little while and, if you can wrap your mind around it, think about what it means to the dignity of a nation founded on the fight for independence from tyrrany.”

“we don't need none of yer lip baume.”

“All of these are good points, but I think we need to remember that the war just ended not too long ago. The search for WMD will take time. Iraq has alot of ground. To coordinate an investigation might take years. I think alot of people wanted instant results and are judging this situation based on that need.

I not saying that we will find huge stock piles somewhere, just that we should give it time.

I also dont think those that lost their lives over there was for nothing reguardless of what they find. Those 166 soldiers that die, did so defending our country's beliefs. I feel saying if we dont find any WMD they die for nothing really does them a dishonor. No soldier ever dies for nothing. Reguardless of the cause, they die doing a job they believe in. The cause is left to the politicians. Alot of people say that we are there for the oil. I promise you the soldiers over there don't give it much thought. ANyways, that my two cents.”

“I gotta agree with Dare that we didn't say our troops for nothing. If they hadn't done their best, if they had cowered in fear, if they hadn't acquitted themselves honorably, or if there weren't lots of folks like our own Sgt. Rock who showed honor, courage intelligence and restraint - things would be far worse. The folks who died acquitted themselves very well (as did more than 100,000 other Americans in uniform in Iraq).

I can't agree with Dare on giving the wmd more time. More weapons and information will show up. Still, if the intelligence on the weapons was anywhere near as good as Bush team claimed - they'd know what happened to the weapons. You can't escape that. Either the remaining wmd really had mostly corroded and degraded with age and there wasn't much left, or the Bush administration's information wasn't nearly as good as they would have had us believe or both.”

“"The fact remains that, for the first time in American history, we have invaded another country - UNPROVOKED."

Phaedrus
12:22:22 PM
06/03/03

Canada, Mexico, Libya, Phillippines and Cuba (Spain), China, Russia, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Jamaica, et al were all occupied by U.S. Forces with less provocation or justification than Iraq.

Depending on how you stretch your convoluted 'logic' you can add Korea and Vietnam to that list.”