[URL="http://goldphantom.blogspot.com/2005/11/so-it-looks-like-iraq-had-wmds-and-was.html"]So the truth comes out.[/URL]
Undeveloped story so far, but I'm watching this one like a hawk. Everyone may officially shut their lips about Bush lying.
EDIT: Oops, this was supposed to go in the war board.
bush is teh devil
It's not like Bush really knew the truth either way; he wasn't exactly a top Iraqi politician. The evidence he previously used turned out to be rather false. His assertion was true though, so I congratulate him.
Oh, and why not just go to the [url=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/16/122915.shtml]original link[/url]?
Where's the proof that this is actually true and not forged? 'newsmax' doesn't look like a very reliable news source.
Anyway, these 'alleged links to al-Qaeda' are either just about the Taliban, or
'Possible al Qaeda Terror Members in Iraq'. Taliban =/= al-Qaeda, and the presence of al-Qaeda members in a country means nothing, there probably are some in America, too.
[quote=Richaod]
I was wondering why this wasn't in the War Board. And you were conveniently too lazy to read my edit in which I said outright that I clicked the wrong board.
[quote=Richaod]
Oh, and why not just go to the [URL="http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/16/122915.shtml"]original link[/URL]?
Because they might not provide updates as fast as I want. I found a better, less biased source, anyways.
[quote=higbvuyb]Where's the proof that this is actually true and not forged? 'newsmax' doesn't look like a very reliable news source.
Newsmax's author isn't the one who discovered it. It was a journalist from the Weekly Standard.
I did more digging and found his original article: [URL="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/345qrbbj.asp"]http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/345qrbbj.asp[/URL]
[quote=///Phantom]I found a better, less biased source, anyways.
If you're referring to your own ****ty blog, AA, I no longer consider you a valid person.
and klarth starts the namecalling early
I'm not going to participate properly if he bases his news source around his swollen ego, sorry.
actually, he was referring to how he links to the weekly standard's site on his page. It is a better source, as the newsmax one has "buy reagan and bush shirts!" and the like and looks sketch. Maybe you should have read it before you commented?
wtf is weekly standard
And I won't believe it until I see it on CNN and Fox News.
[quote=Klarth]If you're referring to your own ****ty blog, AA, I no longer consider you a valid person.Wow, you're dumb. I was referring to Weekly Standard. Quit being in such a rush to flame me. You're making yourself look stupid in the process.
If this is real, myself and about half of America are probably thinking, "whoops"
As if finding WMDs would make Bush a better president. :p
I won't believe it until I read it in the newspaper, with proof that it is real.
[quote=Richaod]I did actually read your edit; I said that in response to your statement that this should've been in the war board.
In that context, your response still makes no sense.
[quote=Richaod] It can't be compared to "knowing the truth" as much as it can be "winning the lottery". Obviously, all the evidence he used has been discredited and this seems to have been a lucky find.
The results are the same though. Even if the intelligence got most of it wrong, if the Pentagon has papers proving it right, then we aren't there for nothing.
Oh, and general statement to all: if you want to make me laugh, keep blaming Bush for everything. Take the lazy way out.
Just because he turned out to be right didnt mean that he didnt lie. For all he knew, it was most likely bunk. If I shoot someone how has their hand in their pocket just because I wanted to, and then later said it was self defense, it doesnt make it true if later on it was found out that they had a knife.
you know whats funny. Is that we had many countries come up with the same evidences as ours. Like Britain, France, Austrialia ect. I believe that Saddam could have leaked this information to start a jihad against the US. Or that he got them all to Syria before the war. How many months did have to do that? We have survalience pictures of missle trucks leaving Iraq to Syria. I wonder what was on those missle trucks? Also why did Saddam promise France, Germany and Russia oil reserves if they voted against the war? We have evidence that he did promise France, Germany, and Russia oil if they voted against it.
[quote=Lord of Spam]Just because he turned out to be right didnt mean that he didnt lie. For all he knew, it was most likely bunk. If I shoot someone how has their hand in their pocket just because I wanted to, and then later said it was self defense, it doesnt make it true if later on it was found out that they had a knife.Well, look back at the history of it. Intelligence info that was disseminated had both Democrats AND Republicans saying there were WMDs. The Democrats gave up on it quicker than the Republicans did.
Well, I never quite believed he didn't, and my ongoing opposition to the whole debacle was not based on NBC weapons. Personally, I now think the doubt over NBCs was largely orchestrated by Hussein to bluff everyone and make them think he was still strong--a lot of generals interviewed after the invasion said something like "we had no chemical weapons but the unit to our left/right did". It seems he bluffed everyone.
Anyway, I accepted that they probably still had stuff left (I believe the UN reckoned about 90% had been destroyed between 1991 and when they pulled out/were kicked out) but didn't see the link between that and the sudden inexplicable need to invade a prostrate, battered country that couldn't even exercise authority within the entirity of its own borders, much less project its power beyond them. Chemical weapons suck, but it's not like Syria, Israel, etc, don't have them too.
And besides, the entire point of inspections is that you expect to be evaded and dodged... it's just what happens. So the fact that Iraq might've been hiding some stuff still, and trying to bluff and hide things isn't really automatically a matter for outrage unless you're trying to beat the drums for war for other reasons.
As for links with al Qaeda and members of that group being in Iraq, and apparent meetings with the Taliban... well, "they both hate Saudi Arabia" is true enough, as is "they both ended up enemies of America", but then, so is "Iraq executed and tortured various Islamic fundamentalist militants" and "Kurdistan, beyond Iraqi control, was a major cross-roads for all sorts of militant groups and other such outlaws and ne'er-do-wells" and not to mention "there's links between the Taliban and people in Pakistan too". Again, given the vagueness of all this, the tenuous links, the lack of substantive evidence, the things working both ways... no-one could make the case that attacking Iraq was somehow important to the "war on terror". Which, even if you manage to prove contact betwixt people identifying with al Qaeda and people identifying with the old Iraq government, you'd still have to prove... and basically cannot.
Also, given the past history of OMG WE FOUND SOMETHING OH WAIT NO LET'S QUIETLY RETRACT IT I wouldn't put too much stock in what some blog and an obscure rag says. I glanced around it, and the rest of the site is rubbish. The article about Canada and the US and trade relations, for example is... well, stupid.
hig is so dumb, lawl
Its called "counter intelligence."
Look into it.
That's pretty stupid. It's not like Saddam is going to risk his life just so tehre is a small chance that some people will declare a holy war on America, even though they already have.
Can you show me any reputable proof of this?
http://www.thebatt.com/media/paper657/news/2004/02/11/Opinion/Bushs.Intelligence.On.Iraq.Wasnt.Flawed-603350.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.thebatt.com
In fact, weapons inspectors have proven that Saddam has tried to expand his weapons capabilities over the last decade. The Iraqi Survey Group, the group responsible for searching Iraq for evidence of weapons of mass destruction, has confirmed that Iraq had an extensive ballistic missile program. These missiles were being built in violation of U.N. sanctions. It is unlikely that the missiles were being developed for anything other than use as platforms for biological or chemical weapons.
Furthermore, analysis of the Iraqi situation from numerous different countries' intelligence networks all led to similar conclusions. Iraq either possesses or is developing weapons of mass destruction. It is not just a coincidence that the intelligence from the United States, Britain and other sources all showed the same thing.
Even if weapons of mass destruction haven't been found, it doesn't mean that U.S. intelligence was wrong. There are numerous reasons why weapons of mass destruction haven't and may never be found. The weapons could have been moved outside Iraqi borders to another nation hostile to the United States. Weapons could have easily been hidden around the country. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld points out that the hole Saddam was found in, "was big enough to hold biological weapons to kill thousands of people."
Uh, dude, we KNEW Iraq had chemical and possibly biological weapons. THAT'S WHY THERE WERE INSPECTIONS AND SANCTIONS. Learn some history.
What I haven't heard from anyone is a good case for the leap from "still probably had some chemical weapons and missiles" to MUST SUDDENLY INVADE. The assumption seems to be that if you can prove the existance of, I dunno, dual-use aliminium tubes or leftover canisters of Sarin, that this proves the war was right.
I didn't bother reading the whole thread, since I kinda stopped coming here. But they were starting to build up again. They were getting longer range missles and starting their process again. Sanction are supposed to be 100% effective. They weren't supposed to have any chemicals, but its kinda hard to do that since they kinda violated it when they kicked the UN out.
Yeah and we violated it by spying on them. Like I said, not a cordial or polite process.
I'm calling it. I predict that there will be a news story about it on TV sooner or later. Then this scenario will happen (not ripping off Bebop here, I'm just a lazy MS Paint artist)
[img]http://xs55.xs.to/pics/05466/bushcomic.JPG[/img]
It's still a far cry from the "we know where these weapons are" and "they can hit us in 45 minutes" of the halycon pre-war days.
Because polical assasinations are looked down upon for some reason. Weird, huh?
Would any country really miss him?
Yep, now having knocked down one argument we play whack-a-mole with the others. Good job shifting the goalposts.
Uh, the mass killing of Kurds, firstly, happened more than a DECADE ago and would've been a reason to invade then but not in 2003. Hell, Turkey probably killed more Kurds over the last 5 years than Iraq did. Iraqi Kurdistan was a well organised de facto INDEPENDENT STATE protected by no-fly zones and so forth, it was no longer under the thumb of Iraq's government. On the killing in general... to put it crudely, the killing in Iraq came in two waves and was well and truly over by the 2000s. First was the extremely brutal Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the second was the crushing of uprisings post-1991 Gulf War. In blunt terms, Iraq was, mostly, just another unpleasant authoritarian regime by 2003, not a mass-murdering one. It was more equivalent to modern day Burma or Turkmenistan, not Khmer Rouge Cambodia or Stalinist Russia. And if "unpleasant authoritarian regime" is the criteria now... well, that laundry list of countries just grew much longer again. The humanitarian horse had long since bolted, because Bush senior had a better sense of political realism than junior has and saw what a disaster a full-on invasion would be.
All you people are saying is "he violated sanctions and inspections, therefore we invaded". I'm still seeing no link as to why, no compelling reason A leads to B. Jeez, if that was the criteria there's at least a dozen other countries you should be invading. Anyone trading with Cuba, for example. Are they the first country to ever violate externally and antagonistically imposed sanctions and so forth? Were they a threat to anyone? The talk about sanctions and inspections and WMD and killing Kurds was all mere pretext, a smokescreen, etc. No, it wasn't oil. It was, basically, the peculiar mix of ideology that occupies the White House at present, running roughshod over objections and reservations from everyone from the State Department, the CIA, most other governments in the world, etc. It was their sheer ideological bloodymindedness, their "**** the consequences, we're awesome" mindset, that got us... well, you... to where we, sorry, you, are.
And where are we.. you?
Most of the world thinks you're the biggest threat to world peace (check out the polls... South Koreans are exactly as afraid of the US as of NK for ****s' sake), pretty much every ally except maybe John Howard and Vicente Fox are alienated and annoyed and won't support you again anytime soon. Your military is overstretched, reservists are being made to stay longer than their tour of duty. Your administration is too proud to admit its errors and maybe ask nicely for assistance, instead it continues to berate potential allies and demand they help on American terms. No-one's gonna send more troops into that mess with diplomacy like that. They are destroying America's credibility and image in the world, and Iraq was a major, probably the biggest, reason for this. Until then it was just "silly Americans with their silly politics" but now it's become "silly Americans with their INSANE LEADERS".
Whats' more, the invasion has had a slew of negative geopolitical consequences. A destablising Iraq, one which is divided along numerous overlapping ethno-religious lines. Strengthening the hand of Iran's hardliners by giving them an issue to rally people with. Stirring up new hornets' nests of angry extremists among the billion or so muslims in the world, giving them the perfect rallying issue and the perfect training ground. In layman's terms this is "creating more terrorists". And Iraq's future? Iraq will end up, probably after another election or two, either another authoritarian regime or maybe a theocracy, or maybe split into a Lebanese civil war, or maybe split into different chunks dominated by Syria, Iran and Turkey. Or both. Or all of them. The US is going to be stuck periodically intervening in Iraq probably for 30 years or more. IS THIS WHAT PEOPLE WANTED?
Was all this worth it? Because Hussein's regime killed a bunch of people a decade ago in a bloody, but successful attempt to regain power in the aftermath of a war? Because there was a bit of funny business going on with some left-over chemical weapons?
Most importantly, because really, international law is a fiction, humanitarian intervention is extremely seldom more than a cloak for what we were gonna do anyway... it all comes down to realism and pragmatism here. Let's focus on that for a moment. Did we have a concrete plan and were we sure we could improve things? Given Iraq's weakness and the fact that it was well and truly contained, what compelling problem was there in Iraq that needed full-on unilateral invasion (**** the consequences!) to correct? All I'm seeing are a hodgepodge of confused half-justifications, none of which really stand up. It was a stupid idea that unleashed a cubic arseload of (predictable) negative consequences that the pro-war crowd just dismissed due to their juvenile liberation fantasy. Could we have trusted George Bush and co to WAGE A WAR OF CHOICE, A POLITICAL WAR, one with no vital reasons or compelling justifications?
Because from what I've seen, all those optimistic estimates about Iraqis dancing in the streets, and the blossoming flowering new democracies, were woefully, woefully wrong, either outright lies or tounchingly naive. They disbanded the military and the civil service then expected the country to improve itself? Madness, pure madness. As far as I can see the post-war plan was for magical democracy pixies to float on down and create a better country.
I hate to say I told you so, but, well, you know. The best we can hope for... indeed all we could've hoped for from the time the tanks and jets first rolled in, was that things not get f*cked up too badly, that something could at least be salvaged. That hardly strikes me as a clever war to start, and we probably won't even get *that*.
Is it wrong that I just fapped to that post?
Get off my board.
Why the hell would George W. Buch risk his presidency, and the lives of thousands of Americans, invading a country just for whatever you said?
Well he's not quite entirely in the neoconservative camp, for one. September 11, I think was what let them influence him decisively. Second, he and the neocons did not believe things would turn out badly, in fact they believed they'd be greeted with open arms and everything would be great and everyone would support them. They wanted war, and they wanted it to turn out well, and judging by the failure to actually have any plans, more or less believed it'd Just Work Out.
So the short answer is they didn't think things would happen this way.
And mate, if you're gonna just call my post "whatever you said" meaning you obviously either didn't read or didn't understand it, just don't bother playing, eh?
That sitre doesnt look veyr reliably. I'll wait until it's made public first.
However if true my view on Bush will have changed
Cheney gave a speech this morning stating, in part, that they have indeed not found any WMDs. Either he is a bit behind on the news, or he doesn't consider this reliable enough to mention.
Look up the Project for a New American Century sometime. note some of the names involved. They're a lobby group who'd been clamouring for a new Iraq war for years before Bush got into power, their letter to William Clinton should be easily found, and it demonstrates this. And yes, they believed invading Iraq would spread peace and democracy and such, sort of a reverse domino theory. They thought it'd be easy and have nothing but good consequences. Remember it was Rumsfeld who thought the entire thing could be accomplished with even less troops than what were used. It's not stupidity, it's ideological blindness and fantasy. There's a difference.
Well, ideological blindness and fantasy is stupid if you think it applies to real life.
Being blind to reality and acting blindly is stupidity.
You said it, not me. If they were outright stupid they'd have never gotten into a position to enact their crackpot schemes.
Being stupid can be overcome if one is sufficiently charismatic/has a rich and powerful daddy and a brother willing to rig state elections.
rig state elections? lawl
I actually read this entire thread and am simply amazed that every political section of a board I read the facts are so out of line with reality.
I'm not going to take a ton of time but a few points.
#1 The UN...I love those who are in support of the war use the UN and violations of Saddam as a reason to invade, but in the next sentence discredit them all together. How does that work exactly? You can't have it both ways in a rational thought out argument. Not to mention at the end Saddam was taking it up the axx complying with the UN inspections BEFORE we invaded.
#2 The supposed banned missiles, were ONLY able to go over the range limit with no warhead on them with the best of circumstances. With any size warhead common in todays modern military they were well within the limit. Not only is this fact never brought up, but how about the fact that Saddam was destroying them at the end when the US complained about them and the UN ruled that he destroy them? Complying by destroying his best defense right before an invasion.
#3 Every country had the same intel us as. To a degree this is true, however our best reasons for war such as Yellow Cake, Aluminum Tubes, Mobile Weapons labs, etc most of the world did not agree with us.
#4 Saddam not able to have chemicals? You seriously need to reread the facts, many items were allowed to be in Iraq under seal, inspection, or until used as they were dual use.
#5 Saddam promising oil to countries to be on his side. Well kind of like we made promises to countries to go along with the war as well. If you're going to try to use that argument then you must also use it against those countries that sided with us, if you're unwilling to do that then there is no point in debating as you obviously have no clue.
#6 The extremely weak attempt to tie in terror related groups/religions with Saddam. You realy need to look at the history of Iraq, as Saddam was fighting the very same groups that would be guilty of this not the other way around. Talk about a twist and turn to try to justify something.
#7 He invaded other countries... Yes during a time when we supported him and with many articles showing proof we gave him the green to do so. Realy IMO makes that point mute.
This is not meant directly to anyone, just a quick 5 minute check of the actual facts of the matter, not twisted to one side or the other.
I would have been pro war if the timing was correct, I however do not see why we would invade a country in the time of terror and economic short falls at home which in the end result makes us weaker not stronger.