*golfclap*

Though I would never have accepted an "alliance" with Saddam Hussein- he was, after all, a despotic farkwit- still, more evidence that it wasn't worth the lives of thousands of some of the most dedicated of our citizens and the trillion and a half dollars we poured into that sand-filled hell hole in the middle east.

ragekage: Though I would never have accepted an "alliance" with Saddam Hussein

Well, then, I guess it never would have happened.

Pocket Ninja: ragekage: Though I would never have accepted an "alliance" with Saddam Hussein

Well, then, I guess it never would have happened.

Yer got-damnned-right. I got connections.

Fnord.

Remember kids, IRAN is the enemy again.

Scary enough to make even Saddam HUSSEIN cower in fear. IRAN.

ragekage: *golfclap*

Though I would never have accepted an "alliance" with Saddam Hussein- he was, after all, a despotic farkwit- still, more evidence that it wasn't worth the lives of thousands of some of the most dedicated of our citizens and the trillion and a half dollars we poured into that sand-filled hell hole in the middle east.

Saddam WAS our ally. We knew he was gassing Kurds but we were still arming him and giving him funding. Because he was the enemy of Iran and was fighting them.

Up until the invasion of Kuwait, Hussein was 'our guy'. That doesn't make him any better but it does reflect rather poorly on the US.

shivashakti: Up until the invasion of Kuwait, Hussein was 'our guy'. That doesn't make him any better but it does reflect rather poorly on the US.

If we're going to judge the US by local allies, there isn't anything that reflects well on us.

No, no, no. I was told in no uncertain terms Saddam was the new Hitler and threatened the world. The wmd's are in, um, Syria. Yep.

ragekage: *golfclap*

Though I would never have accepted an "alliance" with Saddam Hussein- he was, after all, a despotic farkwit- still, more evidence that it wasn't worth the lives of thousands of some of the most dedicated of our citizens and the trillion and a half dollars we poured into that sand-filled hell hole in the middle east.

In retrospect, it would have made sense. He certainly wouldn't have been the first brutal dictator the neocons had worked with. Hell, they worked with Saddam before. If it was too impalpable to work with him, they could have bought him off. Either way, they would have achieved their original goal of surrounding Iran with US allies. Of course, that type of power diplomacy wouldn't have gotten Bill Kristol's dick hard.

So does this make it a false positive? Was Saddam pregnant with WMDs or not?

"Boy, do I feel like a horse's patoot!"

Mentat: He certainly wouldn't have been the first brutal dictator the neocons had worked with.

It wouldn't have even been the first time we worked with THAT brutal dictator. Donald Rumsfeld was the one who originally opened up a friendship between Saddam and the Reagan administration. We gave Iraq plenty of aid in the '80s.

Iran-Iraq War II: Electric Boogaloo.

We need to somehow get Iran to antagonize Kim Jong Il.

Iran has rape rooms. Rape rooms, I tell you.

Boo farking hoo.

Saddam would never have been any kind of a remotely reputable ally. Unless you were Russia or France.

This kind of journalism is irresponsible at best.

And for what it is worth, Saddam would have given handjobs to every marine personally if it meant saving his sorry skin.

Control_this: Iran has rape rooms. Rape rooms, I tell you.

You said rape rooms twice.

"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

-- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, January 29, 2003


BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!!1!!

inconnu: Boo farking hoo.

Saddam would never have been any kind of a remotely reputable ally. Unless you were Russia or France.

This kind of journalism is irresponsible at best.



Now you tell us!

Saddam was hanged.

Of course he would have accepted assistance.

/Not like it hadn't happened before.

SoxSweepAgain: Saddam was hanged.

He was also hung

/HAYYOOOOO

Even though the war in Iraq was a huge mistake, Saddam was still a huge shiatbag who absolutely deserved to be strung up by the neck. Don't forget this.

ragekage: *golfclap*

Though I would never have accepted an "alliance" with Saddam Hussein- he was, after all, a despotic farkwit- still, more evidence that it wasn't worth the lives of thousands of some of the most dedicated of our citizens and the trillion and a half dollars we poured into that sand-filled hell hole in the middle east.

If you actually just divided that money up you'd have enough to give every Iraqi a new life in a first world nation of their choosing.

The US could literally have bought Iraq.

FTA" "The inspectors returned to the weapons hunt in November 2002 but still complained that Iraq was not cooperating."

The weapons inspectors remember things a little differently. As do I. Not all of us were watching Fox News then and were well away of the fabricated evidence. The European press were all over it at the time. Anyone who quoted them and their sources were called out as hating America.

I would like to take this time to say....

I farkING TOLD YOU SO.

/that is all.

the_sidewinder: SoxSweepAgain: Saddam was hanged.

He was also hung

/HAYYOOOOO



...and they was RIGHT!

There was never a stash...... just a stache.

Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

OgreMagi: Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

Gas is not a weapon of mass destruction.

It doesn't destroy anything. Weapon of mass poisoning? Sure. I'll take that. Destruction? No.

Duh, this was pretty clear during the run up to the war. There were many in the intel community and foreign policy circles saying this is 2002, it isn't really news.

No shiat. Saddam wanted the world to think he had WMDs so that Iran wouldn't fark with him. He was counting on the UN (read: France) to keep us in line.

I thought this was pretty well farking known?

FTA:

The documents also confirm previous reports that Saddam falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - the main U.S. rationale behind the war - because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, the hostile neighbor he considered a bigger threat than the U.S.

Fairly logical. The Iranians had significantly more grievances with Iraq, and were neighbors. And the US had more grievances with Iran, as well.

What isn't logical is why he apparently didn't bother to meticulously document the bluff and store evidence of the (concealed) destruction of proscribed materials, for later production -- video, statements, maps et al could all be stored digitally and would have been trivial to hide for a last resort. He might have been able to win security guarantees, had he provided convincing evidence and explanation of absence rather than an absence of evidence of presence -- not likely the US would have approved of an Iranian invasion had he done so, and the guarantee would have been helpful in persuading other suspect nations that it might in fact be safe to comply with disarmament protocols even in difficult neighborhoods.

OgreMagi: Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

You said it. Past tense. As in, "We can't find any of the stuff now, I guess he must have already used it all up killing the Kurds and lied about still having some."

Need_MindBleach: Even though the war in Iraq was a huge mistake, Saddam was still a huge shiatbag who absolutely deserved to be strung up by the neck. Don't forget this.

Perhaps, but why that shiat bag?

Despite the fact that I saw this guy interviewed on TV at least a year ago I can't think of a more appropriate use of the FAIL tag.

kyoryu: No shiat. Saddam wanted the world to think he had WMDs so that Iran wouldn't fark with him. He was counting on the UN (read: France) to keep us in line.

I thought this was pretty well farking known?

You've got some retard in your brain. Thought you should know.

/FRANCE!
//It controls the world!

can't we just go bac to give weaons to the revolutionaries of countries.

civil war cool

LavenderWolf: OgreMagi: Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

Gas is not a weapon of mass destruction.

It doesn't destroy anything. Weapon of mass poisoning? Sure. I'll take that. Destruction? No.

It's considered a WMD by the US, the UN, our allies, and probably our enemies. But you don't consider it a WMD, so I guess everyone else is wrong. My bad.

The circle of failure is complete.

VwlssWndr: OgreMagi: Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

You said it. Past tense. As in, "We can't find any of the stuff now, I guess he must have already used it all up killing the Kurds and lied about still having some."

We had no reason to not believe he had more. I'm fairly certain they did find the components to make more gas. So even if they didn't find a bunch of ready to use tanks of the stuff, he was a danger. However, I think it was a big mistake to invade Iraq while we were still very busy in Afghanistan. Bush had all the attention span of an ADD six year old with a 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew.

OgreMagi: Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

The shelf life of this stuff is kind of short. Short enough that Iraq would have had to kept manufacturing these agents post gulf war, when the United States and Great Britain were bombing them at least once a week. This is why that entire bullshiat story about the moving manufacturing trucks was made up. If he had build a factory that was capable of making the stuff, we would have seen it from the air and blown it apart. They only way he could have anything that was dangerous if he were crafty and put it in moving vehicles.

Problem is, other than the fact that it was made up bullshiat, the embargo on Iraq was successful and our intelligence agencies knew it. There really was no way for Iraq to keep making any WMD of any kind. Just ask ANYONE in the administration before the Sept 11 attacks if Iraq had WMDs, like the media did, and they will tell you the truth. Iraq had no WMDs. It was only after the Sept 11th attacks that Iraq suddenly had them.

All this stuff is documented. The Bush administration lied to the public. It did so to test a political theory written by members of his administration that once democracy takes hold in the middle east, the long term threat of the Islamists will diminish and it used the Sept 11th attacks as an excuse to do so.

All this was done at the cost of prolonging the war in Afganistan, letting the Taliban and Al Qaeda escape over the mountains into Pakistan, a few thousand US lives and an unknown amount Iraqi lives.

We sure freed the hell out of them.

He was just a petty dictator? No real threat to anyone?

The HELL you say!

/should have been an "obvious" tag.

It just another example of why the bush admin was behaving like a fascist pussy POS. They had to kill the weakest of the middle east, they used the boy in their pocket as a lamb. Clown show circus politics.

nice guy, except for that whole gassing of the Kurds ordeal....

OgreMagi: LavenderWolf: OgreMagi: Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

Gas is not a weapon of mass destruction.

It doesn't destroy anything. Weapon of mass poisoning? Sure. I'll take that. Destruction? No.

It's considered a WMD by the US, the UN, our allies, and probably our enemies. But you don't consider it a WMD, so I guess everyone else is wrong. My bad.

I'm sorry, I missed the part where I said I was an expert and said everybody else has to do exactly what I think they should do.

You don't have to preface your paragraph with "in my opinion.." for that to be implied. I am saying it therefore it's my opinion.

OgreMagi: Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

LavenderWolf: Gas is not a weapon of mass destruction.

It doesn't destroy anything. Weapon of mass poisoning? Sure. I'll take that. Destruction? No.

Yeah it most definitely is a WMD.
But the thing was this was old news. Halabja was gassed in 1988, the US and the world kinda came in and said "no, you can't do that", and Saddam never did it again. At the time, the Kurds were sort of aligned with Iranians, probably sort of an "insurgent stronghold" like Ramadi, and he had tried to send a message by gassing the whole place.

Actually Saddam has used poison gas against Iranians- probably extensively- during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. He bombed Iranian towns and outposts. We never mentioned that part; evidently that was ok. We only focused on the one attack on Iraqi soil, probably because after vilifying Iranians they thought that him bombing Iranians thusly might not even go down as a black mark on his record.

LavenderWolf: kyoryu: No shiat. Saddam wanted the world to think he had WMDs so that Iran wouldn't fark with him. He was counting on the UN (read: France) to keep us in line.

I thought this was pretty well farking known?

You've got some retard in your brain. Thought you should know.

/FRANCE!
//It controls the world!

That's cute. Do the words "Security Council" mean anything to you?

France was getting cheap oil from Iraq, and they also owed France a ton of money. With their ability to veto any action by the UN, they should have been able to put a stop to any military action.

What they didn't plan on was the US saying "fark you" to the UN. Otherwise, it was a pretty good plan by Saddam... if it wasn't for those meddling kids.

Bob tells Dave not to move as he has a gun in his pocket and it's pointed right at him. Dave looks down, sees that Bob has his hand in his pocket and that there sure is something gun shaped there. A police officer walking by sees Dave looking scared and demands to know what is going on.

'He's got a gun!' says Dave.

'Is that true?' the office asks

'What does it look like to you?' says Bob with a smile.

'I said, is it true?'

'Why don't you come here, inspect my pocket and find out?'

The police officer considers this and decides, instead, to put a bullet through Bob's head. Problem solved except that it turns out Bob was bullshiatting: it wasn't a gun, it was his finger pointed at Dave.

Conclusion: Bob's dead, Dave feels the need to protect himself just in case the next nutcase actually has a gun and the cop gets written up for excessive force - couldn't he just have tased the guy? or talked him down? etc etc

/not sure where I was going with this
//Saddam should have realised when to stop bluffing

LavenderWolf: OgreMagi: LavenderWolf: OgreMagi: Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

Gas is not a weapon of mass destruction.

It doesn't destroy anything. Weapon of mass poisoning? Sure. I'll take that. Destruction? No.

It's considered a WMD by the US, the UN, our allies, and probably our enemies. But you don't consider it a WMD, so I guess everyone else is wrong. My bad.

I'm sorry, I missed the part where I said I was an expert and said everybody else has to do exactly what I think they should do.

You don't have to preface your paragraph with "in my opinion.." for that to be implied. I am saying it therefore it's my opinion.

Gas is destructive to life.

Just a tiny factoid I thought you should be made aware of.

Oznog: OgreMagi: Saddam used gas on the Kurds. Gas is a WMD. He didn't just farking make it up.

LavenderWolf: Gas is not a weapon of mass destruction.

It doesn't destroy anything. Weapon of mass poisoning? Sure. I'll take that. Destruction? No.

Yeah it most definitely is a WMD.
But the thing was this was old news. Halabja was gassed in 1988, the US and the world kinda came in and said "no, you can't do that", and Saddam never did it again. At the time, the Kurds were sort of aligned with Iranians, probably sort of an "insurgent stronghold" like Ramadi, and he had tried to send a message by gassing the whole place.

Actually Saddam has used poison gas against Iranians- probably extensively- during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. He bombed Iranian towns and outposts. We never mentioned that part; evidently that was ok. We only focused on the one attack on Iraqi soil, probably because after vilifying Iranians they thought that him bombing Iranians thusly might not even go down as a black mark on his record.

Right. The gassing your own people thing looks more evil. I mean, you realize we never really cared about brown people getting gassed one bit. When people still think we care about people's freedom, it just amazes me. But they fall for it everytime.

Renowned transvestite sexologist: The shelf life of this stuff is kind of short

No, the shelf life of poison gases is not short. If it was short, then the US wouldn't have to deal with the tons we have in Utah, Oregon and Kentucky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umatilla_Chemical_Depot