06-10-03 02:38:57 PM Syowr
If We Knew Where It Was -- Why Don't We Know Where It Is?


By John Cory in Saudi Arabia
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Monday 09 June 2003
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I am not an educated man, and there are plenty of folks who will tell you that I am not all that smart either...

As much as I agree with the apparent direction of this essay, my brain shut down as soon as I read the first sentence. I hate when people start essays like "I'm just an ordinary soccer mom...", "I'm just an ordinary hick...", etc. Then shut the hell up. Somehow I doubt the ability of anyone who would start an essay in this manner...

"Rice is a pathetic fool." Hey! Some people like white chocolate.

"I find it extremely ironic that the same people who pushed this war felt the threat of Saddam's WMD was so immiment that they wouldn't let the UN inspectors do their jobs, are the same people now asking that we give their inspectors time to do their job."

Actually, it's beyond ironic. It's amazingly hypocritical. Falls in the same category as saying we were going into Iraq because of their failure to comply with UN resolutions when, in fact, Bush and co and every Farker conservative could give a crap about the UN.

Albo-

Whatever, Herr Rumsfeld.

You cannot claim evidence of something when you have ZERO burden of proof.

I have always agreed with the UN, Germany, (and yes even France) that Iraq had/has WMD, but that inspections should be given more time. The administration then said that we don't need to wait because we know they have them, we know where they are (pictures) and we are in danger of Iraq using them if we don't act. Now they are asking for patience.

The WILL find WMD. But, they will still have a credibility problem. If I walk up to a Roulette table and say "I know for a fact that the next number will be an even number", and 16 is the next number. That does not prove I was telling the truth when I said "I know for a fact".

If they find WMD hidden in underground bunkers, I still want to know what happened to the buildings in the pictures that Powell showed to the UN.

Two points:

It's time for the administration to start hedging. "Our intellegence may not have been as good as we thought it was." would not be all that shameful of a thing to say.
The administration should have used humanitarian reasons for invading to begin with. I would have supported them right away

"The discovery of two Iraqi truck trailers with fermenters is the strongest evidence yet of a germ warfare program. "


I knew it. They were making that deadly deadly home made wine...thank god the world is now safe.

Therealscrodd: That's Herr Professor Doktor Rumsfeld, you sniveling, bran-eating leftist.

I was wrong; Saddam was a friggin Boy Scout. Thanks for setting me straight

Vroomazoom

Iran was on the track to becoming a moderate democracy until the US pulled this stunt.

...because they are so well hidden

yes...

or maybe...

could it be?

because there aren't any???

Damn_Conservative_Media: So then, you're saying the ordinary average joe schmoe shouldn't ever seek public comment on his common-sense questions? If the mass media isn't willing to question the government the way the people want them to, then it's the people's duty to get their own questions answered. Asking the questions is the first step. There are in fact people other than traditional talking heads who have questions about what our government is or is not telling us.

There are still no signs of Iraq's biological weapons materials capable of producing "over 25,000 liters of anthrax," as Bush claimed in a state of the union speech.
Remember that? Where is all that anthrax?

Also, no signs of Saddam's facilities capable of producing "more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin."
Nothing. At. All.

And remember the reports of "materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." Yep - no sign of any of that either. Nada.

As for the "mobile weapons labs" recently discovered in Iraq, all indications point to them being used to produce hydrogen gas for weather balloons - balloons used by Iraqi artillery units in the field, to determine weather conditions in battle. Hardly a WMD lab.

In fact, most of the US military specialists sent to Iraq to search for WMDs have been sent home. Wonder why?

The Bush administraion has lied to the American people and to the world about the reasons for invading Iraq. There are no WMDs in the massive quantities described by the Bush administration before the invasion, though I don't doubt Saddam had them at one time. The reasons for the invasion were based on lies. Spin, Bush, spin. Your re-election depends on it.

Albo-

No. We are not going to give them "time". That is what the UN inspectors were asking for and we told them "No". Uh oh- now here comes some righty farker to tell me that they already had "10 years" blah blah. The bottom line is we were sold a bill of goods for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq that wasn't necessary. And now right wingers want that same "time" given to them because "Iraq is the size of CA" or whatever other tag line is the currently popular. Why do you need time? They have tons of WMD and we know where they are already. That is what we were told. That is why we attacked. Stop asking for more time. It's hypocritical.

06-10-03 02:47:09 PM Burn98
...
If they find WMD hidden in underground bunkers, I still want to know what happened to the buildings in the pictures that Powell showed to the UN.
...

Powell's "evidence" was basically discredited the same day he presented it. For example, one of the buildings Powell talked about had been visited by inspectors. Powell told the UN that suspicious things were going on at the building... they had put a roof back on it, vehicles had been seen coming and going etc... that was about 20% or Powell's evidence right there. The inspectors had already been there. The inspectors had only found evidence of legitimate activities.

"Iran was on the track to becoming a moderate democracy until the US pulled this stunt."

Not even close.

The president made slight overtures to a possible maybe sometime whenever, but thats as far as it went, since the Ayattolla holds the real power and he nixed the idea right away.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/06/10/alqaeda.threat/index.html

I guess Iraq and Afghanistan are innocent if Al Qaeada are still a threat...

Here is a nice little collection of WMD links and excerpts from Instapundit. Not a bad place to start.

"As for the "mobile weapons labs" recently discovered in Iraq, all indications point to them being used to produce hydrogen gas for weather balloons - balloons used by Iraqi artillery units in the field, to determine weather conditions in battle. Hardly a WMD lab. "

True. In fact, the BBC reported that the trucks were sold to Iraq by the British military in 1989. Has anyone seen this mentioned much in the US media?

Hm, why doesn't anyone cry racism when Rice and Powell get flamed?

Some biatch gets drunk and crashes and the cops arrest her and she sues because they're "racist".

Powell and Rice have unpopular views and take unpopular actions (even though they have access to WAY more information than we do), and they suck.

/observation

"
Cliff_Yablonski-
wake up people, it doesn't matter if Iraq has/had WMD or not. We needed to make an example out of some country, an established, organized arab country, to send a message: Don't even try that terrorist bullshiat on us, because we will march over there and just end you. Period. "

I know you're whole deal is trolling and stuff, so this may be pointless, but, isn't there ZERO connection between Iraq and terrorism? I mean, Saddam hated islamic militants worse than the US...

I'm just askin' is all...

Sonnyboy11: But the UN weapons inspectors were never going to find whatever Saddam didn't want them to find. He put limits on where they could go. His people hid things before the UN went to a place. He kicked the inspectors out in 1998 for 4 years. They never would have found anything.

Now, he's gone, and his military is kaput. It's a different situation. Now we (the UN) can go whereever we can, no restrictions, to find evidence.

So far it seems to be all we are finding are torture chambers, dank prisons and mass graves of children buried with their dolls.

but those don't matter; we have to find WMDs or it was all a waste, right?

*high fives Vroom*
nice

Damn_Conservative_Media:
The reason he used that particular line was to emphasise that these questions must surely be getting asked by people who are in power and also those who are very intelligent. (The 2 are not nessecarily related as shown by G. Dubya almost daily)

It was a literary tool to add emphhasis thats all...

Vroomazoom

that, sir, is a load of crap.

ZING! Great argument. You really got me there...

stupid bold tags. </b> </b>. those go on my other posts.

modernhamlet:

That's it! We're all going back to Winnipeg!

Albo: I believe it's been established that the inspectors have historically only been removed by the US... Clinton in '98 and Shrubbo in '03...

Syowr
If We Knew Where It Was -- Why Don't We Know Where It Is?
By John Cory in Saudi Arabia

I am not an educated man, and there are plenty of folks who will tell you that I am not all that smart either


Great Post! I wish I was dumb enough and uneducated enough to have said all that ;)

Albo said "Saddam was a friggin boy scout".

No, actually he was a brutal dictator who was cheered on by the Reagan Administration. He was a brutal dictator who was told by the Bush (I) Administration "it's ok if you annex northern Kuwait". And Frankenstein eventually turned on his master...

Foreign policy under Republicans spells doom, every time.

These hyperbolic hypocrites,
these relics from the eighties,
just need some time to seed their plants
by the banks of the Euphrates.

Modernhamlet:

to state somthing that stupid, with no fact to back it up, does not(haha, got it this time) constitute a legitimate argument.

Why on earth do you think that?

Again, I gotta mention this. Iraq is as big as California. There's a lot of places to hide things.

They had WMDs, the UN said they still had them, the Clinton Administration said they had them, we will find them if they haven't been dumped or buried in a deep mine or bunker.

It's only been a couple of months. patience, my pretties.

Patience my arse.
the UN said that they had them before and during the first gulf war and that they personally over saw the destruction of 90%.
Clinton said that if "left unchecked" That Saddam could build his arsenal of mass destruction and would be a threat.
The bush white house threatened us with "100's of tons" of chemical and biological agents that were so ready to be used that we couldn't wait another minute.
Now after being proven a liar and making more than a billion for Bechtel (rummy) Halliburton, (cheney) and Carlyle Group (Bushes) he refeuses to say "weapons of mass destruction" in public and replaces it with "weapons program". Just like when he stopped saying the words "Osama Bin Laden" publicly in july of last year in the drum up for the war. now you want patience? Give the bastages 110 days like the un and if they aren't found...regime change.
bullshiat

06-10-03 02:50:44 PM Rathumos
Damn_Conservative_Media: So then, you're saying the ordinary average joe schmoe shouldn't ever seek public comment on his common-sense questions? If the mass media isn't willing to question the government the way the people want them to, then it's the people's duty to get their own questions answered. Asking the questions is the first step. There are in fact people other than traditional talking heads who have questions about what our government is or is not telling us.

No... I agree, people should ask the questions when the media and the opposing party are obviously failing. My problem is the style of the essay... starting off with some "I am such a humble ordinary person..." drivel. Appealing to this notion of being "just one of the folks"... rubs me the wrong way.

The same way that people saying stupid things like "I'd rather have a President with 'common sense' than an intelligent President." Common sense is overrated (and a bit of a naive notion)... just being an ordinary person is overrated.

I suppose that in this case I may have overreacted a bit if since it seems that this essay is more questioning than analyzing/synthesizing - even though the conclusions are obvious.

"But we found mass graves and gas chambers and porn!" etc.

Hippy! I don't want to hear your liberal whining anymore.

"No, actually he was a brutal dictator who was cheered on by the Reagan Administration."

Hardly cheered on. The Reagan admin gave info to Iraq ti fight Iran. They also gave Iran info to fight Iraq"

"He was a brutal dictator who was told by the Bush (I) Administration "it's ok if you annex northern Kuwait".

Everyone seems to get this wrong. April actually told him that the US didn't see the boarder dispute as a concern but hoped they would work it out peacefuly.

Saddam was actually in bed with the Soviets, sighning pacts with them before he even came to power and the Chinesse.

US weapons to Iraq acounted for 1% of the total.

He was hardly our puppet.

scrodd: when did Bush pere tell Saddam it was OK to annex northern Kuwait?

Is this something you learned at Indymedia.com?

06-10-03 02:52:30 PM Modernhamlet

Haha.. ok, you win. Excellent reference.

You want terrorist connections with Al Qaeada? Don't look at Iraq, look at Pakistan... The Pakistani ISI wired $100,000 a week before 9/11 to one of the highjakers and Rice an co. knew about it but never mentioned it to the public.

You expect the States to attack Pakistan? Never, now that Afghanistan is "secured" and the oil flowing in the Afghan-Pakistan pipes are safe and away from Russian pipes and / or land don't count on it.

Rathumos: I take that last bit back... about the conclusions being obvious... it really does seem that the essay is more honest questioning. I withdraw any quarrel with the author, except the unforgivable sin of starting an essay in that manner.

remember before the axis of evil speech when the two Koreas were having talks of unification?

Albo-

Plese save the humanitarian crap. That is not why we invaded. Like I am now supposed to believe that Republicans care about the poor in some third world country. How bout not? It's just a convenient excuse because the real reasons are failing.

06-10-03 03:00:59 PM Shut........UP

Saddam was actually in bed with the Soviets, sighning pacts with them before he even came to power and the Chinesse

Not to flame you Shut, but I don't understand what you are trying to say. Could you clarify this?

Let's say it all together now. It is high time to impeach Bush for his illegal war.

If getting a BJ in the Oval Office is grounds then quite certainly sending Americans to die for artificial reasons certainly qualifies.

If only the Democrats weren't such big wusses.

to state somthing that stupid, with no fact to back it up, does not(haha, got it this time) constitute a legitimate argument.

I believe that was my point. You've posted to this thread 10 or so times and all but twice your statement was meaningless and vapid. Please contribute something intelligent or STFU.

Thanks.

The Administration argued that we have to go to war with Iraq because they presented an imminent threat to the US. Remember the Bushism preemptive strike that was thrown around so much. I think it's becoming obvious that the claim was at the very least greatly exagerated.

The fact that Bush, Inc. wants to change the reason for the war to Iraqi liberation now and moving away from talk about WMDs says a lot. But of course the Republicans will defend him to the death, and the Democrats will make some half-arsed attempt to investigate this because they will be more concerned with hurting Bush than finding the facts.

Sonnyboy11: You don't think the Republicans care about the third world poor? That we're all evil, heartless robots?

Well, I care. Sorry I can't confirm your prejudices.

aw nuts. i fed the trolls a little bit too much.

He was a brutal dictator who was told by the Bush (I) Administration "it's ok if you annex northern Kuwait".

Um, isn't that why we went in during Desert Storm? To kick him out of Kuwait?

Can even one of the asshats in Bushy's Junta open their pieholes without lying?