The Iraq / war on terror thread

[axls_locomotive]

Oh one last mention...

Saddam was still selling oil..  When i was in the US Navy we intercepted his tankers daily sailing in iranian waters.. and confiscated and turned back the ships...  

we got maybe 4 or 5 a month if we were lucky... you can guess how many we didnt...

Debate on and tell everyon how its all our fault you fucking shit ...

if you are referring to me then you are wrong...the USA and the UK may have been mostly to blame when the sanctions were put in place and for years after it, but it was France and Germany I recall that didnt want sanctions lifted later when the USA and UK did, so It's not just the USA to blame,

I would like to know how, with Iraq having such a small coastline, so many oil tankers could get out or Iraq

[axls_locomotive]

Even with the sanctions, Saddam was still selling oil.  With that money, he could have taken care of his population.  Instead, he built palaces with gold bath tubs etc.  

Iraq was a rich country before those wars, how do you know that this opulence came from during the sanctions and not before it?  I dont actually know the answer to that question but i would like to know what iraq and saddams palaces were like back then.

 

[DRUNK]

Even with the sanctions, Saddam was still selling oil.  With that money, he could have taken care of his population.  Instead, he built palaces with gold bath tubs etc.  

Iraq was a rich country before those wars, how do you know that this opulence came from during the sanctions and not before it?  I dont actually know the answer to that question but i would like to know what iraq and saddams palaces were like back then.

 

 Saddam continued to spend massive amounts of money after the sanctions were put into place. Spending more than he ever did.  I saw some numbers awhile back, and unfortunately I can't recall them exactly.  Sorry.

[Evolution]

www.costofwar.com



not positive on how accurate this is but on the time ive bn on the page $250 dollars has been spent

[GnRNightrain]

I know we have many Iraq threads, but I feel that we turn every political thread into an Iraq thread.  I originally posted this in another thread, but I dont want it to get lost.  This is a clear argument for the war consisting of many of the points that we have been making on this board for awhile.

The Reality of Saddam?s Threat
The U.S. could not have delayed dealing with Saddam Hussein.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. & Lee A. Casey

On Friday, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Pre-war Intelligence Assessment on Iraq." Although this report concluded that the Bush administration did not seek to "coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities," thereby decisively rebutting the oft-invoked charge that the administration had pushed the intelligence community to find a threat from Iraq, the president's opponents have been busy spinning the report's conclusions as evidence that Saddam Hussein simply posed no meaningful threat to the United States. They now assert that Saddam's Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), was so weak in conventional military forces that it presented no threat even to some of its smaller neighbors, and that, overall, the regime could have been safely contained for years to come.

Emboldened by the report, the Democrat political establishment, including presidential candidate John Kerry, and his recently announced running mate John Edwards, have now broadened their attacks on the president's Iraq policy. Having spent months arguing that the problem was not with the fact that the United States effected a regime change in Iraq, but rather with how the administration went about it ? not enough international support and insufficient planning for the postwar period have been Kerry's favorite allegations ? now they have begun to claim that the whole enterprise was flawed.

These arguments are fundamentally wrong. They both underestimate the threat posed to the United States by Iraq's WMD programs, erroneously equating the absence of WMD stockpiles at a particular point in time with the absence of a WMD threat, and trivialize other aspects of the unique strategic challenge of Saddam Hussein. They also ignore compelling evidence that the international sanctions regime was collapsing and that the real strategic choice facing the United States was not between a regime change and containment, but between a regime change and Saddam Hussein's continuation in power, free from any meaningful constraints. More generally, the critics apparent belief that there is such a thing as perfect intelligence, and that the United States should not use force against a dangerous foe until and unless such perfect intelligence has been secured, is both historically unfounded and a prescription for a strategic disaster.


Saddam's Dream

Both the reality and enduring nature of Saddam's WMD ambitions are well-known. Since proclaimed intentions and declaratory policy have always driven weapons acquisition, the fact that, for years, Saddam Hussein proclaimed his desire to become a new Saladin, and maintained that the possession of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons by Iraq was an indispensable foundation for any resurgence of Arab power, is extremely important. Declaratory policy aside, Saddam spent billions of dollars developing WMDs and their delivery systems. Post-Desert Storm weapons inspections revealed the existence of a massive Iraqi stockpile of chemical and biological agents, a large portion of which were fully weaponized, as well as a mature nuclear weapons program, perhaps a year or two away from completion. Significantly, Saddam also demonstrated his willingness to use chemical weapons on a large scale, both against the Iranians and his own people. This strongly suggests that, once his WMD forces fully matured, maintaining a robust deterrence against him would have been a difficult, if not impossible, enterprise. Indeed, if nothing else, a nuclear Iraq would have been able to intimidate and dominate his neighbors, since the United States' ability to use its conventional forces to aid threatened Gulf states, like it did in 1991, would have been severely compromised.

To be sure, Saddam Hussein was not the only dictator seeking to develop WMD capabilities, and to use them to help underwrite his anti-American foreign policies. Both North Korea and Iran also pose serious threats in this area. However, the argument by the administration's critics that, since we are not actively pursuing a regime change option in either Iran or North Korea, we should have done nothing to replace Hussein, is incoherent. It appears to be based in some notion that the United States must treat all of its foreign enemies equally, and that to topple one dictator is somehow unfair when others are left standing. However, this all-or-nothing approach is neither good foreign policy nor a sensible military strategy. International law contains no "equal protection" clause benefiting rogue regimes, and dealing with threats sequentially, and focusing on the one that is both grave and the most manageable is the essence of good statecraft.

Moreover, Saddam's Iraq posed a sufficiently unique challenge to make dealing with it a priority. If Saddam had succeeded in surviving the sanctions, his ability to have turned a military defeat into a long-term strategic success would have greatly bolstered his standing in the Arab world. This would have been particularly dangerous in the post-September 11 environment, because it would have reinforced the perception, embraced by Osama bin Laden among others, that the United States is a "weak horse." Unlike its critics, who have been focusing on the relatively trivial issue of whether Saddam Hussein had actually aided al Qaeda's September 11 attacks against the United States, the administration clearly understood the pivotal importance, in the new threat environment, of the Islamicist assessment of America's willpower.

In any case, the psychological aspects of the threat assessment aside, given Iraq's enormous oil wealth, Saddam Hussein clearly had the potential to become a far greater threat than the impoverished North Korean regime, and had proven himself to be far less cautious than Iran's mullahs have been ? so far. Last, but not least, the notion that the U.S. could have delayed dealing with this problem is self-evidently false. Once the sanctions regime collapsed, and Iraq was no longer viewed as a pariah state, the United States would have found it even more difficult to secure any regional or international support for the regime change.

[GnRNightrain]

Saddam's Record

There is no question that, even after the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein refused to abandon his WMD aspirations. Although some of Iraq 's WMD stockpiles were destroyed by the time Saddam Hussein expelled the U.N. inspectors in 1998, the situation with the rest of his arsenal was much more complicated. For years, Iraq played a cat-and-mouse game with the U.N. inspectors. Even after Security Council Resolution 1441, giving Hussein one last chance to cure his material breaches of the previous resolutions and come into full compliance, was enacted, Iraq continued this strategy. Indeed, Iraq 's submission to the Security Council of a patently false December 2002 weapons declaration, combined with an arrogant assertion that its WMD stockpiles were destroyed without any record of that fact, signaled Saddam's clear intention never to meet the obligations he undertook at the close of the Gulf War. These were, among other things, to himself prove that Iraq's WMD stockpiles had been destroyed and its programs dismantled. (The notion that Iraq 's totalitarian regime, obsessed as it was with controlling all aspects of public and private life, would have destroyed its WMD arsenal without generating some paperwork in the process is laughable ? unless this was by design. After all, Coalition forces have discovered rooms full of documentation detailing the Iraqis tortured and murdered by Saddam's regime.)

Thus, despite a clear legal obligation requiring Saddam Hussein to destroy his WMD stockpiles and programs, and to prove it, he refused to provide any reliable accounting. This deception went on for years, despite the high cost of the international sanctions regime. Even when he had numerous opportunities to dispel American anxiety about his WMD capabilities ? through "arranged" defections or the use of favored French or Russian interlocutors (who could have been discretely given the kind of access to Iraq's facilities denied to the U.N. inspectors) ? he declined (a point raised by Michael Schrage in the Washington Post). Instead, a stream of Iraqi defectors and information gleaned from electronic intercepts and signal intelligence reinforced the conclusion that Iraq still maintained a substantial WMD capability. This was fully borne out by the discoveries made by Coalition forces that the Iraqi military establishment maintained elaborate chemical-warfare-related paraphernalia, including protective gear, detoxification equipment, and a stockpile of antidotes.

Ironically, although Saddam Hussein consistently refused to present adequate proof that his WMD stockpiles had been eliminated, it now appears that they had been. By the end of the 1990s, it appears that the immediate value of WMDs, from Saddam's perspective, was not necessarily in their potential use on the battlefield. Rather, it was in the status such weapons gave him in the Arab world, and in the potential deterrence value they produced vis-?-vis the United States and Israel. As a result, he was able to adopt a middle course ? evidently destroying much of his stockpile (thus avoiding inconvenient discoveries by U.N. inspection teams), while maintaining the capacity to recreate chemical and biological weapons on a "just in time" basis, and pursuing additional research and development efforts on nuclear weapons. Saddam's strategic gamble, while creative, is not entirely unprecedented, and closely resembles Nikita Khrushchev's exploitation of what came to be known as the "missile gap."


The Two Strategic Gambles

As readers of a certain age will recall, by the late 1950s the Soviet Union was locked in a strategic arms competition with the United States, and it was loosing badly. America enjoyed a considerable and growing advantage in both long- and intermediate-range nuclear forces. Yet, having embarked on an ambitious foreign policy designed to test American resolve, and possibly drive U.S. forces out of Berlin, Khrushchev was not prepared to curtail his aspirations. To enhance his military capabilities vis-?-vis the U.S., he could have deployed a number of costly, inaccurate and vulnerable first generation ICBMs. Alternatively, he could invest the USSR's large, but not unlimited, resources in the development of more advanced missiles (with deployment many years in the future) and other, more reliable, strategic weapons systems that might actually move the nuclear balance in his favor. Sensibly enough, he chose the latter course. However, to maintain the highest quality "deterrence" against the West and, even more to the point, to support the enhanced Soviet prestige necessary for an ambitious foreign policy, Khrushchev also engaged in an elaborate deception designed to make the West believe that Moscow had already fielded strategically meaningful numbers of advanced ICBMs. The Soviet leader's public statements were supported by a carefully tailored intelligence disinformation campaign.

[GnRNightrain]

From Khrushchev's perspective, the entire plan worked like a charm. The alleged "missile gap" between the United States and the USSR was seized upon by a young Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, to discredit the Eisenhower Administration and to defeat then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. Not only did the Soviet Union save billions of rubles, but Khrushchev now believed he could best the inexperienced Kennedy.

In the end, however, he had been too clever by half. The deception was discovered through the use of U-2 surveillance flights and confirmed by intelligence provided by Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. When Khrushchev proceeded to place short and medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba in October 1962, in order to cover his blunder, Kennedy bested him. Backing down from a confrontation the Soviet Union could not win, the humiliated Khrushchev was "retired" within two years.

Although the details of Saddam's WMD deception were different, his basic strategic bluff was virtually identical to Khrushchev's gambit. Having concluded, in the aftermath of Desert Storm, that the possession of a WMD arsenal was an indispensable guarantee of his regime's survival, but not wanting to repudiate openly ? in the manner of Kim Jong-Il ? his international obligations, Saddam chose to continue to perfect his WMD systems, with a particular emphasis on the development of a nuclear capability, while actually drawing down the number of deployed WMDs. In many respects, this elaborate deception, about the existence of his deployed WMDs, was easier than Khrushchev's, since no amount of intelligence gathering or U.N. inspections could prove the negative. Thus, the world was left with the impression that Saddam had WMD capabilities, but there was no "smoking gun." Certainly, there was nothing that could produce an "Adlai Stevenson moment" (when President Kennedy's U.N. ambassador was able, using U-2 generated photographs, actually to show Soviet missile sites in Cuba ).


A Just-in-Time Arsenal

Yet, the existence of this state of affairs in 2003 does not, contrary to the claims of the administration's critics, validate the wisdom of the U.N. sanctions/inspections strategy or demonstrate that the U.S.-preferred regime change strategy was unnecessary and unwise. To begin with, a "virtual" WMD strategy enabled Saddam to wait out the sanctions/inspections regime, which, by the late 1990s, was already beginning to break down ? with claims (by France among others) that the innocent Iraqi people were suffering more than the guilty Saddam regime. It should be recalled that the administration's pre-September 11, 2001 efforts to bolster and "smarten" anti-Saddam sanctions were met with strong opposition from Russia, China and France, all of which were arguing that Iraq should be allowed to rejoin the international community as a normal sovereign state. There were no indications that those who have been critical of "regime change" as the most effective means for dealing with the threat posed by Saddam would have had the bureaucratic and political staying power of sustaining for years, and even decades, a policy of de facto international trusteeship, enforced by weapons inspectors, to be imposed over Iraq (as well as on other WMD-aspiring, rogue regimes).

Moreover, to the extent that Saddam felt confident about his ability to control the timing of events (to be the initiator, rather than the victim, of any renewed military operations), thereby being able to reconstitute his arsenal when needed, retaining a small WMD stockpile was not an optimal strategic choice for Iraq. It did not provide a substantial enough war-fighting capability, yet posed an ever-present risk of detection ? it would have been difficult, for example, to conceal an accident akin to the one that took place in Chelyabinsk in the Urals in 1979, when an accidental release of anthrax killed scores of people (and confirmed the existence of the Soviet bio-weapons program despite the Kremlin's denials).

Significantly, this "just-in-time" approach to WMD deployment was no less dangerous, from the U.S. perspective, than possession of a WMD stockpile. At least with respect to chemical and biological agents, the most important assets appear to be the availability of suitable expertise and the necessary industrial base. Both of these Saddam had in plenty. Thus, a rogue state, capable of reconstituting its WMD arsenal at a time of its own choosing, poses as much of a threat as a regime with the WMD forces in being.

Finally, an Iraqi just-in-time strategy may have been even more dangerous to the United States because of the possibility that Saddam would share either existing WMD, or technical expertise, with a terrorist group. In fact, a rogue regime which has adopted a virtual arsenal approach, while disclaiming its intent to field WMDs, might well feel that it has more plausible deniability and, therefore, would actually be more likely to transfer WMDs to a third party. There is even a possibility that Iraq may have combined its WMD-related efforts with other rogue regimes (Syria in particular) and intended to develop a "distributed" arsenal, which would have been more difficult to both detect and target.


The Myth of Perfect Intelligence

The administration's critics have also embraced the dangerous and ahistorical notion that it is possible to develop and maintain a perfectly accurate intelligence picture of what is being done by a dangerous foe. While the CIA cannot be fully exonerated ? its failure to recruit and run human intelligence sources within Iraq is particularly damning ? developing consistently reliable body of intelligence, especially when dealing with a ruthless dictatorial regime, is an inherently challenging undertaking. Notably, many times in the past, the CIA's "group think" mentality, mentioned prominently in the Senate report, has not caused it to overestimate the threat. If anything, more often than not, the CIA has underestimated the extent of the threats facing the U.S. This was certainly the case with its assessments of the Soviet nuclear build-up, Soviet expense expenditures, and many other aspects of Soviet foreign and defense policies. The CIA's estimates of Iraq's nuclear programs on the eve of the 1991 Gulf war were also way off. Meanwhile, the September 11 Commission is about to indict the CIA and the entire U.S. intelligence community for its failure to anticipate and predict the September 11 attacks.

While gauging accurately what is being done by a regime that is trying to hide its weapons programs, as was the case with North Korea, is difficult, doing this vis-?-vis a regime that has engaged in a deliberate strategic deception program is virtually impossible. Yet, this was precisely the case with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. For example, even if the CIA succeeded in penetrating the senior echelons of Saddam's regime, and all of its human sources reported that no WMD stockpiles were in place, this evidence, even if one assumes that the sources involved were totally reliable, still would not have been conclusive.

After all, it is always possible that Iraq's program was sufficiently compartmentalized to ensure that even senior regime members did not have an accurate picture of what was going on. In fact, this compartmentalization is quite typical of dictatorial and secrecy-obsessed regimes. In the Soviet case, for example, the whole nuclear weapons program was entrusted by Stalin to his secret police chief, Beria, and its specifics were not known for many years by most of the senior Soviet political and military leaders. All of this means that the availability of perfect intelligence is a myth, and the search for it is inherently self-defeating. Unfortunately, U.S. decision-makers often have to make tough choices on the basis of imperfect and ambiguous intelligence.


A Reasonable Policy

When the totality of this evidence is fairly considered, the administration's overall assessment of the threat posed by Iraq 's WMD program remains fully justified. Significantly, Iraq's failure to avail itself of the one last chance to disarm, offered by Resolution 1441, coming as it did on the heels of ten years of sanctions and 16 successive Security Council resolutions, properly convinced the administration that Saddam would never give up his WMD program, no matter what economic and diplomatic pressure was brought to bear upon him. Therefore, the policy choice to effect a "regime change" was both consistent with the administration's reasonable prospective assessments of Saddam's WMD program and constituted the only effective way of dealing with this threat.

[GnRNightrain]

When dealing with authoritarian anti-American states with a demonstrated history of WMD ambitions, the only safe way, short of regime change, to ensure that they are irreversibly disarmed is to adopt a wide-range of confidence-building measures, which go way beyond the traditional inspection regime. Under this scenario, the burden of persuasion is really on the regime itself. In this regard, as was persuasively argued by the president's national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, experience amassed during the "de-nuclearization" of such countries as South Africa and Ukraine demonstrates that a prerequisite to a successful nuclear disarmament is a willing host regime that is prepared to give the international community unrestricted access to its facilities and weapons installations and adopt a wide-range of confidence building measures. Indeed, Libya's recent overture to the international community is another excellent example of this confidence-building approach.

By contrast, a rogue regime that is playing a shell game with inspectors can never be disarmed with any degree of confidence. Significantly, this concern was well recognized by the U.N. weapons inspectors; neither Hans Blix, nor any of his predecessors, have ever claimed that they were confident of their ability to disarm Iraq fully of its WMDs. What the administration's critics are really saying is that, despite the September 11 experience, they would not use force in a situation in which strong, albeit not full-proof, arguments can be made that there is a grave and rising danger to the U.S. In a world in which perfect intelligence is but a pipe dream, this approach virtually guarantees inaction. Come November, the American people should decide whether this is the best way to protect our security in the 21st century.

[Doc Emmett Brown]

GNRNightrain, I'll have to read these posts more carefully when I get home from work.  But I might as well add an article to the fray:

British report absolves Blair of misleading public, saying intelligence on Iraq flawed
By Jill Lawless, Associated Press, 7/14/2004 16:56

LONDON (AP) Prime Minister Tony Blair escaped harsh criticism in an official inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq, which faulted him Wednesday for informal decision-making and pushing available intelligence to the limit, but found no deliberate distortions.

Blair said he took full, personal responsibility. But he told parliament, ''No one lied, no one made up the intelligence'' after the much-awaited report was released.

The commission headed by Lord Butler, a retired civil service chief found prewar Iraq had no usable stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that British intelligence was flawed, unreliable and incomplete. The five-member commission interviewed Blair, senior Cabinet figures and key intelligence officials.

...

Butler's judgment vindicates the British government of some of the harshest charges against it, a week after a Republican-led U.S. Senate committee excoriated a ''broken corporate culture'' at the CIA and said there had been a ''global intelligence failure'' on Iraq. CIA director George Tenet resigned before the report was released.

In Washington, the CIA declined comment on the British report.

Full article at: http://www.boston.com/dailynews/196/world/British_report_absolves_Blair_:.shtml

At least two sides to every story.

[axls_locomotive]

that first article is nothing but verbal diarrhoea enhanced with bully like behaviour....assumptions are a dangerous thing and this article has quite a few

[Informer4.0]

I thought the name of the title was "Good Argument"?  

What a bunch of hogwash. Is that the best you can do is clip and paste crappy articles such as this?

I notice the author ignored the fact that Osama is nowhere to be seen and that Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11.

We didn't do shit back in the day (when we did business with him) about what ruthless dictator he was. Now we do and say "Hey look how bad he is".

Yea, we (the government) have known this man is a bastard for some time now.

The author also ignored the way we went into the "war". That has been discussed several times and of course violated international law.

But international law be damned! He might have some weapons over there! Who's with us?.........

Quit trying to be right. The hammer is falling on Bush and Blair.

It's over. We didn't produce anything but more trouble.

Hell, even Geraldo Rivera's episode where they uncovered Al Capone's vault turned up more shit than this!

[Doc Emmett Brown]

The Bush administration is on the defensive...

By David B. Rivkin Jr. & Lee A. Casey

^ Here's a little info about the authors of this article:

The authors, lawyers in the Washington office of Baker & Hostetler, frequently write on constitutional and international law issues. Rivkin and Casey served in the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

On Friday, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Pre-war Intelligence Assessment on Iraq." Although this report concluded that the Bush administration did not seek to "coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities,"

Like the British report, the Senate report does state that U.S. intelligence agencies overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  I dont care if they want to let Bush and Blair off the hook - after all, it looks bad for the entire country if their leaders are perceived as incompetent, or worse, liars.

the president's opponents have been busy spinning the report's conclusions

nope.  the only spinning going on here is by the authors.  

Having spent months arguing that the problem was not with the fact that the United States effected a regime change in Iraq, but rather with how the administration went about it ? not enough international support and insufficient planning for the postwar period have been Kerry's favorite allegations ? now they have begun to claim that the whole enterprise was flawed.

Yes, at some point many of us have flip-flopped on the war issue, myself included.  At first we were led to believe the story of the '45 minute' capability of Iraq's attacks, the Nigerian uranium hoax, and Saddam's alleged connections with Al Qaeda.  It is likely that he does have close ties with Bin Laden, but so do many other Arab leaders.  Al Qaeda is a network of cells in many different countries.  We picked the one with the most oil.

Post-Desert Storm weapons inspections revealed the existence of a massive Iraqi stockpile of chemical and biological agents, a large portion of which were fully weaponized, as well as a mature nuclear weapons program, perhaps a year or two away from completion.

And how much of these weapons were given to him by the CIA to fight Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

Significantly, Saddam also demonstrated his willingness to use chemical weapons on a large scale, both against the Iranians and his own people. This strongly suggests that, once his WMD forces fully matured, maintaining a robust deterrence against him would have been a difficult, if not impossible, enterprise. Indeed, if nothing else, a nuclear Iraq would have been able to intimidate and dominate his neighbors,

I sense a very Israel point of view, and assumptions here.  I fully support the US's sovereign right to back any country it wants to, including Israel, but this statement smacks of Israeli paranoia.  

To be sure, Saddam Hussein was not the only dictator seeking to develop WMD capabilities, and to use them to help underwrite his anti-American foreign policies. Both North Korea and Iran also pose serious threats in this area. However, the argument by the administration's critics that, since we are not actively pursuing a regime change option in either Iran or North Korea, we should have done nothing to replace Hussein, is incoherent. It appears to be based in some notion that the United States must treat all of its foreign enemies equally, and that to topple one dictator is somehow unfair when others are left standing.

Well, at least they admitted that there are other baddies out there.  I understand (and somewhat agree) that you can choose to eliminate one enemy while ignoring the other for the time being.  It may not be fair, but it's all a game of chess.  

And that's what bothers me the most about the Bush administration: his irritating tendency to push morality into the issue.   It's chess, it's not about good vs. evil, and we're not living in the 10th century.  I'm surprised he hasnt called for the Children's Crusades yet.  

International law contains no "equal protection" clause benefiting rogue regimes, and dealing with threats sequentially, and focusing on the one that is both grave and the most manageable is the essence of good statecraft.

hmm, I sense a contradiction here.  If something is the most grave, then the question of 'manageability' should be moot.  Fighting the Nazis was not manageable, but we did it at the expense of many lives because it was grave.  You cant play chess and morality together.

Unlike its critics, who have been focusing on the relatively trivial issue of whether Saddam Hussein had actually aided al Qaeda's September 11 attacks against the United States

If it's so trivial, then why does Bush keep harping on it everytime he opens his mouth?  

given Iraq's enormous oil wealth, Saddam Hussein clearly had the potential to become a far greater threat than the impoverished North Korean regime,

In other words, N. Korea doesnt have oil. Iraq does.  I wish he'd just come out and say it instead of some rigmarole about the Axis of Evil.   I bet if he just told like it is, he'd gain a lot more supporters.

May I have your attention please?  Will the real Republicans who understand Separation of Church & State please stand up, please stand up? All you other slim shady's are just imitating.

[Mr Cowbell ?]

Regardless of What Saddam did or didnt do to. The reason the US went to war was they stated he had WMD and was helping terrorist. Which has been proven false.

If you get a warrent to search someone's house based on them having illegal weapons. If they bust in and find the guy has no weapons but a bag of pot. They can't arrest him for it. They can take it from him. But they cant have free roam they can only go after what they claimed was in there and warrented the search

[GnRNightrain]

Regardless of What Saddam did or didnt do to. The reason the US went to war was they stated he had WMD and was helping terrorist. Which has been proven false.

If you get a warrent to search someone's house based on them having illegal weapons. If they bust in and find the guy has no weapons but a bag of pot. They can't arrest him for it. They can take it from him. But they cant have free roam they can only go after what they claimed was in there and warrented the search

I dont know where you got that from.  The law is completely the opposite.  They can use the pot.  If you are going to make an analogy you should at least make sure it is right.

Ive used this example before: If you saw Osama Bin Laden on the street and decided to kill him because he was an arab, then I would disagree with your reasoning (racist).  However, I wouldnt complain.  

But many of you dont seem to understand this.  Your hatred of America and or Bush doesnt let you see things like this.  You are looking to condemn America or Bush at every turn, so you cant even say that this war was a good reason for other reasons that Bush might not have used.

[GnRNightrain]

I thought the name of the title was "Good Argument"?  

What a bunch of hogwash. Is that the best you can do is clip and paste crappy articles such as this?

I notice the author ignored the fact that Osama is nowhere to be seen and that Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11.

We didn't do shit back in the day (when we did business with him) about what ruthless dictator he was. Now we do and say "Hey look how bad he is".

Yea, we (the government) have known this man is a bastard for some time now.

The author also ignored the way we went into the "war". That has been discussed several times and of course violated international law.

But international law be damned! He might have some weapons over there! Who's with us?.........

Quit trying to be right. The hammer is falling on Bush and Blair.

It's over. We didn't produce anything but more trouble.

Hell, even Geraldo Rivera's episode where they uncovered Al Capone's vault turned up more shit than this!

You have already proved that you are unwilling to discuss this stuff.  You use guerilla warfare on these threads.  You post your BS, but then when I respond to it, you dont respond back.  So Im not going to waste my time with you anymore.  If you had anything enlightening to say, then you would respond to the criticisms of your posts.

[matt88]

I still maintain that even though there may not be WMD, getting rid of Saddam and the Republican Guard was the right thing.

Saddam's track record for human right's is appalling. And now he'll be brought to justice.

If only someone acted earlier.....we could have saved hundreds of thousands of people

[GnRNightrain]

^ Here's a little info about the authors of this article:

The authors, lawyers in the Washington office of Baker & Hostetler, frequently write on constitutional and international law issues. Rivkin and Casey served in the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

Well I doubt very much you are going to see an article written by someone that wants Bush out of office defending the Iraq war.  It only matters if the facts are wrong.  They are just presenting their opinion.  Its an opinion piece, pure and simple.

Like the British report, the Senate report does state that U.S. intelligence agencies overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  I dont care if they want to let Bush and Blair off the hook - after all, it looks bad for the entire country if their leaders are perceived as incompetent, or worse, liars.

Well many disagree with the reports and think that the weapons were taken out of the country.  Some of those include the President of Australia and Vlad Putin.  There were also many documents found that suggested that such weapons existed.

the president's opponents have been busy spinning the report's conclusions

nope.  the only spinning going on here is by the authors.  

I completely disagree with this one.  You didnt stop hearing about the report that said there was no link between 911 and Suddam, something Bush never said, but something that was said over and over to insinuate that Bush did say it.  And the fact is that the reports have said that there was a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda (which is what Bush said), but you dont hear about that.  All you hear about is no link between Iraq and 911.  Why dont they talk abou that?  No one ever calls the democrats for voting on the war.  Many of those that had the same exact intelligence.  There is no one saying anything against Clinton and all of the democrats that had been saying for the past 5 years that Suddam was developing nuclear weapons.
Bush takes the hit for it all, even though everyone else pretty much saw what he saw and came to the same conclusions.  It is simple partisanship to get him out of office.
Check this out:
http://windsofchange.net/archives/005191.php

Yes, at some point many of us have flip-flopped on the war issue, myself included.  

well lets examine them

the Nigerian uranium hoax,

recent evidence suggests that this was true afterall.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html?referrer%3Demailarticle
Thats one article among many others that are out there

and Saddam's alleged connections with Al Qaeda.  

This is also untrue.  There have been proven links.  Even the 911 commission found some.  Besides he was one of the biggest contributors to the terrorist group Hetzbollah (excuse the spelling) which has killed the second most americans after Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda is a network of cells in many different countries.  We picked the one with the most oil.

Random your smarter than that.  For someone that has flip flopped on the issue, then to make this argument.  Come on.

And how much of these weapons were given to him by the CIA to fight Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

Absolutely irrelevant in regards to whether this war was justified.  The fact is if he had them and was a threat then they should be taken away from his.  We made a big mistake in that war.  We tried to back one evil over another.  We did that in WWII, we also did that by supporting many of the Afghans in the 80's against the soviets.  War makes strange bedfellows.  We made a mistake back then, its not a reason not to correct it now.

I sense a very Israel point of view, and assumptions here.  I fully support the US's sovereign right to back any country it wants to, including Israel, but this statement smacks of Israeli paranoia.  

Well that was the truth.  If Suddam got nuclear weapons it would change the dynamics of the region.  It would allow a tyrant like Suddam to do what he has done in the past easier then he would without such nuclear weapons.  Besides Israel is our best friend in the region, there is no arguing that point.  They are the only democracy, and their people have the most rights out of all of the middle east.

Well, at least they admitted that there are other baddies out there.  I understand (and somewhat agree) that you can choose to eliminate one enemy while ignoring the other for the time being.  It may not be fair, but it's all a game of chess.  

And that's what bothers me the most about the Bush administration: his irritating tendency to push morality into the issue.   It's chess, it's not about good vs. evil, and we're not living in the 10th century.  I'm surprised he hasnt called for the Children's Crusades yet.  

Well all of these countries are evil that deny humanitarian rights and support islamic extremists, so Bush is right on that point in my opinion.  But how you deal with each of these EVIL countries is a chess game.

Unlike its critics, who have been focusing on the relatively trivial issue of whether Saddam Hussein had actually aided al Qaeda's September 11 attacks against the United States

If it's so trivial, then why does Bush keep harping on it everytime he opens his mouth?  

Because as I addressed before the media made it look like Bush said that there was link between 911 and suddam, which is not what he said.  So Bush is restating what he did say, which was found true.

given Iraq's enormous oil wealth, Saddam Hussein clearly had the potential to become a far greater threat than the impoverished North Korean regime,

In other words, N. Korea doesnt have oil. Iraq does.  I wish he'd just come out and say it instead of some rigmarole about the Axis of Evil.   I bet if he just told like it is, he'd gain a lot more supporters.

No, Iraq had something others wanted.  He could gain weapons in exchange for that.  He could get the money to get weapons because of the oil.  That is the point they are trying to make.  I dont know where you got your comment out of that quote.

May I have your attention please?  Will the real Republicans who understand Separation of Church & State please stand up, please stand up? All you other slim shady's are just imitating.

We can argue sep or church and state if you want, thats probably for another thread though.  But you arent going to find many that supported that view at the constitutional convention.  Those folks were in France with Jefferson.

Just to add, I agree with separation of church and state as a political principle, but as a matter of constitutional law it is just false.  Anyone that is interested in my viewpoint can read Justice Thomas' concurrence in Newdow http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/14june20041230/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/03pdf/02-1624.pdf

anyway :peace

[Oddy]

Even though IMO i dont think the Iraq war was justified, i have to admit,

Gnr Nighttrain you argue all your points well.

i would reply and so forth, but i really am too lazy, and by arguing this at the moment we won't resolve anything.

we'll only be able to see the true consequences of this war in 5-10 years time, maybe then we can truely say that it was justified or not. Right now we can only forsee the consequences which isn't really the same.

it's a good and valid argument.....but i just disagree with it. maybe i'll be able to write more as to why i disagree with it later, but im not in the mood to write pages.

also i don't suppose you can provide the footnotes or something similar of the article. there's a lot of claims in that article, i wanna see where it gets all its info from.

[Informer4.0]

I thought the name of the title was "Good Argument"?  

What a bunch of hogwash. Is that the best you can do is clip and paste crappy articles such as this?

I notice the author ignored the fact that Osama is nowhere to be seen and that Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11.

We didn't do shit back in the day (when we did business with him) about what ruthless dictator he was. Now we do and say "Hey look how bad he is".

Yea, we (the government) have known this man is a bastard for some time now.

The author also ignored the way we went into the "war". That has been discussed several times and of course violated international law.

But international law be damned! He might have some weapons over there! Who's with us?.........

Quit trying to be right. The hammer is falling on Bush and Blair.

It's over. We didn't produce anything but more trouble.

Hell, even Geraldo Rivera's episode where they uncovered Al Capone's vault turned up more shit than this!

You have already proved that you are unwilling to discuss this stuff.  You use guerilla warfare on these threads.  You post your BS, but then when I respond to it, you dont respond back.  So Im not going to waste my time with you anymore.  If you had anything enlightening to say, then you would respond to the criticisms of your posts.

I am not going to argue all day with you fools. You guys argue all day over dumb shit. You'll argue endlessly over the same thing over and over. Hell...you'd argue if the sky was blue if somebody brought it up.

I am not here to argue with you all day. I am here to present more of a truthful presence for people to choose from. I'm also here soley to annoy the shit out of you A**HOLES that have been calling us un-American for not supporting this war. I am giving you exactly what you have been giving this board for months and months. I am so sorry you don't like people with another viewpoint. I will not change your mind, and you will not change mine. But if I can change readers minds, and annoy you pro-war guys at the same time, then it's all good. But it is my duty as an American to speak my opinion. It's you guys who use the bully tactics. Now it's back in your lap and you dont' like it. Well....


Have a nice day.

[Layne420]

It's way too early to tell. I would think in next 5 to 10 years you may tell but defintely not tomorrow or even months from now.