Bush administration and the WMD: why not level with the American people?

[AKS\/\/ulfe]

Originally posted by Murdr
Lol, wrong.  Read on.
September 12, 2002 Address to UN

Actually, Gixer is right. WMDs and supporting terrorists is the line that Bush sold the American public to gain approval for the war.
-SW

[GRUNHERZ]

Originally posted by Gixer
Because WMD's where the whole reason for the invasion, not that Sadam was a "bad guy".  

Wrong.  Look up the text of a September 2002 Adress to the UN by Bush. Half was WMD related violations on UNSC resulotion and half was about Saddam's human rights violations...

[Kieran]

Why not admit they were wrong?

1. Saddam was found how long after the war, and how? On a tip. If that person hadn't spoken to the right people, we might never have found him. And he was practically in plain sight.

2. SH was behaving as if he had weapons. Now you might say it was all a bluff, but there is a good chance he wasn't.

3. How will history view us if we go away without a good hard look and it's later found they were right there all along.

4. No one expected it all to be laying right out there on the sand dunes. It was always going to be a hard job.

Now it's real easy to believe that nothing existed prior to the war, especially if that's what you want to believe, but we are there, and we'd better be sure. If the worst that can be said is our intelligence was wrong, that's something to work on, but in the end SH was bucking UN mandates and was fairly well asking for a resumption of hostilities. That was stated as often as any reason to go to war against Iraq, despite the idiotic protestations of political partisans to the contrary. My gosh, it's a matter of public record, google it. You would have thought it was years ago and not this past spring.

[strk]

why not level with the American people?

b/c Bush knows it will result in  first class ticket to Crawford come January 2005 - and it won't be on Air Force One

strk

[crabofix]

Originally posted by Kieran
Why not admit they were wrong?

1. Saddam was found how long after the war, and how? On a tip. If that person hadn't spoken to the right people, we might never have found him. And he was practically in plain sight.

Yes, you really belive he was found in December? How conveniant, just as the Election was starting up. I promise you, SH will never have the chance to utter a single word in a court, anywhere. He will be shoot dead or be blown up by the"IRAQ people", AKA CIA, or die in a heartattack in prison.

[Kieran]

What IS it with you Scandinavians?

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Dowding
There won't be a vote of no confidence against Blair...
Unless something catastrophic happens, I'd say Blair's position is fairly secure.

You can read about this "exclusive poll" on the UK Yahoo! home page, http://uk.yahoo.com/

OK, this alone isn't going to get him out of Downing Street, but there's still the Lord Hutton report to come. Did you see Panorama last night?

The last Labour government (and I really had high hopes that it was the last one) was ousted by a vote of no confidence. It's not unlikely that the Blair administration will suffer a similar fate, though probably not before winning the next election c2005.

[Dowding]

Lord Hutton will reveal nothing that isn't already known. The government will be criticised for using a civil servant as a pawn in its game of trying to justify the debunked 45 minute WMD readiness claim, and the BBC will be criticised for supporting Gilligan far too vociferously.

Blair's reputation has already been damaged with regards to that situation.

[-tronski-]

WMD was the reason we were all told was the justification of the invasion...to simply ignore it and only push the humanitarian sideshow is pure nonsense.


This morning I announced that Australia had joined a coalition, led by the United States, which intends to disarm Iraq of its prohibited weapons of mass destruction.  
                  John Howard  18/3/03

 Tronsky

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Dowding
Lord Hutton will reveal nothing that isn't already known. The government will be criticised for using a civil servant as a pawn in its game of trying to justify the debunked 45 minute WMD readiness claim, and the BBC will be criticised for supporting Gilligan far too vociferously.

Blair's reputation has already been damaged with regards to that situation.

You're probably right.

[Kieran]

Originally posted by -tronski-
WMD was the reason we were all told was the justification of the invasion...to simply ignore it and only push the humanitarian sideshow is pure nonsense.

Absolutely true. OTOH, you have people saying it was the only reason, which is an outright lie.

[Ecke-109-]

Evil boys say: Clinton bombed Iraq because Monica sucked to loud.
And Bush bombed Iraq because he failed badly in Afghanistan. Does anyone ask about Bin Laden nowadays?
War is a perfect kind of distraction.

Ecke

[Nakhui]

Originally posted by Kieran
Absolutely true. OTOH, you have people saying it was the only reason, which is an outright lie.

it was the reason... that with out it... Congress would not have given their consent to go to war - Including Republicans.

The use of WMD within 45 minute WAS the only threat to US security...

Saddam being a malicious dictator to his people was not.
Saddam's violation of UN sanctions was not.

With out the WMD arguement... the Iraq war would have been a no go.

When Powel went to the UN to prove his case... he wasn't giving evidence of Sadam the mean bad guy... years of UN sanction violations... pictures of mass graves...

He went with what he called "evidence" of WMD... that was and is the only White House arguement capable of justifying the war.

[Kieran]

"Yes" or "No"... did Bush speak of years of ignoring UN resolutions when stumping for action against Iraq? Simple question.

[Apache]

"Let me tell you what I know. When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions."

Bill Clinton, 7/22/03, Larry King Live