Saddam's Mig buried in sand....photo

[NUKE]

Originally posted by Nash
Ah Nuke.... Well okay yeah... that happens. But I said dumped and buried.

And even then, they have on occasion turned up from a search.

But that's just rare.

Someone goes missing, and the suspects are rounded up, and someone cops to it, and tells the lea where the body is.

Please don't get hung-up by the possibility of WMD getting discovered by a camel herder wandering through the desert.

Answer instead with what my post was getting at...

sorry Nash, been drinking a little. What specifically do you want me to answer buddy?

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Nash
When a body gets dumped and buried in some remote section of forest, does its discovery come as a result of some search?

I think that's the wrong question, Nash.  

The real question is, "When a body gets dumped and buried in some remote section of forest does it make a sound?"

[Nash]

Instead of expecting a search of sand to reveal WMD, how could not the traditional method of locating things have produced anything?

How could not ONE person have spilled the beans by now?

[Nash]

Liz:

[NUKE]

From my POV, finding WMD never was an issue, so I never cared if we found them really.

My main issue was that Saddam would never do enough to convince me that he did not have banned weapons, including WMD. I believe that Saddam thought he could skate through his "crisis".

For me, the only thing that mattered was that Saddam could never be trusted and that nobody was going to do anything to stop him.

[Nash]

Plenty of folks can't be trusted.

Gud enough reason to go to war? At what it's costing you?

You're in Arizona: 24 soldiers killed and 160 wounded. 2.2 billion dollars of your money, so far.

[Holden McGroin]

At the time of the decision to invade, the decision was between fighting and continuing the sanctions, inspections.  

I haven't found a single quote by a world leader, other than Saddam Hussein, uttered before the invasion, stating that his government was confident that SH did not have WMD's.  I have spent quite a bit of time googling.

1441 passed unanimously, and implict in that acceptance by the UNSC was that the members were concerned about SH WMD capability.

The conventional wisdom at the time was that we were going to get gassed during the fight.

[NUKE]

Originally posted by Nash
Plenty of folks can't be trusted.

Gud enough reason to go to war? At what it's costing you?

You're in Arizona: 24 soldiers killed and 160 wounded. 2.2 billion dollars of your money, so far.

Nash, I really do not want to argue. If Iraq had never invaded Kuwait, the the US would never have been in Iraq and Saddam would still be in control.

The US did not invade Iraq on a whim.

[Nash]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
I haven't found a single quote by a world leader, other than Saddam Hussein, uttered before the invasion, stating that his government was confident that SH did not have WMD's.  

Maybe that's why they ordered a final and pretty harsh all-requests-get-fufilled-and-all-access-gets-granted-or-mr.-hussein-you're-a-dead-man inspection.

The team went to *every* place mentioned in Powell's UN speech, and much more.

They couldn't find squat. But they were still looking, and the cooperation was golden, yet...

Bush yanked them out. Cut short that inspection. There was an accepted deadline, and Bush changed his mind and ordered them out now.

Google the answer to why that was, instead. I frankly haven't been able to make heads nor tails of it.

[NUKE]

Originally posted by Nash
Maybe that's why they ordered a final and pretty harsh all-requests-get-fufilled-and-all-access-gets-granted-or-mr.-hussein-you're-a-dead-man inspection.

The team went to *every* place mentioned in Powell's UN speech, and much more.

They couldn't find squat. But they were still looking, and the cooperation was golden, yet...

Bush yanked them out. Cut short that inspection.

Google the answer to why that was, instead. I frankly haven't been able to make heads nor tails of it.

Nash, that's not true. We found more than 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium at ONE site.... a site that the inspectors had limited access to before the war. We found and removed 1.8 tons of enriched uranium from the same site. We found reference strains of biological WMD.

[Holden McGroin]

Cooperation was golden?

February 08, 2003

Chief UN arms inspector Mohamed ElBaradei on Friday urged a "drastic change" in Iraq's cooperation with inspections as a US-led war on Iraq looms large.

Speaking to reporters in Cyprus before heading for Iraq, ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said he and his fellow Hans Blix wanted to see a "drastic change" in Baghdad's cooperation.

"We expect to see drastic change with regard to particular areas, the areas of surveillance flights, and the question of private interviews, these are the areas where it is important to move on," ElBaradei said.
 

January 27, 2003

UNITED NATIONS - With the United States escalating threats of war, the chief U.N. arms inspector sharply criticized Iraq on Monday for failing to disclose all its long range missile, chemical and biological arms programs.

"It is not enough to open doors. Inspection is not a game of catch as catch can," said Hans Blix. "Iraq appears not to have come to genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it."

After two months of inspections, the reports by top disarmament inspectors Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei to the U.N. Security Council appeared to bolster Washington's case that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

But countries with misgivings about a military strike, including China, France, Germany, Russia, Syria, Canada, Norway and others insisted inspectors had to be given more time.

Blix delivered his toughest assessment yet of Iraq's cooperation, particularly on Baghdad's 12,000-page arms declaration submitted on Dec. 7. However, he did not corroborate U.S. claims that Baghdad had rebuilt its arsenal, saying he could not give a verdict one way or another.

Blix was far harsher in his evaluation than his colleague Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who said there was no evidence that Iraq had revived a nuclear weapons program dismantled in the early 1990s.

[NUKE]

The irony is that if Bush didn't threaten force, the UN inspectors would have never been allowed back into Iraq in the first place. Doesn't that make you wonder about the threat and use of force Nash?

Why do you think Iraq EVER would have allowed ANY UN inpsections?

[Nash]

Good quotes Holden.

How about one from the actual Security Council report just two weeks before the invasion:

"Inspections in Iraq resumed on 27 November 2002.  In matters relating to process, notably prompt access to sites, we have faced relatively few difficulties and certainly much less than those that were faced by UNSCOM in the period 1991 to 1998."


Their plug was pulled not 10 days later.

[NUKE]

Originally posted by Nash
Good quotes Holden.

How about one from the actual Security Council report just two weeks before the invasion:

"Inspections in Iraq resumed on 27 November 2002.  In matters relating to process, notably prompt access to sites, we have faced relatively few difficulties and certainly much less than those that were faced by UNSCOM in the period 1991 to 1998."


Their plug was pulled not 10 days later.

Nash, can you explain why inpections resumed under Bush? Why was Saddam able to kick inpsectors out?

Maybe Iraq suddenly thought they'd be nice.

[Nash]

Oh fer sure Nuke... Iraq wouldn't have aquiesced without the pressure. Totally...

I hear that all the time here though: "Oh the irony"...

Thing is, so WHAT?

The show of force was neccessary... and it worked. So far, so good.

So why was it neccessary to actually go in again?