"A War We Just Might Win"

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by john9001
did saddam bury his WMD is the desert along with his MIG fighters and "weather balloon trucks", yes.  It's a big desert.

What about the convoy of soviet trucks that went to Syria just before the invasion?

We've been over this on this board a thousand times as well.  Do a search on it.

[Elfie]

Originally posted by Thrawn
We've been over this on this board a thousand times as well.  Do a search on it.

True, we have had this discussion before. Fact is, no one really knows. /shrug

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by Elfie
True, we have had this discussion before. Fact is, no one really knows. /shrug

Well know that's not really the case is it, nor was that the consensus on this board.?  The Iraq survey group spent years with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, and a team of over 1,400 men investigation every freaking aspect of the issue.

But none of that nor there conclusions matter to some people on this bbs.  Now, years later they still say stuff like, "Fact is, no one really knows. /shrug".

Yes someone knows, ISG nows and have answered the question definitively years ago.  And this has been stated on this board....useless dozens of times.


Here's a link to all the posts that contain the word "Duelfer" anyways.

http://forums.hitechcreations.com/forums/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=313077&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Hazzer
your're in a War you can't win.Why?I refer you again to the failed British colonialism above.

    When you've finished pass it on to Bush.

You're in a war?  Shouldn't that be We are in a war?

[FrodeMk3]

Holden, from what I can tell, the brits are even more furious about GWB than anyone in the states-Look at the way Tony Blair wound up.

Ask the Brit members of this forum what support for the American occupation of Iraq is, you'll see quite a few more that are against than for.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by FrodeMk3
Holden, from what I can tell, the brits are even more furious about GWB than anyone in the states-Look at the way Tony Blair wound up.

Ask the Brit members of this forum what support for the American occupation of Iraq is, you'll see quite a few more that are against than for.

So if I am furious with GWB, can I ignore my country's involvement in the Iraq war?

[crockett]

Originally posted by Elfie

Again you are assuming that's what we are doing. Some of us just want to see hard evidence before we try, convict and sentence them based on allegations and speculation.

So you want hard evidence that we were mislead into Iraq, but you don't care there wasn't any hard evidence of WMD's or that Saddam had no real links to terrorists?

Even though they contradict themselves on video, first claiming Iraq had ties to terrorist then denying they ever said it.

And of course claiming Iraq having WMD's was a slam dunk case and they knew exactly where they were. Only to later deny that as well.. Meanwhile the video speaks a million words.

I mean seriously what other evidence do you need? George Bush himself first said Saddam had ties to 9/11 and used that to sell the war. Later he claims he never said that but Saddam was a bad guy..

Seems to me all the evidence in the world is there if you choose not to ignore it.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by crockett
I mean seriously what other evidence do you need? George Bush himself first said Saddam had ties to 9/11 and used that to sell the war. Later he claims he never said that but Saddam was a bad guy..

You should be able to link the quote then...

[Elfie]

Originally posted by Thrawn
Well know that's not really the case is it, nor was that the consensus on this board.?  The Iraq survey group spent years with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, and a team of over 1,400 men investigation every freaking aspect of the issue.

But none of that nor there conclusions matter to some people on this bbs.  Now, years later they still say stuff like, "Fact is, no one really knows. /shrug".

Yes someone knows, ISG nows and have answered the question definitively years ago.  And this has been stated on this board....useless dozens of times.


Here's a link to all the posts that contain the word "Duelfer" anyways.

http://forums.hitechcreations.com/forums/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=313077&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Link is on the second page of the 4th thread from your search.

The CIA’s chief weapons inspector said he cannot rule out the possibility that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were secretly shipped to Syria before the March 2003 invasion, citing “sufficiently credible” evidence that WMDs may have been moved there.

Inspector Charles Duelfer, who heads the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), made the findings in an addendum to his final report filed last year. He said the search for WMD in Iraq—the main reason President Bush went to war to oust Saddam Hussein—has been exhausted without finding such weapons. Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s.

But on the question of Syria, Mr. Duelfer did not close the books. “ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war,” Mr. Duelfer said in a report posted on the CIA’s Web site Monday night.

There was hardly a consensus on this board either way. I only read the first 4 threads and there was definately not a consensus.

Now I'm not saying those items were moved to Syria, I'm just saying no one knows for sure what happened to some of that stuff. Anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.

[Elfie]

but you don't care there wasn't any hard evidence of WMD's or that Saddam had no real links to terrorists?

There was evidence of WMD's before  the invasion, that evidence turned out to be false. I have already linked sources for Saddam's link to terrorists (note I did not say Al-Qaeda)

George Bush himself first said Saddam had ties to 9/11

I don't recall that either. I do recall Bush saying Saddam had links to terrorists and that Saddam had given safe harbor to Al-Qaeda members. (One Al-Qaeda member that we know about.) From this folks have come to the conclusion that Bush linked Al-Qaeda to Iraq and from there  to 9/11.

And of course claiming Iraq having WMD's was a slam dunk case and they knew exactly where they were. Only to later deny that as well

They thought they knew where they were, but this goes back to the faulty intel as well.

Seems to me all the evidence in the world is there if you choose not to ignore it.

Or it's there if that is all you are looking to see. People see what they want to see. After seeing all the evidence that is out there, I still say, maybe, maybe not. As Joe Americans it is not likely we will ever know the truth of the matter. Our grandkids might know someday when the government finally declassifies documents. We will be dead and gone by then most likely.

*edit* Much of the evidence that is out there is nothing more than allegations and speculation that people have taken as fact.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Thrawn
Well know that's not really the case is it, nor was that the consensus on this board.?  The Iraq survey group spent years with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, and a team of over 1,400 men investigation every freaking aspect of the issue.

But none of that nor there conclusions matter to some people on this bbs.  Now, years later they still say stuff like, "Fact is, no one really knows. /shrug".

Yes someone knows, ISG nows and have answered the question definitively years ago.  And this has been stated on this board....useless dozens of times.


Here's a link to all the posts that contain the word "Duelfer" anyways.

http://forums.hitechcreations.com/forums/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=313077&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending

Yes, we have been over this before. And then, and now, the same pesky fact remains, parts of the Iraqi WMD program went to Syria.

You know the David Kay quote as well as I do, so why are you here pretending it doesnt exist? Its dishonest at best.

[Elfie]

This is a pretty good article from a man that was part of the inspection teams.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/28/kay.transcript/

A couple things from the article that I found interesting:

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

I think the aim -- and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving -- is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine.

And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.

As leader of the effort of the Iraqi Survey Group, I spent most of my days not out in the field leading inspections. It's typically what you do at that level. I was trying to motivate, direct, find strategies.

In the course of doing that, I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance.

And never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, "I was pressured to do this." The explanation was very often, "The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it."

And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I'm convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, "inappropriate command influence" that led them to take that position.

Clearly this individual doesn't believe that analysts were pressured to come up with certain conclusions based on the evidence at hand.

He also talks briefly about Iraq's attempts to cover up their WMD programs.

And let me really wrap up here with just a brief summary of what I think we are now facing in Iraq. I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [Iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.

A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."

Notice the bold, not even the Iraq Survey Group has all the answers and it was their job to find them. So for any of us to act like we do know the answers just isn't reasonable imo.

The entire article is worth reading imo.

[Viking]

"While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."


"In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes."


"In spite of exhaustive investigation, ISG found no evidence that Iraq possessed, or was developing BW agent production systems mounted on road vehicles or railway wagons."


http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf



And from the final ISG report:

"Based on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials."

[Elfie]

Originally posted by Viking
"While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."


"In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes."


"In spite of exhaustive investigation, ISG found no evidence that Iraq possessed, or was developing BW agent production systems mounted on road vehicles or railway wagons."


http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf



And from the final ISG report:

"Based on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials."

This is based on evidence that they found in Iraq. I don't disagree with this.

The guy that was in charge of ISG also admits that because of the destruction of various things, including documents, there will always be a certain ambiguity in regards to what actually happened.

The CIA also can't rule out the possibility of shipments to Syria.

I've always wondered why Saddam didn't have the destruction of this stuff verified by UN weapons inspectors. Wasn't that part of what he was required to do according to a UN resolution? UN sanctions could have been lifted as well and according to some reports that is what Saddam wanted.

I think we just might have avoided this whole mess if Saddam would have had the destruction of these things verified. The whole war on terror might look entirely different now.

[Viking]

Originally posted by Elfie
I think we just might have avoided this whole mess if Saddam would have had the destruction of these things verified. The whole war on terror might look entirely different now.

I think we just might have avoided this whole mess if the US Government would have let the UN  complete its job of verifying the "evidence" of these things. The whole war on terror might look entirely different now.