3 Huge Iraqi Cargo Ships circling at sea

[SOB]

Yep, the US are a bunch of warmongering amazinhunks.  Environmental concerns . . . we don't give a toejam about the environment, it's just an easy excuse to support the myth.  Dinger, you're an idiot, or at least you're playing one in this thread.


SOB

[Chairboy]

Scuds are not terrorist weapons, they require too much infrastructure and lots of people.

[AKIron]

Originally posted by Chairboy
Scuds are not terrorist weapons, they require too much infrastructure and lots of people.

I think Israel might disagree.

[john9001]

the scuds were not legal cargo , they were not on cargo manifest, all cargo must be listed on ships manifest , international law

[Dinger]

I stand by what I said.  Sorry guys, unconfirmed, unnamed "Government sources" don't always leak stuff simply because they like the press; In this case, the propaganda effect is the same, whether there are three freighters or not.  Not one shred of proof was given, and the description is so vague as to make independent verification possible.  Give me a break guys, propaganda happens.  If you think the US Government, or any other government for that matter, has always been truthful about its wartime enemies, then you are extremely naive.  Hitler was a really bad guy; the US still circulated propaganda against him, and much of it was untrue.

And asking me to "Debunk" the intel report: the FAZ is not Das Bild; But what does it say? they think Iraq has smallpox, and that Germany is ill-prepared against a smallpox attack.  That's not the same as saying Iraq has smallpox WMD, or that they plan on using them on Germany any time soon.  Who would release this and why?

Propaganda doesn't have to be false. It does not exist because it is true or false; it exists so that it be believed.

And SOB, thanks for the personal insult and putting words in my mouth.


Now, if you want my personal opinion (Since everybody else is doing it):

Okay, I admit, I don't care so much about the goal as the means.

The US wants to go to war, fine.  But like A2A combat, or any other fight, in politics you need to attack with the greatest advantage.
With a dictator like our ol' buddy Saddam Hussein, the method that's proven to work is to blindside him.  Give him a sense of security and force him to make a mistake.

What doesn't work is to generate accusations that make it look like you're picking on him.  Why?
Well, we've already blindsided him once, and good (but not good enough).  From that moment, saddam hussein had one card to play, culturally, and that is resistance, and play himself up as fighting the "evil imperialist israel-loving americans".  He can't admit defeat and stay in power.
So what have we tried to do:

A. Associate Iraq with Al-Qaeda.  Well, Saudi Arabia's got tons of Al-Qaeda supporters (ooh, and sorry about all those petrodollars SA pulled out of NYC after 9/11).  Both the Ba'aht (sp?) party and Al-Q hate the US, but that doesn't mean the Iraqi government is friendly to Islamic extremism.  Check out what happened across the border in Syria when a few radical Shiites started causing trouble in the town of Hama.  When the barrage lifted, 20,000 people had died.
B. Tortures its own citizens: and we want to use Saudi military bases for this?
C. Persecutes the Kurds. Yeah, like we can convince the our Nato allies in Turkey we need to avenge the Kurds.
D. Has WMD in violation of UN agreements. Who doesn't? Hell, when some Sandoz buildings burned over by Basel in 1986, the unofficial fear of the swiss authorities was their nerve gas stockpiles next door. So they flooded the buildings and poisoned the Rhine instead.  It sure as hell beats the alternative.
E. Isn't a representative democracy.  Again, sell that one in the Arabian Gulf and see how much excitement it generates. Besides, you can't even sell the myth of a social contract to Iraqis.  "Well, we arbitrarily made you a state. Now we removed the previous government. Go ahead and elect a new one that guarantees everybody's best interest." Who's calling who an idealistic liberal?

Don't get me wrong, all of these are _bad_ things, and really bad things at that.  But none of them are in themselves sufficiently compelling reasons to get the world up in arms against Iraq, especially when Iraq has some resources it can bargain with other countries for.
So if you play the WMD card, all Iraq has to do is give a sufficiently believable defense (again, propaganda), and make sure the inspectors turn up nothing solid.  If they hide it well enough, or if they do destroy their WMDs (you can't find what isn't there) they can make the US look bad by forcing them to change the terms of the agreement.  Prove you _don't_ have WMD? Yeah, and while you're at it, prove that none of your citizens is a martian.

If you still want to go to war, you have to call in so many favors, that it will cost a lot politically, and the consensus generated will not be sufficient to attain your goals, even if you "go it alone".  You can reduce the damage on this by waging an extensive propaganda campaign.  It's been done this way for thousands of years, even in the so-called "free world".


so yeah, I don't think much about the way the US is handling things. Politically, I can't see how they could better strengthen SH's hand at the expense of our national interests then by doing what they're doing now.  That doesn't mean I'm against kicking his ass; I'm just against the way the ass-kicking is being orchestrated.

If you want to shoot, shoot; don't talk.

[Vulcan]

Dinger, for information on Al Qaeda's relationship with Iraq go look up "Al Ansar" on google (think I got the spelling right).

Do a bit of reading, come back and tell me what you think.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Dinger
If they hide it well enough, or if they do destroy their WMDs (you can't find what isn't there) they can make the US look bad by forcing them to change the terms of the agreement.  Prove you _don't_ have WMD? Yeah, and while you're at it, prove that none of your citizens is a martian.
 

Once again...

The inspectors are not in Iraq to search for WMDs.

Now...before moving on, Read above sentence 10 times...good you are now ready for "the truth".  

The inspectors are in Iraq so that Iraq can prove to the UN that they have destroyed their WMDs that we know they had in 91.

In theory it goes something like this:
In the cease fire agreement in 91, one of the conditions were that Iraq would destroy all of their WMDs. But since we really dont trust the Iraqis (and indeed, I dont think anyone in the entire world does) we decided to not just take their word for it "all gone now..yessir". SO a bunch of weapons inspectors were to enter Iraq, and watch the Iraqis destroy their WMDs.

Unfortunately, instead of doing it this way, the Iraqis said "that was the last one...yup...we promise" when they had destroyed roughly 90% of the WMDs we KNOW they had before 91.

Then some weird hide-and-seek game started where the UN inspectors took on the wrong role. Instead of just saying "call us when you are about to destroy something", they said "ok, lets go find the missing WMDs and prove that they are lying."

What should have happened back in 94-95 was that the inspectors should have said "breech of cease fire agreement", and the UN should have said "Tough luck Saddam, now behold Gulf War 2"...but since the UN is nothing without the US and since the US president was a f*cking idiot at the time...nothing happened.

[SOB]

I didn't put words in your mouth.  I summarized.  That's exactly what you said.  Tell me that's not what you meant and I'll believe ya.


SOB

[-dead-]

Caution over Iraq ‘arms ships’
By Eric Watkins and Michael Grey
Thursday February 20 2003

GOVERNMENT sources on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday discounted reports that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been sent afloat to avoid detection by UN weapons inspectors and are presently on the high seas in a number of cargoships.

“We never comment on intelligence stories, however speculative,” a spokesman for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office told Lloyd’s List, while the US Navy’s 5th Fleet said: “We don’t have any information that supports the wire reports at this time.”

While government spokepersons, as customary, refused to comment on intelligence matters, the report of three sizeable cargoships at large on the high seas has been treated with extreme caution.

Without naming the ships, the agent or the countries of registration, the report, which broke in some London newspapers yesterday, said Iraq had smuggled the illicit weapons to either a Jordanian or Syrian port, and that the vessels had set sail in early November.

The report is symptomatic of a continued interest in shipping as either a terrorist weapons delivery system, or as a means of secreting illegally held weaponry.

At the end of 2001, an innocent bulk carrier was stopped by security forces in the English Channel en route to the port of London with a cargo of sugar. Last year, there were rumours, similarly discounted, that suggested that Saddam Hussain’s regime had hidden chemical weapons away from the inspection teams on board craft sunk in Iraqi rivers. The present rumour would appear to be a development of an earlier suggestion that weaponry had been sent out of the country, to Syria or North Africa, to avoid detection.

The extreme vulnerability of a ship upon the high seas would appear to offer the greatest reason to discount the use of cargoships in which to store weapons of mass destruction.

As was demonstrated before Christmas when a North Korean ship was seized in international waters, the capture of a ship could take but a few minutes using trained military teams who have been practising the interdiction of suspect merchant vessels in both the Indian Ocean and eastern Mediterranean. Detection in these closely policed waters is unlikely to be a problem.

From Lloyd's List

If Michael Grey reckons it's nonsense, it almost certainly is.

[Dowding]

Thanks Dead, I think that says it all.

"The end is nigh, and if you disagree you must insane, unpatriotic or a Muslim!"

[davidpt40]

I believe there is some truth behind this story.  DEATH TO IRAQ!