Originally posted by wulfie
The U.S. Congress did vote for war, and the U.N. did pass resolutions authhorizing armed force to counter noncompliance with U.N. conditions and the reason for those resolutions was that the U.N., long before G.W. Bush was President, considered Iraq to be a threat to its neighbors and regional stability and part of the threat was evidence of active WMD programs.
There's no way that can be spun
Of course there is a way to spin it...you just did. The first gulf war wasn't about Iraq being a threat. Iraq actually invade and occupied another nation state, without Security Council approval, sound familiar?
And why did the UN SC take issue with this? Because it broke a contract that every member of the United Nations signed, the Charter of the United Nations.
Maybe the U.N. did not think military intervention would ever take place based on the resolutions they passed, so they passed them even if not totally convinced
Of course the UN didn't think military intervention would take place. This is because the UN Security Council did not pass a resolution asking the member states to enforce the resolutions militarily. And please no equivocation. The language the Security Council uses to direct the UN member states to enforce a resolution is, by necessity, quite plain.
Here is an example from resolutoin 678 (1990), adopted by the Security Council at its 2963rd meeting on 29 November 1990
"2. Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the foregoing resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area;"
Any freakin' doubt in your mind what the Security Council means?
You can find the rest of the resolution here, one of the shortest resolutions I've ever seen.
http://www.casi.org.uk/info/undocs/gopher/s90/32this is not a cause for blame as far as the U.S., the U.K., or any of the other Nations who supported the overthrow of Hussein and his cronies.
I think it is. There was no statement in resolution 1441, like the one above. The coalition did not have a Security Council mandate to invade Iraq. And, in fact, the coatlion nations are in direct violaton of Article 39 of the Charter of the United Nations.
"Article 39
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security."
The same Article that Iraq was inviolation of when it invaded Kuwait.
If there were no WMD, then why would a power-addicted dictator risk his regime by not allowing totally free access to inspection teams?
You don't know why do you? There could have been dozens of reason why he would want to that. One being that the US had already used UNSCOM teams to SPY on Iraq, for THREE fricken' years.
From the Washington Post, March 22, 1999.
"
United States intelligence services infiltrated agents and espionage equipment for three years into United Nations arms control teams in Iraq to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military without the knowledge of the U.N. agency that it used to disguise its work, according to U.S. government employees and documents describing the classified operation."
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq99-7.htmOf course this is all irrelevant because SH DID allow totally free access to inspection teams. But don't let any facts stand in the way of you arguements.
If there were no WMD, why did the campaign of misdirection against the U.N. inspection teams even take place?
Which campaign when? You mean AFTER he gave full access to the inspection teams? If I recall there was a hell of alot of misdirection happen at UN Security Council meetings, but it wasn't coming from Iraq, it was coming from the US.
If there were no WMD, why were signal intercepts made available that quoted Iraqi military commanders telling subordinates to delete all reference to chemical warfare systems, tactics, and doctrine from their SOPs?
Once again, there could be dozens of reason they were talking about chemical weapons and tactics. IIRC miko mention some of them in a thread awile back. But you are going to make the same the mistake that the Bush administration did. You are going to look at the evidence and using the following horrendously fallacious arguement, "Well it COULD mean they have WMD, therefor they DO have WMD".
