WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz

[Ack-Ack]

Originally posted by capt. apathy
wasn't that the whole point of the conflict.  "destroy your WMD or we will invade"

now rumsfeld says well they must have got rid of them before we invaded.

if what he says is true then he just said we had no justification

If they had gotten rid of them, why did they insist on playing all those games with the U.N.?  Why stall at every corner?  If Iraq did destroy them, why didn't they show proof instead of "We don't have any, take our word for it." line they used prior to the war?

While those mobile labs didn't test positive for NBC weapons, it doesn't mean it was never used, just decontaminated recently.  And why would they have a mobile lab in the first place?  That alone was a violation of the U.N. resolutions, which they could have come clean on when they had the chance.

Ack-Ack

[GRUNHERZ]

Originally posted by Duedel
I dont suggest nothing and u dont know nothing about me. I'm against the neo conservative forces in ur country and against the silly followers thats it.
I'm in favor of preventive wars vs. dictatorships but I'm against a world ruled by one nation governed by sick humans that abuse their power.

We just had a preventative war vs an evil dictator who was openly defying the international community with regard to his cease fire obligations while murdering thousands of his own citizens and contributing to the destabilazation of the region by supporting terrorism and paying $25,000 to familes of suicide bombers in Israel all with no real consequences to himslef over a span of 12 years - yet you are still complaining.  The Iraq war was a good war, it was a neccesary war and it seems that it has now helped accelerate a change in Isreal/Palestenian relations by showing the region that America is dead serious in her attempts at cleaning up this mess.  

You guys can whine and squeake and moan about it all you want but we are making progress and making things better..

You all think Bush is evil simply beacuse you disagree with him and his policies and beacuse you dont like him, this is no differnt than all the right wingers who thought Clinton was the devil incarnate. No different and just as useless as it was in the 1990s...

[Rude]

Originally posted by 10Bears
more

Oh so it was politically convenient... well that's cool...

Rumsfeld: Iraq May Have Destroyed Weapons



more

Makes perfect sense.. destroy all your weapons days before your invaded by the worlds largest super power...

Hey Toad get that checkbook ready.. --suckah--  Had you looked into it a little more, like I did, you would've seen they were lying from the get go.

Spin Doctor.....report the WHOLE story, not just what suits your cause.

[blue1]

Just to repeat yet again for the slow learners, like Grunherz. This is no longer about whether the war was the right thing to do.

The question is and remains: Did the President and the administration lie to the world about WMD's? About the intelligence they had? Or are they just incompetant?

The whole emphasis was on supposed rock solid evidence of WMD's.  Sure only 200 sites have been inspected but you can be damm sure they were the most likely 200 sites. Yet nothing was found.

To interpret what Wolfowitz says, the emphasis was on WMD's not least because it was the only legimate reason Bush could use to invade Iraq. The other reasons, freeing the Iraqis and showing the big stick to other countries and terrorists are not legimate and are in fact illegal as all those anti war protesters kept pointing out. However laudable those reasons are.

I suspect they felt (hoped) WMD's would be found not least because of Saddam's antics and the whole thing could be justified.  Without them the whole war is straightforward illegal invasion of a sovereign country.  No country not even the USA has the right to invade another just because they don't like the regime no matter how vile that regime is.

So to sum up, Iraq was invaded illegally and the President of the United States either lied to the people or at the very least was economical with the truth. Or worse still he was lied to and manipulated by somebody else.

It's not hard to understand the implications of this.

[Mini D]

This is a funny rhetoric filled thread.  One side actually believes they are right and the other is wrong.

MiniD

[SirLoin]

This whole pre-emptive invasion doctrine was Dick Cheney's idea..going back some time too with this plan of his(long before 9/11).

Along with Rums...Very frightening individuals in positions of unbeleivable power.

I feel sorry for Powell as he had a bright future in politics before he got sucked into this vortex of lies.

[Duedel]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
We just had a preventative war vs an evil dictator who was openly defying the international community with regard to his cease fire obligations while murdering thousands of his own citizens and contributing to the destabilazation of the region by supporting terrorism and paying $25,000 to familes of suicide bombers in Israel all with no real consequences to himslef over a span of 12 years - yet you are still complaining.  The Iraq war was a good war, it was a neccesary war and it seems that it has now helped accelerate a change in Isreal/Palestenian relations by showing the region that America is dead serious in her attempts at cleaning up this mess.  

You guys can whine and squeake and moan about it all you want but we are making progress and making things better..

You all think Bush is evil simply because you disagree with him and his policies and beacuse you dont like him, this is no differnt than all the right wingers who thought Clinton was the devil incarnate. No different and just as useless as it was in the 1990s...

Yes Grunherz we had a whatever war but when i talk about preventative war i mean first we need a new world order (the UN as it is now is too weak and has no legitimation to do this).  A new world order where those nations play the main role that have a democratic form of government (i.e. not China).
The problem i have with the USA here is that at the moment the USA is governed (in the backgrund) by persons which have fundamental views regarding their religion and those persons want to make sure that the USA is the only super power in the world.

[GRUNHERZ]

If Saddam had no WMD capability why keep the show on his end and thus give the UN cause to keep the sanctions regime ongoing. That cost him billions in oil revenues...

We have allready found mobile WMD labs like Powell told the UN about - of course they dont count according to our Saddam lovers, and anything that does count will have been planted by the CIA or PNAC.

And this decision to push the WMD is merely a reflection on what the administration team could agree on the most strongly - this is a perfectly sound and rational way to run an oraganization. Discuss the issue, let all viewpoints in and agree on on the most suitable course of action.

But of course this int good enough, it must be some sort of jew zionist conspiracy by wolfowitz...  

[Fatty]

Originally posted by Furious
Holy wow!!

A rational Weazel with very good points.

It's not, it's a plagerized column by Mark Bowden.

[Dowding]

I'm a patient man too Toad. I'm not expecting quick results - I advocated letting Blix have until the autumn - but this can't go on indefinitely.

[OIO]

Duedel is right. You cannot win against terrorrism using military force.

HOWEVER, military force is necessary to keep stuff as powerful as WMD's from said terrorists.

My first post was just to illustrate that those who cling so hard to the notion that WMD's have to be found for the invasion of iraq to be justified are thinking small. Really, really, really, small.

Invading iraq was a very important step towards preventing an even bigger disaster than 9/11 from occurring, not only in the USA but in other nations around the globe.

NK is next. Dont doubt it. It may not be today, tomorrow, next week, next year. But it will happen within a decade from now ;  a nuclear korea, which has openly stated they will sell the tech to the highest bidder (*cough*) is completely unaceptable and will be dealt with with the same terminal results as Hussein's WMD programme.

[Nash]

Originally posted by OIO

My first post was just to illustrate that those who cling so hard to the notion that WMD's have to be found for the invasion of iraq to be justified are thinking small. Really, really, really, small.

Your first post was so full of errors, logical leaps of faith, left-field rationalizing, omissions and dubious inclusions that it's hard to know where to begin...

[Holden McGroin]

Colin Powell’s February presentation to the UN

Resolution 1441 gave Iraq one last chance, one last chance to come into compliance or to face serious consequences. No Council member present and voting on that day had any illusions about the nature and intent of the resolution or what serious consequences meant if Iraq did not comply.
And to assist in its disarmament, we called on Iraq to cooperate with returning inspectors from UNMOVIC and IAEA. We laid down tough standards for Iraq to meet to allow the inspectors to do their job.
This Council placed the burden on Iraq to comply and disarm, and not on the inspectors to find that which Iraq has gone out of its way to conceal for so long. Inspectors are inspectors; they are not detectives.

I asked for this session today for two purposes. First, to support the core assessments made by Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. As Dr. Blix reported to this Council on January 27, "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it."[/b]

Later on he said:

Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents.
If we consider just one category of missing weaponry, 6500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq War, UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be on the order of a thousand tons.

This was weaponry declared after 1991 and not accounted for by 2003. Saddam’s people themselves told the UN that they had banned weaponry (banned by the ‘91 ceasefire to which they agreed)

This is why I will allow some more time to accrue before I jump one way or the other.   Now the Iraqi government is not interfering those who are searching, and the number of searchers is ramping up. The truth will come out.

[WpnX]

Originally posted by weazel
Now, before anyone starts screaming "lefty-liberal" at me consider the following:
True patriots believe that if your country is wrong, you make it right.

Weazel, (and 10Bears)
Please don't try to push yourself off as some kind of "True Patriot" I almost fell out of my seat when I read that one. What have you (and 10bears) done to support your country? Have you "True Patriots" even served a day in the military to support this country? Personally, I don't think you'd have the balls to fight for something you believed in, you're too comfortable sitting behind your computer screen insulting America. Let me tell you something, you both are about as far from being a patriot as you can get.

As far as hiding WMD, have you ever been to the Iraqi desert? I didn't think so. You can drive for hours without seeing a living thing. The coalition military and all of the U.N. weapons inspectors could search for a thousand years and never find WMD out there. It really isn't very difficult to hide. Did Iraq recently have WMD?Without a doubt, yes.

Just like Holden said "Two Months? and they haven't found Saddam Hussien? Son of a..... he never existed! Bush told me Saddam existed, and he lied about it!"

By the way, I'd love to hear what you geniuses think we should do about the dangers threatening free countries around the world (Terrorism for one). Maybe if you close your eyes and deny there is any danger it will all just go away by itself.

[Sox62]

The fact of the matter is that all the Bush haters here would be singing the praises of the President who rid the world of a dictator and his brutal regime.......if it was a democratic president.