No Weapons of Mass Destruction.....

It seems that in the beginning of the war, there was a focus of going into Iraq to disarm him from his WMD's, but since the U.S. hasn't found any yet, the focus has been changed into "liberating the Iraqi's"? Am I right?

Originally posted by 10DeadInside10
It seems that in the beginning of the war, there was a focus of going into Iraq to disarm him from his WMD's, but since the U.S. hasn't found any yet, the focus has been changed into "liberating the Iraqi's"? Am I right?

First it was about the claim that Iraq was trying to produce nuclear weapons. That didn't work though cause they didn't have an shred of evidence.

Then it turned into Iraq is believed to have chemical and biological weapons. That didn't work either cause the UN inspectors didn't find any of those or nuclear weapons.

So when all else fails, lets call it Iraqi Freedom. The liberation of Iraq.

Some people will do anything for oil.

Some people will do anything for oil. Posted by Lie Detector

Not so much the oil, but the hard asset backing for the US dollar.

Originally posted by dragonrider
Some people will do anything for oil. Posted by Lie Detector

Not so much the oil, but the hard asset backing for the US dollar.

Yeah, I heard something like that. Guess all the gold went into the making of Master P's mansion.

I think it's pretty Naive to think that the weapons inspectors would actually find anything. Saddam is not that stupid. He knows how to hide stuff from them or else he would never have agreed to let the inspections to resume. It's going to take a while to find them since a lot of the labs are mobile or hidden underground, or worse, possibly snuck out of the country.

Would further add that it is as well very naive to think that at present the focus of the US military is to find WMD. First we deal with fighting the war of which there is one more city to address. Then policing the area and after that investigating the location of hidden arsenals.

You guys are acting like three year olds

The problem is ... Bush said he had proof of WMD's hidden by Saddam. The UN asked to see this proof, and what did Bush basicly do ...? He said screw you and went to war anyway's ... Now we're in Iraq LOOKING for proof!? We're not going there to obtain the proof Bush said he had, no siree, we're LOOKING for proof...

It was the Un who made prooff an issue beyond any shadow of doubt.

xmb.abovetopsecret.com...

[Edited on 12-4-2003 by Toltec]

Originally posted by 10DeadInside10
It seems that in the beginning of the war, there was a focus of going into Iraq to disarm him from his WMD's, but since the U.S. hasn't found any yet, the focus has been changed into "liberating the Iraqi's"? Am I right?

You are jumping the gun, much like the stupid news agencies but in the opposite direction.

The notion of liberating Iraq is not new, its just an attempt to put a magnanimous face on face on this particular battle in the war on terror.

Saddam had had 12 years to hide his WMD. I don't think that we'll find his WMD in 1 or 2 days. The coalition need times to find them.

And if we don't find any weapons, at least, we can say : " Oups, sorry boys. Bha, anyway Irak is now free from Saddam. Good job guys. "

Of course, it would be great if we were finding tons and tons of anthrax & VX.

Enonymous

There are a couple of points to note. One is that there is already proof that they have weapons of mass destruction which no one can deny, it's documented. Until they show proof that they were destroyed then it has to be assumed that they still exist. We can just go by Saddams word for it. Secondly when it comes to proof, showing it will often times put your sources at risk. Showing that proof could mean that his agents would be killed which besides them dying would also mean a loss of a source which would be even more needed in the disarmerment of Saddam. It would also reveal how the information was obtained which may expose a weakness on Saddams part which could then be fixed and prevent the access of further intelligence information.

A not so great example of what I mean is when someone leaked how they got a lot of intelligence on Bin Laden which was by monitoring his cell phone. Once that was made public all communication on his cell stopped and a valuable means of intelligence was lost.

Lastly, being mobile, there is no one place that the WMD would be for them to point out. At one point they wanted to do U2 overflights so that they could track such things and point the inspectors to those areas as they moved. But even that is pretty futal.

Now they have to search through an entire country to find them, assuming that they weren't smuggled out. It's going to take a while to find them unless they happen to get lucky and stumble onto something accidentally.

Now maybe, just maybe he happened to actually destroy the WMD, but that would be completely inconsistant with his behavior. And if he did he would have no problem showing the proof of their destruction.

Why would the destruction of WMD be inconsistent with Saddam's behaviour ?

Perhaps the credible threat of invasion and ending his reign made Saddam comply to the resolutions ? Thats absolutely possible, given Saddam is/was a good calculator...

and why rule out the hypothesis (that is becoming more plausible every minute, as contracts are passed by GWB using the Iraqi people frozen foreign assets with american companies) that the war was fought for economical reasons alone ?

[Edited on 12-4-2003 by Mokuhadzushi]

Mokuhadzushi anything is possible at this point including the idea that they are simply well hidden

We are still fighting this war once that aspect of it is over we can deal with other issues, such as searching for what on paper started it.

"searching for what on paper started it"

I cant believe that! You are relinquishing legitimacy of an armed intervention to a secondary status!!!

Mokuhadzushi the first priority in a war is to win, the second is to adress the issues of the masses. After that comes anything else.

Why would not that make sense to you???

No, sorry, that does not make sense to me. In a war, as in any action where people are killed, the first issue is legitimacy. The question WHY to kill tens of thousands should always be the first question. Skipping that issue and rushing to war is plain, brutal, bloody mass murder.

I feel that Sadaam's crimes against his own people were enough of a reason to have him removed. We gave him plenty of opportunity to change his brutal ways or get out before we came in and he didn't take it. As far as the WMD go, we have already found evidence of areas with radiation levels so high that they pose a danger to those searching for them. That came from www.foxnews.com... They are still investigating what is located there but even if it is nuclear waste and not of weapons grade material, why didn't he declare it to the UN weapons inspectors? Sadaam just cannot be trusted and I personally would rather the US remove him by force then wait for him to do something and have to hear everybody in the world say we should have done something.

I'm not arguing whether taking out Saddam is good or bad. I'm saying that killing someone needs proper procedure, lest we throw away the rule of law...

LOL. I love all this rule of law in war.
Who gives a crap if war is legal? What difference does it make that a few lawyers at the UN say that it's legal?

In my opinion, if a war is morally justifiable then it is legal.

I couldn't care less what the lawyers say.

Well but who's law do you follow when you go to war? The people who want to go to war or the people who don't want to go to war. We tried to handle this diplomatically 12 years ago and Sadaam spit on those laws, so what choice did we have? I do agree we need a good reason to go to war but not everybody has to agree with our reasons and if you don't well then you better have a pretty good reason why we shouldn't.