[reply]The White House knew that they could not discover the clandestine labs without control of the country, so pre-existing stockpiles were the only viable, verifyable target.[/reply]

Which viable verifiable targets were these then?
And remind me how the discovery of the labs making this stickpile is going again?

Hopefully others on this forum will heed your advice and come to realize that Iraq under Hussein was truly a dictator who had the ability to terrorize the world.

Except the world really hadn't heard from Hussein since the inept attempt on George HW Bush's life. I say again, Iraq was as contained as any country will ever be. Noone outside the borders of Iraq was living in terror of Hussein.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Fair enough.

But try not to let someone from the internet that you don't know ruin your day. Glad you took his comments in stride.

You are right. Bush made everything up! How blind I've been!!!

Thank you sooooo much.


You're more than welcome, but in the future, it would be better if you were able to think critically all by yourself.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Interesting article. Thanks for posting the link. I hadn't heard that yet. Just a couple things regarding North Korea and Syria. Yes I believe these are two very naughty countries. I personally believe NK's behavior more actively threatens the US and US interests than did Iraq's, but that doesn't really matter now. SCUD C and D missiles (referenced in the article) don't scare me too much if they're based in Syria or NK. Now if they are in a barge off the West Coast, then that is a whole other issue. Not to mention that the logistics of pulling off a successful launch from such a location is infinitely more complicated to do. Anyway, that kind of hardware does not pose an iminent threat to the US, and covertly positioning it such that it does is not something that I consider to be reasonable.

To say that we are doing nothing about the NK threat is false. (I'm just saying this generally, not to any particular poster.) We are currently investing Billions of dollars in a missile defense capability. Say what you want about the feasibility or potential wastefullness of such a program, but one must realize that the substantial investment is precisely because of threats such as NK. We don't really have the "luxury" of invading NK like we did Iraq. As previous posters mentioned, there would be serious repercussions for doing so. Also, NK has a very real and strong army. Rummy's pet idea of 10 men doing the job of 1000 would fail miserably there. So we have to take a different approach there; defense and diplomacy.

>Iraq was as contained as any country will ever be

So vitus, do you think we should have continued with sanctions indefinitely, with Iraqi children starving as Saddam funnelled money illegaly to build palaces?

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So vitus, do you think we should have continued with sanctions indefinitely, with Iraqi children starving as Saddam funnelled money illegaly to build palaces?

Oh, that's right, I forgot- we did it all for the children, the poor Iraqi children.

Personally, no, I was not in favor of the sanctions. But are you really arguing that we went to war as a mission of mercy so that we could lift the sanctions? To improve the lives of the Iraqis? That's a dubious proposition.

If we're that worried about starving children, I would suggest that there are lots of them in places other than Iraq that we could help with a lot less bloodshed.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

[reply] Fine. Your intellectual laziness, along with your blind acceptance of whatever the WSJ opinion editors tell you, is noted for the record.[/reply]
It is not intellectual laziness, it is not permissable. To do that to an obvious troll who cannot even read what I said without putting words in my mouth would be the height of stupidity.
Kaplan is a partisan of the most obvious sort. To take anything he says as fact is shocking. I stated clearly that the WSJ article agreed with the intelligence, and I hope you have the sense to read through the lines here....
BTW, "fact" number two is not supported by the statements of the international community or the UN Resolutions. Read them before posting such unsupportable nonsense. You say "2. The War in Iraq was about EXISTING WMDs, NOT "programs" or "program-activities"." Well, the resolution says, "Deploring the fact that Iraq has not provided an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure, as required by resolution 687 (1991), of all aspects of its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles with a range greater than one hundred and fifty kilometres, and of all holdings of such weapons, their components and production facilities and locations, as well as all other nuclear programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to nuclear-weapons-usable material,"
End of discussion. Your "facts" are clearly without merit, and you are obviously a troll with nothing of use to say.

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ok, i would agree that technical ability to produce more chemical/biological weapons would be a major issue and elevate someone(group or country) as a threat. but i have a couple responses to that:

first, as stated in another thread, the components for making something like sarin gas are readily obtainable, and thus it seems to me that there are tons and tons of 'threats' existing out the world. if technical ability to produce the chemical agents alone is sufficient, then iraq is just the tip of the iceberg(i will cede that ability to deliver those agents in some manner--i.e. missile delivery--limits the number of threats, but not by a whole lot).

second, and more importantly, i don't recall bush, rumsfeld, cheney, et. al. emphasizing technical ability to produce the weapons as a reason to go into iraq. the statements made related(at least in my view) to large amounts of then-existing weapons/components/agents---not things that could be made in the future. these statements were unequivocal--iraq had the weapons and we knew where they were. so which is it? ability to produce them or actual existence? it would be wrong for the administration to have equated the two because this is a difference in kind, not degree....

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f/k/a mclamb6

There are more people starving in the USA than there are people in all of Iraq (even counting the coalition troops).

12% of the US population lives under the poverty line, I would suggest that Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush... take care of their own people before wasting lives of US soldiers under fals pretenses, with poor excuses and trying to use the excuse of "starving children".

Do you want a list of countries with starving children that actually have developing WMDs and are ruled by dictators? Let me tell you, Iraq is NOT one of them.

If President Bush and everyone else know that there were no weapons of mass destruction, why use them as a justification for invading Iraq? If they were lying, then they would have known that they would not find them after the invasion. Even if you still believe that President Bush is dumb, don't you think that the neocons are some sort of evil masterminds that would have thought this through enough to plant WMD if they knew that Saddam did not have any?

Besides, if Saddam did not have WMD or any sort of program, etc, why was he acting like he had them?

"...the statements made related (at least in my view) to large amounts of then-existing weapons/components/agents---not things that could be made in the future... "

Guys, in fairness, didn't the administration also cite Iraq's potential future nuclear (er, "nuculer") as another reason to go in? I agree that they played up the chem/bio stockpiles way too much. I think that is without question. (An opinion that I'm sure qualifies me as a traitor in some of our more eloquent poster's eyes.) But it wasn't the only argument, and future capabilities were often cited. I'm saying this from memory, so if you're going to jump on me for not citing specifics, I can try to dig it up if you like.




Edited to add:

I'm not saying that Iraq actually had a viable nuclear program or was anywhere near aquireing nukes, I'm just saying that future capabilities were part of the justification.

It would be helpful if some semblance of sentence structure, grammar, and paragraphs were utilized in your responses.

To me and others, you repeat nonsense about "putting words in [your] mouth", but I have done nothing of the sort. You earlier claimed I utilize "strawman arguments", again with no indication to what you refer. Perhaps a primer on logic would help you: http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/toc.php

Thank you for your selective post of the UN Resolution. Another pertinent part states:

2. Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council; and accordingly decides to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process established by resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent resolutions of the Council;

You can find the whole resolution HERE: http://www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm

You conveniently ignore that part and parcel of Resolution 1441 was the reintroduction of weapons inspectors to Iraq. As I referenced earlier in this thread, the inspectors were working in Iraq, finding nothing of significance just like our troops today. They left only because of Bush's 48-hour ultimatum for Saddam to leave and the imminence of war. If you are going to rely on UN Resolutions to support your statements, you can't pick and choose only those parts of the Resolution and its enforcement mechanism that suit you.

"End of Discussion"? OK. Class dismissed.

Why did Bush41 say "read my lips, no more taxes"? Why did Clinton say "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky"? Why does Bush43 pretend to be an honest man?

There is a common theme among presidents, regardless of political party or country and that theme is: corruption, lies and deception. No one has been able to proof this wrong yet.

i recall the mention of re-constituting a nuclear program or starting one or something of the like. however, it also seems to me that that aspect of the administration's justification(the burgeoning nuclear program) was quickly shot down by a variety of sources(for instance, the niger-yellow cake incident). i believe that kay was pretty adamant that iraq's nuclear program was dead in the water at best.

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f/k/a mclamb6

If President Bush and everyone else know that there were no weapons of mass destruction, why use them as a justification for invading Iraq? If they were lying, then they would have known that they would not find them after the invasion. Even if you still believe that President Bush is dumb, don't you think that the neocons are some sort of evil masterminds that would have thought this through enough to plant WMD if they knew that Saddam did not have any?

I can think of several possibilities. Possibly, the administration believed that Iraq still had WMDs, and the evidence would be discovered after the invasion. This is not the same thing as already having evidence in hand, as was claimed by the administration, though, and doesn't come close to providing a justification for war.

It's also possible that the administration never cared whether or not Iraq had WMDs, and only used that as a means to whip up support for invasion. They might not be terribly concerned about actually finding evidence of WMDs because it's unnecessary to their aims- enough people are going to support the war no matter what.

Besides, if Saddam did not have WMD or any sort of program, etc, why was he acting like he had them?

I would guess that he was acting like he had them in order to save face.

Let me ask you this: Why should we care whether Iraq had WMDs or not? Has he ever used them on us? Nope. He didn't even have the capability to do so. Arguing that the use of WMDs against a third party more than a decade ago justifies invasion now is questionable reasoning.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

We should care whether countries like Iraq have WMDs because 9/11 showed us that waiting around for proof positive can lead to thousands of dead Americans. A smoking gun, after all, usually means that someone has been shot.

Fortunately, the State Department puts a lot of Secretary Powell's speeches on line, including his speech to the UN in early 2003 (http://www.state.gov/...ry/rm/2003/17300.htm). If you compare the "evidence" that Powell talks about then to what has actually been found and what is now the justification for the war, there is a pretty big gap.

Maybe that is why Powell has backed off on some of the key points he made then.

A smoking gun, after all, usually means that someone has been shot.

And again, I have to ask where this stops. Why, then, is it not imperative that we overthrow the leaders of every country that dislikes us and has the ability to kill Americans- before they get the chance?

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Its during times like these I like to take a step back and be selfish....has Bush's determination to "get the terrorists" by invading Iraq done us any good? And don't go at the point that any of what we are doing is for the Iraqi people cuz that is bulldung. Everyone here is smart enough to know we didn't go in there to liberate those people....

Are we really safer from terrorist attacks that we were before we went into Iraq? No one can prove that we are, and more likely as everyone points out, we've created a bigger group of people that will risk their lives to retaliate against us.

Maybe we should stop doing things to make ourselves targets?

Was going into Iraq like hitting a beehive with a baseball bat? I think so...

I want someone who supports this cause and who love everything that Bush uneloquently says or does, to articulate how this whole cause is beneficial to us? And how is it going to end? Since the president himself cannot articulate this, please do me a favor and humor me, enlighten me, whatever....I really want to hear from you.

"All the evidence seems to indicate that the containment program was working. "

It wasn't working and fortunately we saw that the threat could not endanger the free world.

"All the evidence seems to indicate that the containment program was working. "

It wasn't working and fortunately we saw that the threat could not endanger the free world.

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What?? So now we should go to war over threats that cannot endanger us?

Too funny.
A "strawman argument" is a common method used by people with no ability to respond to the actual arguments being stated. In practice, it is used by inserting statements or meanings where none existed, and then shooting them down. You did this by stating "Only an idiot or someone with an agenda thinks that the war in Iraq was about WMD-program-related activities, rather than the actual existence of WMD stockpiles that Rummy, Powell, Bush, & Cheney all stated Saddam had..." I had never made the assertion that it was all about the programs and not also about the stockpiles...therefore it was a strawman argument.

You then attacked me for not spending time editing for perfect grammar, noted as "Style Over Substance" in your helpful but not-to-complete link.

You did not respond to the fact that Kaplan is a severely partisan writer who cannot be trusted to maintain any journalistic objectivity. Sorry, but there isn't a section in your link for ignoring the whole argument.

Your quoting of additional 1441 text is interesting, but ultimately you are proven wrong in your assertion that "weapons programs" were not a main target. Your quote brings up yet another strawman argument by implying that I even mentioned the reintroduction of inspectors.

Not to mention your non sequitor regarding the existence of weapons. The WMDs exist and we should have found them, but we have not yet found stockpiles, therefore they never existed. This I believe is roughly called "Denying the Antecedent."

And NOW...class in logic is over my friend.

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Very good point CTL. I'm not willing to sit around to find out whether or not that 155mm shell will work or not...It's a WMD and is capable of alot of damage to innocent people. Thankfully our leaders saw fit to take care of the problem and rid the world of the threat.

Triguy...get used to that from Cholla...it's how he "argues."