Gameface now is the time for an open apology to everyone and admit that you were a sheep. Something along the lines of, I'm uneducated and blindly believe everything my lying piece of crap government says without proof. I'm not bright enough to think for myself. Sorry and I will stay out of the political forum.
Thousands of Kurds might disagree with you...too bad they all inhaled Sarin gas dropped by some benevolent dictator who was unjustly thrown from office. The report does say that Saddam was waiting until sanctions were ended before starting his production of WMDs, and a major goal of his was to retain the intellectual capacity for developing the weapons until those sanctions were lifted.
I do believe that this was this one argument that Bush used to justify the invasion.
I do believe that this was this one argument that Bush used to justify the invasion.
arty:The Americans were more than aware of Saddam gassing his enemies back then and chose to ignore it. This was done back in the day when Rumsfield was shaking Saddams hand and the Americans turned a blind eye to the gassing of Iranians and Kurds. There was a high ranking American official that saw the use of chemical weapons on the Kurds complete with video. He brought it back to the attention of the American government . They recommended nothing more than a few sanctions which they said yes to at first then decided not to when they figured the sanctions would harm the Americans bottom line more than the Iraqi's. Just like Cheney said last night he is against sanctions in Iran etc because then Haliburton can't get any contracts there.
Shotgun said:
Get off this argument. You sound foolish. You know damn well that your gov't, headed at the time by Bush's daddy no less, also knew damn well that this was happening. As horrible as it is, the US, of all countries, has no current claim to this justification given their complicity to the crime in 1988. No US official gives a rat's ass about the Kurds. It was used as part of the Saddam descriptor to play on the compassion of American citizens. That is it and that is all.
That's obviously speculative unless Saddam has confessed to this. The UN and the US knew, after 1995 at the latest, that Saddam has dispensed with 98% of his WMD (the remaining 2% was not known to be there, by any stretch.) The following 7 years of inspections were for the plans, not the weapons. In the run-up to the war, Bush et al profoundly abused the weapons inspection process, knowing that they had already reached a stalemate on getting paperwork from Saddam (he was convinced that the US just wanted to overthrow him) and knowing that the likelihood of his having WMD was extremely remote. It's why Powell, in early 2001, defended the sanctions, saying he knows they're working and keeping Saddam from developing weapons. It was a matter of time before Saddam was overthrown. Unfortunately, Bush et al had a point to make ....
One of how many, exactly? And when do we get to hear the actual reason, already?
xpanda said:
Quoting what Powell says before 9-11-01 makes little sense; you already know that the US drastically shifted their national defense posture after that date. You may dismiss the attacks, but the country that was attacked certainly doesn't. After Al Queda, Iraq was THE major threat to the US. The sanctions that Powell was talking up back then had collapsed; Saddam was making hundreds of millions of dollars off the oil for food bribes. He certainly wasn't going to be overthrown; every new day Saddam was tightening his grip on power. As soon as sanctions were dropped, he was going on a spending spree. This isn't speculation; the Duelfer report quotes numerous senior officials as well as a number of documents uncovered since the invasion. Rather than reading what the newspapers claim is in the report, you should check it out for your self. The summery link is
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf
and the complete report is here (over 1000 pages so it's a biggie)
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/Comp_Report_Key_Findings.pdf
No WMD stockpiles? Sure. Ready to build those stockpiles up once the pressure was off? You bet.
Somehow, nobody wants to talk about the part of the report that says how Saddam was still actively persuing WMD's and was waiting out the sanctions to get his program in full swing again. In light of this, were we supposed to wait til he had WMD's and try to deal with him then? It's amazing how much sympathy this scumbag gets from our understanding libs.Shotgun said:
I don't think many people read the whole report. I think they read the lib-spun title..."Iraq had NO WMD's"...and stopped there.
Funny how you libs believe the intelligence now, but not a couple years ago. Best case scenerio for you libs is that he didn't have stockpiles of nuclear bombs ready to use. But in that case Saddam was bluffing, America called his bluff, and Saddam was found hiding in a worm hole. Poker 101.
