[extropy-chat] Who thinks the Bush admin lied over Iraq? Onwhatbasis?

[Robert Lindauer]

Good!

So let's grant that it's possible that Saddam had a small chemical and 
biological weapons arsenal (prrovided him for the most part by Americans 
during the long-time Iraqi-American Alliance against Russia and Iran 
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-30-iraq-ushelp_x.htm and 
other places, including, of course, thetip.org... ) that was virtually 
eradicated by the long-term UN inspections regime and/or then removed 
from the country when we threatened to invade, the potential danger to 
the US of such weapons was negligible OR at best was something that was 
solvable through the political process (and would have been solved had 
the US simply continued to press its case in the UN and required 
expanded UN inspection regimes, for instance).  Still the question is 
the case for war.  If Iraq moved the weapons out of the country as a 
result of the US attack, (instead of USING THEM, DUH!, like they did 
last time, DUH!) then our threat level was intensified by the 
dissemination of the weapons into even less stable hands (people who 
smuggle biological and chemical weapons out of Iraq and into Syria, fo 
instance).  Then we still killed lots of civilians without achieving our 
goal of reducing the threat, in fact, increasing the threat because now 
all those WMD's are in the hands of the devil we don't know instead of 
the one we knew.

So, again, given that we had other options than killing lots of people 
and launching us into an occupation quagmire, we should not have gone to 
war but instead continued the intensified political action.

But we still have the problem of "we KNOW that they have weapons" - not 
we think or we have some good guesses, but "we KNOW", is still a lie, 
used to gather support for the war.  Especially the part about aquiring 
nuclear material in Niger.  This aspect of the administration's position 
remains inexplicable.  What happened to the evidence we had?  Where are 
the weapons they said they knew where they were? 

Meanwhile we lose a coupla billion dollars to Haliburton in the process 
while Cheney continues to recieve his million-dollar-a-year pension.

Hmmm, I buy it.

Robbie



Bret Kulakovich wrote:

>
> Here, let me try.
>
> Not that it matters at this point, because opinions solidified long  
> before this 'discussion'.
>
>
> Saddam had chemical and biological weapons. As we all know, and he  
> used them on his own people. [1]
>
> A sparse amount of sarin and mustard gas, was found scattered about  
> in 2004. [2]
>
> Iraq had an existing infrastructure for the construction and  
> deployment of said weapons. [3]
>
> Saddam liked to bury stuff out in fields. [4]
>
>
> Those are a few facts, each cited below, with varying degrees of  
> credibility.
>
>
> Someone can no more prove that Bush 'knew he was lying' about WMDs  
> than I can prove that Saddam moved his weapons over the Syrian border  
> in the long buildup to the invasion. Or that Russian technicians were  
> still installing electronic countermeasures in Baghdad when the US  
> attacked. Or that those Russian technicians preferred boxers over  
> briefs.
>
> I can infer with the above points. No more, no less.
>
> I can guess boxers.
>
>
>
> ]3
>
>