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

[Bret Kulakovich]

You raise some very good points in return.

I will offer a cautionary, almost concessional point on your remarks  
to start with. Although we can say

> Let's grant that it's possible that Saddam had a small chemical and  
> biological weapons arsenal

The 'possible' isn't possible, it was a fact. He did actually have  
them at least at some point.

Also, the 'small' qualifier modifying 'arsenal' is a bit personal -  
what constitutes small? He factually killed over 8,000 people (names  
were recorded, remains identified, etc.) in one attack alone. Is that  
amount of chemical weapons a small amount, or is 10x that a small  
amount? or 10%? See what I mean?


> that was virtually eradicated by the long-term UN inspections  
> regime and/or then removed from the country when we threatened to  
> invade,

With this point, I share the notion for even bringing it up, but as I  
said - I cannot prove that he moved them. At the same time, we cannot  
prove that they were 'virtually eradicated' either.


> OR at best was something that was solvable through the political  
> process

This is true, in as much we can say that something in the future  
could have been true. Many people will argue that it could have been  
solved with less violence. Others will argue we should have attacked  
sooner.


The rest of your post makes a lot of sense. There was a lot of  
probable outcomes branching at that point in our history. Who knows  
if there were WMDs evacuated to other sites? Could we have found a  
political solution? It is daunting in the face of such heavy decisions.


I would like to ask you some questions about one of the figures  
you've used. I did go to thetip, and to be as helpful as possible, I  
think your links need some stronger or more obvious names*

You keep referencing hundreds of thousands of dead civilians. I am  
not sure where this is coming from. Is it that report in the British  
health journal? I think cnn or the bbc mentioned it a while back.

As for Cheney and Haliburton, well I don't think anyone on either  
side of the fence (fences, whatever) will argue that.


One counter-point I'd like to introduce. Is there any benefit to  
causing an opponent to expend their limited resources in a manner  
that reduces their capacity to do you harm? I know there is an  
argument out there that says the battle in Iraq keeps material  
support from reaching the United States. If that was the reason the  
Bush administration gave in the first place, would you feel any  
better about what is going on because of the honesty?


]3



(* for instance instead of just "impeach" make it "the case for  
impeaching George W. Bush" - a search engine would never find  
'impeach' if someone really wanted to know. Until you mentioned it in  
a previous posting in this forum, I didn't think to look there.)


On Jul 12, 2005, at 5:10 PM, Robert Lindauer wrote:

> 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
>>
>>
>>
>
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