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

[Robert Lindauer]

Bret Kulakovich wrote:

>
> 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.


I gave a reference in the last message to some damning proof that he did 
in fact have the ones that we (the us) provided to him during the 80's 
under the supervision of the Reagan/Bush administration and, I might 
add, without congressional consent.

>
> 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?


Of course, but this is all OLD NEWS - our (cia) operatives were helping 
them gas the kurds so they could concentrate on killing Iranians for 
us.  We can't blame Saddam for doing things that we paid him to do.  
Let's not play games.  My point is that we could grant that he CONTINUED 
after the 10-year inspection regime to have a small (apparently 
invisible*) arsenal of hidden weapons that the weapons inspectors of the 
UN were unable to detect either before or after they were ejected (and 
returned) AND still be pissed at Bush for lying to us since he obviously 
didn't KNOW that Saddam did despite what they (Bush and Powell and 
Cheney and Rumsfeld) said.  We can also fault them/him for making a 
very, very bad decision in starting a war with someone who had such an 
arsenal and was capable of disseminating to other even less stable 
elements (as is the current top republican theory) and with not apparent 
exit plan other than that the Iraqi's will welcome us.  Well guess what, 
they didn't put out some pie and coffee when we got there. 

If there weren't such obvious profits involved in going to war for Bush 
and Cheney and Rumsfeld, one would think that the case for going to war 
was simply irrational ("they almost killed my dad") or stupidity ("We 
look forward to analyzing and working with legislation that will 
make--it would hope--put a free press's mind at ease that you're not 
being denied information you shouldn't see." George Bush, Washington, 
D.C., April 14, 2005).  However, in light of the tremendous profit 
potential, we have to regard their actions as rational but unfortunately 
evil.  The risk of the American Public becoming sufficiently outraged 
before the damage could be done and profit made was too small because of 
the natural tendency of the new-deal-educated-sheep to swallow whatever 
codswallop is secreted from the Rovian press room. 

>
> 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.


What we seem to agree on is that 1)  they weren't there when we got 
there and 2) we didn't -actually- have any good reason to suspect that 
they would be.  I think that's all that's needed to make the case.


>> 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.


As I argued here before, war is a last resort - REALLY.  This means that 
war should be used only when all other options have been exhausted. This 
is because war is dangerous and unpredictable and leads to exponential 
complications usually of a bad sort.  I assume you agree that its 
obvious that we didn't exhaust ALL OTHER OPTIONS.  As I recall, the 
weapons inspectors of the UN were again ejected from Iraq after our 
declaration of our intention to invade, and that our threats had managed 
to get them back into the country.  Our threats and existing sanctions 
were enough.  If threatening is enough, there's no need to fight.

> 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*


Thanks, you're quite right - although I still manage to get #3-#10 on 
google for "impeach george bush" on any given day.  I haven't had time 
to keep up on that aspect of the site.  There are LOTS of problems with 
it.  For instance, the design was thrown together in about 10 minutes, 
the "content management system" is bastardized from something originally 
written for another platform altogether (including another database) and 
consequently does lots of stupid things (like break paragraphs and words 
in the middle because of boundaries of database records, etc.)  There 
are entire sections of content and functionality retired simply because 
I didn't have time to promote them, even though I think they're good 
ideas (I used to have a boycotting section, my personal favorite, for 
instance).  It doesn't have a really good way of automatically filtering 
out spoof email addresses and names, etc.  And I haven't had time to 
keep up with the SEO game.  "Not everyone can carry the weight of the 
world".

But I think impeach -who- is obvious enough - I mean who else would you 
impeach right now if you're in the US and paying attention to the news 
in the last two years?  (well maybe some federal judges, but I think 
most people don't even know that you can impeach a judge).

>
> 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.


Well, we don't have a reliable source of numbers, obviously, since our 
government doesn't allow third-party observers to investigate such 
matters.  On the other hand, we have the Lancet Study which reports the 
total civilian dead since the beginning of the effort at around 98,000, 
when you include the military deaths you're up over a hundred.  It's a 
matter of conjecture what percentage is collateral dammage versus 
natural causes.  HOWEVER since there is a big war and we did just shock 
and awe the shit out of their biggest city and continue to be carrying 
live ammunition around in the streets there and since we won't allow 
third-party investigators to settle the matter there is an impetus to 
err on the side of more dead rather than less, at least until say, the 
Red Cross or UN is admitted to analyze the situation publicly and 
without any obvious accountability to the Bush Administration.  But even 
at 99,000 dead iraqi's the sadness of the matter remains.  Perhaps I 
should post this disclaimer on the site.

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


What about Bush and UDI?  This is a major part of the case.  Otherwise 
we'd have to regard their actions as bumbling idiocy.  Instead, there's 
a sinister money element, too.  It's really, really insidious when you 
take into consideration Haliburton, UDI/Carlyle, Bechtel and even our 
non-favorite democrat, Diane Feinstein (who along with -most- of those 
turncoats voted to give Bush the authority to war for us) and hubby 
Dicky Blum and URS, Inc.  The truth is, of course, the payoff list on 
this war was long (but not suprisingly long, it takes a lot of political 
will to make a war and that costs money).

> 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?

I doubt that it would have gone on at all had Bush been honest - it 
would have been much harder to explain why people were going to have to 
die because Saddam MAY have weapons and we don't know and he MAY have 
allies who MAY use them, but we don't know.  Of course he MAY.  I MAY.  
But that's not a good enough reason to hunt me down and kill me and 
certainly not enough reason to bomb downtown Hilo (where I may or may 
not be).  (Well, some people would no doubt like to hunt me down and 
kill me anyway and that would no doubt be among their excuses and if 
someone were to bomb downtown Hilo, they may like to use me and my 
potential terrorist connections to justify it but again, I'm still 
waiting for my check for the mildly war-damaged Vietnamese swampland I'm 
selling.)

Given that the rate and intensity of terrorist activity has gone up as 
well as the apparent sources of threat (since now some Baathist allies 
may have the leftover WMD's from the defunct Iraqi government giving us 
another major potential threat - ASSUMING you believe that story at all, 
which I don't).  So again, given that there were other options (and in 
fact remain other options) of course I would not support a pre-emptive 
war. I would never support a pre-emptive war, the very idea being 
against any kind of moral evaluation of warfare other than the sadistic 
imperialistic version of morality or completely relativistic morality of 
"what I want now".  Contrary to what our logico-philosophical political 
philosophers (since when is Warren Goldfarb a political philosopher?) 
may have said about it.  The policy of pre-emptive war is tantamount to 
proactive imperialism being the same effective policy (kill others 
whenever we see them as a potential threat so they don't become an 
actuall threat).

With regards,


Robbie Lindauer

(Ps - it wasn't my intention to shamelessly plug thetip.org, Paatsch 
asked for references apparently to see if I knew what I was talking 
about, so I started shoving it down his throat, I don't actually even 
like the site that much any more, it's not really accomplishing the goal 
for which it was intended, e.g. unelecting him in the last term.  I 
don't think that any impeachment effort will succeed because the 
political will in congress doesn't exist - too many people would have to 
admit they were fooled and/or wrong.  Given that he won't be impeached 
and that the international war crimes court isn't touching it, there 
doesn't appear to be much we can do but complain and wait him out - 
hopefully with the effect of making a democrat seem more plausible (even 
though I'm not a democrat - we think in an ideal world, but live in the 
real one).  Hopefully Jeb won't run next time  (and even if he does, I 
think his name is too white-trashy to really appeal broadly) and I'm 
pretty sure Cheney couldn't win against anyone who looked alive.  I 
mean, I just can't see myself voting for someone named Jeb even if they 
were a libertarian.

* I like oxymorons and footnotes in emails.



>
>
> ]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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