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

[Robert Lindauer]

Bret Kulakovich wrote:

> On Jul 13, 2005, at 5:15 PM, Robert Lindauer wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>
> Sorry to jump around here, but this part is more in tune with the 
> original thread so I thought I would start here.
>
> As for 1) it does seem to be the case that we haven't found anything 
> yet, and it can be argued that there is nothing to find to begin with,


Good start.

> but as far as 2) goes, I don't know that we're in agreement, no 
> biggie. There is a lot of circumstantial stuff going on, and a lot of 
> opinion. So if I put my personal opinion out there, which is based on 
> reading alot, and having an interest in epidemiology (and reading 
> books like Ken Alibek's memoirs, etc.) i.e. which is no better 
> qualified than anyone else in particular - I would want to err on the 
> side of caution. There were, all parties agree I believe, lots of 
> weapons unaccounted for when tallies were made at different points. 
> There was an infrastructure churning out chemical and biological 
> weapons. When I see people unearthing a Mig-25 out in the desert, I 
> think it is totally rational to assume that "if I were him" I'd bury a 
> lot more stuff than that. A Mig-25 is still a formidable interceptor 
> even now, I wouldn't want to hand that to a neighbor, even to keep it 
> out of coalition hands.


Again, I think what we're missing is legitimate intelligence sources 
that demonstratively support Bush Administration's pre-war contention 
that Iraq was harboring and producing biological, chemical and nuclear 
weapons in massive amounts.  Otherwise it appears that Bush was 
exxagerating to say the least, if not straight out making things up.  
Without clarity into the intelligence sources that he was quoting it's 
hard to say.  We know in at least one case that the intelligence was 
known by the CIA to be faulty (the case of the Niger nuclear material) 
and had been reported to the white house as faulty.  Whether or not the 
rest of the 'intelligence' he was quoting was equally faulty remains 
something to be found out, preferably in an adversarial impeachment 
setting. 

It may have been the case, as you say, with all that great desert to 
bury stuff in we may never know.  This is not the point.  The point is 
that we were objectively in the same quandry before as after - we didn't 
know.  Our best intelligence experts told the president that we didn't 
know.  We didn't know.  MAYBE he had them, MAYBE he didn't.  We didn't 
know.  Bush didn't KNOW, he just said he did.  In fact, according to 
admissions by the white house, Bush didn't even read his own state of 
the union speech.  I find that a little hard to swallow, still rejecting 
the retarded spoiled brat version of Bush psychology. 

On the other hand, we did know that the UN inspection regime was 
relatively effective at at least slowing the pace of any such 
developments because they'd have to be performed under-the-radar and 
that for the last few years at least Iraq had been relatively quiet even 
without the inspections teams.  With the reinstallation of the UN 
inspection regime we could have felt satisfied.  Nobody dies, Iraq 
remains messed up but stable, no potential leak of weapons to Syria, 
etc.  We remain able to attempt to remove Saddam with political means, 
etc.  In fact, with continued UN pressure because of our willingness to 
cooperate we may have been able simply to pay Saddam off and get him to 
move to Aruba or something.  Instead, we have to bomb downtown bagdad 
for two weeks.

Again the appeasement thing.  No, I don't like Saddam, but the vision of 
a world where he's sipping champaigne on a beach in Aruba smugly 
enjoying the fruits of his evil life but where the upwards of 100,000 
Iraqis and several thousand Americans and British soldiers are alive 
sounds good to me.  God will pay him for his sins, it's not the business 
of men to take vengeance, but to make peace work.


> All your points that war is terrible, and a last resort, of course I 
> pretty much agree with. And that there were other options, well 
> certainly.


Wow.  You may be restoring my faith in humanity.

>
>> 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.
>
>
>
> What the Lancet reported was that they were 95% certain that the 
> number of people who died the year of the invasion was between 8,000 
> and 195,000 people. The number is based on a cluster survey with ~30 
> homes in each cluster. They went to each of these households, almost 
> 1000, and conducted interviews with the members of the households 
> about who lived there, and asked how many people had died in the past 
> year, and the cause. The people in the houses, the source of their 
> data, stated that people in their households had died violent deaths, 
> by coalition forces. 
>
> Arriving at a number without the census as you say, is pretty much 
> impossible. And in order for everyone to accept that number, it must 
> come from a so-called neutral party, not the Iraqi Ministry of Health, 
> or the coalition.
>
> I also understand that people try to justify the number being 100,000 
> because the US "flattened" al Fallujah, which it did not. The strike 
> against al Fallujah, while not 'surgical' was not nearly damaging as 
> is being told by certain news outlets and partisans.


So the bottom line is we know that LOTS of civilians and military people 
died as a result of the war and "upwards of 100,000" isn't an 
unreasonable interpretation of the facts we do have on hand. 

>
>
>
>> * I like oxymorons and footnotes in emails.
>
>
> Then we do agree on two points after all!
>
>
> ]3
>
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