655,000 Dead

[JoeEpcotRocks]

Unfortunatly , all the problems in the world and in the USA wont be solve by sentences out of the "Star spangle patriotic quote book"

They tried it in China, with Mao's "Red Book" and I am sure they realised that a contry cannot be ruled by patrotism alone.

The USA does more than "sing" (unlike the UN).

Yeah, our republic is just like China.

 

[LakeAriel]

WMD was just one reason given. The burden was on Saddam to disclose disposal per the UN (as he had did have them at one time), not on us to find them.

Terrorists are real. Fear is real. I'm glad the USA and its allies took action.

He said he didn't have them. He didn't..Hans Blix said he didn't. We attacked.

 

[Anewman]

WMD was just one reason given. The burden was on Saddam to disclose disposal per the UN (as he had did have them at one time), not on us to find them.

Terrorists are real. Fear is real. I'm glad the USA and its allies took action.

WMDs was only one reason given???
Did you not hear any of his speeches prior to the war??
It was WMD, WMD, WMD, WMD, 911, WMD, WMD, WMD... Every speech was that way.

Yes he did have them and use them at one time, but what republicans fail to mention every time they point this out is=

THAT WAS BEFORE THE FIRST GULF WAR.

So using this logic we should invade Japan because they invaded Pearl Harbor, "at one time."

 

[dcentity2000]

Guys, supporters of the war are, by and large, guilty of emotional reasoning. Their reasons for war mutate to match every outcry and lead to discounting, where certain critical issues - such as the catastrophic loss of civilian life - are either ignored or belittled.

Such is life.



Rich::

 

[charlie,nj]

He said he didn't have them. He didn't..Hans Blix said he didn't. We attacked.

I always find the WMD topic interesting. From Pelosi’s statement that Iraq indeed had WMD when Clinton bombed Iraq to President Bush deciding to invade Iraq overnight on a whim.

The discussions about Iraq started in September 2002 the first bombs fell on Iraq in March 2003. All Saddam had to do in those 7 months was comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1441. (or am I missing something?)

Blix Says Nix on Iraqi Disarmament Cooperation

By Kathleen T. Rhem
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27, 2003 – After 60 days of inspections by U.N. officials, Iraq appears not to be cooperating with Security Council Resolution 1441.

"Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace," chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix told Security Council members this morning.

Security Council members unanimously approved Resolution 1441 on Nov. 8, 2002. The resolution lays out requirements for Iraq to declare its weapons and weapons programs and to assist inspectors in their verification of the declaration.

Iraq is failing in several specific areas, Blix explained today. The country has refused to guarantee the safety of missions by a U-2 aerial reconnaissance plane at the inspectors' disposal. Iraq has also failed to account for 6,500 chemical bombs and an unknown quantity of VX gas, a chemical nerve agent, some of which may have been weaponized.

Blix referred to the highly publicized discovery Jan. 16 of 12 empty chemical warheads and Iraq's subsequent disclosure of four more a few days later. He said the 12 discovered by inspectors were in a "relatively new" bunker.

"The rockets must have been moved (there) in the past two years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions," he said. Iraqi government officials claimed the warheads had simply been missed in accounting. "They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg," Blix said.

Investigators also have found small quantities of a mustard gas precursor and evidence that the country produced significantly more anthrax than it disclosed.

To date, inspectors have carried out roughly 300 inspections at about 230 different sites. Eleven scientists have declined to be interviewed without Iraqi government "minders" being present. Blix said this might be because they don't want government security officials to think they've disclosed anything.

He disclosed that inspectors found 3,000 pages of classified documents regarding enriching uranium in an Iraqi scientist's home. He said this supports a long-held concern that Iraq is hiding sensitive documents in the homes of private citizens.

He also expressed concern over a few acts of civil unrest that have occurred near the inspectors' offices in Baghdad and at inspection sites. "Demonstrations and outbursts of this kind are unlikely to occur in Iraq without initiative or encouragement from the authorities," Blix said. "We must ask ourselves what the motives may be for these events."
In an impromptu press conference after the meeting, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte said nothing he heard today gives him hope Iraq intends to comply with Resolution 1441.

"What we have seen over the past 80 days is that, in spite of the urgency introduced in Resolution 1441, Iraq is back to business as usual," he said. He urged the Security Council members to face their responsibilities in disarming Iraq.

"It benefits no one to let Saddam think he can wear us down into business as usual as he has practiced it over the past 12 years," Negroponte said.

American officials in recent days have taken a hard stand that time is running out for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to disarm and that the United States isn't afraid to move ahead alone if need be. But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer today said President Bush still feels it's important to consult with world leaders on the issue.

"The president will continue, as I said, to consult and to talk to our allies," Fleischer said at the White House. "But I think it's important for the world to know what the president has said -- that time is running out."



....

 

[Anewman]

I always find the WMD topic interesting. From Pelosi’s statement that Iraq indeed had WMD when Clinton bombed Iraq to President Bush deciding to invade Iraq overnight on a whim.


....

Hey Charlie, I almost did not recognize you. Until I saw the copy and paste...

 

[dcentity2000]

copy and paste

aka. Copy Pasta.



Rich::

 

[charlie,nj]

Hey Charlie, I almost did not recognize you. Until I saw the copy and paste...

Hey I learned the copy and paste trick from an ..err I mean THE expert..THE DOCTOR.
(except my copy and pastes are from known sources, not the "power to the people", "fight the power" web sites he used)

Whatever happened to THE DOCTOR. Did he get sick from all of that glue?


.

 

[Anewman]

(except my copy and pastes are from known sources,




.

Yes your example in this thread is is from the American Forces Press Service.

Of course I dont mean to imply that a source payed for and 100% controlled by the United States Department of Defense, would be biased towards the current administration.

 

[richiebaseball]

He said he didn't have them. He didn't..Hans Blix said he didn't. We attacked.

Hans Blix?

From June 2003,

Asked if he thought Iraq no longer had banned weapons when he conducted his inspections, Blix replied: "It's one suspicion I have. You want to pin me down, but I still think it's too early to do that.

June 2003 was too early for Mr. Blix to make a determination on WMD. That's June, 2003.

"I don't exclude that they can find things. ... I don't think I'd be surprised if they found it."

June, 2003. Mr Blix was so certain there were no WMD's he wouldn't have been surpised if they were found in June, 2003.

Using Hans Blix to bolster the no WMD argument is akin to using Michael Brown as an expert on disaster relief. The fact that no WMD's were found, with respect to Mr Blix, lends credence to the "even a blind squirrel can find a nut" theory.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/06/06/sprj.irq.blix.wmd/index.html

 

[richiebaseball]

Is is better to live under a corrupt regime , but have food , and electricity and not be afraid to go in the streets , or live "free" with infrastuctured destructed , terrosist attack daily , sectarian violence. I am just asking...

Vive Le France!

 

[LakeAriel]

Hans Blix?

From June 2003,



June 2003 was too early for Mr. Blix to make a determination on WMD. That's June, 2003.



June, 2003. Mr Blix was so certain there were no WMD's he wouldn't have been surpised if they were found in June, 2003.

Using Hans Blix to bolster the no WMD argument is akin to using Michael Brown as an expert on disaster relief. The fact that no WMD's were found, with respect to Mr Blix, lends credence to the "even a blind squirrel can find a nut" theory.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/06/06/sprj.irq.blix.wmd/index.html

__________________________________________________________________I can copy and paste too...


Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Thursday April 28, 2005
The Guardian


The head of the United Nations weapons inspectors in the run-up to the Iraq war, Hans Blix, last night undercut one of the main grounds offered by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, in his legal advice to Tony Blair.
Lord Goldsmith said there would have to be evidence that Iraq was not complying with the inspectors.

But Mr Blix, who has since retired to Sweden, said his inspectors found no compelling evidence that Iraq had a hidden arsenal or was blocking the work of the inspectors. He said there had been only small infractions by Iraq.

"We did express ourselves in dry terms but there was no mistake about the content," he said. "One cannot say there was compelling evidence. Iraq was guilty only of small infractions. The government should have re-evaluated its assessment in the light of what the inspectors found.

"We reported consistently that we found no weapons of mass destruction and I carried out inspections at sites given to us by US and British intelligence and not found anything."

In a key passage in the legal advice written by Lord Goldsmith on March 7 2003, the attorney general said that UN resolution 1441 could only be sustainable as a justification for war "if there are strong factual grounds for concluding that Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity. In other words, we would need to be able to demonstrate hard evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation."

He said the views of Unmovic, the UN inspectorate body, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, will be "highly significant" and "you will need to consider very carefully whether the evidence of non-cooperation and non-compliance by Iraq is sufficiently compelling".

Mr Blix and his team returned to Iraq in December 2002 after a four-year absence and remained until the week before war began in March 2003. More than 200 inspectors crisscrossed Iraq, checking out possible sites for the production or stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological or nuclear.

Mr Blix's first monthly report to the UN security council in January was mainly negative about the Iraqi government, complaining about lack of cooperation. A month later he adopted a more neutral stance, pointing out some infringements but finding no significant stockpiles.

On March 7, the day Lord Goldsmith drew up his report, Mr Blix gave his final report and this was the most favourable yet from Iraq's point of view.

Asked if this final report amounted to the compelling evidence that Lord Goldsmith considered crucial, Mr Blix said: "One cannot say so. There were infractions, you can say. In March, they (the Iraqis) cooperated like hell. They were pro-active. In December and January, no. That is why I gave a critical account on January 27. In February, it was more balanced."

On March 7, Mr Blix pleaded for more time to complete his mission and reported that lethal weapons such as Samoud 2 missiles were being destroyed.

Mr Blix said last night: "The things found were all small things. We found dozens of munitions for chemical weapons. They were empty and in a site declared. In relation to Samoud that went beyond 150 kilometres, they (the US and Britain) said it was beyond the permitted limit but I did not feel particularly indignant about that."

On the same day, the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, reported that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any nuclear weapons or was in the process of acquiring them. Mr Blix said: "By then, Mohamed ElBaradei revealed that Niger was not authentic." British intelligence falsely claimed Iraq had been trying to acquire uranium from Niger.

Mr Blix said Mr ElBaradei had also challenged US claims that aluminium tubes found were for WMD purposes. Mr Blix himself also expressed scepticism to the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, about alleged evidence of WMD.

The Iraq Survey Group, set up by the US to search for WMD, found none.

In Britain, inquiries into the route to war have been held by MPs, Lord Hutton and Lord Butler. The intelligence service was criticised for not re-evaluating its assessments in the light of Mr Blix's reports.

 

[LakeAriel]

....or even more damaging to GWB


Monday, March 22, 2004 Posted: 1:34 AM EST (0634 GMT)



U.N. inspectors look for chemical weapons in Iraq before the war.




WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United Nations' top two weapons experts said Sunday that the invasion of Iraq a year ago was not justified by the evidence in hand at the time.
"I think it's clear that in March, when the invasion took place, the evidence that had been brought forward was rapidly falling apart," Hans Blix, who oversaw the agency's investigation into whether Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

Blix described the evidence Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 as "shaky," and said he related his opinion to U.S. officials, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

"I think they chose to ignore us," Blix said.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, spoke to CNN from IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

ElBaradei said he had been "pretty convinced" that Iraq had not resumed its nuclear weapons program, which the IAEA dismantled in 1997.

Days before the fighting began, Vice President Dick Cheney weighed in with an opposing view.

"We believe [Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei, frankly, is wrong," Cheney said. "And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency in this kind of issue, especially where Iraq's concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what Saddam Hussein was doing."

Now, more than a year later, ElBaradei said, "I haven't seen anything on the ground at that time that supported Mr. Cheney's conclusion or statement, so -- and I thought to myself, well, history is going to be the judge."

No evidence of a nuclear weapons program has been found so far.

Blix, who recounts his search for weapons of mass destruction in his book "Disarming Iraq," said the Bush administration tended "to say that anything that was unaccounted for existed, whether it was sarin or mustard gas or anthrax."

Blix specifically faulted Powell, who told the U.N. Security Council about what he said was a site that held chemical weapons and decontamination trucks.

"Our inspectors had been there, and they had taken a lot of samples, and there was no trace of any chemicals or biological things," Blix said. "And the trucks that we had seen were water trucks."

The most spectacular intelligence failure concerned a report by ElBaradei, who revealed that an alleged contract by Iraq with Niger to import uranium oxide was a forgery, Blix said.

"The document had been sitting with the CIA and their U.K. counterparts for a long while, and they had not discovered it," Blix said. "And I think it took the IAEA a day to discover that it was a forgery."

Blix said that during a meeting before the war with the U.S. president, Bush told him that "the U.S. genuinely wanted peace," and that "he was no wild, gung-ho Texan, bent on dragging the U.S. into war."

Blix said Bush gave the inspectors support and information at first, but he said the help didn't last long enough.

"I think they lost their patience much too early," Blix said.

"I can see that they wanted to have a picture that was either black or white, and we presented a picture that had, you know, gray in it, as well," he said.

Iraq had been shown to have biological and chemical weapons before, "and there was no record of either destruction or production; there was this nagging question: Do they still have them?" ElBaradei said.

Blix said he had not been able to say definitively that Iraq had no such weapons, but added that he felt history has shown he was not wrong.

"At least we didn't fall into the trap that the U.S. and the U.K. did in asserting that they existed," he said.

ElBaradei faulted Iraq for "the opaque nature of that Saddam Hussein regime."

"We should not forget that," he said. "For a couple of months, their cooperation was not by any way transparent, for whatever reason."

ElBaradei said he hoped the past year's events have taught world leaders a valuable lesson.

"We learned from Iraq that an inspection takes time, that we should be patient, that an inspection can, in fact, work."

 

[What the Heck]

I agree with your argument to a certain extent. It is not our job to judge the past but rather to study decisions that were made and attempt to incorporate that information into our understanding of the present. Mistakes that were made at the beginning of the conflict can have a demonstrable impact on our present situation. Without a full accounting of the mistaken nature of the past we cannot begin to fully understand the current problem. Our debate should not focus on whether we should have gone to war. Instead it should focus on what can be learned from our mistakes and applied to future situations. History never repeats itself but it sure does have one hell of a loud echo.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner

Actually, my point isn't about learning from the past or not, but those who would change the history of it based on what they see now. Learning from it, as you have put here, is another story and does need to take place. But that is a far cry from those who would have us believe that we should not have gone into the war because, obviously, there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction (usually shortened to WMD because that is much easier to ignore).

 

[What the Heck]

Lake Ariel keeps proving my point. Hans Blix prior to the war was convinced that the Weapons were there. But she would have us believe what he said a year later than have those treated as the facts rather than the direct quotes of what he said before the fact. 20/20 hindsight.