The war worked

Gonz

Gonz

molṑn labé
Staff member
The WMDs may be gone after all :headbang:

Chemical weapons dumped before war?
By Eric Schmitt The New York Times

NEW YORK -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested publicly for the first time Tuesday that Iraq might have destroyed chemical and biological weapons before the war there, a possibility that senior U.S. officers in Iraq have raised in recent weeks.

Rumsfeld has expressed optimism that it is just a matter of time, and interviewing enough senior Iraqi scientists and former government officials, before military teams uncover the illicit arms that President George W. Bush cited as a major reason for attacking Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein's government.

While Rumsfeld repeated that assertion Tuesday, he added, "It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict." Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, now in northern Iraq, mentioned the same possibility two weeks ago.

Senior defense aides insisted that Rumsfeld's response to a question after his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday broke no new ground, and was consistent with his past explanations.

He said military investigators have been searching in earnest for only seven weeks, that Iraqi weapons might be buried in one of several hundred uninspected sites and that investigators' best leads could come from Iraqi officials who have only recently surrendered or been captured.

"I don't know the answer," Rumsfeld said. "I suspect we'll learn a lot more as we go along and keep interrogating people."

But the fact that Rumsfeld even raised the possibility that Iraq might have destroyed unconventional weapons before the war prompts new questions about the intelligence Bush and his senior advisers relied on to go to war, and on the credibility of the United States, defense analysts said Tuesday.

"They don't have a good explanation, and therefore are trying to come up with as long a list as possible," said Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "But it's impossible to destroy or hide the quantities the administration said they had without our noticing it."

Bush, in an interview last month with NBC News, acknowledged, "there's going to be skepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction program."
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I'm convinced there were programs, if not actual weapons (I'm afraid there were weapons and I want evidence that there weren't or evidence of where they've gone). I don't think most people are prepared for the long haul. To do this right we'll be in Iraq for a long time. Will we stick it out? :shrug:
 
Shadowfax said:
very reliable source
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Probably the best around right now, actually. You think they really want another scandal?

I seriously think that there are weapons in that country still. There were massive tunnel systems, it wouldn't be that hard to disguise a few entrances to storage areas that are hundreds of feet below ground. We will find them, and the world might just see it and beleive it. Of course there will always be some people that don't beleive it simply because we are the US.
 
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested publicly for the first time Tuesday that Iraq might have destroyed chemical and biological weapons before the war there, a possibility that senior U.S. officers in Iraq have raised in recent weeks.
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i don't find that very reliable, since it benefits the us very much by stating that 'fact'. if more independant sources would state it, i would be more willing to believe it.
 
Israeli intelligence told us before the war that much of it had been moved to syria. I'm not even going to dabate whether or not they had them. To say the didn't is pure ignorance imo.
 
Shadowfax said:
might have
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Key words. Had he said DID, then you could complain. I posted this story because of what may be & they turned that into a news story.

I'm with the other that think there were weapons & would like to know where they are, now. Tunnels would be better than other potential places.
 
first of all: i didn't say "might have", that was rumsfeld. watch out who you quote, and DON'T make it look like i said things i didn't.

and damn, if i were to take seriously all the things people THOUGHT that might have been, or have happened....
posting a thread with a title like this makes it look like you're stating this as a fact. indoctrination, and you damn well know it.
 
Well obviously Iraq was in no way an "Imminent Threat" as they were made out to be. Now trying to explain possible scenarios of why we can't find any WMD is just backpedaling.

Obviously there isn't any "Iraqi Freedom" either as the U.S. will be effectively running things in their country for a long time, with the only chance of exit being with an acceptable puppet government firmly in place.

Aren't these reasons for the war seeming a bit foolish yet?
 
chcr said:
I'm afraid there were weapons and I want evidence that there weren't or evidence of where they've gone
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That's what scares me. I think he had 'em, but I think another nation or group that's damned unfriendly to the West (Syria leaps out as a possibility) now has a ready-made arsenal. Scary as hell.

Shadowfax said:
and damn, if i were to take seriously all the things people THOUGHT that might have been, or have happened....
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What do you think this forum is all about? Everybody in here, including me, throws out their opinions on what might have happened all day long, with zero proof in most cases.
 
Well obviously Iraq was in no way an "Imminent Threat"
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No it never was compared to other nations in the region.

Obviously there isn't any "Iraqi Freedom" either
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Incorrect. Do you hear what some of the Iraqi people are saying about us? Saddam would've killed them for less. This is freedom of speech. This is at least one very important portion of freedom.

with the only chance of exit being with an acceptable puppet government
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Are you saying it won't be a domocracy? It will be a democracy and i promise, puppet government or not a puppet government will not last under a democracy. You have to start somewhere so i would argue that a puppet government is neccessary at least to start things off.

Note: I'm still not argueing any excuse for the war only the reality of the current situation.
 
they got plenty of freedom there, so much that the security of much of the country can't be kept in place. baghdad in particular is in a highly unstable state.

i do not mourn the loss of an evil man. i am pretty annoyed that the reasons for going to war are so flimsy - clearly our intelligence was not all we were told it was, added to the policiticising of intelligence for whatever reason, has brought us here.
 
I will say one last thing to the left, i find it unlikely that Iraq destroyed their wmd's or why wouldn't they simply have done it before the UN and spared themselves destruction? It makes no sense whatsoever. On the other hand the UN stated that Iraq had 30,000 liters of anthrax alone. This was public knowledge by the way and not US intelligence. So if they destroyed it, again why didn't they do it before the un and save themselves? Once again it makes no sense. I tend to believe what Israeli intelligence told us long before we started this war, that much of it went to Syria and was buried.
 
You can destroy weapons in a couple of seconds. What you can't change overnight is production facilities and treatment plants - you can't make them invisible and like hell you can clean them spotless. The weapons themselves are secondary; the proof, if it's to be found, will be the plants.
 
HeXp£Øi± said:
quote:
Obviously there isn't any "Iraqi Freedom" either


Incorrect. Do you hear what some of the Iraqi people are saying about us? Saddam would've killed them for less. This is freedom of speech. This is at least one very important portion of freedom.
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There's is a very large portion of freedom that involves not having your country run by an invading foriegn government that you hate.

I can't believe that you dare call that freedom.


HeXp£Øi± said:
quote:
Well obviously Iraq was in no way an "Imminent Threat"


No it never was compared to other nations in the region.
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Well good thing we spent all those millions and killed all those people then instead of going addressing real threats.

HeXp£Øi± said:
Are you saying it won't be a domocracy?
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It will be largely run by the U.S.
 
Whoever said "Obviously there isn't any "Iraqi Freedom" either" I simply don't understand.

Is the US supposed to just leave right now... pack the bags, come home, and let the people of Iraq starve, kill one another, fight over territory and political power, where eventually one will rise to power to once again rule over the Iraqis with an iron fist? C'mon. This thing is going to take time. Sure, some Iraqis want us out now, but it's in their best interest that we stay.

Just because children scream for something, should the parents allow it to be? Don't the parents sometimes know best? Same situation. These people have been abused physically, mentally, economically, and socially. There is no government authority capable of bringing order to Iraq and setting their economy on a course beneficial to the Iraqi people. There are no leaders capable of setting up such a government on their own in the current conditions. They need help; whether they want it, or ask for it, is irrelevant at this point. We destroyed what simblance of order was there, and it is our responsibility to stay there until we have restored order once again.

Again, are some people actually suggesting that we should just pack our bags and come home right now?
 
It will be largely run by the U.S.
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That's not really an answer Flav. It doesn't work both ways. Either it will be or it won't be but it can't both be run by the US and be a democracy. The Iraqis would never stand for that.
 
the un has given the us/uk a mandate for a year in control of iraq to set up the interim government and start the rebuilding. so for the immediate future the iraqi people have no more control than they did before and their conditions are worse. it is undoubtedly a short term situation but it does not look good.

the knowledge about how much anthrax and other agents they had went back to the early 19900s inspections and sales from overseas. iraq had a long time to get rid of the stuff, their only mistake they claim was not keeping proper records.

i'm not sure i buy the 'might have destroyed them just prior to war' - if you know you are about to be invaded then why deplete your arsenal? in addition, iraq and its military was probably the most surveiled country in history and yet we saw nothing. intelligence says they could use them at 45mins warning, then nothing appears, the intelligence says they might have destroyed them.

which one is it? clearly something or someone has been playing us for idiots.
 
I don't buy it either ris. However although they were under heavy surveillance we still weren't even doing flyovers until something like 30-45 days prior to the war. Satellites are great but they still can't touch an aircraft at 40,000ft.
 
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