Dragonlich

ctembreull, again you're drawing dangerously close to insulting me and, in this case, my country. And again I'm getting fed up with your refusal to even accept you might be wrong.

I wanted Iraq to prove the destruction of what we KNEW he had. I already stated that if the US says he has something, they should bloody well prove it. In some cases in the past, they did, and in some of *those* cases, Iraq could not/would not prove the destruction of said weapons.

If Hans Blix has questions regarding certain amounts of WMDs, do you suppose he just makes them up as he goes along? No, he looks at the available evidence (including lists provided by the Iraqi government themselves), and concludes there's a problem. IF the Iraqis couldn't prove the non-existence of certain weapons, as you claim, why would they have suggested that the UN inspectors visit the area where Iraq claims to have destroyed those same weapons? Apparently there was some truth in the claims Blix made...

And to be totally blunt: I don't think formal logic has anything to do with this... What you apparently seem to forget is that Iraq has repeatedly kicked out the inspectors in the past 12 years, and has repeatedly refused to cooperate even if the UN inspectors *weren't* kicked out. That will obviously lead one to question their sincerity. It will also invariably lead to questions regarding the truthfulness of their claims. Any resulting problems are directly the result of this refusal of the Iraqi government to cooperate.

If they had cooperated fully, we wouldn't be having this discussion today - Saddam might still be in power, the sanctions would have been lifted years ago, and Iraq would have been free to develop *new* WMDs without those pesky UN inspectors breathing down their necks. (note: this scenario isn't very likely, I know. Read on to know why I say this.)

As I already stated: in the real world, nobody has access to full information. That means we have to weigh the evidence we do have, and decide if we trust it enough to act on it. This is where formal logic fucks up. In the case of these WMDs, we could not prove that Saddam had anything left, yet we could not dismiss the claim either. Given Saddam's character and history, it is *likely* he could be lying about it.

If you want to bring formal logic into it, we could take a look at North-Korea's example: when the proof emerges about their nukes, and we *know* they have them, there's preciously little we can do about it. The same goes for Iraq: the only real proof would have been the use of a chemical weapon on his enemies (the US, Israel), killing thousands of lives. That result is so dangerous and nasty, that we should minimize the risks of that ever happening, which means: deciding to distrust Saddam, and to demand proof that he has no WMDs now and will never make them again. He could not provide that proof. Note that "proof" in this case wouldn't be the logical mathematical thing, it'd be simply: "pretty damn sure".

In essence, this means that Saddam could never, ever have complied with our demands, simply because he was a murderous, lying POS, with a history of developing, making *and* using chemical weapons. There was simply no way to be sure he wouldn't do that again; his actions during the inspection rounds only made that more evident. So perhaps we agree on this (Saddam's inability to prove his case) after all, if for different reasons. (Note: *I* would have supported his removal in '91, but the UN disagreed...)

Now, formal logic (or not) aside... I'll repeat my previous statement: Iraq *had* to comply with the law. Failure to comply for whatever reason is still failure to comply. That's the political reality of the UN deciding to compromise.