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Originally posted by smooth
No, we can say that we now know they couldn't have been launched in 45 minutes, which was the supposed grave threat to my country.
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We do NOT know that, we assume that. It is still possible these weapons were smuggled out at the last minute, or that they simply weren't used in those 45 minutes (for some reason), and are now hidden. Unlikely maybe, but still possible. Hence, you do not know. Sure, the difference between "knowing" and "assuming" in this instance is becoming small, but it becomes very important if you pretend to have "facts" about something.
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We also know they didn't know exactly or even approximately where they were.
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"They" might certainly have known exactly where these weapons were. The weapons might have been moved prior to invasion; that's not too hard to do with missiles and bombs, especially given Saddam's extensive experience in the field. Again, we don't know, we assume.
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It's also a reasonable assumption that they didn't get carted off into some other country since we would presumably have pretty little bird's eye views of them caravaning around the desert with missile launch systems--like we used to demonstrate the precision of our weapons systems during the last war.
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Ah, here you say it yourself: you *presume* satellites would have seen them moving around. Well, these satellites are not around all the time, and their movement around the sky is well known. It is not unreasonable to assume a series of secret transports might have taken place during the hours that the satellites were not around.
Also, how would you know if a truck is carrying WMDs or something else without someone on the ground checking it? It is unreasonable to assume Saddam would simply move his scud-launchers around without any camouflage. And we know from experience (Kosovo) that camouflage can be *very* effective against satellites and/or spy planes.
In short: there are plenty of reasons shipments of WMDs may have moved around undetected, which means that your assumption might be wrong, or even unreasonable.
(By the way, the precision of the weapon systems in the last war is probably overrated, just like the precision was overrated in the '91 gulf war. Most precision weapons, GPS-based bombs for example, are very good against static targets, but are pretty useless against moving targets.)
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Now, this thread started with Strange Famous saying:
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Despite the absolute certaintity that Blair lied about Iraq's ability to strike its enemies with weapons of mass destruction, and that Blair deliberately and wantonly lied to the British people and the House of Commons; and the strong suspicion that Blair was involved in ordering the murder of Dr Kelly by the secret police...
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I think that I can safely assume Strange was way out of line when he claims to have "absolute certainty" about Blair lying. He simply cannot have this certainty, as has been shown.
Regardless of the further direction of this thread, and regardless of how you feel about the whole war, can we at least agree that the initial post was false? Hell, if that was posted in an existing thread, I'd probably consider it trolling.
