DJ Happy

Jack Straw, the UK Foreign Secretary, has proclaimed that even though no WMDs were found, Saddam was in fact "worse than they thought."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3719522.stm

It seems as though he is grasping at straws (no pun intended). He is basing his entire evaluation on what he thinks would've happened, a foundationless "prediction" of Saddam's future intentions.

Personally, I find this kind of reasoning to be patronising and, quite frankly, ridiculous. He proclaims that "the threat from Saddam Hussein in terms of his intentions" was "even starker than we have seen before," but what is this assessment based on?

We seem to have gone from false "facts" to no facts at all - not the progression I would've hoped for.

martinguerre

Cute. Meaningless. But cute.

hannukah harry

i also like how he mentions that saddam would have become a bigger threat to the iraqi people and "the people of this region." sounds like a real threat to the US to me.

/blech

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Halx

Whose hand is up this guy's ass?

Seriously, sounds like a lot of words without any meat.

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Asuka{eve}

Did they find out Saddam was a deceptacon?

Willravel

HAHAHAHA. I'm sure they could provide a report from some Secretary of Energon that states with no amount of uncertianty that Saddam is, in fact, Megatron.
All kidding aside, it is reports like this that make me want to start a new government on Mars. He makes wild and careless claims and has no proof to back them. I'm sure I'll be reading the report after it comes out, and be laughing out of the pure absurdity of the claims.

Dragonlich

Is anyone here suggesting Saddam would *not* have build up his WMD collection if the UN sanctions would have been lifted?

host

1066 dead young Americans.....and counting,,,,,,,7000 more seriously wounded,
maimed, a U.S. president who has lost all credibility in the world community,
and among at least half the voters in this country, with more to follow as
they are personally affected by losing of a loved one in Iraq, or by loss of their
own civil rights, and by the damage to the value of our currency and our treasury. Yup....Cheney is right to declare the weapon's inspector report a victory today, what other choice do he and Bush have, since they refuse to
admit the truth ! <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20041007_816.html">http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20041007_816.html</a>

Of course, if Bush had not taken the bold and now completely justified step
(according to Cheney and Bush, and some who are already posting it here..) of going to war against Iraq, our government, believing that Saddam was the
greatest threat to our security, would have caved in to attempts to lift the
U.N. sanctions, ended the no-fly-zone enforcement flights that our military
and the U.K. had been flying for 12 years, discounted our ability to use
satellite surveillance in Iraq, abandoned other efforts to gather intelligence
on Iraq, or monitor it's attempts to obtain materials to build weapons, and
woken up one day, sometime in the future, to the shocking news that Saddam's Iraq was bristling with new WMD's. On the other hand, as Hans
Blix said today, if the U.S. had granted his request for more time to complete
the 2003 U.N. weapons inspection, the original excuse for Bush's invasion
would have been exposed for the factless rhetoric that it was.

Are "what ifs" and "maybes" enough justification for you to lose a son or
daughter in an unnecessary war ? It seems to me that the lives of other
Americans' children are cheapened by thoughtless loyalty to a failed and
now discredited president and his bluster. How dare anyone try to justify
the loss of 1066 of our brave volunteers to a reason that now has been
reduced to some future "might or maybe" failure of U.S. intelligence gathering,
diplomacy, or the threat of our use of military force to contain a result of
a future agressive policy of Saddam ? I grieve for my dead and wounded
countrymen, and those Iraqi innocents, and the dangerous, myopic view of
too many of my fellow citizens !

mjw

You know, I have one really big issue with that ABC article, the fact that they're refering to the Iraq mess as a "mistake". I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who would actually say that Saddam was a good person, and that we were wrong for ousting him.

Don't get me wrong, I will be the first to agree that the initial reasoning for initiating the the war was skewed at best, and that there definatly were an infinate number of more politically correct ways we could have gone about it, but that doesn't change the fact that Saddam and his dictatorship was an atrocity.

Just look at the mass graves we've turned up, the horror stories from the general populace, and the way he was raping the country simply for his benefit. The man was a monster, and though we could have gone about it better, it is a good thing to have him out of power.

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Dragonlich

Well Host, can you tell me what the alternative to this war was? The weapons inspections found WMDs, or it would not have. Either way, at the end of the day, they would have to end the inspections, and the UN would have been forced to lift the sanctions.

Bush & co maintain that Saddam would have used the lifting of sanctions to get new piles of WMDs, and this report supports that. Knowing what we know (and knew) about Saddam, this is not a unreasonable idea. Of course, it might have been possible that Saddam would have renounced WMDs and that he would have turned into a nice guy, but I find that hard to believe.

Given the (hypothetical) rebuilding of the WMD stocks, if the choice was between going in now, and going in in 10 years (with new stockpiles of weapons), I'd say going in now was a good decision.

Orpheus

Iraq would have crumbled from a lack of infrastructure. If the governments of the UK and US can deal with Libya (who actually killed British and US citizens) we could surely come to terms with SH.

cocoaguy

No one will disagree that Saddam was a bad guy, one of many in that area, but like the WMD'S that Bush and Co said that Saddam had: many of the specific charges are untrue or grossly exagerated. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/...263901,00.html
Just like the incubator story of the first Gulf War this was a story made up to inflame our emotions and convince us we were doing right in other words propaganda.

stevo

Iraq was not going to crumble. They were scamming the oil for food program lining Saddam's pockets, the French, Germans, and many other pockets in europe and around the globe. Saddam was constantly trying to get around sanctions and obtain WMDs. Are there any of you out there who thinks that Saddams ultimate goal was not to obtain WMDs? We would have had to act eventually, and with the intelligence available at the time, most everyone thought it was a good idea to go to war then, even the anti-pro-anti-pro-anti-antipro-candidate John.f. Kerry.

Ramega

Freedom isn't free. We have paid for Iraqi freedom and increased world security with American lives, just like we have done numerous times in the past. 1,000 dead Americans looks like a scary number to this generation because we didn't have a WWI, WWII, Korea, or Vietnam to offer perspective. There are <i>74,000</i> American troops buried in France alone.

maypo

The Iraq war is being referred to as a mistake because, in fact, it was. You can't change your reasons afterwards. Many of you are using arguments for war that would have applied to China or the Soviet Union or Korea. Pre-emption is a flawed concept from the get-go. Haven't you ever seen Twilight Zone. Everyone gets the future wrong in large and small ways. Wheres my jet car????!!!!!!

Dragonlich

Pre-emption is *not* flawed if the evidence is strong enough. If the US government has very reliable evidence that Mexican-sponsored terror groups are about to strike at Texas, and the Mexican government doesn't want to stop it, the US has every right (and responsibility) to stop that attack before it happens.

Not that I'm saying the Iraqi case is this clear, of course. It's just an example of when the concept of pre-emtion would be good. If you want further proof, I suggest you look at some of the wars Israel fought (and launched) against it's neighbors - they prevented their enemies from striking first, and won the wars.

hannukah harry

freedom may not be free, but it's meaningless if it's not earned. the iraqi's havent' earned it themselves. as soon as we leave, things could change. or when they have elections they could elect a hardcore islamic leader. if they as a whole don't want democracy (which in my opinion, isn't the only govt. system where people can be "free"), then we can't give it to them. our forcing our ways on them after getting rid of saddam doesn't make them free, it just means that they have foriegners calling the shots.

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seep

Wow, this is war is shaping up to be a real disaster, isn't it?

They more focus that is placed on Saddam Hussein's "intentions", the more it becomes clear that Iraq posed absolutely no serious threat to the USA whatsoever. Are we just going to merrily stomp the shit out of every country that looks at Israel funny? It's not worth it.

maypo

Thats not really Bush's doctrine of pre-emption. Thats a response to a specific threat. His concept is attacking nations who sponsor terrorism or engage in it themselves. A category so wide it covers practicaly every nation at some time or another. It is destined to always fail precisely because it uses vague standards for qualification. In the sixties it was often argued we should attack the Soviet Union as "they were out to get us" with first strike nuclear missles. Should we have? Right now you would say it was the wrong thing to do, but which camp would you have been in during the Cuban missle crisis? Guessing whats going on is not a viable foreign policy. I believe, anyway, this administration wanted an excuse to invade Iraq and used pre-emption as a convenient device.

filtherton

Well, he did have Weapons Related Program Activities...

Dragonlich

If, at the end of the day, Iraq turns into a viable democratic state, I'd say it was worth it. We don't know the long-term benefits of this war (nor the downsides), just the short-term effects. If Iraq is indeed an example of democracy to the middle-east, and it spreads out (like Bush says he hopes), we'll all be looking back at G.W. Bush, the great statesman. If it all falls to pieces, he'll be just another lying bastard.

Here's a prediction for you all: this whole terror crap will end in a few decades, when the population build-up of Arab/Muslim countries becomes more like Western countries (i.e. less young, more middle-aged, more old). It's a fact that bad things happen when a country/civilization has more than 20-25% young people (15-25) - lots of angry young soldiers for a revolutionary cause.

Ramega

So we should have just let France and Poland rot under the hand of the Third Reich because they didn't "earn" it? Sorry, I'm not buying that. And besides, I think the Iraqis heaped in mass graves would have a thing or two to say about whether or not they earned it.

It's entirely likely that the Americans would not have won the Revolutionary War without the aid of the French. Does that mean we didn't earn it?

seep

I think perhaps Democracy is more of a cultural thing than something you can "give" to people.

sob

Hmmmm. It's been clearly confirmed that Iraq negotiated to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Robert Byrd, Al Gore, Madeleine Albright, and John Kerry all stated that Iraq had WMDs, and must be stopped.

But the Bush-haters continue. Amazingly enough, they ask why Bush hasn't "dealt with" North Korea, although they already HAVE nukes. But preventing Iraq from getting them is bad.

I can't figure out why no one blames Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who GAVE North Korea the nuclear material.

Dragonlich

Ramega, that's just bullocks. France and Poland had more-or-less democratic governments before the Germans invaded. The US didn't invade them to install democracy, they invaded to *restore* it. It's simply a bad example.

Seep, are you suggesting that Muslims are unable, culturally, to have a democratic political system? Some people might consider that racist... You might want to rethink that statement a bit.

hannukah harry

dragon beat me to it... and i'm using the word freedom the way it seemed to be used by others in this thread... freedom = democracy. poland and france weren't occupied so that the germans could change their style of govt. and leave. they were being occupied as part of war, part of an attempt to conquer the world. that's not our stated goal. both situations are entirely different... i'm sure there's a logical fallacy you're making, maybe a strawman, you'd have to ask someone else though. and since we started the war, more than enough iraqi civilians have been killed to make another mass grave or two, so don't think everythings smelling like daisy's over there.

us bringing a revolution to a group is meaningless. fine, we overthrow their govt., but what's to stop them from reinstalling a similar one once we're gone? unless the iraqi's were to attempt a revolution on their own, this is nothing but nation building. the french helped us out years after our revolutionary war started, they didn't invade, train us, kick the english out and say "this is how you're gonna run things."

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pedro padilla

He wanted weapons if he coulda got them but that wasnt going to happen. But deep down he really wanted them.
I really want all 12 of last years playmates in my bed. Really truly would. Should their husbands come shoot me now for this impossible to fulfill fantasy? Would they be justified because they know I would if I could? Even though the odds of getting within 2 miles of them are zero?
Thought crime is right around the corner.
We are less secure every day as a direct result of the pre-emptive, unfounded bullshit being forced down our throats. Saddam was not a threat to the US. Probably never could be. Hmmm, no way Americans could be dying for Israeli interests, is there?

seep

Oh, I love saying things that "some people" might consider to be racist, but that one was actually an accident.

Democracy works best for people who really want it or who are used to it.

host

Please back your claim that "It's been clearly confirmed that Iraq negotiated to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger".

Bush had support from Kerry and other legislators to:
Before Bush ordered the U.S. military to invade Iraq, he committed to seeking
a final resolution for war from the U.N. security council. When his administration determined that the votes for a war resolution from the U.N.
would not be forthcoming, Bush decided to forego the opportunity to allow
a security council debate on whether to end of weapons inspections in Iraq
and make the case one last time that war was the only option. instead, he
warned the U.N. inspectors to leave Iraq, and issued a macho, disconeected,
"you've got 48 hours to git outta Dodge (City) to Saddam and his 2 sons,
if an invasion of Iraq was to be avoided. Bush suddenly changed his agenda from ridding Iraq of WMD's, to simply ordering Saddam out of Iraq at gunpoint.
Bush was authorized by congress to determine whether <i>"further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq ."</i> Bush failed to build an international consensus or a coalition for
war that could be compared in numbers or stregth to the one his own father
built to fight the Gulf War in 1991. Bush sought the authority to determine
if it was necessary to invade Iraq. Now he refuses to accept responsibility for
making an unjustified decision to take the U.S. to war.

[quote]Ending Inspections 'Not Reasonable,' Blix Says
Citing Iraqi Cooperation, U.N. Arms Official Asserts More Time Was Needed

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 19, 2003; Page A17

UNITED NATIONS, March 18 -- The United Nations' chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said today that it "was not reasonable" for the United States to end U.N. inspections in Iraq at a time when its government was providing more cooperation than it has in more than a decade.

"I don't think it is reasonable to close the door on inspections after 31/2 months," Blix said in his first public appearance since 134 U.N. inspectors were evacuated from Iraq, effectively ending a 12-year effort to disarm Iraq through inspections. "I would have welcomed some more time."

Blix voiced disappointment and sadness at the failure to complete the peaceful disarmament of Iraq, and said he was confident that Iraqi leadership would not dare to use chemical and biological weapons against U.S.-led forces even if the country faced certain military defeat.

"I doubt that they will have the will," he said. There are "some people who care about their reputation even after death."