Cancel The Invasion, I Have A Hang Nail

A couple points while linking this bit from ABC's Tapper verifying Obama's Afghanistan story from the debate. If Clinton and the libs AND the McCain's in Congress hadn't savaged our military budget in the nineties, these problems might not be so pronounced now. I doubt Obama would build it up, he just wouldn't use the military. And he showed no leadership on Iraq.

Americans have too short a memory - years of sanctions, pleading for Saddam to comply with the UN, all to no avail. We were right to go in when we did, if anything, we waited too long. Anyone who thinks Obama is ready to be CIC is crazy and willing to embrace a weak America when it comes to such issues. That's the last thing we need right now.

Obama stinks. But as a typical Republican voter, I still have yet to hear a convincing explanation as to where was John McCain in the 90's under Clinton when these issues were allowed to grow. It might have been nice to have a war hero in the Senate defending the military then. Neither side showed much leadership in this area during the nineties. They seized the so-called Peace Dividend and used it as a rationale to spend.

As for the losers and cowards now turning against the Iraq decision, like Coburn, apparently, I have no respect for them at all. There's no leadership in doing that once we made the decision to go in. And that decision was correct at the time, despite what the revisionists would have us believe.

At last night's debate in Texas, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, told an anecdote about an Army captain that is causing a lot of chatter in the political world.

Obama was making a point about what he called "the single most important foreign policy decision of this generation, whether or not to go to war in Iraq." His point was that in opposing the war he "showed the judgment of a commander in chief.  And I think that Senator Clinton was wrong in her judgments on that."

Comments

[WAHOO WILLIE'S BACK]

Yawnnnnnnnn. Let's not even pretend I give a crap about this link you posted. More irrelevance to me.

[rwilymz]

"Your link is from 2003. Here's one from 2005"

Blix gave his reports to the UNSC in late 2002 and early 2003.

Your links, however, are talking about the reputed weapons PROGRAMS. ...which was a different claim altogether.

You can continue to equivocate as so many have done before you, or you can demonstrate that you actually *have* a brain and know what to do with it besides insulate your ears.

Repeat after me:
Iraq was claimed, in violation of the 1991 Gulf War Cease Fire, to:
1] have chemical weapons;
2] have chemical weapons PROGRAMS;
3] be seeking parts and supplies for nuclear and biological weapons;
4] be seeking prohibited parts and supplies for its standing army;
5] implementing human rights violations against certain of its peoples;
6] misappropriating national revenues contrary to the civilian-use requirements.

They were, in order:
1] true; 6,500 of them re-appropriated from UN control between '98 and '02, not counting any others that the UN hadn't found
2] largely untrue, although there is much evidence that they were attempting to get turnkeys in place
3] largely untrue
4] largely true -- and the French, Russian, Chinese and NKoreans were more than willing to oblige Hussein's purchases
5] true
6] true

And these are on top of the notional violations of the Cease Fire: e.g., every time the UN requested to see warehouse 'X' today and Iraq delayed for a week ... violation. There were thousands of individual instances of that happening.

It also doesn't count the several dozen beligerent violations in which they either shot at US/UK aircraft, or locked onto US/UK aircraft with their SAM targetting radar.

As it stands, **any** **one** of those things [and more] was all the justification anyone needed to take military action against Iraq. Simply because the only items you can manage to keep in your pea-sized brain of yours are those items that were found, after the fact, to be largely untrue does not for one moment alter the reality that several others were unimpeachably true.

And again: you only need ONE cease fire infraction.

[Worst President Ever]

rwilymz writes: "6,500 chemical shells found by the UN between '92 and '98, stored by the UN in locked warehouses at the time the UN left Iraq in late '98. In late '02 when the UN, lef by Hans Blix, went back, the first place he looked were those UN warehouses."

Got a link? Cause I'd love to read about that.

[WAHOO WILLIE'S BACK]

You two just refuse to give it up huh? Well WPE, I know what rw does for a living and frankly he needs no link to convince me. Now to make you feel better, Saddam said the stuff was destroyed as demanded by UN. He also said that he wanted the world and especially Iran to think he still had the stuff. It's the old " if I stick my finger in my coat pocket and tell you I have a pistol, it's for you to decide whether to take a chance that I dont" strategy. BTW, if you go tell Da Lama that I hav a pistol and she calls teh cops.....She isn't the "liar", I am and people who parrot that crap frankly look stupid. Clinton and his intelligence folks believed he had the stuff. The Russians, Israelis, Brits and hosts of others believed he had the stuff. Rather than let UN have free reign to snoop around, Saddam continued with his strategy (lie). UN resolutions piled on each other demanded disclosure by their inspectors and Saddam declined to cooperate......We had every "legal" right to do what we did. Now if you're going to find some reason to be against this misadventure, find a moral one or at least your on reasons vis someone elses. I believe that you are sincere in being against the war but man, you make yourself look stupid being a parrot of Mickey Moore and you deserve better.

[Worst President Ever]

rwilymz made a statement of fact that 6,500 Iraqi chemical shells were in the custody of the UN in a locked warehouse. The UN left, Hans Blix later returned and found the shells gone. He's written the same thing in other threads.

So wanting to be a well-informed citizen, I tried to find out more about it. But strangely, I can't find any reference to those locked up shells. You'd think something like that, a link should be a simple thing. Again, I'd love to read about it.

So, link, please.

[moldy]

Hi Fred,

Its a fair point. Even if he didn't have WMD, he built it up so much that even his own army thought he had them. I have been flipping through the Duelfer Report and it is pretty amazing the mixed messages he sent his own staff. http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/pdf/duelfer1_b.pdf - pg 65

So with this known, I agree with Wahoo Willie's finger-in-the-pocket analogy and subsequently your assesment of what justified the war.

However, if you read the links below, it does appear that at least some members of the Bush administration had some pretty good and current intel indicating that there was no WMD threat. If that was the case, its hard to justify the war using this angle.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/23/cia.iraq/
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/

That said, I like rwilymz's point about "politics for the voters" vs "justification". Maybe the politics given to the public is irrelevant as long as the real reason for the regime change was just? rwilymz - I think thats what you are getting at with the Cease Fire agreement posts?

After all my reading, it does seem like Iraq was pretty deceitful about their WMD status but I'm still not convinced that military action of this magnitude was justified. However, one issue I don't understand is the '91 Cease Fire agreement. I would be interested in reading about it and will try to do so in the near future. - rwilymz, can you post some links to save me some googling?

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p.s
rwilymz - I am confused about the UN warehouse as well. I found reference to the 6500 missing bombs aka "The Airforce Report" in the Duelfer Report
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/pdf/duelfer1_b.pdf - pg 53.

It definitely sounds like the Iraqi's were hiding something, but it was all on paper - there is no mention of anyone ever seeing these bombs in a warehouse. It also says that their existence wasn't discovered until 1998. Its pretty evident that the bombs are still unaccounted for so I don't think it makes your point any less relevant, but I am still curious where you heard about the bombs being in a UN warehouse between 1992-1998?

[Worst President Ever]

Here's a bunch of other threads rwilymz made the same claim about the 6,500 shells: http://tinyurl.com/39meb

Still waiting for that link.

[Worst President Ever]

Whoops; http://tinyurl.com/39mebc

[scarshapedstar]

"Chemical shells"?

We spent a trillion dollars on the off chance that Saddam would dig up some mustard gas canisters from the desert, load them into a cannon, float the cannon across the Atlantic, and then take a few potshots? (Presumably not on a windy day)

How the hell did Republicans manage to play up their "competent" reputation for so long?

[WAHOO WILLIE]

"We spent a trillion dollars on the off chance that Saddam would dig up some mustard gas canisters from the desert, load them into a cannon, float the cannon across the Atlantic, and then take a few potshots?"

A big gold star for da scar!! Welcome aboard, glad to have you with those of us who saw that great big ass obvious point before BOTH GD HOUSES OF CONGRESS AND YOUR GD PARTISANS started throwing about the WMD disussion from jump.

[Worst President Ever]

So Wahoo, you still believe anything rw posts? Because I'm calling bulls*** on him and his his 'the UN had the shells locked up, then they were stolen' crap.

[Wahoo Willie]

"So Wahoo, you still believe anything rw posts?"

For someone who thinks he knows all the answers, you aren't very bright. rw spoke about 6500 shells and you could find it yourself if you look. It's too bad one cant click some link here and find "other posts by this person" so you could find mine. I knew from before the beginning, and said more than once, that any weapons that existed were/are theater only weapons that posed no threat to me and you. Get this genius, artillery shells and I dont care if there were 65 million are theater only weapons....and short range ones at that. Since some of these shells HAVE been used in IEDs they not only were there.......they still are.

[Worst President Ever]

No, I don't know all the answers, I just believe in facts over BS - you posted you'd essentially believe anything RW wrote because you know what he does - BFD. And you've confused me with rw - go back and read HIS posts. He LOVES to insult the intelligence of others - he did it to me in this thread.

He's talking about CHEMICAL WEAPONS shells - none of which have been used in IEDs.

RW wrote that the UN captured the shells, stored them in a locked warehouse, left them there, then Hans Blix returned to find them gone. That implies someone stole them for some reason. But it's all total BS.

What the UN really has is a piece of paper with some numbers on it. They never had the shells. If you can't tell the difference between captured shells and a pieced, I have a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge I'll sell you cheap.