did you believe the evidence presented when the administration said Iraq had WMD's

[brainhulk]

Or were you skeptical of the government back then?




Moved from OT.

Anandtech Administrator
KeithTalent

 

[John Connor]

I watched and watched and WATCHED plus recorded on VHS all the Congressional hearings with the CIA and Colin Powell presenting the evidence. I for one believed it after Saddam gased the Kurds. Recently with the ISIS BS they did find some chemical weapons. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/isis-seizes-chemical-weapons-plant-muthanna-iraq

U.S soldiers raiding homes found plans on make explosives and how metal detectors worked.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

But seriously, we DID find WMDs in Iraq. And we knew they were there because they were WMDs we gave them. I knew this when they said they had WMDs.


http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/10/16/new-york-times-reports-wmd-found-in-iraq

 

[brianmanahan]

did you look at the left sidebar on forums.anandtech.com and see that there is a Politics and News subforum?

 

[brainhulk]

did you look at the left sidebar on forums.anandtech.com and see that there is a Politics and News subforum?

This is a history topic. Neeener neener neener

 

[Muse]

Your poll's stupid. What evidence are you talking about? They never presented evidence. They declared that they knew, but hard evidence was never presented. Never! Of course, they never found them, and I presume they didn't exist, at least not anything like they were conceived to be or hyped to be by the Bush Administration.

 

[brianmanahan]

This is a history topic. Neeener neener neener

your "history" topic got moved, neeener neener neener

 

[brainhulk]

your "history" topic got moved, neeener neener neener

That's it, i'm taking my toys and go play somewhere else






















J/k no im not

 

[Smoblikat]

Considering I was like 8 when all that went down, im going to say I dont know.

 

[brandonb]

I thought this:

"So what if they have WMD? Every county on this earth has WMD in some form."

 

[Genx87]

I will admit it. I bought into the lies Iraq was trying to acquire yellow cake and build a nuclear weapon.

 

[IronWing]

No, I thought Bush was a lying sack of shit before he stole office. Nothing he ever said or did changed my mind on that point. He pulled together the biggest group of weirdos and pyschopaths to lead a western state since the fall of the Nazis. There was no reason at all to trust them on anything. Bush wanted to kill people and that is what he did.

 

[glenn1]

The evidence wasn't conclusive, however paired with the known history of WMD use (gassing the Kurds) and Saddam's behavior (like presenting huge resistance to UN inspection teams) made it a very reasonable assumption. Anyone who was expecting 100% reliable proof wasn't being honest about it.

All that being said, Iraq shouldn't be looked at as a complete waste. Other despots will probably be less likely to be similarly elusive about subjects deemed a critical national security risk to the U.S. Also, future Presidents have an object lesson that you can't force the evolution of democratic institutions and citizen maturity in places where it doesn't exist, and that sometimes the dictator you know is better than the anarchy/terror groups you don't.

The downside is that Presidents may be returning to the "bad old days" where they opt to use the CIA and more covert methods to influence foreign policy; e.g. the U.S. sponsored coup to install the current Ukrainian government.

 

[Strk]

Nope. Oddly enough, from a thread about what your first post was on AT, my first post was about how bad of an idea Iraq was.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I don't believe this poll result. At this moment in time those who said no are ahead two to one but soon before the war there was little doubt expressed and overwhelming support for war.

Technically we knew there were WMDs in Iraq because they had been used before but that was irrelevant.

At the outset when I first heard about Iraq I wondered if Saddam might be guilty of what he was charged with, but the pattern of nonsense Bush et al combined with facts supporting Saddam being disregarded or lied about soon moved my non-committed position to one dead set against war and that there were programs and weapons squirreled away to supply terrorists or any other purpose. Saddam was a nasty piece of work but he has his ass handed to him in his hat by the West in his last exploit and was in no position to pose a serious threat. Indeed the claims of terrorist links was wholly absurd, none of the "evidence" was credible when viewed beyond the propaganda supplied by Cheney and his ilk, and Saddam while a crazy and stubborn tyrant could not do what was demanded, and neither could anyone else. That would have been "produce that which you do not have".
Utter nonsense.

 

[IronWing]

I don't believe this poll result. At this moment in time those who said no are ahead two to one but soon before the war there was little doubt expressed and overwhelming support for war.

Ignoring that some of the largest anti-war protests in American history were staged during the lead up to Bush's war, you are correct.

 

[fskimospy]

I don't believe this poll result. At this moment in time those who said no are ahead two to one but soon before the war there was little doubt expressed and overwhelming support for war.

Technically we knew there were WMDs in Iraq because they had been used before but that was irrelevant.

At the outset when I first heard about Iraq I wondered if Saddam might be guilty of what he was charged with, but the pattern of nonsense Bush et al combined with facts supporting Saddam being disregarded or lied about soon moved my non-committed position to one dead set against war and that there were programs and weapons squirreled away to supply terrorists or any other purpose. Saddam was a nasty piece of work but he has his ass handed to him in his hat by the West in his last exploit and was in no position to pose a serious threat. Indeed the claims of terrorist links was wholly absurd, none of the "evidence" was credible when viewed beyond the propaganda supplied by Cheney and his ilk, and Saddam while a crazy and stubborn tyrant could not do what was demanded, and neither could anyone else. That would have been "produce that which you do not have".
Utter nonsense.

I would say that while I thought the rationale for going to war over WMD programs was ridiculous anyway, my best guess at the time was that he had SOMETHING. I was fairly surprised that we turned up functionally nothing.

So I'm not sure where my opinion would fit in this. I didn't think it was a good reason to go to war and I thought the Bush admin was exaggerating and just throwing everything they could at the wall to hope some would stick. I figured there was a grain of truth to it, but that turned out to be wrong too. Just a total lie.

 

[Atreus21]

No, I thought Bush was a lying sack of shit before he stole office. Nothing he ever said or did changed my mind on that point. He pulled together the biggest group of weirdos and pyschopaths to lead a western state since the fall of the Nazis. There was no reason at all to trust them on anything. Bush wanted to kill people and that is what he did.

 

[thraashman]

I didn't believe it and it was one of the things that made me become politically active. In fact my first P&N post was about how I believed he'd keep finding excuses to invade other countries.

 

[Subyman]

I was too busy with final exams and junk to care.

 

[glenn1]

I didn't believe it and it was one of the things that made me become politically active. In fact my first P&N post was about how I believed he'd keep finding excuses to invade other countries.

I guess the "he" you're referring to must be Obama since the previous guy did nothing of the sort.

 

[zephyrprime]

Or were you skeptical of the government back then?




Moved from OT.

Anandtech Administrator
KeithTalent

I believed but I was completely skeptical. The evidence they provided turned out to be much more phoney than I would ever have believed. I was amazed that the news organizations of the world did such a poor job of fact checking (yes, I know there was talk about the yellow cake uranium being BS but just that wasn't enough). My trust in mainstream news dropped a lot and I started relying more on internet deep diving news.

 

[DrPizza]

I don't have the time to look through old posts right now, but if I recall correctly, I said no. (I've probably posted it in the P&N forum back then.) Most of the other countries said they didn't. UN couldn't find any (and was repeatedly kicked out), and the US said the UN just wasn't looking hard enough.

 

[maddogchen]

i remember during the invasion thinking when we'll have mass casualties from chemical weapon attacks....but that never happened. which is a good thing!

 

[Knowing]

I knew when the towers fell that we were going to go to war somewhere.

I knew Saddam gassed the Kurds.

I didn't buy the axis of evil rhetoric.

I believed then as I do now that if we didn't find weapons that they were probably
a) buried in the sand somewhere
b) moved to another country, Syria perhaps.

I knew there were other reasons given in the Iraq war resolution.

Before the hostilities started I knew the UN was useless and wouldn't commit any manpower to the enforcement of their own resolutions.