Iraq is a TICKING TIMEBOMB what are we waiting FOR?????

[kherman]

EVERYONE SHUT UP with the conspiracy heories.

Today Bush is addressing hte U.N. You know what. Our evidence probably hasn't been "let out" yet. IMHO, Bush is going to drop a bomb on the UN today with evidence no one heard before. Remember, "the element of surprise". We didn't want to give saddam our evidence last year. What satalite photos has anyone here seen? I saw like one or two about two months ago, from a PRIVATE company, not from military spec satalites.


Karl

 

[Moonbeam]

I don't take well to 'shut up' kherman, and the bs you just spouted is nothing but conspiracy theory.

 

[rickn]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
I don't take well to 'shut up' kherman, and the bs you just spouted is nothing but conspiracy theory.

you got that right moonbeam, because what we heard in his speech today was no bombshell. He basically repeated everything we've heard before

 

[clarkmo]

Originally posted by: kherman
EVERYONE SHUT UP with the conspiracy heories.

Today Bush is addressing hte U.N. You know what. Our evidence probably hasn't been "let out" yet. IMHO, Bush is going to drop a bomb on the UN today with evidence no one heard before. Remember, "the element of surprise". We didn't want to give saddam our evidence last year. What satalite photos has anyone here seen? I saw like one or two about two months ago, from a PRIVATE company, not from military spec satalites.


Karl

I have seen satellite photos.



Of my house.

 

[SuperTool]

So, how is Iraq a ticking timebomb? Ticking means he will invariably explode on us. But he doesn't have nukes as of now, and even if he did, he is unlikely to commit suicide by using them. This man loves his life too much to give it up. I would rather have one death fearing man, however unfriendly, have his wmd's, than have them fall into hands of someone unafraid to die. If he knows he is about to be killed, there is nothing to stop him from giving his remaining biochem weapons to people who will kill americans. Haven't we learned anything from Afganistan? We supported and trained terrorists to "liberate" Afganistan. They of course promptly made it into a lawless terrorist state, and used it as a base to attack us. The law of unintended consequences has backfired on us many times, that's why starting wars unless absolutely necessary, is very dangerous.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: rickn

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
I don't take well to 'shut up' kherman, and the bs you just spouted is nothing but conspiracy theory.

you got that right moonbeam, because what we heard in his speech today was no bombshell. He basically repeated everything we've heard before

Yea, I was hoping for some substance to backup up his fear of Iraq. In his defence however, I think he made some good points on why the UN needs to react. It seems to me though that he's still stuck on the idea that a US invasion is the only solution and that the "UN acting" is merely joing the US in an invasion.

 

[Moonbeam]

The question I can't answer is what's the frigging hurry. Why does WW3 have to happen tomorrow. There is something missing from this whole story, it seems to me. The speach was good where it emphasized UN action, dangerous and high risk where it implied we would go it alone. There isn't a single reason we're giving for attacking Iraq that does not apply to us as well.

 

[clarkmo]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
The question I can't answer is what's the frigging hurry. Why does WW3 have to happen tomorrow. There is something missing from this whole story, it seems to me. The speach was good where it emphasized UN action, dangerous and high risk where it implied we would go it alone. There isn't a single reason we're giving for attacking Iraq that does not apply to us as well.

The US was in Iraq with the consent and at the behest of Kuwait and the UN.
Because it was a UN mission they did not proceed into Bhagdad.
After the war, peace treaties were signed, which allowed UN inspectors to go into Iraq and inspect.
Hussein repeatedly violated this agreement by not allowing UN inspectors to inspect where they wished, when they wished, thus allowing him the chance to cover up his activities.
Eventually he threw them all out of the country.
The British discovered that he did, indeed, have wmd in 1998.
This is a flagrant violation of the treaty.
So, if he was a convicted felon in this country and repeatedly violated his parole don't you think he would be rearrested?
We have an international obligation to enforce his probation. He believes we will not do it.
His flagrant disregard has, imo, encouraged other anti-American activites. And it will go on. That is how the criminal mind works. When one gang succeeds it encourages the others. This is nothing new. Would he ever use a possibly inneffectual wmd? It doesn't matter. Not at all. Because he will be apprehended as a result of his treaty violations. Period.
If Jeffrey Dahmer were still alive and got probation and prevented his p.o. from looking in his fridge, would you want him out on the street?
It really is this simple. Hussein is an international criminal by UN decree and will be treated as such.

 

[dszd0g]

Originally posted by: clarkmo

After the war, peace treaties were signed, which allowed UN inspectors to go into Iraq and inspect.
Hussein repeatedly violated this agreement by not allowing UN inspectors to inspect where they wished, when they wished, thus allowing him the chance to cover up his activities.
Eventually he threw them all out of the country.

That is not true, and this one you can find a ton of press about in the mainstream media. Just do a search for "US withdrew weapon inspectors from Iraq" and you will find a ton of hits.

CNN
Guardian

From my understanding, what happened is that a number of the weapon inspectors (6 I believe) that the US sent in were CIA agents and were spying on Iraq when doing their inspections. Saddam said that CIA spying was not what he agreed to and kicked the CIA agents out. The UN then withdrew the rest of the weapon inspectors in protest.

Overall, we withdrew the weapon inspectors. Saddam has agreed to let weapon inspectors back in as long as he doesn't get secret service spies, which is somewhat understandable.

Now I am not claiming that Saddam did not constantly move things around to make it more difficult for the weapons inspectors to find things. In addition, there were some places off limits to the weapons inspectors which it is pretty clear were being used for chemical (and possibly nuclear) research.

I do think we should get weapon inspectors back in to Iraq. That is a much better approach then war. But on that note, I think that the UN should get weapons inspectors into the United States too and shut down our chemical and nuclear weapons programs There is just a wee bit of hypocrisy here.

 

[UltraQuiet]

But on that note, I think that the UN should get weapons inspectors into the United States too and shut down our chemical and nuclear weapons programs There is just a wee bit of hypocrisy here

Not to mention ignorance. We are no longer making chemical weapons and are currently destroying our stockpile in a joint effort with Russia. We also have a treaty with Russia in regards to the inspection of nuclear weapons. There are Russian inpsectors in this country quite frequently to count both warheads and launchers and we quite frequently go there to do the same.

 

[dszd0g]

Originally posted by: DaveSohmer

Not to mention ignorance. We are no longer making chemical weapons and are currently destroying our stockpile in a joint effort with Russia. We also have a treaty with Russia in regards to the inspection of nuclear weapons. There are Russian inpsectors in this country quite frequently to count both warheads and launchers and we quite frequently go there to do the same.

You mean divisions like this one don't exist?
Chemical and Biological Defense

I am well aware than we are cutting down the number of live warheads we are pointing at each other and that we inspect each other on that. What I am not aware of is any stop to the research we do towards better nuclear weapons. I am not aware of any inspections of nuclear research facilities.

Here is a list of 18 known nuclear research facilities in the US. I am sure there are more:

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Research, Development, Testing, and Production, and Naval Nuclear Propulsion Facilities

I declassified our chemical weapons stockpiles in 1996, I don't know how long it takes once they are declassified to be disposed of:
U.S. CHEMICAL WEAPONS STOCKPILE INFORMATION DECLASSIFIED

If we have stopped chemical weapons research it has been very recent. I highly doubt we will. We claim that we do the research so that we know how to fight it.

You were saying?

 

[kgraeme]

Originally posted by: DaveSohmer

Originally posted by: JellyBaby

Why the contradiction? He hasn't done an inspection in nearly 4 years yet he has completely reversed his decision.

What decision? He made observations and issued reports. Iraq had a banned weapons manufacturing capability, decided by the U.N. The Gulf War and subsequent dismantling of that infrastructure resulted in 90-95% disarmament according to the team's estimate.

Ritter is now saying, and rightly so, that we don't know as much about Iraq's military condition as we should before declaring war and destroying the country. Hopefully, the proof positive that Iraq is a direct threat to the US will be revealed this week when Bush finally unveils the "evidence".

Ok "decision" was the wrong word. Did you even read the two articles? He completely reverses himself by saying in '98 that there was a danger of them reconstituting there WMD program and then this July makes it a point to say that they're probably all gone. Why the reversal, especially since we haven't done any inspections in 4 years? In '98 he was worried about what would happen without inspections and now he suddenly knows there is no problems. Makes absolutely no sense to me.

There is no contradiction. Both statements are, to the best of his knowledge, true. Mr. Ritter is very passionate about his work. When they were pulled out he was extremely concerned, and I believe accurate, in the statement that Iraq had the potential to build WMD within a few months. However, the window of opportunity to use many of the chemical/biologic weapons of the type that Iraq had was short. These components don't always have a good shelf-life and from what I understand much of their material was liquid as opposed to dry. I'm not a bio/chem weapon specialist, but I'm told that the liquid forms are the ones harder to preserve. They obviously didn't use it and a decade later apparently puts it outside of the reasonable window of opportunity for effective use.

Like I said, he was quite concerned, so even though he was pulled out in an official capacity he still has friends and professional contacts in intelligence agencies monitoring the region. Agencies such as those in Israel who have a very vested interest in keeping tabs on Iraq. From what he describes of their records, Iraq hasn't been purchasing enough critical material to have any substantial new WMD production. So the components they had needed to be reconstituted within a few months, but apparently weren't, and they haven't purchased enough components and equipment to make new material. There's the lack of contradiction.

But guess what? If you talk to Mr. Ritter, you will find that even though he has been vocal about the U.S. not invading without solid evidence, he fully recommends that inspectors should go in and establish the truth. Even he acknowledges that he doesn't know for absolute certainty and the only way to know for certain is to go look. And that's what pisses him off. He supports the U.S., but he doesn't support action without intel. As a soldier, I suspect you can appreciate that.

 

[Moonbeam]

Where'd the weapons grade anthrax come from that went through the mails and why are they looking at US scientists.

 

[Moonbeam]

We'll find the evidence kgraeme if we have to plant it ourselves.

 

[kgraeme]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
We'll find the evidence kgraeme if we have to plant it ourselves.

I'm flashing on DEA raids of post war crops.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: kgraeme

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
We'll find the evidence kgraeme if we have to plant it ourselves.

I'm flashing on DEA raids of post war crops.

LOL! They'll be out in the middle of some sand dune too!

 

[Zipp]

Wow,there are several posters here that you would swear they lived in France and then some that watched to many X-file reruns. Many of you here just don't get it. Saddam is a whacko just like Hitler was and more than likely has some WMD but "probably " no Nukes yet..Thank God.

When this guy finally does get his hands on nukes,he's going to be a raving power hungry lunatic and put fear into all of his neighboring countries and then
he will even be a problem for us cause you know that we'll get the first call for help and then we'll have to deal with those nukes. There has already been many shipments of some pretty bad stuff intercepted by our allies on its way to Iraq too.

I saw some film footage of several villages in his own country that he had bombed with poisonous gas and it was very sad. Men,woman and children stiff as boards everwhere you looked. And you think this guy should still be allowed to go on like this?

I'm not going say I know more than all of you about this situation in the Middle east cause I don't but I do know one thing. This Saddam Hussien should be removed cause he's a very unstable man and even if he seems semi normal now,he could flip out and go on a rampage anytime especially as he gets older and/or "the bomb"

If any of you spoke your mind as negatively about the goverment as you did here and lived in Iraq,you would have your tongue cut off. I be willing to bet that most of the people in Iraq are just waiting for us to come in and remove that insane regime so they could have somewhat of a better life than what they have now. These people have no rights what soever and have to live under a maniac Dictator.

I just thank God that the leaders of our country in the past didn't think the same way as many of you do here cause all of Europe would be speaking German right now.

 

[Jeff7]

I hope the UN takes some action. I don't like the idea of us asking them for approval, then just going and doing it regardless of what they say. I was under the impression that we are part of the United Nations of this planet. Just because we have extensive power doesn't mean that we should take on whoever we don't like. There's also the issue of helping the Iraqi's establish a stable government. We failed to do that in Afghanistan; we bombed the place to get rid of the Taliban, we sort of did that, but left the place in chaotic ruins for the rest of the citizens.

 

[craftech]

Bush is a hypocrite. Do a search on UN Security Council reform and see what you find. You will see a cartoon of Uncle Sam walking a dove on a leash. Why? Because there are only 5 countries which have exclusive veto power...The US, Great Britain, China, France, and Russia. If you check the veto record (difficult to find by the way) you will see that the veto power has been abused (overused) by only one country.....the US. Most of the vetoes have been for the purpose of preventing the UN from following through on UN Resolution 242 because Israel has been violating it since it was passed. The US wont even approve UN observers to go there to monitor because Israel doesn't want it. Yet George Bush can stand up and tell the UN that it will be a failure if they don't allow a follow through on Iraq's violation of UN resolutions. Does most of the public in the United States realize this? The answer is no. That's the "majority" of the American media at work. Do they realize the hypocracy of Bush's statements in the rest of the world? The answer is yes. They aren't sheltered from it by their media. That is why their views differ. They sit down to watch television news and read the newspaper the same as we do. The difference is that when it comes to the Middle East, they see balanced reporting and we do not. I have (over the past two years)collected thousands of pages of online newspaper clippings from here and abroad to prove my point. I have hundreds of A-B comparisons of news reports from there and here which illustrate the point. Our reports of events which happen in Israel/Palestine don't even match the Israeli media reports. The difference is that the moderate Israeli newspapers aren't afraid to report in a balanced way yet most American newspapers are. I think that many of our politicians don't look any further than the major American networks for news from there. I read the moderate Israeli websites every day. Then I turn on news programs such as CNN and it's like hearing about a completely different subject or region. There is nothing to read into because it is so blatant.....yet it is working. Anyone speaking as I do is un-American...right?....or anti-semitic.....Right? Then we listen to Europeans saying that Americans are blind. So we call them names when the answer is that they aren't watching the same things we are when it comes to the Middle East. Which seems more likely?....that the European media and that of the rest of the world are fabricating events which happen and hiring actors for the videotapes to perpetrate a hoax or that the American media is simply selectively omitting them from their news coverage? The American media have been reporting in this way for years and our politicians have been setting policy accordingly for as many years. What is sickening is that in light of 9/11 they are still doing it. How about trying to address the root causes of what happened? The rest of the world seems to know why we were attacked, yet we don't. Oh yeah......we were attacked because these people "hate freedom". I guess there are some people who are ready to kill themselves because they hate freedom so much. The only country which love freedom is the United States. The Europeans, Asians, Russians, etc. don't agree with our policies because they don't love freedom. So who is really at fault here? Our media.

 

[B00ne]

Originally posted by: shinerburke
Why haven't we attacked Iraq yet? Because we are waiting for the next bad thing to happen so that we can then tell all the peacenik self righteous hippy tree loving freaks who care more about making pants out of hemp than they do making the world a safer place to shut up, stay out of the way, and go fvck themselves while we deal with the problem as it should be dealt with. Sorry folks but sometimes you just have to kill people and blow sh1t up in order to make the world a better place.

Your motivation is probably true, but do u think ther Iraqi civilians and neighboring countries will think bombs falling out of their skies is a good thing? What u say is a purely american, dominate because u can opinion.

If u start to bombard ppl because of speculation what they might do, where do u stop? Who tells me that the US wont unleash their nuclear/biological/chemical arsenal at some future point?

It's all speculation.

 

[JellyBaby]

craftech, paragraphs, man, paragraphs.

That said you hit the terrorist right on the head. The American public is too busy to be adequately involved in politics. Can't be bothered. If they would wake up and see our policies in action, our real reasons for implementing them, and who drives the decisions, they quite rightly would demand radical change.

Something Moonbean mentioned a long time back is still true: things need to get a lot worse here before they can get better. No, I don't want to see it happen that way but the hardest lessons learned are kept the longest.

 

[ElDonAntonio]

Great post, dszd0g!
As for the US overthrowing democratic governments in order to put dictators in place and get better deals, you could add to the list Chile, Iran, Congo, Brazil, Indonesia, and lots of others.

For all you thinking you live in the best country in the world, the leader of the free world, the most democratic-loving country, here's an eye-opening link.

And how come that when Iraq refuses to obey the UN, Iraq gets dismanteled, while when Israel doesn't want to allow a UN mission, the mission gets dismanteled?

 

[dszd0g]

craftech, I do not understand the major point of your post. I agree that the mainstream US media is extremely biased and does not do accurate reporting. One must look at foreign news to get an accurate picture. Unfortunately, unless you speak a language other than English fluently that is a difficult approach to take. I do look at a lot of foreign news that I can find in English. I can get by in a few other languages, but I do not trust my understanding of those languages to read news and trust that I am getting the right jist. I do not wish to put words in your mouth, so what are you saying about Israel?

Some people are blaming this whole thing on Isreal, and that makes absolutely no sense. Saying that September 11th, would not have happened if we did not support Israel is completely false. If you listen to these terrorists speak they say that they hate Jews and they hate Americans. When someone hates two groups blaming the other group makes no sense. For example, the KKK hates Blacks and Jews (and a whole lot of other groups). Us blaiming Israel would be the same thing as Blacks blaiming Jews for the KKK hating them. The US itself has done plenty to make these terrorists hate them, without anything to do with Israel.

Now I do not agree with what Israel does to the local Palestinians. The Israeli military is quite brutal and uses revenge tactics, i.e. you kill one of us, we will kill 10 of you. That is definitely not the moral thing to do. However, I also simpathize with Israel. They are surrounded by people who hate them, and would hate them no matter what they do.

Another thing to bring up, is not a lot of people realize why Israel was established. The general reason put out is that Israel was established as a safe place for Jews to live. That is only part of the reason. Another large reason, was that after WWII and the surviving Jews were released from the concentration camps they could not go home. Europe hated Hitler, but I am not sure which they hated more Hitler or the Jews. Even today it is not difficult to open a European newspaper and not find some article in it that blaims something on Jews. When the Jews were sent to concentration camps all their property was confiscated. When they were released, Europeans did not want to give the property back. There was a lot of discussion, and the approach they though best was to keep the property and give the problem to someone else. Thus Israel was established, so that Europe could get rid of the Jews that they hate and not have to give back the property that they stole.

I do not agree with this. I think Europe should have learned from its fascism and given the property back.

Do not think that from my discussion of US foreign policy, that I believe that the US has a monopoly on bad policy.

 

[B00ne]

Originally posted by: Zipp

I just thank God that the leaders of our country in the past didn't think the same way as many of you do here cause all of Europe would be speaking German right now.

Actually, that would be russian