US UK deny WMD was rationale for war

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: syzygy

Originally posted by: LunarRay
Oh! Boy! Now we didn't invade under Article 51 of the UN Charter. We invaded a sovereign nation - see UN Resolution 1441 - to oust a dictator.
Under what authority did this invasion occur? Are we back to asserting that Res 1441 gave that authority? It clearly did not. Our draft Res that was rejected indicates this as well as the non willing members of the UN.
I guess we have to change the rationale to what is plausable but, it seems more egg on the face going this way.. at least we can argue the defensive issue...

i don't care much for legalisms when there is a long (recent) history rich in detail. a constant diet of failure should whittle down the
available options to one, the only one saddam understood and the only one that could oust him, remove what threat he posed,
and rid the region - and world - of his menace.

if the u.n. were the reformed organization they themselves beleive they can be then saddam would never have ridden them into
irrelavance as easily as he did. if the u.n. had the mechanisms, the cahones, the international support to function against these
third world megalomaniacs then the only available option would never have been implemented. there was nothing but failure
and on the other side of that were decades and decades of continued ba'ath rule, whcih must have been saddam's wish all
along. thankfully somebody with principle acted - and angered chirac in the process. sweet.

Principle.... what a joke. I did what was right, says George Bush, but I had to lie to get it done. The donkeys who vote in this country would never have supported me saving us and the Iraqi people over some vague future threat, especially when we had their asses nailed down with overflight and embargo. No I had to save America and the Iraqi people with a lie cause you assholes would be too stupid to vote for the war if I told the truth. The means justify the ends. That the meaning of principle.

 

[Gaard]

i don't care much for legalisms

You're not alone.




BTW, not knocking you or anything, but why do all of your posts look funny?

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Gaard
i don't care much for legalisms

You're not alone.




BTW, not knocking you or anything, but why do all of your posts look funny?

He doesn't care much for principle either.

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: syzygy

Originally posted by: LunarRay
Oh! Boy! Now we didn't invade under Article 51 of the UN Charter. We invaded a sovereign nation - see UN Resolution 1441 - to oust a dictator.
Under what authority did this invasion occur? Are we back to asserting that Res 1441 gave that authority? It clearly did not. Our draft Res that was rejected indicates this as well as the non willing members of the UN.
I guess we have to change the rationale to what is plausable but, it seems more egg on the face going this way.. at least we can argue the defensive issue...

i don't care much for legalisms when there is a long (recent) history rich in detail. a constant diet of failure should whittle down the
available options to one, the only one saddam understood and the only one that could oust him, remove what threat he posed,
and rid the region - and world - of his menace.

if the u.n. were the reformed organization they themselves beleive they can be then saddam would never have ridden them into
irrelavance as easily as he did. if the u.n. had the mechanisms, the cahones, the international support to function against these
third world megalomaniacs then the only available option would never have been implemented. there was nothing but failure
and on the other side of that were decades and decades of continued ba'ath rule, whcih must have been saddam's wish all
along. thankfully somebody with principle acted - and angered chirac in the process. sweet.

I won't argue against the menace that Saddam is or was. I will, however, argue for the rule of law. When we don't recognize the rule of law, if we in this case haven't, then we are not on any more moral ground than Saddam. We could have and should have allowed the Security Counsel to determine the timing and course of events regarding Iraq. The UN, by treaty, is our law too. I cannot link principle with a violation of law no matter the outcome.

 

[HomerJS]

I want to get a jump on the excuses.

1. Clinton said WMD existed so Bush must be right.
2. Intelligence was at fault not Bush.

1. The report from the Clinton administration concerning WMDs was issued in 1998. Around that time the weapons inspectors said they uncovered almost all of the WMDs. The inspectors were kicked out of Iraq and Clinton?s response was to lob a couple of cruise missiles over there. Without a full running weapons program any remaining weapons would degrade in a few years. If there were some weapons left in 1998 the question is did the weapons exist weeks before the war started in 2003? According to the Kay report, no. Considering Republicans have been casting Clinton as the devil, it?s ironic they would now use him as an excuse.

2. The line coming from Republicans and conservative talking heads is, it?s the CIA?s fault. Bush started a precedent of preemption as a means of defense. In order to carry this out with credibility you must have accurate intelligence. By all accounts the administration cherry picked the bits of intelligence that would support its desire from the mid 1990s, to get rid of Saddam. (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other neocons). The charge of cherry picking is support by the incident with Amb. Joe Wilson and the outing of his wife who worked for the CIA. I don?t think Americans were looking for evidence that was beyond reasonable doubt but starting a war should require preponderance of the evidence which we never had. So starting a preemptive war based on the way the evidence was compiled is the fault of Bush.

BTW ? I doubt that Bush will have the stones to fire Tenant because he and his people know too much.

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: Gaard
Even though I follow them all, I usually just stand on the sidelines during your Article 51 discussions LunarRay, but I just want to interject a moment here to say that I know what you're talking about. I've seen those who you discuss the issue with go from 1441, to 51, and back to 1441 again. (Except when it comes to Dari...he bypasses both )

If I was in the Administration I'd have argued that since a defacto state of war existed from 9/11/01 between the US and the responsible terrorist bodies AND their nation supporters that Iraq and Afghanistan were subject to direct US invasion. Afghanistan because of its known ties to Al Qaeda and Iraq because its constant refusal to fully comply with UN demands raises the suspicion of Iraq's complicity from possible to probable. And, that we and the world must insure future and more devastating attacks are eliminated.
This, I guess, is where they are trying to get... I just wish they'd take a more direct route and stick with less certain terms. And, stay away from the Saddam and the Iraqi internal issues. It is a reason for the UN to take action but, not the US without UN authority.

 

[HomerJS]

Originally posted by: LunarRay

Originally posted by: Gaard
Even though I follow them all, I usually just stand on the sidelines during your Article 51 discussions LunarRay, but I just want to interject a moment here to say that I know what you're talking about. I've seen those who you discuss the issue with go from 1441, to 51, and back to 1441 again. (Except when it comes to Dari...he bypasses both )

If I was in the Administration I'd have argued that since a defacto state of war existed from 9/11/01 between the US and the responsible terrorist bodies AND their nation supporters that Iraq and Afghanistan were subject to direct US invasion. Afghanistan because of its known ties to Al Qaeda and Iraq because its constant refusal to fully comply with UN demands raises the suspicion of Iraq's complicity from possible to probable. And, that we and the world must insure future and more devastating attacks are eliminated.
This, I guess, is where they are trying to get... I just wish they'd take a more direct route and stick with less certain terms. And, stay away from the Saddam and the Iraqi internal issues. It is a reason for the UN to take action but, not the US without UN authority.

If we followed the money supporting terrorism Saudi Arabia would have been second. There goes that 9/11 and Iraq link again. I believe that one has been debunked many times.

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: HomerJS

Originally posted by: LunarRay

Originally posted by: Gaard
Even though I follow them all, I usually just stand on the sidelines during your Article 51 discussions LunarRay, but I just want to interject a moment here to say that I know what you're talking about. I've seen those who you discuss the issue with go from 1441, to 51, and back to 1441 again. (Except when it comes to Dari...he bypasses both )

If I was in the Administration I'd have argued that since a defacto state of war existed from 9/11/01 between the US and the responsible terrorist bodies AND their nation supporters that Iraq and Afghanistan were subject to direct US invasion. Afghanistan because of its known ties to Al Qaeda and Iraq because its constant refusal to fully comply with UN demands raises the suspicion of Iraq's complicity from possible to probable. And, that we and the world must insure future and more devastating attacks are eliminated.
This, I guess, is where they are trying to get... I just wish they'd take a more direct route and stick with less certain terms. And, stay away from the Saddam and the Iraqi internal issues. It is a reason for the UN to take action but, not the US without UN authority.

If we followed the money supporting terrorism Saudi Arabia would have been second. There goes that 9/11 and Iraq link again. I believe that one has been debunked many times.

I'm only speaking to the ability to argue the issue of invading Iraq. Sure Saudi Arabia could be linked by the nationality of the terrorists but we could defend not invading Saudi Arabia by our historic relationship. Just because they were Saudi does not make Saudi Arabia a nation supporter of the terrorists. Same goes for the $ that are alleged to help them.. personal $ and not nation support, I'd argue. I chose to link Iraq via the UN Res failures ... vague and arguable. One must always start with a theory that considers the evidence in hand. To include possible this or that requires the statements justifying the actions be extremely well crafted and defensible regardless of future eventualities.. like no WMD.

 

[Red Dawn]

US UK deny WMD was rationale for war

Then why did Bush use the threat of Iraq supposed WMDs to convince the American Public to support his excellent adventure in Iraq?

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

US UK deny WMD was rationale for war

Then why did Bush use the threat of Iraq supposed WMDs to convince the American Public to support his excellent adventure in Iraq?

He was goaded into it kicking and screaming by false intelligence.

 

[syzygy]

Originally posted by: LunarRay
I won't argue against the menace that Saddam is or was. I will, however, argue for the rule of law. When we don't recognize the rule of law, if we in this case haven't, then we are not on any more moral ground than Saddam. We could have and should have allowed the Security Counsel to determine the timing and course of events regarding Iraq. The UN, by treaty, is our law too. I cannot link principle with a violation of law no matter the outcome.

the concern wasn't the menace posed by saddam but the history of fruitless action against him and the consequences of that
repeated failure. and the issue i was arguing was not the rule of law but legalism. legalism is being bogged down in the maniacal
tedium of the letter of the law while playing lip service to actual events. legalism (like scientism) divorces reality from method.

you also slide from legal carping into relativism. nobody is bound to follow bad law or to stand idly by and neglect repeated failure.
liberals know this very well. this would have been a dereliction of responsibility and would have made us party to saddam's future
plans. the u.n. treaty does not usurp our's or any other member nation's sovereignty. the obvious implication being that our laws
(and legal interests) are irrelevant. there is a happy middle ground that i think serves as the tacit guide in any nations relationship
with the u.n.

the supposed (theoretical ?) primacy of the u.n. treaty is one of the useful fictions that governs day-to-day business there.

 

[syzygy]

Originally posted by: HomerJS
I want to get a jump on the excuses.

1. The report from the Clinton administration concerning WMDs was issued in 1998. Around that time the weapons inspectors said they uncovered almost all of the WMDs. The inspectors were kicked out of Iraq and Clinton?s response was to lob a couple of cruise missiles over there. Without a full running weapons program any remaining weapons would degrade in a few years. If there were some weapons left in 1998 the question is did the weapons exist weeks before the war started in 2003? According to the Kay report, no. Considering Republicans have been casting Clinton as the devil, it?s ironic they would now use him as an excuse.

scott ritter, at least version 1.0, said quite the opposite. in testimony before congress, and in comments he made on public television,
he lambasted the iraqi authorities for their lack of cooperation and feared their wmd capabilities were operational.

the link i provided above of robert einhorn's testimony before congress in 2002 gives you the skinny on the clinton adminstration's
beliefs about what iraq possessed and did not possesse. it doesn't agree at all with your thoughts.

2. The line coming from Republicans and conservative talking heads is, it?s the CIA?s fault. Bush started a precedent of preemption as a means of defense. In order to carry this out with credibility you must have accurate intelligence. By all accounts the administration cherry picked the bits of intelligence that would support its desire from the mid 1990s, to get rid of Saddam. (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other neocons). The charge of cherry picking is support by the incident with Amb. Joe Wilson and the outing of his wife who worked for the CIA. I don?t think Americans were looking for evidence that was beyond reasonable doubt but starting a war should require preponderance of the evidence which we never had. So starting a preemptive war based on the way the evidence was compiled is the fault of Bush.

BTW ? I doubt that Bush will have the stones to fire Tenant because he and his people know too much.

dr. david kay addressed this issue. international agencies shared similiar concerns. the germans had more dire predictions. hindsight is
20/20. arguing now about what we knew then (or should've known) is dumb. i think this in large part forms the basis of liberal criticism.
liberals revel in learning that the truth does not jibe with the pre-war intel estimates and claim the discrepancy proves the error (or worse).
the problem being that error was bound to surface as it inevitably does when estimates, predictions, and prognostications meet the results
of work done on the ground without restraint or worry from ba'ath intelligent agents.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: syzygy

Originally posted by: LunarRay
I won't argue against the menace that Saddam is or was. I will, however, argue for the rule of law. When we don't recognize the rule of law, if we in this case haven't, then we are not on any more moral ground than Saddam. We could have and should have allowed the Security Counsel to determine the timing and course of events regarding Iraq. The UN, by treaty, is our law too. I cannot link principle with a violation of law no matter the outcome.

the concern wasn't the menace posed by saddam but the history of fruitless action against him and the consequences of that
repeated failure. and the issue i was arguing was not the rule of law but legalism. legalism is being bogged down in the maniacal
tedium of the letter of the law while playing lip service to actual events. legalism (like scientism) divorces reality from method.

you also slide from legal carping into relativism. nobody is bound to follow bad law or to stand idly by and neglect repeated failure.
liberals know this very well. this would have been a dereliction of responsibility and would have made us party to saddam's future
plans. the u.n. treaty does not usurp our's or any other member nation's sovereignty. the obvious implication being that our laws
(and legal interests) are irrelevant. there is a happy middle ground that i think serves as the tacit guide in any nations relationship
with the u.n.

the supposed (theoretical ?) primacy of the u.n. treaty is one of the useful fictions that governs day-to-day business there.

The US signed on to the Charter. That binds us to it. If the US does not like it, it can work to have it changed, or withdraw. It has done neither. So, the US becomes a "rogue" state by it's own definition of scoffing at a law it agreeded to. That is the problem here. It is not a law that someone else made, and the US did NOT agree to follow. It agreed to. We pulled this political expediency crap with Pinochet, and the Shah. Now we do so, and claim some bizarre post facto morality argument for this invasion. Saddam was never a serious threat to anyone outside his borders since the last war, and many said so. The problem is that those reports like the recent War College assesment paper on Iraq were met with the same "If it doesnt support our view, we arent going to read it. Facts be damned."

 

[syzygy]

Originally posted by: WinstonSmith]
The US signed on to the Charter. That binds us to it. If the US does not like it, it can work to have it changed, or withdraw. It has done neither. So, the US becomes a "rogue" state by it's own definition of scoffing at a law it agreeded to. That is the problem here. It is not a law that someone else made, and the US did NOT agree to follow. It agreed to. We pulled this political expediency crap with Pinochet, and the Shah. Now we do so, and claim some bizarre post facto morality argument for this invasion. Saddam was never a serious threat to anyone outside his borders since the last war, and many said so. The problem is that those reports like the recent War College assesment paper on Iraq were met with the same "If it doesnt support our view, we arent going to read it. Facts be damned."

wrong. many u.s. administrations have tried to introduce change into the u.n. why do you think past u.s. administrations
withheld funding from the u.n. ? conservatives have been the loudest critics. they were imploring change when nobody was
listening. they saw the bloat, the monstrous bureacracy, the regulations that hamstrung effective practice. the iraq issue
will hopefully expedite this process because this failure was too destructive for their relevancy and prestige to continue as
usual.

the question is should the administration have been shackled in their ability to respond when faced with wide-scale and
institutional failure. would you continue to follow legal demands placed on your person when they failed to protect, prevent,
or manage wrongdoing ? look at the results blix was preparing to present in his final report versus the findings made by
dr. david kay in his october report 2003 to congress. we were doomed. the war college assessment dealt with a status
quo that was unacceptable. business as usual could not continue.

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: syzygy

Originally posted by: WinstonSmith]
The US signed on to the Charter. That binds us to it. If the US does not like it, it can work to have it changed, or withdraw. It has done neither. So, the US becomes a "rogue" state by it's own definition of scoffing at a law it agreeded to. That is the problem here. It is not a law that someone else made, and the US did NOT agree to follow. It agreed to. We pulled this political expediency crap with Pinochet, and the Shah. Now we do so, and claim some bizarre post facto morality argument for this invasion. Saddam was never a serious threat to anyone outside his borders since the last war, and many said so. The problem is that those reports like the recent War College assesment paper on Iraq were met with the same "If it doesnt support our view, we arent going to read it. Facts be damned."

wrong. many u.s. administrations have tried to introduce change into the u.n. why do you think past u.s. administrations
withheld funding from the u.n. ? conservatives have been the loudest critics. they were imploring change when nobody was
listening. they saw the bloat, the monstrous bureacracy, the regulations that hamstrung effective practice. the iraq issue
will hopefully expedite this process because this failure was too destructive for their relevancy and prestige to continue as
usual.

the question is should the administration have been shackled in their ability to respond when faced with wide-scale and
institutional failure. would you continue to follow legal demands placed on your person when they failed to protect, prevent,
or manage wrongdoing ? look at the results blix was preparing to present in his final report versus the findings made by
dr. david kay in his october report 2003 to congress. we were doomed. the war college assessment dealt with a status
quo that was unacceptable. business as usual could not continue.

Of course the US tried to get the rest of the world's nations to behave as it would want. That is the beauty of the UN. It is the World and we are but a part and at 300m we are a small percentage of it.. We can control what goes on inside our boundaries but what gives us the right to do this inside the boundaries of other nations? We have veto power in the Security Counsel but must work to gain consensus to enact change or push an issue. Is this not how it should be among sovereign nations?

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: syzygy

Originally posted by: WinstonSmith]
The US signed on to the Charter. That binds us to it. If the US does not like it, it can work to have it changed, or withdraw. It has done neither. So, the US becomes a "rogue" state by it's own definition of scoffing at a law it agreeded to. That is the problem here. It is not a law that someone else made, and the US did NOT agree to follow. It agreed to. We pulled this political expediency crap with Pinochet, and the Shah. Now we do so, and claim some bizarre post facto morality argument for this invasion. Saddam was never a serious threat to anyone outside his borders since the last war, and many said so. The problem is that those reports like the recent War College assesment paper on Iraq were met with the same "If it doesnt support our view, we arent going to read it. Facts be damned."

wrong. many u.s. administrations have tried to introduce change into the u.n. why do you think past u.s. administrations
withheld funding from the u.n. ? conservatives have been the loudest critics. they were imploring change when nobody was
listening. they saw the bloat, the monstrous bureacracy, the regulations that hamstrung effective practice. the iraq issue
will hopefully expedite this process because this failure was too destructive for their relevancy and prestige to continue as
usual.

the question is should the administration have been shackled in their ability to respond when faced with wide-scale and
institutional failure. would you continue to follow legal demands placed on your person when they failed to protect, prevent,
or manage wrongdoing ? look at the results blix was preparing to present in his final report versus the findings made by
dr. david kay in his october report 2003 to congress. we were doomed. the war college assessment dealt with a status
quo that was unacceptable. business as usual could not continue.

The ends justify the means. The mind later can explain to itself why it acted with lust and hatred cause the law isn't perfect. Hitler thought the same way. They all do, mass killers. We make our own rules. It's the way of faithless cowards.