Point of information: Even if Hussein did have WMD, it would still be a crime. Wars of aggression are criminal - and the mere possession of WMD does not automatically consitute a threat that demands offensive action.

I'd say the reporting has been pretty thorough. If one wants to throw in the term ALL then I guess one can say no decision to go to war should ever be criticized because one can never know ALL the factors that went into it.


Let me go out on a limb here. I would say not attacking and occupying a country that is not a threat to you or your allies is better than attacking and occupying a country that is not a threat to you or your allies. I would go further. Opening the door to Al Qaeda type insurgents and suicide bombers and incurring sectarian civil war is worse than sitting tight and keeping Hussein boxed in and well inspected.

I know Mark Twain used to like posit the notion that rolling our of bed on one side and rolling out of bed on the other would cause an entirely different chain of events to follow which of course you couldn't predict. But relying on the kind of argument in politics can only lead to a kind of "who cares" nihilism. Why even enter the argument if it doesn't make any difference anyway?


Once again all I can really do is restate my above point. It is impossible to prove that any other message wouldn't have the same persuasive value so I guess we're all here just blowing smoke to no purpose.

I guess I don’t see how you conclude Iraq was no threat or was not involved with terrorists based on the above. “fewer” is not 0. How many CBW attack would you tolerate in the US?

And over and above all of this is the simple fact that the intel of 1998-2003 still pegged Iraq as having massive amounts of WMD. FORGET what Bush said and READ the intel. Read the testimony of Butler, Blix and even Ritter (1998 testimony before Congress).

The intel clearly showed Iraq as a threat to the US and our interests.

It really is a matter of degree. I am sure that almost every government in the world is "involved with" terrorists ways similar to the Iraqi regime's "involvement" with Al Qaeda. And for that matter, it is highly likely that the governments of some of our allies in the middle East are thus "involved with" Bin Laden's forces. This does not necessarily warrant war.

Secondly, it really is preposterous to spin theories out of the many muddled and contradictory reports that came out of Iraq in the years and months leading up to the war. The big picture has already been painted by intelligence specialists far more capable of evaluating this kind of information than anyone on this thread, and that is, Iraq was not substantially involved with al Qaeda. That, I would point out, only makes sense in view of the particular aims of the Ba'athist regime, by far the most important of which was to keep control of Iraq.

So we have, on the one hand, the more or less unanimous view of top-level intelligence analysts and a growing national consensus; we have on the other, torturous interpretations of confusing and uncertain sources by a few right wing ideologues bent on retroactive justification of the invasion of Iraq. Not being an expert oneself, one is nevertheless forced to conclude that the conjectured Iraqi-al Qaeda alliance is but one example the bizarre conspiracy theories that capture the imaginations of some people these days. We might as well debate whether Castro killed Kennedy as continue to hash this over.

Good grief, is anyone actually maintaining that Iraq was obtaining enriched uranium from Niger? And doesn't the Administration's willingness to tell that big lie suggest that they were willing to lie on this point, also?

My, my, my....the leaps of logic which liberals go to constantly amazes me. We could have all sorts of valid reasons for being in Iraq, but Bush critics will be there to deny them, and seek out any excuse to avoid debating them. Perhaps that's because they're worried they might actually be wrong? But, never mind, no one cares, they'd rather avoid the debate, thereby increasing the chances of the issue being repeated. And, to top it all off, to then have the temerity of accusing the other of being completely devoid of common sense? Baffling.....especially considering that I have repeatedly asked for, and repeatedly received no response, of ANY war, ANY time, from ANY country, from ANY administration in which full disclosure to the public was given regarding the reasons for the war prior to engaging in it. I think that absence speaks volumes about who's argument is lacking common sense, and, as you state, this thread is strong evidence of that.

Speaking of common sense, doesn't it strike anyone else here as a bit odd that Bush is simultaneously being accused of lying while also using his statements as the only evidence of what the reasons for going to war were? Either his statements are lies, or they are not, using your definition of lies. So, either stop using them to support further arguments, or stop accusing the administration of lying. You can't have it both ways...doing so would be, well, completely devoid of common sense.

While we're discussing unanswered questions, I had asked:



Which naturally went unaswered. Typical response, avoid the question, but throw out unsubstantiated innuendo...how very, well, liberal. I repeat that there are those out there who might actually believe that statements issued by politicians constitute the full and unabridged story on any issue...quite frankly, though, such a view is naive in the extreme, and leaves little room for debating any actual issues. This is probably particularly true in the ultimate issue of going to war, which is why I reiterate the question above regarding past history. Any here who do feel the political mill yields the true and unabridged story of the issue (any issue, really), please continue on. As I stated, clearly the nuances of foreign policy are beyond this group. Those who care to dabble in reality, however, might consider tackling the problem from a far more constructive framework.

This is an odd turn of logic that defies my best attempts to reconcile it with my otherwise easy to understand perception of you Wertz. Are you actually in favour of arming your society? After all, guns don't kill people, right? People do.

If a tyrant with a WMD is not a threat then what is? Would you care to live beside a known bully, safe in the knowledge that he owned a machine gun?

What good is a law that can't protect you? What possible difference does it make to a victim, dead, that the criminal, may, or may not face charges after the fact? When confronted with a credible threat, it is surely the best course of action to remove the threat. Even if it means breaking the law.

If wars of aggression are a crime, then the history of the human race dictates that all societies yet created by humanity are criminal for there are precious few nations on this planet which were not founded through warfare and invasion.

If we argue that the past should not dictate the present, then we must, as the human race, draw a line in the sand and say from this point forth no further nations may be created, save by democratic means. If that, ever so unlikely event were to happen, then just imagine what it would mean. People's like the Basque, the Kurds and the Palestinians would lose their claims to fight for statehood, whilst nations like Spain, Turkey and Israel would inevitably lose territory once their minorities began the process of democratic devalution. That might sound like a democratic paradise to some who despise the world for what it is, but in truth it would never work. It is a dystopian nightmare where established nations would be subject to the subversive elements of ethnic minorities and war would be the natural outcome.

Warfare as we've known it will always be with us. One way or another, groups of people will use what ever means they can to dominate others and what your refering to as 'criminal' is nothing so much as the human condition.

With regards to the current question at hand, GW Bush was most probably not misled by the intelligence. I doubt he even bothered to read it. He most likely based his decisions on the advice of those who surround him, coupled with a personal need to deal with Saddam Hussein.

And why should we spend so much time lamenting that? The job is done and there is nothing can be done by whining about it now. So what if the intel was cooked? Either impeach your President (not you personally Wertz) or support him until the next election.

Hobbes I think you must have missed the fact that it was DaytonRocker that made these statements - you know with the moderate and republican tags next to his name?

The real problem is exactly summed up by this sentence. You hear something that conflicts with your world view and you tune it out and blame it on "liberals". I could turn almost everything you just wrote in your post back on you. The funny part about this is that it wasn't a liberal that said this, not by any stretch of the imagination. I am liberal and I can assure you DR and I disagree on more than a few issues.

You have been stepping all over yourself this entire debate. You keep saying there were multiple reasons to go to war and we are all missing the point yet you haven't ever stopped to illuminate us and tell us what these reasons were.


Really? Then what are they Hobbes? Name three and let's discuss "valid".

There is a reason that the President now has a 32 percent approval rating and his numbers amongst Republicans are dropping every month and you are looking at it with DaytonRocker. He's clearly republican on almost every other issue. On this issue the layer of lies is so thick that all but the most devoted have a hard time believing them and still looking at their faces in the mirror each day.


What? It's pretty simple Hobbes, let me break it down for you.

Bush and his administration repeatedly stated to the American public and to the UN the reasons for going to war. This wasn't once or twice in a speech here and there it was every communication for months. Along with those reasons he revealed some proof that supported them.

We later discovered that proof was bogus and the situation was completely different. Further we later discovered that many parts of his own government completely disagreed with him, including organizations he said supported his reasons.

People aren't suggesting he lied about the reasons we went to war (except maybe you because you keep suggesting there were "other reasons" that you haven't shared with us) they are saying that he lied to support those reasons.

I really don't see what is so hard to comprehend there.


Once again slandering liberals. Might that mean that you don't have a decent argument so you have to resort to that? Oh and then there is the fact that DaytonRocker is not liberal.

So on to your question... I say what does it matter. Of course what the press secretary says is only one version of the story, but it is an important version of the story. It is the version of the story the White House wants to tell the American public. When we find out that is all based on lies then that means that the President lied to the American people. Pretty simple Hobbes.

Some people thought that the President lying about getting oral sex from an intern was a bad thing, I'd say that lying the American people into supporting a war that has killed tens of thousands is infinitely worse.


Gee Hobbes, I sure hope you aren't calling all of us stupid, equating us to the kids at the Thanksgiving table - because that would be against the rules you know.

I have an idea, why don't you start a topic on that subject so we can all be enlightened as to this "more constructive framework" and do our best to stay in it. It may be beyond us but we'll sure try.

That is because that was done, ad nausem, on multiple threads previously.



Yes, this is indeed a symptom of the message. However, that is a separate discussion from one involving any of the actual reasons for going to war.



Then they're not paying attention, as this has been documented.



Again, this is discussing the message, as opposed to the decision. The discussion on whether or not these constitute 'lies' has also been addressed ad nauseum. However, that discussion is also focused on the message as opposed to the decision. Am I the only one here concerned with why we might actually have gone to war? Apparently so, in which case, by all means, simply carry on. It strikes me, though, as something most of us should be interested in.



No, I am trying to point out that in the world of politics, and especially in the world of foreign relations, and most especially in foreign relations in an area with as many complex intertwined issues as the Middle East, statements are made all the time which are designed to achieve policy goals. Taking any of them at face value without trying to determine the motivations and desired end goal is indeed foolish. Is there really a disagreement on this?

As for calling anyone anything, note that my statement asks a question, and gives any responder the chance to include themselves in that group or not. Its intent was merely to point out the fallacy of taking political statements as the 'be all and end all' defintions of complex policy decisions, when all of human history points to the fallacy of that viewpoint.



If you look at the title, this thread is on that subject. All that I'm trying to do is point out that it appears that it is missing what I would think would be the major issues relating to it, focusing exclusively on the message as opposed to the decision. How can we know if Bush was misled by the Intelligence without discussing what the intelligence really was, how it was used, what decisions were made, why they were made, what the alternatives were, etc? Focusing on the message put forth as a result of those decisions bypasses the entire issue, IMHO. But the only response I get to pointing this out is that it is void of all common sense, when in fact both common sense and all of human history would indicate that my point is quite valid.

I think the answer to this question given the facts presented here can be pretty well summed up by saying that Bush wasn't misled by the intelligence, he took the parts of the intelligence that supported his policy and misled the American people.

And I'm not talking about a lone voice of dissent amongst the intelligence agencies, I'm talking about at least half of them saying these claims were bogus, that has all been presented thus far and has been confirmed at the highest levels by senior people in MI-6 and by the CIA head honcho in Europe. I'm talking about this very administration contradicting itself not two years before the war.

Furthermore, whether you like it or not the "message" is related to the intellligence debate because the people delivering the message were claiming things that simply weren't true - these things were according to the people that said them - based on the intelligence. Before a lot of the information we have today came out the only solid position you could hold is that our intelligence agencies simply got it wrong and Bush was making decisions based on what information he had. Now that we have the benefit of more information it comes back to what I said above and of course the famous quote from the Downing Street Memo - "the facts were being fixed around the policy." In other words he knew exactly what he was doing and it was deliberate.

Now what this debate isn't about Hobbes, is whether we are better off today without Hussein, whether pre-emptive attacks are a valid foreign policy, etc. If you are pleading with us to discuss that there are other active topics or you can always start your own.

Nor am I trying to debate those topics, unless such matters entered into the decision made in a significant way.



Without knowing exactly how and why the decision is made, it is difficult to make inferences on whether any particular piece of intelligence was given due weight, or not. It is almost always the case that those whose intelligence or input seems to have been disregarded would claim that theirs wasn't given sufficient value. Sometimes such claims are valid, other times they're not.



Again, without knowing more about the decision itself, it's difficult to draw such inferences. For example, there is another initial position...that there were a variety of factors involved, and that the intelligence or lack thereof on, for example, WMD, might have only played a minor role in the decision, thereby rendering counter opinions on that intelligence somewhat insignificant. Or, maybe more to the point...if they were fixed around the policy...why was that policy arrived at? Although there's plenty of speculation on that particular question, I don't think any of us knows.

If it's of any value, personally I think that much of the intelligence countering the WMD claims did come after the decision had likely been made. I don't think it was disregarded, but that it was simply not sufficient to change the decision, as that decision was based on other factors as well which were still valid, and also due to the fact that that path, once proceeded down, is difficult to reverse without other negative implications.

Was Bush misled by the intelligence?

Yes and no. Collecting intelligence inside any authoritarian regime is not easy, and Saddam’s was one of the most secretive in the world at the time. The only reason Unmovic was even let into Iraq for the first time in its (at the time) three-year existence was because of Anglo-American threats of regime change and the military build-up in Kuwait, which continued to report pretty much up to the last minute that Iraq was still not complying fully with the pile of UNSC resolutions by which it had already agreed to. So, there was a basis to believe that Saddam was hording weapons because he had a history of severe obfuscation, and weapons collection. It was up to the president to make that call, and he did so (IMO) because he believed it was in our security interest. It seems that Congress agreed with him as well, in spite of the fact that many are crying crocodile tears now.

And of course, UNSC resolution 1441 passed unanimously. The resolution stating that Iraq had failed to comply with the stack of resolutions requiring it to demonstrate that it had divested itself of WMD, stockpiles, delivery systems and development progams, and that it had one last chance to co-operate "immediately, unconditionally and actively" with Unmovic and IAEA or be confronted with "serious consequences." And I really don't think anyone believed that "serious consequences" meant more scientists in white coats coming in for still more inspections.

Everything is of course crystal clear with hindsight 20/20. Hindsight 20/20 indicates that Bush should have disregarded much of the reams of intelligence on Iraq but paid meticulous attention to a paragraph in one of his morning security briefings regarding Osama bin Laden one morning in 2001. No weapons were found. The fact that they were prepared for and searched for exhaustively would indicate that they were expected. The fact that Resolution 1441 passed unanymously would indicate the same. The history and pattern of collecting them and obfuscating inspectors would indicte the same. Remember that after the first Gulf war, when the inspectors went into Iraq, they discovered an extensive and sophisticated nuclear program that had not been declared to the IAEA, though they made inspections, it had been developed right under their nose. Saddam was about 6 months away from having a nuclear weapon. The outcome of his invasion might have been significantly different if he had just waited those few short months to start trying to take over the middle east.

Ok I think I'm about done with this game

You are essentially asking us to debate the reasons why the decision was made yet just a few sentences earlier you said you don't want to talk about things like whether we are better off without Hussein and the concept of pre-emptive strikes. So essentially you are asking us to read Bush's mind which is clearly impossible.

The reports are here in this thread Hobbes, as much of the information as the public will probably ever see anyway, and they clearly state that this was not a "slam dunk" nor were even a majority of the intelligence outlets convinced that Hussein was a threat. We have statements from people who were in the thick of this saying that "the facts were being fixed around the policy."

What that means is that for whatever reason Bush wanted to invade Iraq and he was just looking for an excuse to do so. That means he wasn't misled by the intelligence, it means he used the intelligence to mislead people.

Furthermore, the message communicated to the American public and to the UN was that Iraq was a threat due to WMD. This was clearly false and much of the intelligence showed this, ergo Bush lied to the American people as well.

Just a note, according to Scott Ritter the reason inspections broke down in 1998 was because our intelligence was using inspectors to supply bombing targets for the US air force. As far as Saddam not living up to UN resolutions that is hardly justification for an invasion. If it were we would have invaded Israel long ago. The important point is that Blix had a free hand in being able to Inspect Iraq for WMDs and had overflights and human intelligence to point to possible places of hiding for the inspectors. As far as the congress caving on giving him war powers a lot of democrats opposed that bill including a majority of democrats in the House. Many who voted for it felt they had been misled in their understanding of the provisions that would trigger an invasion and certainly there was later evidence that key intelligence had been withheld.


Hindsight wasn't needed. Foresight would have told him curveball, the aluminum tubing and other bogus intelligence that he seized on were of no value. A little objectivity would have gone a long way. Instead the intelligence was "fixed" to pursue a preexisting invasion agenda. That seems pretty clear at this point. We now have a former CIA agent saying he received information from the Iraqi Foreign Minister that there was no on going WMD program and being told by a representative of the BA that WMDs were no longer the issue. Regime change was.

We have reports from very early in this administration (O'neill, Clarke) that the removal of Saddam was the focus and yet admissions from both Powell and Rice that Hussein was not a present threat to the US. 911 seems to have thrown the "get Saddam" engine into high gear and he was going to be out of there WMDs or no WMDs, terrorist cooperation or no terrorist cooperation. As to dividing up the pie of reasons my guess is probably not much better than anyone elses. I would guess principally PNAC, a need for ports in that strategic region, direct access to oil resources and no doubt we had some unfinished business from Gulf 1 along with a lot of misplaced irrational fears engendered by 911.

In fact, I am in favor of the right to bear arms and have previously argued that the Second Amendment should itself be amended to make the individual right to bear arms explicit.


Ideally, no. But if I did happen to live beside a known bully that owned a machine gun, I would not consider it my inherent right to march next door and preemptively blow his or her brains out. Apparently, you would - and the Bush administration obviously does. Though, I hasten to add, the bully in this case didn't have a machine gun. It doesn't look like he even had a squirt gun. And I'm fairly certain that we knew it. That's what this thread is about.


There was never substantial evidence that Saddam Hussein was a credible threat. There wasn't even substantial intelligence that Saddam Hussein was a credible threat. ("This is the best that we've got?") Three years after the invasion, there is still no substantial evidence that Saddam Hussein was a credible threat - and overwhelming evidence that he was not.


I'm not discussing human nature here, I'm citing international law. There's no "if" about wars of aggression being criminal. Wars of aggression are criminal. Never mind the charges of torture and suborning torture through rendition, a war of aggression is itself a criminal act as defined by the UN War Crimes Tribunal. It is also a violation of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, of the Constitution of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg, and of the UN Charter. Invading Iraq specifically is a violation of Security Council Resolutions 687 and 1441. I'm not describing wars of aggression as crimes on some moral or theoretical basis, I am accurately defining them as crimes on a legal basis.

You can argue territorial imperatives, historical inevitability, and the human condition until you're blue in the face. Some of us believe that humankind can aim higher. Some of us believe that this is the reason we make laws. I could as easily argue that murder, rape, and child molestation will always be with us as you do that warfare will always be with us. Should we assume that the only course of action is to abandon law altogether and dismiss the rape and murder of a child as part of "the human condition"? Not in my world, moif - and it defies my best attempts to reconcile it with my otherwise easy to understand perception of you.


You are no doubt right. This means, of course, that the US didn't even rape and murder that child because we thought it was a threat, but simply because we wanted to. That's what you think we should "support until the next election"? No, thanks.

Waging aggressive warfare may be the human condition, but letting that happen - with or without cooked intelligence - is the human tragedy.

No, if you recall, I said...



Interestingly, you had stated previously....



I'm curious, exactly why would those issues be off the table, if they were indeed (as they certainly were) related to the decision to go to war? You can't answer the question of this debate, namely Was Bush Misled by the Intelligence?, without examing ALL of the intelligence, on ALL of the factors leading up to the decision. Restricting this to one aspect, then, would be refusing to allow any input that might contradict with a certain, preconceived notion. Wasn't this pretty much what I had been accused of here?:



So, what this all boils down, which is also what I have been trying to point out since before the war even started, is that the decision to invade Iraq almost certainly involved a variety of factors. Pointing out flaws in one of them and then drawing any definitive conclusions about the decision simply isn't logically possible. If anyone wants to know whether or not Bush was misled by the intelligence, the only possible way to evaluate that is to look at all the intelligence on all the aspects that entered into that decision. Without that, one can't answer the question: Were there good reasons not to change the decision, given any of the intelligence on WMD indicated in this thread? If one can't answer that, then one can't answer whether or not Bush was misled by the intelligence.

To draw an example, if factors w, x, y, and z were used to arrive at a decision, and somewhere down the line, information indicating that perhaps factor w wasn't as strong a factor as initially thought, does that mean the decision should be changed? How can that be answered without knowing what x, y, and z were, how strong of a factor they were in the decision, and how strong the evidence on them was? The answer is, it can't. Claiming that it could would be, well, being misled by the intelligence.

Curveball, aluminum tubing and Nigerian yellow cake were far from the only pieces of intelligence. This is a common bromide, and an erroneous one. Repeat it three times and it's true! The analysis of prewar intelligence alone is over 200 pages long. If you look at the chronologies attached in the link I supplied earlier, you will see a list of sanctioned procurements during this time.

There seems to be some egregious and irreconcilable collective amnesia on this issue. Saddam had been considered a threat for over a decade. After 911, no politician wanted to appear “soft”, to included Congress which gave Bush approval to the invasion.

Anti-aircraft SAMs had gained technological accuracy through imports during a time in which Saddam was under strict sanction. One could conclude from this that Saddam decided to put all of his energy and funds into anti-aircraft SAM technology rather than WMD. But, then, he built new palaces too during this time. So, one would have to conclude that Saddam placed all of his energy and funds into palaces and anti-aircraft technology, but not WMD, though no inspectors had set a foot into Iraq for years, and though he had made use of WMD in the past and had a history of surreptitious development of such weapons.

Now, would I have made the same decision? Probably not. But, I wouldn't have had us patrolling no fly zones over Iraq for ten years either, nor would I have agreed with a host of other military policies. That doesn't mean I think the former president was lying about the perceived threat, or "fixing" intelligence. And I am certain there were conflicting intelligence reports during that time as well, as the intel under such conditions is very hard to gather. It's a judgement call, like I said before.



Powell and Rice are taken out of context (can you provide a quote AND original source to back this?). I did find something Powell said in February 2001 :

It doesn't sound like he thinks Saddam doesn't have WMD, and it certainly doesn't sound like he doesn't view Saddam to be a threat. Now, taken completely out of context he says Saddam doesn't threaten the US, true. Need I supply the Carter quote that has been American policy since the 1970s? Threats to the Gulf are considered threats to the US.

Remember that when this speech (as well as others quoted out of context) was given, in early 2001, there was a push to end sanctions. It was Powell's job to push for sanctions and explain that they were working. If there were a push to cut police forces down in California, and the chief of police made a press statement saying that the police were necessary and doing their jobs, would this mean he is a liar if there is any crime on the streets?

Again there is evidence Iraq had connections with terrorists including AQ. IMO he hated the US enough to support anyone who hated us as well – the well known “Enemy of my Enemy ……. Theory holds here in spades.

I have no clue what you mean by “muddled reports” out of Iraq before the war. I have posted the sworn testimony of UN inspectors. If you disagree please say WHY they were all wrong. And since Iraq admitted to most of what was alleged I fail to see how you conclude this was “muddled”. 12,000 pages details their WMD programs. EVERY single inspector in Iraq up to 2003 said they retained massive stockpiles of WMD so if you have new data please post it here. Tell us what for example the statement below by Butler, who headed the group that uncovered most of Iraq’s WMD program was wrong. CLEARLY in 2003 this was the intel that indicated that Iraq, under UN sanction for over 10 years and having developed and used WMD as well as invading a neighbor was a danger to the US, or interests, and the region.

As Butler said in 1998:

Iraq's record on biological weapons is "pathetic," Butler said. "For
four and a half years Iraq flatly denied having any. When we
confronted them with compelling evidence to the contrary they then
admitted that they had a program, but sought to minimize its nature
and extent."

"The fact is that Iraq created a quantity and quality of weapons of
mass destruction that, when one thinks of the size of the industrial
base, etc., was virtually unique, breathtaking in its scope and its
danger to its region and population beyond," Butler said.

Fair enough.


Indeed it is, and as yet no one here has managed to point to anything conclusive in this regard.

In point of fact, whilst there is no evidence to prove Saddam Hussein had WMD's neither is there evidence to prove he didn't. What there is however is plenty of circumstantial evidence that Iraq moved its most deadly weapons, weapons which were never accounted for, to Syria prior to the attack. Usually this observation is countered with the question; "If Saddam had WMD's, then why didn't he use them on US troops?"

The obvious answer is, because he would not gain anything from doing that. His WMD's were never intended for use against the USA. They were to defend him against his regional enemies. By not using his WMD's Saddam Hussein was playing his last card and his continued survival to date demonstrates how cool his game really is.

You can tell me he didn't have WMD's until you are blue in the face, but you can't tell me that based on any evidence. Only on a lack of evidence which to you is apparently enough. For me, when dealing with a man like Hussein, I require more than just a lack of evidence because I've been watching him kill innocent people for as long as I can remember.

Remember Halabja? Weighing Saddam Hussein's carreer against the lack of evidence tips the balance against Saddam Hussein. Whether or not he had WMD's at the moment of inspection means nothing. It only means nothing was found at that point in time.

The same is now true for Iran and GW Bush must make a new decision with regards to that country's nuclear ambitions. Does Iran intend to build nuclear weapons?
Of course it does... but we can't prove that.

Does this lack of proof mean we shouldn't act? Why? What is more important? Our survival, or international laws our enemies do not even follow?

Was GW Bush misled by the intelligence? No he wasn't. But he was compelled to act to get rid of the threat Saddam Hussein would continue to pose for every single day he remained in power. In order to do that I believe GW Bush chose what to believe.

Like you I was appalled by that but since then I've come to realise that he had no other choice if the world was to be rid of Saddam Hussein and the threat he posed... indeed, still poses and will continue to pose for as long as he is still alive.


Tell that to the people of Halabja. Tell them that International Law can protect them.

There is no substantial evidence that Iran poses a threat to Israel, or to Europe, or to the USA either. There's just a whole load of crazy people making threatening noises at us with the resources of an oil rich country behind them.

You have the right to defend yourself, but International Law forbids you to attack first, so how will you defend yourself? Its easy. Rule Nr 1 of the human race. You ignore the law and use the first and best excuse to kill them first!

Given the right motivation, I guarantee you would pull the trigger first because thats human nature.

If you feel bad about that, if the USA feels bad about that, then I suggest you all abdicate your position as global super power and leave the subsequent vacancy for the Chinese, the Iranians, and the Russians to fill.


If there is such overwhelming evidence that Saddam Hussein was not a threat, then I'd love to see it. As far as I am concerned, the man is still a threat.
To date, I've not seen anything to prove either argument, for or against, and my opinion is therefore based on Saddam Hussein's entire carreer and the simple observation that that career has almost been ended.


So, all pre-emptive war, regardless of cause, context or circumstances is equal to raping a child?

Thats ridiculous. Thats like saying we can never defend ourselves until we are attacked. That we must sit and wait until a threat has been carried out before we react to it.
That I must sit and wait for the maniac with a machine gun to open fire before I retaliate.

I'll ask again, what good is the UN War Crimes Tribunal to us here and now? By its very nature it is a body designed to deal with the aftermath of warfare.

What good is Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions if our enemies don't honour it?

What good is the UN Charter if its decisions are easily circumvented by tyrants with oil money?

What good is the Security Council if it can't protect us?




And how are you going to stop it?

With the law? What law? How is the law going to stop a rogue nation from bringing a nuclear weapon into Denmark, or the USA? Do you know how easy it is to do that? People have been smuggling thousands of tons of drugs into the USA for decades already. No one inspects the multitude of trucks which enter Denmark. The EU did away with our border patrols. We are wide open to attack.

How many nuclear weapons do you think are already buried under privately owned houses in the major cities of the USA?

Is that paranoia? Am I wrong in thinking the best way to hit the USA is not by direct military attack but by sneaking WMD's through the back door. Osama Bin Laden has already given an advance warning that two major attacks on US soil are imminent!

Is there substantial evidence that Osama Bin Laden is a credible threat?


So...

There you are. You have a range of enemy's and options. What do you do? Do you play by the rules and get hit with WMD's? or do you abandon your principles and do what ever it takes to survive?

If your going to fight an enemy who doesn't play by the rules, then why follow them yourself? To do so is to handicap yourself.
Is it to prove to yourself that your the better person? If so, why do you need to prove that to yourself?

You say your in favour of bearing arms Wertz. May I ask you, whats the point if, when the need arises, your not prepared to fire first?

There is no such thing as international law when your dead.

You do realize this train of thought will repeat itself in a few weeks when the security council gets handed the referral from the IAEA?

Also note as the idea of pre-emtively striking becomes more accepted and mainstream we might see further uses (abuses?) of justification to warrant the means.

I think what makes Mr. Bush dangerous is that he knows he is on a finite timeframe to get this war going. Six months from now, we will be debating why George ignored John Negroponte's assessment and reframe the the same thread. Was Bush mislead once again? It is sad really. I think the evidence of premeditated intent is obvious enough. I feel our efforts would be best used to construct a war crimes case against the entire cabinet once they have left power.

With regard to Powell and Rice expressing confidence in Saddam's lack of danger to the US before 911 MPP asked this:


Powell Feb. 24, 2001
Powells Iraq remarks in Egypt


Comments from Rice and Powell about Iraq before 911
Rice July 29, 2001


And Powell from the same link in May 15 2001




I'm no longer willing to pour through long pdfs that people throw at me as an answer. If you have specific examples of evidence that was so credible and so suggestive of imminent danger that it warranted an invasion rather than a continuation of the on going inspections then I would be interested in seeing it. But only specifics examples, not broad sweeping sources. I'm not a professional academic. I don't think there are any examples and I think that leaves us with the strongly believable hypothesis that invasion was the pre-existing agenda, wmds or no wmds. I base this on:
1. People like O'neil and Clarke who gave testimony that a strong focus on Iraq and an invasion agenda preceded 911.

2. The overwhelming presence of the invasion supporting PNAC contingent in positions of power, starting with Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz.

3. The cherry picking (fixing) of questionable evidence and sources and giving it an agenda supporting interpretation.

4. Both off the record and on the record comments that the intelligence process was being hijacked to reach a forgone conclusion.

5. The hostility to the inspection process evinced by both Cheney and Rumsfeld.

6. Frank admission from a BA representative, when confronted with contrary evidence, that it was not about WMDs but about regime change.

The link above wasn't the original. I found it though. Thanks.

From my perspective, this pretty much demonstrates what I mentioned about pushing for continued sanctions. In order to do so, and enact the "smart sanctions" that they hoped would alleviate suffering but also wanted to demonstrate that the sanctions were effective and shouldn't be removed. That doesn't mean they didn't consider Saddam to be a threat. Before Rice said this, the very same transcript, she said this:

Kind of presents a larger picture than the single sentence.



Understood. I'll remind you that I posted that link a while back for you to peruse on the stacking the deck thread . My only point is, there is a lot there. Much of it was analyzed and found to be false after the invasion. Intelligence under the conditions of a closed and secretive regime like Iraq, I assume, is kind of like a puzzle. You won't see all of the pieces, only a few. Some won't fit, and they are discarded (or should be), and from that the overall picture is attempted to ascertain. I think most of the problems stemmed from the dearth in trustworthy human intelligence. Be that as it may, the above link of the Senate Report on Intelligence comes to the conclusion that there is much blame to go around for the CIA, State Department, Defense intelligence, ect. Obviously there was no information suggestive of compelling imminent danger. With this I agree, as I said I don't agree with the action. That doesn't mean I think he fixed the intelligence. Which, incidentally, is the same conclusion that the Senate committee also came to in my link above.

I really don’t have much else to say on this issue. It doesn’t surprise me that agents are coming out now with claims of “I told him so…” Next to the books in the store of “How Bush lied about WMD” there are books “How Bush Ignored signs of 911.” I just have to shake my head. Congress saw virtually the same intelligence when they approved the move. Paragraph number 5,000 Nigeria yellow-cake wasn’t the deciding factor, it was the big picture that mattered. Now that things didn’t go well parties are trying to escape responsibility by feigning ignorance, when I am virtually certain would have acted the same after 911 (unless Ralph Nader or Carter were the presidents). Look at the last fifteen years or so, not simply the last five. This doesn’t all come down to one evil administration, though the concept is good for selling books and booking speaking engagements.

About seven years ago I was a member of FOX debate forums. At the time, I really didn’t like Clinton. He was my reason for being there to vent, in fact. I found that the assertions were so unfounded and ridiculous I became a virtual online Clinton advocate. I didn’t want to be, but I couldn’t sit back and read illogical unfounded accusations. Not saying that this thread is full of them, specifically I’d say this thread is pretty fair, I’m simply bringing up the general pattern I’ve been seeing. I have followed the Iraq issue much more closely than most through the years because I had a vested interest in knowing. My husband flew over the place for quite a while. I've seen a lot of ostensible "surprising new information" that should have been common knowledge as I'd read it through many times through the years.

I came to this forum because I didn’t like Bush (still don’t), and I find myself generally placed in the same position as I was seven years ago. The Senate Committee analyzed the intelligence and found it lacking. They interviewed all of these individuals who are writing books that they “knew” now, and they still came to the conclusion that there was a lot of blame to go around. Not Bush only, or even primarily, or even heavily, “cherry picking”.

Bottom line, Congress agreed that means democratic voters are responsible. Regime change has been official national policy since Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act. I wish I had a dime for every time I heard "Bush should have finished the job in Iraq", "Now Clinton has to finish Bush's job", ect...ect....I can't help but wonder how many of these very same people are now the ones swearing that all of this is the work of one Doctor Evil Bush and his associates? It would be nice and much more productive, if as much concentration and energy was expended on actually fixing the problems.

'Nuf said.

Ah, please, what are you trying to do, re-write history? All of this has been evaluated by experts far more capable of weighing it than anyone on this thread, and the conclusion was that there was no credible evidence, either before the war or now, either that Iraq possessed any weapons of mass destruction or that it was substantially cooperating with Al Qaeda. If you want people to change their minds about that, go get yourself a soapbox, take it Central Park, and wave your purported evidence around. But I very much doubt that you'll get very many people to stop and listen to you.

One is not an expert in the evaluation of these things, but one does tend to trust the interpretation of those who are expert over the theories of right-wing ideologues bent on retroactive justification of the war. In any case, there is no point in debating this point here, since there has already been a national debate about it and, precisely because the experts would not back the Administration up, your side lost.

I won't go on at much length here because this is starting to stray from the topic - and we seem to agree that the intelligence, cooked or otherwise, was irrelevant to the illegal invasion of Iraq.


Exactly - thanks. You have just argued that Hussein posed no immediate threat to the US and that we are, therefore - by definition - international war criminals. I agree entirely.


Or you wait until there is evidence of a credible threat and act lawfully in your defense.


In that both are unlawful, absolutely. Yes.


Not in the least. But the bully next door simply owning a machine gun is not enough. If I saw that bully leaving his house with his Uzi and entering my front gate, I'd have every right to meet him with my Sig 228 9mm and tell him to drop his weapon. As you've already admitted, the bully in question had no machine gun capable of hitting the US - and he had certainly not left his house and marched into the front yard of America. We are the bullies in your analogy, moif, not Hussein.

Your questions about international law are valid - as is your concern about porous borders and nuclear weapons (though I hasten to add that neither Iraq nor Iran have nuclear weapons), but they belong in a different thread.

In this thread, I can but agree with you. The intelligence was immaterial. The Bush administration was going to do whatever it wanted, with or without credible intelligence - and that's exactly what they did, breaking every international agreement in existence in the process. The United States, moif, is the rogue nation that you should be fearing. We have nukes - and we may well be using them unless this administration is stopped. What are you prepared to do about the very real threat of America?

Come on please don’t insult my intelligence here. This is not “sound bite” news. The people I quoted ARE the experts and they were THERE and they testified to the facts – which by the way IS the Intel available in 2003.

So if you have some data to refute what I posted – esp. any available in 2003 please post it rather than attacking me personally. There is nothing “purported” about what I posted. But your statements are typical of the nonsense from the left and fools like Teddy K who thing it possible to bury thousands of pages of evidence and years of work with simple (and stupid) statements like “Iraq never had WMD”.

Nothing could be more ludicrously wrong than that. And if we get back to the thread. PLEASE show me your expert data from 2002-03 since that is what we are discussing here.

You're right, Mrs. Pigpen. While we do go on about Bush in this forum, though, there are many of us who still remember that Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress gave this man carte blanche to invade Iraq.

Curmudgeon and I contacted our Senators and Congressman urging them not to go to war, obviously to no avail. And we have not excused the Congress from their role in this invasion.

But while the members of Congress share the responsibility for invading a country that had not attacked us and was not threatening us, it required the Chief Executive to actually send the troops to invade. And while I blame Congress for not insisting that they remain in the loop, constitutionally, by claiming their power as a body to declare war if there was going to be a war, I blame George Walker Bush for "rushing in" where his father George Herbert Walker Bush "feared to tread," and then for not having the grace or humility to acknowledge his mistakes until far later when it was moot.

It was the Bush administration, according to Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill and many others, that was dying to connect Iraq to the events of 9/11/2001, to the point of sending back collaborative reports to be redone by the State Department, CIA, and FBI because no evidence could be found. In criminal court such an effort to find a person guilty to the point of disregarding other evidence would be called a "malicious prosecution," yet it was done.

Saddam Hussein was a monster to his own people. The order he imposed was cruel. In reply, western countries imposed an embargo on Iraq, and who did it hurt? Not Saddam.

Yes, in many cases, this was the fault of Congress as well. As a dictator, all you have to do is oppose Communism and cooperate with the United States in fighting it, and it is all too easy for the U.S. to wink at your barbarism.

But we look at the Victory Poster Boy landing on the deck of the U.S.S. Lincoln like a fighter pilot and then taking the podium under the banner, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, and we know for a fact that Bush was all too ready to wear the laurel wreath on behalf of (or in spite of) the people of the United States. Twenty-five hundred deaths and approximately 17,500 injuries later, it doesn't look like it was such a great victory. We're all sadder but wiser about the idea of waging war and occupation in a culture that is different from ours, where they appear to hate the occupiers as much as they did their dictator.

So while Bush is not exclusively to blame for cherrypicking the intelligence and running with it--EDIT: Yes, he actually was; Congress was to blame for not questioning it--he and his administration performed the deed based on what he wanted to believe vs. the body of intelligence the agencies had. To this day there are still people who believe that Iraq was connected to the 9/11 attacks, and it is President George Walker Bush who did not and does not discourage this belief. He is willing to perpetuate misconceptions if they are to his advantage, even as he willingly took dubious intelligence and ran with it to get us into this unfortunate, undeclared war.

Weeeeelllll... I'd have said that the possibility of Iraq attacking Saudi Arabia was the actual threat against the USA, and this is the threat I still think exists, even today... in fact, given Iran's meteoric rise in regional power, sans Saddam Hussein, I'd say this is actually still a threat.


Ahh... yes... but.. what if you can't raise enough evidence? What if the threat is credible to you, but you can't prove it to other people?

Then you have to either live with the threat hanging over your head, fake some proof, or you have to allow yourself to be misled by 'the intelligence'.


How is America a threat to Denmark?

I understand the rest of your point, but not this question...

So, okay, GW Bush allowed himself to be misled by the fake evidence to get what he wanted... but he did that to get rid of a perceived threat in the Middle East and by doing so, he not only helped out the some what ungrateful people of Iraq, but he also helped out his allies, the some what ungrateful people of Europe.

But, okay, you've asked an interesting question, and I admit, it has crossed my mind that Denmark's best bet in this post 9/11 world might possibly be to start a secret nuclear weapons programme of its own (not likely to happen since Denmark considers itself a nuclear free zone) but a threat from the US was not an aspect I had when considering Denmarks enemies.

For me, the greatest possible threat from the USA comes from the opposition to GW Bush. As Gary Brecher has pointed out, the people of the USA are not always rational. They got rid of GHW Bush after he gave them the greatest US military victory since 1945, but elected to retain his son despite the latter's poor record in Iraq. That irrational choice was not made without exterior context of course, but the point is valid nonethless. If the people of the USA are so fickle as to disregard the winning of their wars as politically significant then the real threat to Denmark, or any where else in the world, comes not from the aggressive tendencies of GW Bush, which will always be constrained by simple logistics if by no other means, but rather the pacifist indifference of the American electorate that would rather the USA, for all its strength and authority, did nothing.

If the most powerful nation in the west does nothing and allows men like Saddam Hussein to act with impunity, THEN we in the west face a very serious threat indeed. This is why Saddam Hussein is still a threat.

There is something else as well. If GW Bush did allow himself to be misled by the (fake?) intelligence, then how does one explain the many world leaders who, whether they were in favour of attacking Iraq or not, also believed he same intelligence?
After all, even the French believed Iraq had WMD's. Why?

Obviously Saddam Hussein was a threat, but he was a threat in such a way that many people would rather turn the other cheek than bring him to book. There is that common slogan, 'no blood for oil'

...but if not for oil then what? Oil is the blood of the western world. Without it, and the regions that produce it, the entire industrial economy is under a severe threat.

Oil is the physical embodiment of 'American freedom' because its the oil thats given you Americans the strength to build the nation you have today. Without that oil you could never have won the second world war (and I'd not have been born, because my Mother would never have been able to travel to Denmark to meet my Father).
Every thing we have today and take for granted, stems, ultimately from a society that requires energy and oil is the best form of energy we have. Its such an important strategic resource that to not go to war to defend it is to surrender outright. And consider this. What happens if the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia falls and the USA finds itself facing a Middle east dominated by Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood?

Will international law protect us from that threat? The world as we know it will end and the Islamic fundamentalist agenda will have broken the western world unless the USA and its allies take immediete steps to destroy the threat and control the oil.

GW Bush knows this. In fact I think the whole world knows this which is why so many other western leaders agreed that Saddam Hussein was a threat prior to the war, but most people are either too scared by the impending nightmare to do anything about it (its much easier to agree with the USA, then sit on the fence and avoid the hardship of fighting for your freedom)

...or, as is the case with many on the left (who look upon this New World Order as being something desirable since it might possibly see an end to the hated US imperialism they've been raging against for decades) they don't consider Islam to be such a threat.

In other words, I believe that not only did GW Bush know the intel was directly misleading, but so too did most of the rest of the world.

You know that I thought of when I first read this moif? What if you can hear voices in your head but others can't hear them? The answer, clearly, is that you are insane.

That is much the same answer here. If the threat is credible to you then you will have evidence to back it up, period. In order for the threat to be credible by definition you must have evidence to back it up, there is no other way for it to be credible.

It just surprises me that you keep arguing that the threat was credible when you argue just a few sentences later that the war was primarily about oil. You can't say the WMD threat was credible on the one hand and thhen posit that the war was about oil on the other, just doesn't fit together.


Islam itself is not a threat Moif, it is the extremist teachings that are a threat. Of course that is pretty much an off topic discussion for this thread. I will state that I'd really like to see people stop attributing things to "the left" that simply aren't true. There certainly is a progressive/liberal component that are philosophically pacifists, but these people are not anywhere close to a majority of those that call themselves liberals or Democrats. In fact out of thousands of members here on I'm aware of one pacifist, Quarkhead. You quickly forget that many of the same people speaking out against Iraq supported what we did in Afghanistan.


Iraq attacking Saudi Arabia? That is ludicrous, do you have something to back that up at all?

And you've identified yet another problem with the login of removing Hussein as well - increasing Iran's power in the region. Iran has always been a much bigger threat to the region and to our interests there than Iraq ever was. So you remove one of the checks on that power and that makes sense how?

You are correct in your reply, since history backs you up.

When General Bond was told there was a credible threat from Japan against Singapore, he dismissed the notion, much as you describe, he saw no evidence that the Japanese military would be able to destroy the Royal Navy battleships which guarded the city or that the IJA would be able to mount a successful cross land invasion to take Singapore from the rear.

His intelligence people knew the risk was real and tried to make the case to prove it, but they were not able to. On the day after the attack on Pearl Harbour, the British Commander at Singapore, Lt Gen Percival learned just how 'insane' the notion of a Japanese attack was and by 15th February, Singapore fell to a Japanese force, inferior in numbers to the British garrison. Churchill described the loss of Singapore as the greatest capitulation in British military history.

If you look around the history section of your book shelf (or local library if your not into history books) you'll probably find more examples of people being considered 'insane' because they could see a threat they could not prove existed.

Recent European history is crammed with such examples. The Jews of Europe for instance knew full well what was coming and tried desperately to avoid it. Many tried to flee to the USA, but the borders were closed to them. In desperation many sent their children out of Germany. The UK accepted 10,000, the USA, a mere 1,000.
They were the lucky ones. They survived, as orphans.

If your paying attention to whats going on in Iran these days, you might have noted that the Iranian clerics have recently begun to talk of nuking Israel out of existence. Rafsanjani, who is often described as a 'moderate' has noted that the nuclear destruction of Israel would wipe out the Jews, but a Jewish counter strike would have only a passing effect on Islam.

Is it 'insane' to take note of this threat? No.
Can I prove it will happen? No.

Consider this, there are six million or so Jews in Israel. Is it 'insane' to act pre-emptively to counter a threat that might save the lives of six million Jews... or should we appease those who make such threats in return for 'peace in our time'?

If you want to look closer to home, ask yourself how people in the US intelligence community, on Sept 10th, 2001, treated the notion that there was an imminent attack by Islamic terrorists on the US mainland...

'Insane?'

Sure.

Wrong?




Of course it does.

The threat, which was shrouded in deliberate misinformation by both sides, consisted of more than one possible danger. Tony Blair made the claim Saddam Hussein was able to hit targets in Europe within 45 minutes (and that was what prompted my initial support for the war) but the truth is really that Saddam Hussein was a threat to Saudi Arabia. This was after all why the US military had troops in that country (which in turn was what got Osama Bin Laden all upset).

The real threat to the USA was a possible attack by Saddam Hussein's forces, possibly in connection with terrorist allies, probably using WMD's against Saudi Arabia.

The danger, or should I say, the uncertainty surrounding the danger of such an attack lay in the fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not a trust worthy ally. The USA could not afford to fight both the Iraqi's and the Saudi's at the same time. If Hussein had attacked Saudi Arabia in conjunction with a Saudi uprising, then the USA would have no option but to withdraw and lose a vital oil resource.

The best purely military option for the west would be to invade Saudi Arabia and ethnically cleanse it, like the Romans might have done, but to even suggest such a course of action in this day and age is outrageously unacceptable. So what is the alternative?
To protect the western worlds strategic interest in the oil of the middle east, the USA launched a pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein and simply removed him from the equation. This means that the US military presence is out of Saudi Arabia which lessens the pressure on the US allies there and keeps the oil flowing.

It also retains a US military presence in the region whilst putting more pressure on Iran.

Geo-politics 101.

All the Bush administration needed was a credible pretext and Saddam Hussein gave them that by refusing to fully disclose the state of his WMD arsenal. Its worth noting, that even to this day we do not know what became of all Iraq's stockpiles of WMD's.



Yeah? Whats the difference?


I'm sorry CJ, but when I referred to 'the left', I mean the real left, not that middle of the road lot you have in the USA. I'm not talking about the US Democrat Party, which by European standards is a conservative party.

I'm talking about the Socialist and 'Communist Light' party's which dominate the European political landscape. The people who marched in Europe's streets, under red banners on May 1st.

...and these people are certainly not pacifists. For all their rhetoric and moral arguments regarding the far right or US imperialism, the European left is violent.

What I said was, 'they' welcomed the rise of Islam because they do not consider it a threat. 'They' see it as a new counter weight, an ally to assist and strengthen Europe against the USA. 'They' being the socialist elements of the EU who have deliberately been allowing millions of Muslims into Europe in order to strengthen Europe's geo-political ties to the rest of Eurasia.

If you want to know more about this look closer at who in Europe is urging for Turkey's inclusion into the EU.


Only history.

Do you deny this was a credible threat? If you do, perhaps you know of another reason why the USA had so many troops in Saudi Arabia?


Your question answers itself.

Iran was always a threat and the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam Hussein didn't change that or make Iran more or less of a threat. All thats really changed since 2002 is Iran is now in an even tighter geo-political situation with US military assets on two flanks.

As you can see for yourself, Iran is feeling the pressure since its becoming more desperate and more belligerent as a result and started to make empty threats against Israel in the hope that such angry rhetoric will make west back down by causing the American population to flinch.

A tactic that has already worked so well on Europe where people are terrified of another 'US war'.


edited to add:

Irans threats stop being empty once they build enough nuclear weapons to launch a strike against Israel.