Well well well.....

[horvendile]

when I need advice on dealing with gay guys, I'll listen to you.

Wow. That was probably the most unpleasant thing I've read here for some time.

(Apart from some things about Arabs (not said by Vince!), come to think of it.)

 

[pascal]

when I need advice on dealing with gay guys, I'll listen to you.

Congratulations Vince. You are surpassing yourself.

STILL NO WMD
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3051963.stm

 

[RussSchultz]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/09/sprj.irq.main/index.html

Maybe there is a tie between Iraq and Al Qaeda. I guess we'll find out now that we've got the Iraqi operative who allegedly met with Atta.

Wow. Apparently, according to the CNN 'gallery' of the deck of cards, the US has every member in custody, except Saddam, Uday, and Qusayn (and maybe Chemical Ali--nobody know where he is).

Looks like our decapitation strikes weren't terribly useful.

 

[Deepak]

I am surprised CIA is yet to capture Saddam/Uday etc, it is such a resourseful agency with worldwide network and with a budget which put to shame many countries' defence budget.

 

[RussSchultz]

I am surprised CIA is yet to capture Saddam/Uday etc, it is such a resourseful agency with worldwide network and with a budget which put to shame many countries' defence budget.

They're just people, not super humans. If I had a million dollars cash and a percentage of a population that wanted me hidden, I could disappear also.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I am surprised CIA is yet to capture Saddam/Uday etc, it is such a resourseful agency with worldwide network and with a budget which put to shame many countries' defence budget.

They're just people, not super humans. If I had a million dollars cash and a percentage of a population that wanted me hidden, I could disappear also.

No you couldn't.

I will just hit on you publically and you will be so pissed that you will come out to knock me out.

Vince: Even if Pascal is gay, why do you feel a need to attack him?

 

[Sxotty]

While I am happy with the outcome of the war, I am not happy with the means used to get us to this point.

Natoma surely you were smart enough to realize it was total BS before we started. I supported the war b/c I wanted to get rid of saddam, I believe that it was a good thing to do, I knew the WMD stuff was crap, but I figure if the end result is the same who cares.

I think we should do something about NK too, but it is kinda unfair at the moment since they will only be able to strike S.K, and japan. Saddam had little strike capability against his neighbors so we could do it, but if we attacked NK and he nukes SK I think we would be a mite unpopular.

 

[Himself]

Iraq was just a scape goat for 9/11. The American people wanted revenge on somebody and Bush gave it to them. Everything else is just BS to rationalize it. I'm sure there are other reasons as an aside, but nothing that strikes you as as different than a dozen other countries.

 

[Silent_One]

Natoma wrote:

I never said that we didn't do the right thing in terms of removing a sadistic dictator. But the means to get us there is what I am at odds with.

1) Faulty intelligence, Faulty "handling" of the intelligence, outright lying, or downright incompetence are at fault here, or maybe a combination of those.

2) We were led to believe that Iraq was amassing tons of WMD. We were led to believe that Iraq was such a dire threat that we'd see mushroom clouds in US cities (Thanks Condoleeza Rice. I'm sure that drove up the prescriptions to Prozac real fast.).

3) We were led to believe that Iraq had deep ties to Al-Qaeda. So much so that by the start of the war, more than 50% of the US populace believe that it was 19 Iraqis, by order of Saddam, who flew those planes into the WTC and Pentagon, to not mention the downed plane in Pennsylvania.

We're now finding out that the ties to Al-Qaeda were extremely tenuous at best. Basically the CIA had an iffy photograph of someone they thought was one of Saddam's ministers of defense having lunch with Mohammed Atta. That's where the whole "connection" came from.

I'm not even a spook but it doesn't make sense for Al-Qaeda to form an alliance with Saddam. Why? Saddam is one of the people they're trying to take down. They want to establish hardline muslim states in the holy land. You honestly think Osama would align himself with Saddam then? Saddam is enemy #1c next to Israel and America, enemies #1a and #1b

1.) Agreed. I'm at odds with that too.
2.) I'm not at odds with that. Again, even the UN did not know where tons of WMD went. Were they making more? No one really knew.
3.) Where do you get "more than 50% of the US populace believe that it was 19 Iraqis, by order of Saddam, who flew those planes into the WTC..."? Link please (not that i doubt it). Did the administration say the 19 were Iraqi? Of course not. Did the administration say Saddam ordered the planes into the WTC? Not that I know of. Did the administration imply or infer that Iraq and Saddam were responsible for the WTC attacks? Your implying that -so show me the link.

"....ties to Al-Qaeda were extremely tenuous at best". Yes intellegence gathering is "tenuous' at times. Rarely is there "proof".
Thats the nature of intellegence gathering. As I said in another thread evidence in itself does not need to be proof, it needs to be convincing. To deal effectively with terrorism, authorities need to be able to consider information that would not constitute evidence in a court of law.

"Basically the CIA had an iffy photograph of someone they thought was one of Saddam's ministers of defense having lunch with Mohammed Atta. That's where the whole "connection" came from. " There's more to to it that that. There was also the terrorist site in northern Iraq. This information was available before the war. From The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030210fa_fact

According to several intelligence officials I spoke to, the relationship between bin Laden and Saddam's regime was brokered in the early nineteen-nineties by the then de-facto leader of Sudan, the pan-Islamist radical Hassan al-Tourabi. Tourabi, sources say, persuaded the ostensibly secular Saddam to add to the Iraqi flag the words "Allahu Akbar," as a concession to Muslim radicals.

In interviews with senior officials, the following picture emerged: American intelligence believes that Al Qaeda and Saddam reached a non-aggression agreement in 1993, and that the relationship deepened further in the mid-nineteen-nineties, when an Al Qaeda operative—a native-born Iraqi who goes by the name Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi—was dispatched by bin Laden to ask the Iraqis for help in poison-gas training. Al-Iraqi's mission was successful, and an unknown number of trainers from an Iraqi secret-police organization called Unit 999 were dispatched to camps in Afghanistan to instruct Al Qaeda terrorists. (Training in hijacking techniques was also provided to foreign Islamist radicals inside Iraq, according to two Iraqi defectors quoted in a report in the Times in November of 2001.) Another Al Qaeda operative, the Iraqi-born Mamdouh Salim, who goes by the name Abu Hajer al-Iraqi, also served as a liaison in the mid-nineteen-nineties to Iraqi intelligence. Salim, according to a recent book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," by the former N.S.C. officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, was bin Laden's chief procurer of weapons of mass destruction, and was involved in the early nineties in chemical-weapons development in Sudan. Salim was arrested in Germany in 1998 and was extradited to the United States. He is awaiting trial in New York on charges related to the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings; he was convicted last April of stabbing a Manhattan prison guard in the eye with a sharpened comb.

Intelligence officials told me that the agency also takes seriously reports that an Iraqi known as Abu Wa'el, whose real name is Saadoun Mahmoud Abdulatif al-Ani, is the liaison of Saddam's intelligence service to a radical Muslim group called Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small enclave in northern Iraq; the group is believed by American and Kurdish intelligence officials to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. I learned of another possible connection early last year, while I was interviewing Al Qaeda operatives in a Kurdish prison in Sulaimaniya. There, a man whom Kurdish intelligence officials identified as a captured Iraqi agent told me that in 1992 he served as a bodyguard to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, when Zawahiri secretly visited Baghdad

. There are links to connect the two. You just dismiss them as insignificant.

"I'm not even a spook but it doesn't make sense for Al-Qaeda to form an alliance with Saddam. Why?...."
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020325fa_FACT1a

On the surface, a marriage of Saddam's secular Baath Party regime with the fundamentalist Al Qaeda seems unlikely. His relationship with secular Palestinian groups is well known; both Abu Nidal and Abul Abbas, two prominent Palestinian terrorists, are currently believed to be in Baghdad. But about ten years ago Saddam underwent something of a battlefield conversion to a fundamentalist brand of Islam.

"It was gradual, starting the moment he decided on the invasion of Kuwait," in June of 1990, according to Amatzia Baram, an Iraq expert at the University of Haifa. "His calculation was that he needed people in Iraq and the Arab world—as well as God—to be on his side when he invaded. After he invaded, the Islamic rhetorical style became overwhelming"—so overwhelming, Baram continued, that a radical group in Jordan began calling Saddam "the New Caliph Marching from the East." This conversion, cynical though it may be, has opened doors to Saddam in the fundamentalist world. He is now a prime supporter of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and of Hamas, paying families of suicide bombers ten thousand dollars in exchange for their sons' martyrdom. This is part of Saddam's attempt to harness the power of Islamic extremism and direct it against his enemies.

Question: How many terrorist groups do you know of has joined up with Al Qaeda? Since the early 1990's Al Qaeda has changed to fit the times and circumstances. Many groups has joined them. Al Qaeda's stated goals have changed to also fit the times. Why? To survive. See this article (unfortunatly you have to pay to read it all) - The Protean Enemy
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030701faessay15403/jessica-stern/the-protean-enemy.html

Despite the setbacks al Qaeda has suffered over the last two years, it is far from finished, as its recent bomb attacks testify. How has the group managed to survive an unprecedented American onslaught? By shifting shape and forging new, sometimes improbable, alliances. These tactics have made al Qaeda more dangerous than ever, and Western governments must show similar flexibility in fighting the group.

Indeed Al Qaeda and Saddam reaching a non-aggression agreement in 1993 seems logical.
Natoma wrote:

And with regard to Saddam's ties to terrorism. He gave money openly to the Palestinian suicide bombers, but has no ties with Al-Qaeda. The CIA has admitted this, that their only link, a photograph between Mohammed Atta and someone they think, but are not sure, was Saddam's defense minister. That was their only link.
Lest I remind you that right after 9/11, the Bush administration took this and ran with it, trying even then to forge a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, which was shot down by the CIA as false. Yet somehow, that eventually grew to more than 50% of the american populace believing Iraq was responsible for 9/11, *not* Al-Qaeda. That had to come from somewhere to convince 140 Million people that Al-Qaeda was responsible. That sort of thing doesn't just fall from the sky and suddenly become common belief.

"And with regard to Saddam's ties to terrorism. He gave money openly to the Palestinian suicide bombers, but has no ties with Al-Qaeda...." false, see above.

"...which was shot down by the CIA as false". Link please.

Interesting you give creedence to the CIA when it fits your outlook but the rest of the time you dismiss them as incompetent. Here's an example of the CIA in action again:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,885114,00.html

The Ansar-Baghdad debate in US intelligence circles reflects a rift between the CIA and a special intelligence office set up in the Pentagon by the under-secretary for defence, Douglas Feith. The CIA tends to be sceptical and hostile to the Iraqi National Congress which has produced many of the recent defectors. The Pentagon is readier to listen to the INC's defectors, and has established a separate channel of information to the White House, outside the control of the CIA director, George Tenet.

Here the CIA was sceptical of the northern Iraq site being a part of an Al Qaeda / Saddam link:

While evidence of Ansar al-Islam's links to al-Qaida are comparatively strong, its links with President Saddam remain largely circumstantial. Villages in the area around Ansar territory have reported seeing Iraqi Mukhabarat agents making contact with Ansar operatives. There are also reports that TNT seized from Ansar during one of their assassination attempts on Kurdish officials was produced by the Iraqi military and that arms are sent to the group from areas controlled by President Saddam.

So we have a Al Qaeda base in Iraq. Question: do you think Saddam would allow such a group to exist in his country without his approval?

Summary:
1.) If outright lying or outright manipulation of information by the administration is the case, then I'm at odds with that.
2.) Before the war everyone believed there were WMD which were unaccounted for in Iraq.
3.) I believe there were ties to Al Qaeda.
4.) There appears to be 2 instances of outright lying or outright manipulation-aluminum tubes & Uranium purchase from Niger.

Again, does No. 4 above negate the need to go to war?

 

[Clashman]

Everyone knows that the supposed "Al Queda Terrorist Camp" in Iraq was in the area that Saddam and the Ba'ath party generally had very little control over. The same no-fly zones that allowed the Kurds to organize themselves in the north also gave way Ansar al-Islam. If they were "operating with Saddam's consent", then so were the Kurdish opposition groups.

 

[Silent_One]

If I recall correctly there was quite a battle (2 days?) between the American backed Kurdish opposition groups and the "supposed" Al Queda Terrorist Camp. So the two did not exactly get along.

The supposition that "If they were "operating with Saddam's consent", then so were the Kurdish opposition groups." because of the no-fly zone is erroneous. I'll rephrase the question: do you think Saddam would be opposed to such a group to exist in his country?

 

[Clashman]

I never said that the Kurds and Ansar Al-Islam got along. I said that the conditions that allowed one to exist did the same for the other. I think if Saddam had full control of his country, he would likely have crushed both the Kurdish opposition groups and Ansar Al-Islam. I think given the political realities within Iraq, the Ba'ath party may well have sent agents into Ansar Al-Islam to try and get them to stir up trouble with the Kurds.

 

[Natoma]

While I am happy with the outcome of the war, I am not happy with the means used to get us to this point.

Natoma surely you were smart enough to realize it was total BS before we started. I supported the war b/c I wanted to get rid of saddam, I believe that it was a good thing to do, I knew the WMD stuff was crap, but I figure if the end result is the same who cares.

I think we should do something about NK too, but it is kinda unfair at the moment since they will only be able to strike S.K, and japan. Saddam had little strike capability against his neighbors so we could do it, but if we attacked NK and he nukes SK I think we would be a mite unpopular.

I've been bitching about the means for months Sxotty, even before the war began.

Wrt NK nuking it's neighbors. We have spy sattellites and high flying bombers that could coordinate strikes against their missile complexes and nuclear facilities no? I would be in complete support of that move.

 

[Clashman]

Natoma, I'm going to disagree with you there. North Korea has close to 1 million troops stationed along the DMZ. If we did anything to them, they could level much of South Korea within an hour.

 

[Clashman]

Again, does No. 4 above negate the need to go to war?

Lying about the WMD negates the legality of the war. The doctrine of "pre-emptive strikes" claims to be legitimate because they are responding to an imminent threat. It should be obvious to most people by now that Iraq did not in any way present itself to be an imminent threat to the American people.

I think this can also be looked at as a serious questioning of how our democracy, (or democratic republic, for all you nitpickers), functions. If it's ok for our political and economic leaders to use deliberate misinformation to sway the public, how can you say that this is a government "of, by, and for the people"? If it's ok to lie about this, then why not lie about everything else? Why not fix elections, (I won't even start a debate about whether or not that's already happened)? People can give large amounts of popular support to a dictator if they are constantly being mislead. It has happened in China, even with "formal" elections in much of the country. You wonder why 65% of the people say the war is OK when 95% of the news coverage leading up to the beginning of the war had very little actual debate on the issues surrounding it. And after the war actually started? Forget about it. All you had was Bush, Rumsfeld, and Gen. Brooks telling the public how swimmingly this was all going. Of course they would do an pieces reporting on the largest series of protests against a war the world has EVER seen, (which were of course dismissed by the administration as insignificant), but there was never any real or frank discussion of the issues behind the protests, such as the effects of depleted uranium, civillian casualties, the possibilities for the countrythe overblown threat posed by Saddam Hussein, etc. If we were LUCKY, major television would occasionally bring out some wishy-washy Democrat to say that he or she "wasn't fully convinced yet" of the justification for war.

 

[Sxotty]

I wasn't saying that disinformation from leaders is ok, I am saying that I wanted saddam out in the 1st gulf war, and so when we got rid of him I was happy regardless that we were being misled. I truly do think that something should be done about N.K. but it is a confusing situation. And as our bombs showed we couldn't get saddam, so why should we be able to get N.K.'s nukes?

 

[Clashman]

I wasn't saying that disinformation from leaders is ok, I am saying that I wanted saddam out in the 1st gulf war, and so when we got rid of him I was happy regardless that we were being misled. I truly do think that something should be done about N.K. but it is a confusing situation. And as our bombs showed we couldn't get saddam, so why should we be able to get N.K.'s nukes?

If they lied about the reasons for going to war, then why do you assume that they aren't lying about why they're still there? Perhaps this isn't about democracy and rebuilding the country, (hell, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that using their oil to pay for the damage done by the bombs we dropped on them isn't exactly the Marshall Plan). I think there should be much more questioning of the credibility of what they say given what we've already had to endure from them.

 

[Silent_One]

Lying about the WMD negates the legality of the war.

Legality is a different issue....

The doctrine of "pre-emptive strikes" claims to be legitimate because they are responding to an imminent threat. It should be obvious to most people by now that Iraq did not in any way present itself to be an imminent threat to the American people.

Again, the imment threat is a precieved threat. Hindsight is always 20/20.

I think this can also be looked at as a serious questioning of how our democracy, (or democratic republic, for all you nitpickers), functions......

Agreed. As I said above I'm at odds with lying (if indeed that happened).

You wonder why 65% of the people say the war is OK when 95% of the news coverage leading up to the beginning of the war had very little actual debate on the issues surrounding it.

Disagree. I thought there was lots of debate about it.

And after the war actually started? Forget about it. All you had was Bush, Rumsfeld, and Gen. Brooks telling the public how swimmingly this was all going.

Go God man, did you forget about all the questions second guessing the war plan? Not enough manpower. Supply lines to thin. Why are we stopping. Everybody and their mother had an opinion! It was only when Bagdad fell that everyone said that it went suprising better than most though it would. Regarding the "protests, civillian casualties, the possibilities for the country, the overblown threat posed by Saddam Hussein, etc..." I don't know what paper/news your NOT reading/watching but the New York Times/BBC/washington Post/ect... had a lot of information about those issues.

 

[Clashman]

Lying about the WMD negates the legality of the war.

Legality is a different issue....

The doctrine of "pre-emptive strikes" claims to be legitimate because they are responding to an imminent threat. It should be obvious to most people by now that Iraq did not in any way present itself to be an imminent threat to the American people.

Again, the imment threat is a precieved threat. Hindsight is always 20/20.

I'm on my way out, and so I only have time at the moment to respond to this one piece, but it is not hindsight if they knew beforehand that the information they were using was false and/or misleading. More and more evidence seems to be pointing in that direction.

 

[RussSchultz]

So you're saying that we knew as a fact, before we went in, that all the chemical weapons that were documented to exist at one time no longer existed?