Well, here's the thing. Mistakes have different consequences than lies. They didn't just judge it more likely that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction than not. They claimed that they had clear, detailed, overwhelming proof: so certain that no more inspections could be useful, so certain that they were sure they could localize and secure all of them in the chaos of war, so certain that an ally who claimed to be unconvinced had to be lying. If they are so catastrophically wrong with such certainty on such a crucial matter, if that was not deception on their part, then US intelligence failed spectacularly, completely and for years on end. The only logical solution would then be to completely reform US intelligence, distrust any information proffered by US intelligence before the reform, and perhaps trust their alles' intelligence instead, if any. But frankly, when faced with the choice whether to believe that all American intelligence services jointly and separately are completely incompetent, or that the American government lies, I know what I will go with.
Once again, people that claim the Bush Administration lied about WMDs in Iraq would have you believe that The Bush Administration knowingly lied about WMDs being in Iraq......in order to justify the invasion of Iraq.......an invasion that would inevitably expose those original lies in the first place. That is ridiculous.
Incredulity is not an argument. They obviously didn't care if they were found out, because they could get away with it. Unfortunately they were right. They said that they were certain. They said that they knew where the weapons were. There is no interpretation of those claims that allows for an honest mistake.
Did you miss the part where there have been no consequences? Bush gets to go chop wood, and Cheny gets to go fishing. Exposure of your lies after the fact only matters if you're going to be punished. They only had to be scared that the lies would be exposed before the fact, to stop their war. You're really stupid, Dayton. If I were as stupid as you, it would really start to bother me. It's like water off your back.
And President Bush and Vice President Cheney could be certain of this BEFORE the war? At the very least, they should've been terrified that it would've resulted in their loss of the general election in 2004. I don't doubt that President Bush and Vice President Cheney exaggerated and played up the WMD case against Iraq. But it is not the job of the advocate for something (even war) to state both sides of the argument for those who oppose him. And EVERY American war effort has been justified with exaggerations and simplifications.
No Rick. I don't care. Saddam Hussein was an enemy of the United States and I was hoping to see him eliminated. I sent a letter to President Bush early in 2001 urging him to do so. If I had had my way, the U.S. would've eliminated the Iranian and North Korean regimes during the Bush Admin. as well. Unfortunately, the Iraqi occupation dragged on and public support for more wars evaporated. Maybe we'll get luckier next time.
This is what you do when you're certain that your enemy is bent on acquiring WMDs. Much more at the link. Any doubts that I had about the war being bullshit were erased in the first few hours of the invasion when we didn't hear of anything similar being undertaken. That would have been any intelligent military planner's first objective: Secure the WMDs so they don't fall into the wrong hands. Lest anyone think that Rumsfeld wasn't claiming they knew where the WMDs were when we invaded, allow me to point out what he said. We sent multiple waves of what were effectively suicide missions to keep the Germans from getting heavy water in WWII, but for some odd reason, we couldn't be bothered to do the same against Saddam, even though the odds of him being willing to hand the weapons over to terrorist groups to get back at us for invading his country were thought to be pretty high.
You miss the obvious Tucker. Even if Saddam Hussein had WMDs. What EVERYONE thought he had were a bunch of chemical weapons shells. Not SS-18s with one megaton warheads. Chemical weapon are really not that big a deal when it comes to getting any kind of military advantage. They are more of a political weapon. A demon to threaten simple civilians with. Even if Saddam Hussein had thousands of chemical weapons shells, they were not militarily useful to Iraq.
Look, I don't think they purposefully lied, but they clearly overlooked thee obvious truth in order to find a story that matched their larger goals. Anybody who didn't simply want to invade Iraq could see through the intelligence claims.
It is the truth. No one seriously thought that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons and biological weapons have not proven significantly effective in modern warfare.
Saddam was sponsoring terrorism without doubt. He was giving cash rewards to the parents of suicide bombers. His time and that of his ruling party had come.
The Spanish-American War resulted in the break-up of the Spanish Empire and the liberation of Cuba and the Phillipines from Spain's domination. It all happened because the U.S. believed that the Spanish sunk the Maine, an American warship. History has now shown pretty conclusively that the Maine blew up because of an onboard fire that spread to an ammunition magazine; the Spanish had NOTHING to do with it. That mistake, however doesn't mean Spain's getting Cuba and the Phillipines back. My point is that EVEN IF the belief that brought us to war was wrong, the results will be what matters in the long run. Had we secured a lasting South Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin incident would matter very little. As for Iraq and WMD, I don't think it was a lie myself. I believe those in power believed that there were weapons and weapons programs in Iraq. Was it a case of wanting to believe weak evidence? Maybe. But post-9/11, who was willing to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt? Especially when he himself put up opposition to international inspectors?
Tell that to the Iranians. In point of fact, chemical weapons are considered WMD because they (1) cause mass casualties and (2) act as an area-denial weapon.
I wouldn't have given two shits about Saddam if I hadn't been terrorized with the WMDs, and even that wouldn't have taken if not for the fucking Anthrax mailer. (I love how that chapter of the saga has been deleted from the history books, BTW).
In all honesty, if they were knowingly lying, why didn't they bother planting any evidence? Not like our government has never covered up misconduct in the past and been proven to have done so, yet here it's like they never bothered.
I don't expect you to think that far, but the bullet solution implies and requires that your guy is in place to step up. Even more, he must act like he hates you while doing your bidding and stuffing his coffers with your money. I know, it's all so complicated so never mind
There is a very good reason for the general principle about not assassinating enemy leaders in time of war. Back in the early Middle Ages, there were at least two major seiges of cities (including Rome) where the leader of the attackers was killed in the final assault on the cities. With the leader dead, there was no one to stop or limit the unrestricted sacking of the city. This principle still exists because of the idea that when dealing with a dictator who has centralized power, you need him to be able to surrender and halt this troops for the war to end.
Paragraph it appears in. We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq’s concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don’t have any reason to believe they’re any more valid this time than they’ve been in the past. to me it is clear that Vice President Cheney is saying that "Saddam Hussein wants nuclear weapons and still has a program aimed at getting them". Not "He has nuclear warheads on missiles in silos".
