The risk was in his leadership to push the UN into doing the right thing with Iraq. Many politicans of Kerry's caliber would have shyed away from that responsibility. Bush has a history of tackling issues that are supposed to be "third rail" issues not to be touched.
Reportedly so, yes. That is the reason, I believe, he went to Martha's Vineyard one year. He is also famous for staging "unscripted" moments like when he placed stones in the shape of a cross while at Normandy while a hundred reporters watched. Problem is there are normally no stones on that beach.
positions on issues that I have no idea where he stands. Take
something at some point that everyone can agree on, however,
will certainly conflict and contradict something he has said
position he will take on any issue if he should get elected?
Al, you seem like a nice guy, but what the hell are you talking about!!!! :) Who says he has used up his favors and has burned bridges??? This is really quite silly. The leader of the US never burns bridges because we are too important for the world economy. I would dare say it is near impossible for the president of the US to do anything that would cause any European country to boycott the US. Do you know that France just came out and flat out said that they will not change their position even if Kerry is elected?
We should care that France and Germany didn't want us to attack Iraq because they were getting some kind of illegal kickbacks from Saddam? I, for one, am glad as hell that we have a president who does what is best for us, not what is best for France and Germany. Let's see the Eiffel tower fall and then you'll see what side France comes down on.
No, someone better informed of the technological issues would understand their implications. What did Iraq do with all the soil and water they contaminated during the production process? Organics do not bind readily to soil particles, they travel longe distances through the environment.
What did Iraq do with all the people who know where the stockpiles are hidden? If they were all killed, what did Iraq do with all the people who killed them?
If you are to judge dilligence by result then you must first abandon logic because neither dilligence nor the lack therof can change the facts. If there are no WMDs then the most dilligent search possible cannot find them. Thus a failure to find them cannot tell us if the search was dilligent or not.
Your first argument cuts both ways. I have no delusions about our politicians being more honest than those in France, Germany, or Russia. Prior to 2003 the contracts for Iraqi oil reserves were owned by the French, Russians, and Chinese. Now they are owned by the US and the UK.
If you feel that the negative findings by UNMOVIC are an indictment of their dilligence then surely you must have an exceptionally poor opinion of the 1800 person US WMD search team that, in 18 months of unfettered access to all of Iraq found even less than UNMOVC did in three.
My opinion is that they both were highly competent.
Incidently, Hans Blix is not French, German, or Russian.
Clearly you have never been informed of the discovery of antibiotics which render the black plague ineffective as a military agent. But if you do not believe me, you will want to be sure to avoid the Southwestern United States where cases are routinely reported on an annual basis.
The Spanish flu, like all flu is caused by a virus. Unlike bacteria which often may be cultured in a nutrient media, and some of which will form spores that can survive for long periods outside of a host viruses will not reproduce outside of a living cell and most have a very short lifetime outside of a living host. One of the reasons the SARS virus is so virulent is that it has an exceptionally long lifetime outside of a host, but even that is (IIRC) a matter of hours not days. Long term preservation of viruses requires cryogenic freezing. Even if Iraq had the capacity to culture and preserve the Spanish Flu Saddam Hussein was also faced with the problem that there are no surviving reference strains.
The most commonly considered biological warfare agent, (though you didn't mention it) is anthrax. Anthrax is cultured realatively easily, it does form long-lived spores that require minimal preservation. But it anthrax does not spread from one infected person to another, only those directly exposed to the spores will be affected and they can be readliy treated with antibiotics. Soldiers exposed to anthrax can be treated and immediately returned to duty. Anthrax has less potential as a weapon than do chemical weapons if used against an army with any reasonable medical support.
You display precisely that technological ignorance that Bush used so effectively to his advantage in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.
It is my opinion that if the Bush administration had evidence that Iraq had fissile material GWB would have said so. Instead, all references to nuclear weapons involved words to the effect of "Saddam Hussein is x months away from have in nuclear weapons if only he had sufficient fissile material." That statement was absolutely true, not only for Iraq, but also for every other nation, most corporations and many individuals.
The issue of observability, is a matter of technological fact, not mere opinion.
At that time Saddam Hussein enjoyed the protection of the United States, both diplomatically in the UN Security council and militarily in theater. His WMD program had the enthusiastic support of the US Department of Commerce, it was good for the American Economy.
Because we have not reverted to that wholly evil Reagan/GHB era policy what I wrote was true of Iraq in 2003, though it was not in 1989.
As discussed above, your argument is a logical fallacy. One cannot judge the dilligence of UNMOVC or the extent of cooperation of Saddam Hussein by the outcome because neither the diligence of UNMOVIC nor cooperation of Saddam Hussein can change the fact of whether or not there were WMDS.
You are using the same argument that is used in the claims for the existance of the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, Big Foot, Alien Abductions, Satanic Cults and so on. I do not beleive in any of those.
You simply rephrase Bush's insultingly absurd argument that the failure to find WMDS is the proof they were hidden.
No. I see Saddam Hussein allowing UNMOVIC to search EVERY location they requested. Not 'a (singular) particular location.' Further, I see no evidence that they would have NOT been allowed to search any other location.
You advance from speculation that they might be hidden elsewhere to the conclusion that they are hidden elswehre, without the benefit of intervening evidence.
Your interpretation relies upon the impossibility of proof of a negative hypothesis. It can NEVER be disproven any more that I can prove there are no witches in Salem, Communists in the Pentagon or invisible monsters under your bed.
But it also ignores the forensic capability of modern technology or requires a collosal effort on the part of a decrepit Iraqi technological infrastructure.
The conventional wisdom was that Iraq's WMDs, aside from mustard, were too impure to have a long shelf life. After 12 years they would be worse than useless since firing a dud is worse than firing nothing at all. *I* do not think that Saddam Hussein scrapped whatever WMDs survived the 1991 war out of good will. I think the sanctions effectively prevented Iraq from replacing them.
I'll leave it to you to check back with me in 12 years.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree on this, I guess. Our differences can be boiled down quite succinctly to this:
Saddam said he didn't have any WMDs. Bush, Blair, Powell, Clinton, Kerry, Feinstein, Kennedy, Lieberman, and a host of others said he did.
You believe that Saddam was telling the truth, and Bush et al were lying.
I believe the opposite.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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I don't recall the stones. But I do remember seeing him kneel down to straighten a flag that had fallen over in one of the cemeteries. And I do remember seeing him look back over his shoulder to make sure the cameras were on before he straightened it.
IIRC, someone actually owned up to the placement of the stones on the Normandy beach.
There was also the "tears on demand" occurence at the Ron Brown (?) funeral. He was yucking it up with several people as they were headed to a limo, then saw that cameras were on him and become stone-cold sober with a feigned tear.
That was the most amazing thing I've ever seen, and sums Clinton up in 2 seconds. He was actually walking with the pastor I believe when that happened.
I've yet to see a credible, "non-fringe kook" explanation for why Bush would want to attack Iraq for no apparent reason. I, for one, don't care whether or not there were WMDs, though I believe they are/were there or in Syria etc. There were plenty of other reasons that this was the right thing to do, and more people agree with me than you. You know what those reasons are, you just choose not to accept them, which is your choice. People like Bush will continue to follow their convictions and do what they believe best for the country with or without the support of 100% of the electorate. It is called leadership, and I believe the country will respond with a resounding vote for reelection.
I never said there were no good reasons to depose Saddam Hussein or invade Iraq. I said that the WMD issue did not provide a good reason to invade Iraq.
1) Obviously there is no danger of anyone challenging the administration's interpretation if neither the tapes nor a transcript are released. But IF the administration has thus far stonewalled on releasing the tapes or a transcripts then we do have prima facia evidence that the administration has something to hide. Obviously they may wish to hide anything on the tapes that would compromise US assets, but one supposes they could be expurgated to accompish that without losing the relevent evidentiary value assuming there was any in the first place.
2) If Powell does not speak fluent Iraqi-Arabic, then he maintains plausible deniability even if the conversation is found to be less imciminating than he claims.
His testimony on the Medusa (clone) missle tubes was very clear. It was also patently false to fact.
Let me make it a little more clear. You and I are *both* operating from certain a priori beliefs that color our interpretation of the facts. Your a priori assumption clearly is that there are not, and never were, WMDs in Iraq. My a priori assumption is that there were, and they're still around
*somewhere*.
On the basis of your a priori belief that they never existed, you see UNMOVIC's failure to find them as confirmation of that belief.
On the basis of my a priori belief that they did exist and still do, I conclude that UNMOVIC has not looked in the right places -- including places to which those WMDs have been moved and hidden, e.g. Syria.
The only proven fact at this date with respect to Iraqi WMDs is that they have not been found. Yet.
There is no proof that they did not, exist. Nor, I admit, that they did.
And you believe Saddam. I believe that all the people who said Saddam had WMDs were right. The failure to find those WMDs thus far is not proof that they did not exist.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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That's a damn lie and I expected better from you. I never claimed there never were WMDs in Iraq.
In fact, until 2003 my presumption was that there were (non-nuclear) WMDs in Iraq. And I said so.
If you would have used Google to research what I wrote on the subject in early 2003, instead of making stuff up, you would have found that for yourself.
In the face of the evidence that became available in 2003 I changed my opinion to conform to that evidence. Some people call that flip-flopping. I call it being in touch with reality.
I presume that you are telling the truth here. I do not see why you refuse to extend the same courtesy to me.
Agreed though I am inclined to elaborate a bit. They were not found, nor was any evidence for them found WHERE the US said they were. This calls into question the quality of the information provided by the US.
We are not just talking about finished shells and bombs where it is conceivable that they could be moved without leaving evidence behind. What about the manufacturing facilites the administration claimed were rebuilt and active? What about the supposed manufacturing facilites at Fallujah, Ibn Sina, Tarmiyya, and al-Qa'qa'? Are we supposed to believe that Iraq suddenly unrebuilt them and destroyed all foresnic evidence in the surrounding soil and water?
It is not just UNMOVIC that failed to find evidence. The 1800 person Iraq Survey team that has had unfettered access to Iraq for the last
18 months has not turned up any manufacturing facilites either.
True. Further, there can be no proof that they did not exist.
No. That is a lie.
I do not even *know* what Saddam Hussein may have said about WMDs in Iraq.
All right then, remove the phrase "and never were", and my statement stands. You clearly have an a priori assumption that there are not WMDs in Iraq. The
*facts* are: a) it was widely believed, prior to Feb '03, that there were; b) none have been found so far; and c) it is not presently known whether there are or were, or not. All else is opinion and assumption.
I'd call it changing your opinion without sufficient evidence. I think they're still around. Somewhere. Maybe Syria. Maybe Iran. Maybe buried in the desert somewhere. Iraq's a big place. They'll turn up eventually.
Or maybe they won't. But Saddam had a loooong time to hide them, and it's a bit premature to suppose that they aren't there, just because they haven't been found *yet*.
I likewise presume that you're telling the truth -- that is, that you believe what you say. I just think you're wrong.
Perhaps. Or maybe the Iraqis moved them before anyone got there to check.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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snipped-for-privacy@spamcop.net (Fred the Red Shirt) wrote: ...
I clearly told you the opposite.
Agreed. It was also widely believed that, except for mustard, any materials left over from befor 1991 would no longer be effect. It was also widely believed that at most, 500 aerial mustard bombs remained unaccountd for from prior ot the 1991 war.
Almost none.
Yes with an important caveat. The 2002 Iraqi declaration to UNMOVIC has been kept confidential as public release would be "intensly embarassing" (ISTR that was the term used) to the companies who provided the material to Iraq.
So we do not know what was in that declaration. We do not know what UNMOVIC had inventoried and tagged befor the US advised them that the invasion was imminent and they left. Since the US has taken over Iraq material previously inventoried and tagged by UNMOVIC has been found abroad. It is conceivable that Iraq did declare WMDs not previously disclosed, such as the binary sarin shell later used in an IED, that these materials were inventoried by UNMOVIC and then passed into the hands of the insurgents during or after the invasion.
Note that the US has refused to allow UNMOVIC and IAEA to reinventory the materials they had tagged. IIRC, that includes some mustard munitions that were originally discovered and inventoried by UNSCOM prior to 1999.
1) What evidence do you have that they were there in the first place? Have you considered testing your a priori assumption?
2) What evidence do you have that they were moved to another country? That hypothesis did not emerge until after the invasion.
According to the US, he was manufacturing WMDs in the Fall of 2002. How does that give him a long time to hide them? Your argument does not agree with the implications made by the Bush administration that Iraq had been busy making new WMDs since UNSCOM left.
I encourage you to test that a priori. Don't trust me, check it out for yourself.
Moved the factories too? The soil, the water, the byproducts, the unused feedstock the people involved in the manufacture, etc etc?
That is an awful lot to accept without evidence.
Look around the room where you are sitting now. Do you see evidence of a giant pink elephant? Are you telling me that you do not consider the absence of that evidence to be evidence that there is no giant pink elephant in the room with you?
Then you're contradicting yourself, because you continue to argue that there are no WMDs there. Since it is not yet known or proven whether there are or not, you are clearly articulating an assumption. [large snip]
Numerous people who presumably know more about it than I (e.g. Presidents Bush
*and* Clinton, Sens. Kerry, Kennedy, Feinstein, & Liebermann, and two consecutive Sec'ys of State) stated unequivocally that Saddam had WMDs. I presume that they know what they're talking about.
I'm doing so -- by waiting for the US military, and the new Iraqi government, to find them.
I didn't state that they were moved, only that they may have been. That, of course, is one of several plausible explanations for the failure to find them in Iraq to this point.
Actually, it was reported prior to the invasion that they had been loaded onto container ships and sent to sea. That report later proved to be false, but the hypothesis did exist before the invasion.
Mobile labs, later taken to Syria, would be one explanation.
Yep, just waiting. They'll be found someday.
[more snippage]
Spurious analogy, at several points. First, it's considerably easier to hide munitions, even a munitions factory, in a hundred million acres of desert than it is to hide an elephant in a twelve-foot-wide room. Second, the absence of evidence of an elephant in the room *now* is not evidence that there was no elephant present two weeks, or two years, in the past. Finally, pink elephants do not exist.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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Regarding proof, what would you consider to be the minimal necessary proof that there are no WMDs in Iraq?
Perhaps you aren't using the term _a prior_ the way it would be used numerically. That is one's first _a priori_ in the absence of any data at all, is arbitrary excepting only those values that result in a degeneracy, singularity or other mathematical condition that prevents convergence. However once one has processed any data then one can use whatever conclusion resulted from the earlier analysis as the new _a priori_.
So I started somewhere back in antebellum times knowing nothing at all. By 2003 I had enough information to conclude that there were (non-nuclear) WMDs in Iraq. That became my next _a priori_. Subsequent analysis moved the next conclusion further toward acceptance of the null hypothesis.
Understand?
I made the same mistake as you, prior to 2003. Then I began to check on the basis for what was being said.
If there is a null result, How long will you wait befor concluding that test?
OK, what evidence do you have that they may have been moved?
Please feel free to enunciate some others and cite the supporting evidence for each.
Can you cite something to support that?
No they would not. Please read those two paragraphs again. You wrote "Saddam had a loooong time to hide them". Please do not change the subject befor addressing the issue at hand.
Is your assumption based on anything other than the logical impossibility of proof of a negative hypothesis?
I think if an elephant had been in that room for two years or twelve there would be plenty of dung left behind. Indeed, while preparing to leave Iraq one of the UNMOVIC inspectors used _precisely_ that analogy for the the US intelligence though he chose a somewhat less delicate synonym
It would appear that analogy is apt.
More to the point, logic requires that the existance of a thing be proven by evidence of that thing, and not by the absence of evidence that the thing in question does not exist.
If that is what you meant by my _a priori_ being that WMDs do not exist in Iraq then yes, that is my _a priori_. But that also means that if your _a priori_ is that they did exist then your approach is fundamantally illogical.
You appear to be citing the absence of evidence of nonexistance as evidence of existance.
I already described a standard that I would accept: the SOB had twelve years to hide them. If twelve more go by without anyone finding them, I'll admit that they were never there to begin with.
The only data available regarding the existence (or lack thereof) of WMDs in Iraq is that none have been found so far. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Thus a belief that there are no WMDs in Iraq is a belief that is not supported by proof.
As I've said repeatedly -- the same 12 years that Saddam had to hide them.
They have not been found in the places that have been searched so far. Logic provides only a limited set of possible explanations for that fact:
1) They never existed at all.
2) They did exist, but not in the places which have been searched.
3) They did exist, in those places, and are still there, but were not found.
4) They did exist, in those places, and are no longer there because they were moved to some other place(s).
5) They did exist, in those places, and are no longer there because they were destroyed.
I think if you search CNN's web site, you might find something about it. I remember hearing Limbaugh talking about the report one week, and then a couple of weeks later stating that the report had been shown to be a hoax. There were stories on the CNN web site at the time.
One explanation, that is, of what happened to the WMDs that he was making in the fall of '02. Obviously he had much more time to hide what had been made earlier.
Yes, it's based on my confidence that Saddam is a scoundrel. He already used WMDs on the Kurds and the Iranians, so it's very clear that he had them at one time. To suppose that he abandoned them is optimistic at best, and possibly a dangerous fantasy at worst.
Not if somebody's been shoveling it out regularly.
Again, we disagree.
Indeed, that would be illogical -- if I were doing so. But I have not maintained that, ever. I have pointed out that the failure to find them _so_far_ is *not* proof that they do not (or did not) exist. I never claimed that it was proof that they do exist.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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Was that Sarin shell not there then, or was it not WMD-ish enough? None is an absolute...
Exactly. We gave him over a decade to hide the stuff in a very big place, and let him jerk around the inspectors coming to check on him.
Seems reasonable, but I think proof enough that they were there has already been found. And why aren't we hearing about the binary precursors which are being found?
We know that to be false, of course, what with that we sold 'em a bunch, and the dead Kurds and stuff.
Also likely.
Possible.
Well, maybe he became all nicy-nice all the sudden, did you consider that? (thinks)...naah, prolly not, you're right.
Right. And besides, it's interesting that you have all of this Elephant Chow, books on "care and feeding of your elephant", subscriptions to "Elephant quarterly", and a history of being seen with your elephant, yet your elephant pens are suspiciously empty of everything but elephant tracks.
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