Okay, okay -- I shoulda said "almost none". There's no evidence [yet] of a stockpile, and it's possible that that Sarin shell was a leftover that they somehow missed destroying. I think, though, that it's much more likely that it simply fell off the back of a truck headed to Syria.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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Perhaps you should explore the filtering and killfile capabilities built into your newsreader.
Or else learn to ignore _obviously_ off-topic threads.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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IIUC there are two kinds of Senate Intelligence meetings. Closed door during whihc the Senators have access to classified information and open meetings which are dog and pony shows for the public. Kerry missed a lot of the dog and pony shows. His attendence record at the closed sessions is not publicly available.
Neither has made it to Google yet. Probably propogation delay.
Regarding what you quoted from :
1) If we are willing to believe that the President was dishonest then it is not much a stretch to suppose information was withheld from the Congress.
2) It is also possible for the President to request, in as many words or through implication, that he only receive information that support what he already decided to do, thus remaining willfully ignorant of the contrary evidence. Then presenting that same evidence to the Congress would promote the same conclusion.
3) a) Much more evidence became available AFTER the war powers resolution passed and befor the invasion began. The WPR was passed befor the UNMOVIC inspections were underway, the major reason for a COngressman to vote for the WPR was to force Saddam Hussein to accept the UNMOVIC inspections. b) The UNMOVIC inspections found nothing that needed to be taken away from Saddam Hussein, certainly nothing worth the cost of a single human life. It is just to depose and punish Saddam Hussein, but at what cost?
Slight quibble with your choice of words. Kerry *refuses* to make his attendance record at the closed sessions known. The chairman of the committee has indicated he will make the attendance record public, but [just as with his military records] Kerry must request that the chairman do so. As most engineering texts will say, "the conclusion is left to the reader".
Perhaps I am guilty of a slight paraphrase, the more common phrase is, "the proof is left to the reader" and "it is obvious to the casual observer ..." And if you don't have any engineering texts with those words in them, you don't have genuine engineering texts. :-)
Don't know for sure, I haven't gone looking for them. GWB did sign the appropriate form such that the pentagon has released his records; I'd be surprised if they don't exist somewhere.
There was also one (1) mustard gas shell found. But keep in mind that UNSCOM had discovered and inventoried a cache of mustard gas shells (or bombs, is don't remember which) that were reinventoried by UNMOVIC. It is not clear why they weren't destroyed, perhaps do to lack of a proper disposoal faciltiy as mustard is harder to destroy than VX and some other agents.
Since the US has not allowed UNMOVIC back in to reinventory anything since the invasion, we do not know if that cache of mustard is still there or not.
Prior to the discovery of the binary sarin shell the conventional wisdom was that Iraq did not have any long-lived chemical munitions other than mustard. That is why it was important to account for all of the pre-1991 mustard (and most was accounted for) but relatively unimportant to account for other munitions since they would have long ago become impotent.
That is why the essential issue was what, if anything, the Iraqis has made recently, NOT what they had in 1989 and certainly not what they had used.
As I said, previously there had been no indication on the part of anyone, including the Bush administration, that Iraq had developed binary munitions. This calls into question the true origin of that shell. Was it really manufactured in Iraq, or was it imported from the former Soviet Union, or even the US?
Also keep in mind that the Fall 2002 Iraqi declaration has never been publicly released because to do so would be 'intensely embarassing' to the companies who supplied Iraq with proscribed materials. So we do not know if Iraq declared any binary sarin shells or not.
No. As a consequence of the null result of the inspections process I went back to see what justification there was to my pre-2003 assumptions. I found that the justifications were slim and none, IOW I was wrong to make those assumptions.
But you are right, I cannot logically conclude in some abstractly absolute sense that there are no WMDs in Iraq for the same reason that I cannot similarly conclude that there are no passenger pigeons, no Spanish Armada off the New Jersey Coast, and no 57 communists in the Pentagon. Negative hypotheses are not falsifiable.
Is that what you want for proof? Twelve years? "the SOB had twelve years to hide them." is both factually incorrect and rhetorical. Can you state any reasonable basis for your twelve-year standard of proof? Offhand, it looks like you simply want to defer a conclusion until long after GWB is no longer in office.
You state that there is no evidence that there are WMDs in Iraq. But you conclude that there are WMDs in Iraq. You aren't making any sense.
Well, you didn't answer so I don't know if you understand or not.
I rephrase: Have you considered re-examing the reasons you had for adopting those a prioris?
Saddam Hussein did not have 12 years to hide the WMDs the US claimed he was making post-1999.
IRT any weapons that may have survived the 1991 war, which is itself unlikely, the standard you present seems to be entirely arbitrary, without any factual reasoning behind it. What do you expect to be done in the next decade that was not done in the previous two years?
What evidence have you seen for:
1)
2)
3)
4) or
5) ?
Where's the evidence?
OK, I'll take your word that there was a hoax.
I'll remind you that even after Bahgdad fell Rumsfeld insisted that there were WMDs in Iraq and he knew where they were--in the Sunni Triangle.
No. Mobile facilites CANNOT explain the administrations claims about al-Qaim [1], Tuwaitha and numerous other permanant (non-mobile) facilities the Bush administration claimes were in operation.
US Department of Defense, "Iraqi Denial and Deception for Weapons of Mass Destruction & Ballistic Missile Programs" (8 October 2002) [hereafter, "Department of Defense, 8 October 2002"].
And what about those mobile facilities? What evidence is there that they ever existed?
Every falsifiable claim about Iraqi WMDs made by the Bush administration has been falsified. All that remain, are the non-falsifiable claims.
But also consistant with all available observables and also consistant with a plan to lay low in the hope that the sanctions and inspections will be relaxed allowing a resumption of ilicit activities.
1991 to 2003 = twelve years. Prior to 1991, he was under no obligation to declare them, and presumably had no reason to hide them; post-1991, clearly he did. Post-2003, he was no longer in position to hide anything, even his own sorry behind.
I "concluded" nothing of the sort. I stated explicitly that it is my a priori
*assumption* that they existed. This assumption is not completely unfounded, you know: Saddam claimed to have them, and threatened to use them. [...]
Not sure what your point is here... at least ONE of those five circumstances
*must* be the truth. MY point was that we don't know, yet, which one(s).
[...]
Illicit activities including the construction of WMDs ?
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.
You're evading the question. What reasoning serves as the basis for
12 years of searching to be the standard? In particular, how can you enunciate that standard when you have no idea as to what searching may or may not be done during that time? What is it about twelve years that makes it significantly better than ten but not significantly worse than fifteen?
How do you explain the negative findings at al-Qaim, and Tuwaitha? According to the Bush administration these facilities had been rebuilt and had resumed operation?
Here's a description by people who actually visited the site:
"The remains of the three reactors destroyed in 1981 by the Israelis, and then a decade later in the Gulf War, by the Americans, have been left by the Iraqis. [....] Officials were keen to show the supposedly clandestine construction which so alarmed Mr Blair. They appeared to be no more than a few sheds. Nor were there overt signs of the infrastructure needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. "
"Inspectors Find Only Mushrooms Amid Ruins Of Bombed Reactor", The Independent (5 December 2002), at:
formatting link
you really thing something will be found there in 10 years?
As you will recall, Tuwaitha (aka Osirak) was one of the sites severely looted after the fall of Baghdad. Three weeks after the fall of Baghdad the US had still not sent a single person to the site. If the Bush administration REALLY thought there was clandestine WMD activity at Tuwaitha don't you think that they might have made some effort to secure it?
In 1991, among the priority targets in Iraq, perhaps second in importance only to the Iraqi air defense systems, were nuclear and chemical weapons facilities like Al Muthanna. The reasons for bombing such facilites while US troops are in the field fighting the Iraqi army are rather obvious.
Conspicuously absent from the 2003 invasion was any comparable action against the facilities where the US alleged Iraq was manufacturing or stockpiling WMDs. Even after the fall of Baghdad the US did not bother to seize or secure those sites.
A reasonable inference, indeed the only resonable inference, is that the Bush adminstration considered it highly unlikely that there were any WMD materials at those sites. In many respects, that lack of alacrity in attempting to seize and secure the claimed WMDs is the best evidecne we have for deception. Even if the administration thought that the WMDs ahd been shipped to Syria, you'd think they'd have wanted to check to be sure they didn't leave some behind.
While the bush administration did allege (without presenting supporting evidence) the existance of mobile facilities, it also alleged active programs at a dozen or more fixed manufactuirng sites-- stating in each case the location of the sites and the sort of activity there. The allegations were quite specific. The Bush administration never alleged factories hidden out in the desert, that is your speculation. Every allegation by the Bush administration that could be falsified was falsified. At some point one has to say "Fool me once, shame on you... and we won't be fooled again."
When and when, respectively? There were reports FROM THE US that Iraq had moved chemical weapons to forward postitions and that field commanders had been authorized to use them. I am not aware of any such statement by Saddam Hussein. The closest I recall was the warning that if we invaded we would be 'incinerated'. Assuming that was an accurate translation, that hardly implies what you are saying. So what is the basis for your statement? Are you misattributing statments to Saddam Hussein that were actually made by the bush administration?
My point is that you are presenting nothing but naked speculation.
There is no doubt that Iraq had chemical weapons prior to 1991 and that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program prior to and after 1991.
Between using its stockpiles furing the Iran-Iraq war and against the Kurds, considering the bombing dampaign in 1991 agains the Iraqi stockpiles and production facilites and taking into account teh destruction fo the Iraqi calutrons and seizure of enriched Uranium by UNSCOM in the 1990s there was scant reason to believe that Iraq had stockpiles or production facilites in 2003.
Exactly. No one ever said that Iraq would not resume WMD production if it could, that was one of Bush's lies. No one ever said that Saddam Hussein could be trusted, that is another of Bush's lies.
On Tue, 05 Oct 2004 02:25:42 GMT, "Lew Hodgett" calmly ranted:
What else would you call a small Bush?
Indubitably.
I turned off the debate when they started talking about "Making America Secure" as if they were interested...
I did love Kerry's statement about the totally uninspected cargo areas vs. the overly-inspected person/baggage area on any given passenger flight. One in 25 or 50 is frisked which means 24-49 in 50 _could_ be carrying weapons.
I couldn't carry my 1-1/2" pocket knife on board but waltzed right past all the security guards with a 9" sharpened weapon (a pencil) sticking out of my shirt pocket. One DHS guard's eyes were within 18" of my weapon at one point and he didn't say a word. Who's kidding whom about security on flights?
This has been discussed before. Enter the CEO's with uncannily similar physical appearances, and you can also spot a congress critter by his coiffure ... no "haircuts" there.
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