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#243730 - 03/28/07 04:55 PM
Re: here is the deal
[Re: Rick Donaldson]
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CaryP
Member
Registered: 01/04/04
Posts: 743
Loc: Louisiana
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Okay Rick. I've got to give you one here. Scott Ritter, former chief UNSCOM weapons inspector (former US Marine Capt.) in Iraq did an interview shortly after his resignation from his position in the second half on 1998. I've seen several interviews (videos) where Ritter claims that UNSCOM had completed over 90% of its inspections and had verified that Iraq had no WMD's at the time of his resignation. This interview conflicts with that BIG TIME. Ritter's commentary leads one to believe that Clinton's admin wouldn't respond to a weaponized Iraq in 1998. Ritter just dropped off of my "reliable source" list. He said one thing in August 1998, and has contradicted that since 2001.
Source of the interview:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec98/ritter_8-31.html
At the same time, PNAC sent a letter to Clinton in January 1998 asking, beggin, demanding for a "regime change" in Iraq, which Clinton ignored. It wasn't just the democrats Rick. It was the neocons as well. The two party system is an illusion to keep the sheople asleep at the wheel. My opinion anyway.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
And to follow up, the PNAC boys sent a letter to the Speaker of the House (Newt Gingrich) and the Senate Majority leader (Trent Lott before his disgrace for racist remarks)again asking, begging, demanding "regime change" in Iraq in May 1998. Here's the link.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqletter1998.htm
And the US had informed "allies" that Afghanistan was going to be invaded before 9/11. The whole "war on terror" was pre-planned. 9/11 was the pre-planned catalyst to kick the whole thing into motion. My opinion anyway. Don't go off with your "CHILDISH, STUPID, INSANE, ETC." remarks please. I can say the same about your perspective.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/preplanned.html
Damn. I feel like I've missed something. LOL
_________________________
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#243736 - 03/29/07 12:36 PM
Re: here is the deal
[Re: CaryP]
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Tom Young
Member
Registered: 01/14/04
Posts: 352
Loc: Chicago, IL
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Okay Rick. I've got to give you one here. Scott Ritter, former chief UNSCOM weapons inspector (former US Marine Capt.) in Iraq did an interview shortly after his resignation from his position in the second half on 1998. I've seen several interviews (videos) where Ritter claims that UNSCOM had completed over 90% of its inspections and had verified that Iraq had no WMD's at the time of his resignation. This interview conflicts with that BIG TIME. Ritter's commentary leads one to believe that Clinton's admin wouldn't respond to a weaponized Iraq in 1998. Ritter just dropped off of my "reliable source" list. He said one thing in August 1998, and has contradicted that since 2001.
Ritter may well have changed his mind on some aspects of the WMD issue over time as new information became available, but I've never found anything directly out of step with his opinions. The U.N. inspection program had largely verified that Iraq had destroyed it's WMD capabilities as of 1991 and that there was no direct evidence of any renewed effort towards re-acquiring WMD's in the time since. While the inspection program itself was only 90% complete in 1998, the lack of evidence of any current WMD program would be sufficient to conclude that any stored WMD's that had not been located, chemical and biological in particular, would have aged out to useless goop by 1998 making any WMD threat from Iraq a highly unlikely possibility. Ritter never did claim that a complete lack of any WMD storage had been fully verified, complete verification would have required continued and unfettered inspections, something that by 1998 was no longer possible due to political corruption of the inspection program itself.
There's never been any question that a policy towards regime change in Iraq continued throughout the Clinton Administration, a policy that was first put into place during the previous Bush administration. Nor has there been any question that the same PNAC groupies tried to push both President Bush Sr. and Clinton into taking more direct and unilateral action into affecting regime change in Iraq. Actions that went well beyond the sanctions that had been imposed and were being maintained. While those two weren't as easily duped by the PNAC rhetoric as our current president has shown himself to be, they were complicit in allowing the inspection program to fail by using it as a tool for implementing agendas that went well outside the bounds of weapons inspection..
The U.N. Security Council mandate was based on insuring the complete disarmement of any Iraqi WMD programs or threat It had absolutely nothing to do with regime change, "freeing the Iraqi people", or even the notion of ending Saddam Hussein's alleged support for terrorism. Ostensibly, our invasion of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with WMD's but by having created an environment that was certain to prevent the successful conclusion of the U.N. inspection program the groundwork had been laid towards using a non-existent WMD threat as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq, an invasion that never would have been authorized on the basis of regime change alone.
_________________________
"Get your chook, Toivo, and we'll go yank some lakers."
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#243767 - 04/02/07 06:19 AM
Re: here is the deal
[Re: Tom Young]
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Rick Donaldson
Member
Registered: 05/04/01
Posts: 6675
Loc: Colorado Springs
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Well, everyone bases their argument specifically on the "fact that there were WMDs in Iraq".... however, as pointed out above, it's not secret everyone wanted a regime change.
Further, there WERE WMD there. There have been several instances where they were found, including the 500 or munitions that were meant to be launched out of long range artillery.
When anyone mentions those particular items, the other side says, "Well, they were OLD".
That's called "raising the bar" on what's acceptable.
So, your argument about Ritter is moot anyway. Besides which, the UN inspectors were NOT allowed into areas WHERE they were producing stuff, nor to the secret locations where stuff is probably still buried over there in the sand.
_________________________
Rick Donaldson
It's better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for who you are not.
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#243786 - 04/02/07 02:28 PM
Re: here is the deal
[Re: Rick Donaldson]
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Tom Young
Member
Registered: 01/14/04
Posts: 352
Loc: Chicago, IL
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Well, everyone bases their argument specifically on the "fact that there were WMDs in Iraq".... however, as pointed out above, it's not secret everyone wanted a regime change.
Where above was it pointed out that "everyone wanted a regime change"? There were certainly elements within the U.S. and other places that were indeed hopeful of a regime change, generally for their own reasons, none of which had anything real to do with freedom and democracy. They were also hopeful (and remain hopeful) of a regime change in places like Libia, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and other nations, each of which could potentially pose an even greater threat than a country like Iraq could have on the heels of more than a decade of international sanctions prior to the invasion, but to say that everyone wanted a regime change in Iraq is patently false and even if it were not, the desire for regime change alone would never be considered a legal justification for invasion any more than it would be for these or any other nations
Further, there WERE WMD there. There have been several instances where they were found, including the 500 or munitions that were meant to be launched out of long range artillery.
When anyone mentions those particular items, the other side says, "Well, they were OLD".
That's called "raising the bar" on what's acceptable.
Still more false truths. These 500 or so rounds worth of pre-1991 and fully degraded ie; non useable, mustard and sarin stocks that have been found since the 2003 invasion did not under any circumstances represent any kind of imminent threat, either to the U.S., or Iraq's neighbors. For a short time they did make a cute little "see we told you so" argument for folks like Santorum as well as being drummed up by a handful of so called media outlets like Faux News, Michelle Malkin and others but as anyone who doesn't rely solely on these types of sources for their news coverage must surely know, that was about as far as it went. The DoD, as well as the administration have fully disavowed any significance to these findings, noting that they were essentially war relics leftover from previous conflicts, conflicts which the U.S. supported and financed. The Duelfer Report summed this issue up fairly succintly in it's 2005 addendum, nearly a year before Santorum's "big announcement":
"“ISG assesses that Iraq and Coalition Forces will continue to discover small numbers of degraded chemical weapons, which the former Regime mislaid or improperly destroyed prior to 1991. ISG believes the bulk of these weapons were likely abandoned, forgotten and lost during the Iran-Iraq war because tens of thousands of CW munitions were forward deployed along frequently and rapidly shifting battlefronts. All but two of the chemical weapons discovered since OIF were found in southern Iraq where the majority of CW munitions were used against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war.”
Compared to the administrations allegations during the build-up to the Iraq invasion, allegations that layed claim to Iraq's current capablity to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent as well as 30,000 munitions to deliver them, mobile biological weapons labs, and as if that weren't enough to justify an invasion, it was asserted that Iraq would likely be able to produce a nuclear weapon within a year.
Personally, I would call Santorums argument "lowering the bar" and by a very significant margin.
So, your argument about Ritter is moot anyway. Besides which, the UN inspectors were NOT allowed into areas WHERE they were producing stuff, nor to the secret locations where stuff is probably still buried over there in the sand.
As history has clearly shown by now, I'm not the one throwing around moot arguements. Even if the U.N. inspectors had been barred from searching in these locations, the coalition forces are now in to their 5th year of looking and still not finding anything of even the most remote significance. But, since you bring it up, one should spend a short amount of time examining why the inspection process was subjected to these failures to begin with, at least during that time prior to when the U.S. chose to invade Iraq without the explicit support of the U.N. security council, basing the decision to invade on the propositon that we had "weeks, not months" to ascertain Iraq's WMD capability before risking being attacked by Iraq ourselves.
As has been noted earlier, the U.N. sanctions were themselves centered around containment of any threat that Iraq might pose following the first Gulf War, and to date, there's no clear evidence that they weren't successful in that role. However there is no shortage of evidence backing up Iraq's charges that the U.N. inspection program was being manipulated through it's entirity by agents of the U.S. Government as well as those from Great Britain, Australia, Israel, Russia and no doubt others, most of whom were spying in support of the CIA (and in all likelyhood, on each other) while using the inspection program as nothing more than a front to cover of their own covert operations. The CIA's involvement was clearly not in place to support UNSCOM's containment mandate. Certainly the Iraqi government was well aware of what was going on and their knowledge of these operations gave them ample reason to resist an inspection program that had since it's earliest days, been reduced to a complete sham.
Of course this is all very, very old news by now. However, what I do find curious, if only to a slight degree, is that business about all of those "loud mouthed Democrats" whining about impeaching Bush. Actually it seems more than a little surprising (and worrisome) that so few people, "loud mouthed Democrats" in particular have even gone so far as to mention the word except to proclaim that "impeachment is off the table".
Certainly there are plenty of good reasons to justify impeachment proceedings, not only against President Bush, but Vice President Cheney as well. The last time I checked the Constitution, it appeared pretty clear that impeachment wasn't somethng to shy away from, but on the contrary, it's an integral part of the duty of Congress in any case where the question of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors have been brought into question. It seems to me that Congress is remiss in their own duties by continuing to ignore their role here. I honestly can't even make a guess as to why they do, unless perhaps Speaker Pelozi isn't yet ready to step into the role and accept the fallout for the mess that this administration has left us with. Until she is, I suppose there are some among us who might just be thankful that these "loud mouthed Democrats" seem willing just to sit back and watch this these two enter into history as leaders of the most incompetent and damaging administration in U.S. history.
_________________________
"Get your chook, Toivo, and we'll go yank some lakers."
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#243794 - 04/02/07 07:31 PM
Re: here is the deal
[Re: Tom Young]
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Rick Donaldson
Member
Registered: 05/04/01
Posts: 6675
Loc: Colorado Springs
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Where above was it pointed out that
"everyone wanted a regime change"?
Well... here:
There's never been any question that a
policy towards regime change in Iraq continued
throughout the Clinton Administration, a policy
that was first put into place during the
previous Bush administration. Nor has there been
any question that the same PNAC groupies tried
to push both President Bush Sr. and Clinton into
taking more direct and unilateral action into
affecting regime change in Iraq. Actions
that went well beyond the sanctions that had
been imposed and were being maintained. While
those two weren't as easily duped by the PNAC
rhetoric as our current president has shown
himself to be, they were complicit in allowing
the inspection program to fail by using it as a
tool for implementing agendas that went well
outside the bounds of weapons
inspection..
Still more false truths. These 500 or so rounds
worth of pre-1991 and fully degraded ie; non
useable, mustard and sarin stocks that have been
found since the 2003 invasion did not under any
circumstances represent any kind of imminent
threat, either to the U.S., or Iraq's neighbors.
Easy to call me a liar. But, apparently this is
your OPINION they weren't a threat? And as I
said before, when it is pointed out specifically
when and where munitions have been found, EACH
TIME, people like you come along and say, "Oh
sure, but they weren't going to hurt anyone", or
"they were OLD".
It's not RELEVANT that they were old, or you
BELIEVE the Iraqis and Saddam weren't going to
hurt anyone. Completely irrelevant. What IS relevant is that there were WMD. He used them on the Kurds, and he used them on the Iranians at one point. So, he HAD them.
So, the ONLY false "truth" here is yours saying there weren't any. Actually, there were multiple instances of various devices, reported widely in the news, including materials for uranium enrichment found there (specially made tubes for centrifuges for instance)... but, what the hell, you won't believe that even if I showed you the news sources. It's a waste of time.
I've learned one thing from the ANomalies site in my years of being here, people believe what they want, and call others (like me) names because I know better than to believe tripe when I see it. Instead, no, I'm "brainwashed" or "can't think for myself" or "a government plant".
Whatever.
_________________________
Rick Donaldson
It's better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for who you are not.
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