It really scares me that anyone would try to parse words so precisely as to deny that the Bush administration ever claimed that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11. Right before the war (or should I say "invasion") began in 2003, a respected pollster reported that a significant majority of Americans said the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis. I forget the exact figure but it was greater than 70%. The fact that the hijackers were all Saudis or Yemenites didn't stop the Bush administration from taking advantage of people's ignorance and fear from waging an unnecessary and unjust war.
Leading up to and well into the war, the administration was insisting that there were WMDs. Then they claimed they were just well hidden. Then the WMDs were supposedly in Syria. After a while, we never heard about WMDs. Then it became all about bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. No more mention of WMDs.
No one will deny that Sadaam Hussein was a dictator who commited heinous acts. However, I don't think anyone can deny that the great majority of Iraqis were leading better lives under Hussein's rule than they are now.
This war has been a disaster in any way you look at it. And the blame sits squarely on the shoulders of Bush, Cheney, and Rumseld.
Who gives a shit?? Regardless of those things, it was GOOD to remove him from power and crush his military-machine... Our big fuck-up is thinking we have some responsibility to "fix" the power-vacuum that was created by removing him... That place was a cesspool of torture and terror looong before we were even here and it will still be looong after America is only a memory... We should have loaded up the day we killed Uda & Qusay and just let the sub-human community hunt for Saddom themselves with a million rusty knives....
Why do you suppose God made that region out of sand?? So the blood soaks into the ground and disappears! America needs to focus on AMERICA for the next 20+ years or we won't survive! We've got terminal economic and social cancer in this country, yet we're running around the world trying to be peace-corp to everyone under the sun! NOT OUR BUSINESS!!
I think you missed the point that Scriptfixer made. When Bush launched his war, Saddam no longer had a military machine, at not one that was a threat to anyone, and especially not a threat to the U.S. Hell, there were large portion of Iraq that he didn't even control with his "military machine."
At the time there was supposedly intelligence that Hussein had active WMD programs, everyone said so what?. Hussein was no freind of the Islamic extremists.
I recall realizing that it didn't matter. The terror groups just needed to get one or two sympathetic people inside a WMD program to start smuggling things out, especially if the WMDs were biological in nature. Forget suitcase nukes. Welcome to test tube plagues.
And the rest is history. No WMDs, unless they went somewhere else. I always wonder about *that*, too. Dummy Bush rattled his sabre for so long, Iraq could have moved anything they had by wagon trains pulled by half dead camels and hidden them anywhere (possibly Syria). Who knows? It's all just a big mess. This isn't how I pictured the 21st century being: the same 2000 year old conflicts, but with bigger guns.
assad keeps them well hidden
actually, everyone knows pigloosey's mission was really just to undermine her own credibility
Mission Accomplished!
Where the WMDs Went
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 16, 2005
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bill Tierney, a former military intelligence officer and Arabic speaker who worked at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and as a counter-infiltration operator in Baghdad in 2004. He was also an inspector (1996-1998) for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) for overseeing the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles in Iraq. He worked on the most intrusive inspections during this period and either participated in or planned inspections that led to four of the seventeen resolutions against Iraq.
""Tierney"": Thank you Jamie for the opportunity to say there were weapons, and that we were right to invade Iraq.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20154
BUt of course you HuffyPuffy Post readers have better intel than a guy like this......yeah, right.
-- Modified on 5/4/2007 11:43:27 PM
... the only reason I can see is that they don't believe it.
What do you think?
a couiple of questions first, then what i think.
1. why would a serious profeesional like this say what he said?
2. where DID the WMD go that the previous Administration was claiming was there EVEN AFTER the invasion began? Was BC being puppetiered by Cheney?????
I think there is a high likely hood saddam knew the jig was up.
he took what he had and shipped it off to assad, better him than Iran, eh?
but on the heels of being so wrong about them being in Iraq they were not about to go rummaging off to Syria...bush haters were already teeing off on bush for no wmd
“When Clinton was here recently he told me he was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime,” . – Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso said in an interview with Portuguese cable news channel SIC Noticias
Is the Porteguese PM LYING?????
WHY???
The fatal qualifier here is "...he was absolutely convinced...."
One can be absolutel convinced that the earth is flat, and STILL be be wrong.
I guess we'll never know anytime soon. God knows any of these WMD turning up by noveber 2008 would be a godsend to bush, though.
anyone who has ever been ina position that often required decision making knows there is no such thing as absloute certianty, as you have demonstrated.
you make decisons based on your best "guess"
in light of 9/11, it was reasonable in my mind to take action based on what they believed to be true at the time
How hard is this to understand? This guy was part of the inspection team five to seven years before the war. What he fails to mention is the Operation Desert Fox strikes in December 1998 that hit almost 100 weapons sites in Iraq and effectively destroyed what was left of Saddam's WMD capabilities.
UNSCOM inspectors in 2002 and 2003 did not find any WMDs in Iraq. I'm sure they woyuld have if Rummy was part of the search team since he obviously knew where they were.
how in the fuck do you know the affect of desert fox? inspectrors were never reinsrted due to the gutless wonder not wanting to rock the boat
DF showed saddam BC had no cajones
“When Clinton was here recently he told me he was absolutely convinced, given his years in the White House and the access to privileged information which he had, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction until the end of the Saddam regime,” . – Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso said in an interview with Portuguese cable news channel SIC Noticias
I know the effect because it's been reported by several sources.
Operation Desert Fox was a perfect example of the uselessness of strike operations. Iraqis have told me that the WMD destruction and movement started just after Operation Desert Fox, since after all, who would be so stupid as to start a bombing campaign and just stop.
It was only after Saddam realized that President Clinton lacked the nerve for anything more than a temper-tantrum demonstration that he knew the doors were wide open for him to continue his weapons program. We didn’t break his will, we didn’t destroy his weapons making capability (The Iraqis simply moved most of the precision machinery out prior to the strikes, then rebuilt the buildings), but we did kill some Iraqi bystanders, just so President Clinton could say “something must be done, so I did something.”
Wow...there are sure a lot of malcontented, Bush-bashing GED flunkies airing their political and social ignorance. Right or Left...lets talk winning...not losing. Oh yes...we can!
So busy cunting the trees, they're totally clueless to the fact that they're very badly lost in the forest!