Iraqi WMDs revisited

[The Avon Lady]

There have been a number of recent relevant stories and documentation regarding the existance or not of Iraq's WMDs.

Have a look at this interview:

The Iraqi WMDs That Slipped Through Our Fingers (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21924).

And at these compiled blog entries (http://blogs.pajamasmedia.com/wmd_files/).

[Sixpack]

Btw AL,

Is your husband aware o/t fact you as a housewife spend much of your daytime on the internet ? :P

[kiwi_2005]

Sixpack wrote
Is your husband aware o/t fact you as a housewife spend much of your daytime on the internet

:yep:

No guessing whos da boss in Avons house :-j

[The Avon Lady]

Sixpack wrote
Is your husband aware o/t fact you as a housewife spend much of your daytime on the internet
No guessing whos da boss in Avons house :-j
We're both the bosses in our house. :yep:

As for my time on the Internet, my husband is often by my side in some discussions on some forums and sometimes so are my kids, usually during the afternoon/evening hours.

[Sixpack]

Cool :up:

I just wondered as you seem to be ever present -which is great; now I know.

PS Sorry for the hijacking. Back to topic. "That's right people, this show is over. Move on."

[The Avon Lady]

Back to topic. "That's right people, this show is over. Move on."
You mean nothing to see here? :hmm:

[kiwi_2005]

As for my time on the Internet, my husband is often by my side in some discussions on some forums and sometimes so are my kids, usually during the afternoon/evening hours.

Well at least yous are normal. Its 2am here, my internet chatting starts around 10pm & im usually up till 4am on forums, then crash out in a slumber. :88)

:rock: :roll:

[Sixpack]

Back to topic. "That's right people, this show is over. Move on."
You mean nothing to see here? :hmm:

Uhmm, no I merely figured you would like to return to Iraq's WMD now .... :88)

[Abraham]

Sixpack wrote
Is your husband aware o/t fact you as a housewife spend much of your daytime on the internet
No guessing whos da boss in Avons house :-j
We're both the bosses in our house. :yep:

As for my time on the Internet, my husband is often by my side in some discussions on some forums and sometimes so are my kids, usually during the afternoon/evening hours.
Ah, that answers a lot of my questions.
Your husband and eight children are all posting under your name...
Guy's, we are posting against a whole family!

Shouldn't we ask Neal to divide The Avon Lady's total posting score by (Max) Factor ten?
:D

[Kapitan]

Bless her poor sole mind you i cant say alot divide mine by 20!

With 12 brothers and 8 sisters sheesh !!!

[Sixpack]

Abraham, you're killing me :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

[STEED]

:hmm: well right.............

[The Avon Lady]

Bless her poor sole mind you i cant say alot divide mine by 20!

With 12 brothers and 8 sisters sheesh !!!
Orphanage alumni don't count! :P

Me? Eight kids? I must've miscounted. Where'd that extra eighth one come from? :hmm: :hmm:

Aha! A stowaway! I'll shish-kebab him/her! :arrgh!:

[SmokinTep]

Getting back to the subject, I think all the stuff went to Sudan.

[Oberon]

Sssssh, it's in my backyard...gonna wait till the next boot fair and flog it on the cheap ;)

[Konovalov]

Getting back to the subject, I think all the stuff went to Sudan.

I think all the stuff went to the planet Mars myself and this guy is guarding the stash:

http://www.angelfire.com/pa/lkmarvin/Pictures/marvredblk.jpg

[Abraham]

Me? Eight kids? I must've miscounted. Where'd that extra eighth one come from? :hmm: :hmm:

Aha! A stowaway! I'll shish-kebab him/her! :arrgh!:
@ The Avon Ladt:
Sorry for the extra kid. But I vaguely remember you once mentionned something about an adoption on a posting to Pigfish...
Wanted to take him with you to enjoy trout at Pigfish's place.
Trouble remembering his name though...
:-?

[XabbaRus]

Ah yes Jamie Glazov, another self loathing emigre from the USSR....

Not saying all immigrants from USSR/Russia are like that but I have met many who are. As soon as they move out of Russia they start being uber-critical of everything about their homeland.

the guy he intervied has valid points. I read some stuff he wrote on another website. One for an intelligence expo.

[Linton]

Is the report of the Iraq survey group available anywhere ?

[The Avon Lady]

Is the report of the Iraq survey group available anywhere ?
Doubtful.

However the tape transcripts are available via some US military site on the WEB. Forgot the name of the military section handling these. Will see if I can find it.

XabbaRus, I know of plenty ex-Soviets and Russians who have very little to say for their native land. Maybe there's a reason for the pattern.

[CCIP]

XabbaRus, I know of plenty ex-Soviets and Russians who have very little to say for their native land. Maybe there's a reason for the pattern.

I think you have to be careful with not confusing "land", "people" and "state".

As one of these emigrants, I've never lost my identification with the land and people, however cold both may be on occasion. Given a fair opportunity, I would return to them. If it came down to it, I would fight for them.

On the other hand, I've little love for the Russian state, in any of its more or less recent forms. And returning to Russia, for me, almost unquestionably means fighting for that state, which I would not.

But we digress.

[The Avon Lady]

But we digress.
:yep:

I've found the site: FMSO (http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/).

[XabbaRus]

I think you have to be careful with not confusing "land", "people" and "state".

As one of these emigrants, I've never lost my identification with the land and people, however cold both may be on occasion. Given a fair opportunity, I would return to them. If it came down to it, I would fight for them.

On the other hand, I've little love for the Russian state, in any of its more or less recent forms. And returning to Russia, for me, almost unquestionably means fighting for that state, which I would not.

But we digress.

No I don't. I know of a fair number Russians who bitch about Russia in its present state, in its past state and about their own people. I have met a fair few who loathe being Russian and try to find anything possible to distance themselves from their birthright. These same people don't say anything positive about Russia/fUSSR.

As an emigre surely you must admit that not all things were bad in USSR.

What bugs me about Glazov is he resides in Canada as far as I can make out yet he writes such anti-Canadian rhetoric. As for the interview it mertis investigation. Like I said I found other stuff by the interviewee that suggests ISG maybe didn't follow stuff up. For what ends who knows.

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

getting back to WMDs...

1- can i have a clear and concise definition of what these weapons are...

2- can i have a specific instance or picture of one of them in this Iraqi storehouse that we captured...

that's all...

--Mike

[Takeda Shingen]

getting back to WMDs...

1- can i have a clear and concise definition of what these weapons are...

2- can i have a specific instance or picture of one of them in this Iraqi storehouse that we captured...

that's all...

--Mike


In this we have the real legacy of 9/11/2001 and the Iraqi invasion and occupation. This is, are the people of the world, and of America in particular, willing to take the world of the intelligence community at face value? I share Mike's concern. Undeniable proof will not come, even if such weapons do exist in the locations specified, due to the fact that security concerns will never allow for full disclosure. In the back of the collective minds of America will be the failures that have put us in this mess. I

am no doubt speaking like a young 29-year-old, but I do not believe that I will ever completely trust my government and it's agencies again. Most of our older members have probably felt this way for some time, but prior to 2003, I generally trusted Washington.

[The Avon Lady]

getting back to WMDs...

1- can i have a clear and concise definition of what these weapons are...

2- can i have a specific instance or picture of one of them in this Iraqi storehouse that we captured...

that's all...

--Mike


In this we have the real legacy of 9/11/2001 and the Iraqi invasion and occupation. This is, are the people of the world, and of America in particular, willing to take the world of the intelligence community at face value? I share Mike's concern. Undeniable proof will not come, even if such weapons do exist in the locations specified, due to the fact that security concerns will never allow for full disclosure. In the back of the collective minds of America will be the failures that have put us in this mess. I

am no doubt speaking like a young 29-year-old, but I do not believe that I will ever completely trust my government and it's agencies again. Most of our older members have probably felt this way for some time, but prior to 2003, I generally trusted Washington.
Ditto but my loss of faith in US secuirty agencies abilities goes back to 2001. And they're not much better today, if at all.

[scandium]

I don't buy into the intelligence failure story. The intel was there (the August 6 PDB "Bin Laden determined to strike in the US"), they had requested more funding for anti-terrorism, but anti-terrorism simply wasn't a priority for the US admin which instead was preoccupied with missle defence. There was a failure yes, but it was political.


getting back to WMDs...

1- can i have a clear and concise definition of what these weapons are...

2- can i have a specific instance or picture of one of them in this Iraqi storehouse that we captured...

that's all...

--Mike


In this we have the real legacy of 9/11/2001 and the Iraqi invasion and occupation. This is, are the people of the world, and of America in particular, willing to take the world of the intelligence community at face value? I share Mike's concern. Undeniable proof will not come, even if such weapons do exist in the locations specified, due to the fact that security concerns will never allow for full disclosure. In the back of the collective minds of America will be the failures that have put us in this mess. I

am no doubt speaking like a young 29-year-old, but I do not believe that I will ever completely trust my government and it's agencies again. Most of our older members have probably felt this way for some time, but prior to 2003, I generally trusted Washington.
Ditto but my loss of faith in US secuirty agencies abilities goes back to 2001. And they're not much better today, if at all.

[micky1up]

i dont think the truth will ever get out about WMD's and the extent but i would love it to be made public when they find them for i think they do exist because alot of people on this forum would be force to accept they were wrong,i always look back at the weapons search's in ireland to find ira arms caches and in over 30 years of searching and hunting down these caches they only ever found a hand full and iraq is alot bigger than ireland. as a matter of historical fact it has always been easier to disprove than to prove and unfortunatley the proof may be a chemical attack in a major city by terroist that got there weapons from iraq

[scandium]

i dont think the truth will ever get out about WMD's and the extent but i would love it to be made public when they find them for i think they do exist because alot of people on this forum would be force to accept they were wrong,i always look back at the weapons search's in ireland to find ira arms caches and in over 30 years of searching and hunting down these caches they only ever found a hand full and iraq is alot bigger than ireland. as a matter of historical fact it has always been easier to disprove than to prove and unfortunatley the proof may be a chemical attack in a major city by terroist that got there weapons from iraq

If Saddam had WMD when the US invaded, why didn't he use them? And its been, what, 3 years since the invasion of Iraq? If these WMD existed and were given to terrorirsts as you seem to suggest, why haven't they been used in the last 3 years?

[The Avon Lady]

i dont think the truth will ever get out about WMD's and the extent but i would love it to be made public when they find them for i think they do exist because alot of people on this forum would be force to accept they were wrong,i always look back at the weapons search's in ireland to find ira arms caches and in over 30 years of searching and hunting down these caches they only ever found a hand full and iraq is alot bigger than ireland. as a matter of historical fact it has always been easier to disprove than to prove and unfortunatley the proof may be a chemical attack in a major city by terroist that got there weapons from iraq

If Saddam had WMD when the US invaded, why didn't he use them? And its been, what, 3 years since the invasion of Iraq? If these WMD existed and were given to terrorirsts as you seem to suggest, why haven't they been used in the last 3 years?
- Smuggled out to Syria? See this recent opinion piece (http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=20499&catcode=13). I have no idea how valid the claims made are.

- The US and Bush, as you know, look like the greatest of fools.

- These weapons or materials were not yet in a deployable state.

- They're sitting under the coalition's noses and those that want to get to them cannot due to location or equipment required to move them.

I'm not claiming anything here as fact. I'm just pointing out that there are rational answers to your question.

[Abraham]

@ The Avon Lady:
I can't display your link. Something wrong?
:hmm:

i dont think the truth will ever get out about WMD's and the extent but i would love it to be made public when they find them for i think they do exist because alot of people on this forum would be force to accept they were wrong,i always look back at the weapons search's in ireland to find ira arms caches and in over 30 years of searching and hunting down these caches they only ever found a hand full and iraq is alot bigger than ireland. as a matter of historical fact it has always been easier to disprove than to prove and unfortunatley the proof may be a chemical attack in a major city by terroist that got there weapons from iraq

If Saddam had WMD when the US invaded, why didn't he use them? And its been, what, 3 years since the invasion of Iraq? If these WMD existed and were given to terrorirsts as you seem to suggest, why haven't they been used in the last 3 years?

Having a Weapon of Mass Destruction does not equal using a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
They have to be hidden, what reduces their deployability and if you don't have a well thought-out and proven chai of command & control your orders might not even be carried out!

[The Avon Lady]

@ The Avon Lady:
I can't display your link. Something wrong?
Link is correct. Server seems to be down. Try again later.

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

- Smuggled out to Syria? See this recent opinion piece. I have no idea how valid the claims made are.

- The US and Bush, as you know, look like the greatest of fools.

- These weapons or materials were not yet in a deployable state.

- They're sitting under the coalition's noses and those that want to get to them cannot due to location or equipment required to move them.

I'm not claiming anything here as fact. I'm just pointing out that there are rational answers to your question.


so, in other words, you don't know...

and therefore, all of your opinion, all of your viewpoint, of which you so vociferously put forth, all of it is based on rumor, propaganda, and heresay... and none of it is based on fact...

yet you continue to wave your finger of guilt, and the truth of the matter becomes secondary, and eventually becomes meaningless... to the point where you never even stop and look for the truth any more... only your self righteous agenda is important to you...

and that is central to the problem... all of your [so called] 'rational answers' seem to ignore the most rational of all...

that they may have never been there at all in the first place


--Mike

[Abraham]

- Smuggled out to Syria? See this recent opinion piece. I have no idea how valid the claims made are.

- The US and Bush, as you know, look like the greatest of fools.

- These weapons or materials were not yet in a deployable state.

- They're sitting under the coalition's noses and those that want to get to them cannot due to location or equipment required to move them.

I'm not claiming anything here as fact. I'm just pointing out that there are rational answers to your question.


so, in other words, you don't know...

and therefore, all of your opinion, all of your viewpoint, of which you so vociferously put forth, all of it is based on rumor, propaganda, and heresay... and none of it is based on fact...

yet you continue to wave your finger of guilt, and the truth of the matter becomes secondary, and eventually becomes meaningless... to the point where you never even stop and look for the truth any more... only your self righteous agenda is important to you...

and that is central to the problem... all of your [so called] 'rational answers' seem to ignore the most rational of all...

that they may have never been there at all in the first place


--Mike
Well actually they were there in the first place.
They were there when Kurds were gassed by Saddam.
They were there when Iranian soldiers were gassed in the Iraq-Iran war.
They were there when Iraqi Scud's were fired at Israel - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).
They were there during the First Gulf War - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).
They were there when many were found and destroyed after the First Gulf War.
And it turned out that there was a widespread WMD-program on it's way after the First Gulf War.

And yes, with hindsight it seems that they are not there anymore - although only a small part of all the confiscated Iraqi documentation on the subject is translated yet.

History will eventually teach us how far the WMDs were develloped or ready or non-existant.
History also teaches us to err preferrably on the safe side...
;)

[The Avon Lady]

- Smuggled out to Syria? See this recent opinion piece. I have no idea how valid the claims made are.

- The US and Bush, as you know, look like the greatest of fools.

- These weapons or materials were not yet in a deployable state.

- They're sitting under the coalition's noses and those that want to get to them cannot due to location or equipment required to move them.

I'm not claiming anything here as fact. I'm just pointing out that there are rational answers to your question.


so, in other words, you don't know...
Not "in other words". Read what I said. You seem incapabale of grasping what people state in their posts - even after they repeat themselves for you.
and therefore, all of your opinion, all of your viewpoint, of which you so vociferously put forth, all of it is based on rumor, propaganda, and heresay... and none of it is based on fact...
Read Scandium's question or at least the way he posed it. I answered appropriatly. Again you don't read.
yet you continue to wave your finger of guilt, and the truth of the matter becomes secondary, and eventually becomes meaningless... to the point where you never even stop and look for the truth any more... only your self righteous agenda is important to you...
Rabid dog! Call the city pound!
and that is central to the problem... all of your [so called] 'rational answers' seem to ignore the most rational of all...

that they may have never been there at all in the first place

Abraham just answered you very rationally.

So you can stop foaming at the mouth now.

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

@ Abraham...
Well actually they were there in the first place.
They were there when Kurds were gassed by Saddam.
They were there when Iranian soldiers were gassed in the Iraq-Iran war.
They were there when Iraqi Scud's were fired at Israel - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).
They were there during the First Gulf War - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).
They were there when many were found and destroyed after the First Gulf War.
And it turned out that there was a widespread WMD-program on it's way after the First Gulf War.

show me a picture of one of them... just one... any one... that was captured in this war...

show me a picture of one half of one...

one quarter of one...

you can't... facts are facts... gut feelings are gut feelings... rumor and propaganda are rumor and propaganda...

@ Avon Lady...

read above what i just said to Abraham... s l o w l y...

[quote]Rabid dog! Call the city pound!
Quote:
and that is central to the problem... all of your [so called] 'rational answers' seem to ignore the most rational of all...

that they may have never been there at all in the first place


Abraham just answered you very rationally.

So you can stop foaming at the mouth now.

i think you go to far this time AL... i won't lower myself to the level of returning the name calling... and it is a direct violation of the fiorum rules...

lets see what Abraham does on this instance...


--Mike

[The Avon Lady]

@ Abraham...
Well actually they were there in the first place.
They were there when Kurds were gassed by Saddam.
They were there when Iranian soldiers were gassed in the Iraq-Iran war.
They were there when Iraqi Scud's were fired at Israel - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).
They were there during the First Gulf War - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).
They were there when many were found and destroyed after the First Gulf War.
And it turned out that there was a widespread WMD-program on it's way after the First Gulf War.

show me a picture of one of them... just one... any one... that was captured in this war...

show me a picture of one half of one...

one quarter of one...

you can't... facts are facts... gut feelings are gut feelings... rumor and propaganda are rumor and propaganda...

@ Avon Lady...

read above what i just said to Abraham... s l o w l y...

Rabid dog! Call the city pound!
Quote:
and that is central to the problem... all of your [so called] 'rational answers' seem to ignore the most rational of all...

that they may have never been there at all in the first place


Abraham just answered you very rationally.

So you can stop foaming at the mouth now.

i think you go to far this time AL... i won't lower myself to the level of returning the name calling... and it is a direct violation of the fiorum rules...

lets see what Abraham does on this instance...

Please contact Kofi Anan (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/06/02/international/i175403D57.DTL&sn=011&sc=611) for the pics.

Now ain't this confusing! We thought they were there, but they weren't, and now we find out someone must have moved them. The weapons that weren't there, that is. :hmm:

[Abraham]

@ Abraham...
Well actually they were there in the first place.
They were there when Kurds were gassed by Saddam.
They were there when Iranian soldiers were gassed in the Iraq-Iran war.
They were there when Iraqi Scud's were fired at Israel - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).
They were there during the First Gulf War - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).
They were there when many were found and destroyed after the First Gulf War.
And it turned out that there was a widespread WMD-program on it's way after the First Gulf War.
show me a picture of one of them... just one... any one... that was captured in this war...

show me a picture of one half of one...

one quarter of one...
Real funny to ask me that question (3 times) after leaving out this part of my own quote;
History will eventually teach us how far the WMDs were develloped or ready or non-existant.
History also teaches us to err preferrably on the safe side...
But then, half-quotes makes it so much easier to reach conclusions like:you can't... facts are facts... gut feelings are gut feelings... rumor and propaganda are rumor and propaganda...

@ Avon Lady...

read above what i just said to Abraham... s l o w l y...

Rabid dog! Call the city pound!
Quote:
and that is central to the problem... all of your [so called] 'rational answers' seem to ignore the most rational of all...

that they may have never been there at all in the first place


Abraham just answered you very rationally.

So you can stop foaming at the mouth now.

i think you go to far this time AL... i won't lower myself to the level of returning the name calling... and it is a direct violation of the fiorum rules...

lets see what Abraham does on this instance...

--Mike
I find it a bit childish of you to complain about a lack of moderation in this case and mingle another discussion on another thread with this one.
But if you really need a moderator, I suggest you send a P.M. (it's the little button down left) to one of the other moderators of this forum. That's the most discreet and most often used way to get a moderator going.
As you might or might not have noticed, I do not moderate a subject in discussions I take part in and I do not take part in discussions when I moderate a subject.
I'm strict on that, because could cloud my objectivety.
So on this thread, I'm not moderating.
:D

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

Please contact Kofi Anan for the pics.
i did... and this is what he said (read from the very site you directed me to)
He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair."
the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes.

well...

me thinks that Union Carbide had more gas producing facilites that could've been termed WMDs, than what was found in Iraq... and the related disaster in Bopal India in the late 80s killed almost half as many people as Saddam's savagery...

also...

http://hnn.us/articles/1242.html

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Stephen Pelletiere argued that the March, 1988, gassing of Kurds during the waning months of the Iran-Iraq war may have been perpetrated by Iran, not Iraq. This issue has taken on importance because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds is often given as one ground for the U.S. to go to war to effect regime change. As it happens, Pelletiere, a former CIA analyst, is just plain wrong and appears not to have kept up with documentation made available during the past decade.


and also...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1779.htm

The former CIA official revealed that immediately after the battle the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report that said it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds

nahhh, your purpose and agenda is clear here... facts have no bearing in your arguement... only your obviously anti Arabic agenda...

you see only what you want to see, and you use it as fuel to your ignorance of anything remotely factual...

what you say has very little to do with terrorism... and more to do with what is obviously your inbred hate for an entire ethnicity...


@ Abraham...
I find it a bit childish of you to complain about a lack of moderation in this case and mingle another discussion on another thread with this one.
But if you really need a moderator, I suggest you send a P.M. (it's the little button down left) to one of the other moderators of this forum.
your finding it childish is important only in your own mind... and Neal has already been notified of the goings on here...

what's more important is this forum being used as a sounding board for the vilification of an entire people, and as a perverse means of promoting an obvious agenda of hate and ethnic bias... and it's being condoned by a moderating member...

THIS IS WRONG... i cannot in good conscience stand by and watch this continue... this community deserves better...

it was a place where members of a common interest could come and enjoy the exchange of info, opinions, etc without fear of persecution, merely because they were of a certain ethnic group...

unfounded persecution at that... all people of Arab ethnicity or of the Muslim faith are not terrorist, nor do they seek the destruction of anyone... it is the extremists on both sides that wave this sort of flag... some of which we are seeing here now...

i am neither Arabic nor Muslim... i was born of a Catholic family... and i am reviled by the fact that so many here who consider themselves Christian, even those who are not Christian, but consider themselves fair minded... would stand by and watch this sort of thing, and not comment...

i should make public just a few of the emails i've received recently by members here who for their own reasons refuse to become involved in this mess, but who have made it clear that they've seen this going on for a while now... and they object to it as well...

there is an undercurrent of discontent here, brought about not only by an obviously biased individual here, but encouraged by you directly...

i am not the only one who draws parallels to this situation and those involved directly... if you didn't already know the definition of the term vilify, look at www.dictionary.com


[Download Now or Buy the Book]
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.


vilify

v : spread negative information about; "The Nazi propaganda vilified the Jews" [syn: revile, vituperate, rail]

can ya see now why my references earlier took the direction that they did... how ironically fitting in this particular context...

this is a dark day for all of us here... and you are part of the darkness by your condoning such activities...

--Mike

[Abraham]

He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair."
the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes.
I agree 100%, but:
He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair."
You're a real optimist, Mike...

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Stephen Pelletiere argued that the March, 1988, gassing of Kurds during the waning months of the Iran-Iraq war may have been perpetrated by Iran, not Iraq... As it happens, Pelletiere, a former CIA analyst, is just plain wrong and appears not to have kept up with documentation made available during the past decade.
And funny too...

The former CIA official revealed that immediately after the battle the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report that said it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds
The only logical conclusion I can draw from this quote is that it's source is not reliable.
I fail to grasp this conclusion:
nahhh, your purpose and agenda is clear here... facts have no bearing in your arguement... only your obviously anti Arabic agenda...
you see only what you want to see, and you use it as fuel to your ignorance of anything remotely factual...
what you say has very little to do with terrorism... and more to do with what is obviously your inbred hate for an entire ethnicity...
And neither do I understand whom you're talking to... Me? The Avon Lady? Yourself?

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

You're a real optimist, Mike...
me being an optimist or a pessimist is irrelevant... the fact is that in not one case has there been any proof or evidence connecting any of this with the construction of so called WMDs...

in a court of law, this would be thrown out as circumstantial, and the jury would be forced to find the defendant not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt...

optimism or pessimism has nothing to do with the facts... and that's where your mind and the other ones seems to stop working...

And neither do I understand whom you're talking to... Me? The Avon Lady? Yourself?
that's not the only obvious thing you fail to understand... one of the many things that you fail to understand is, that as a moderator here, you must excercise a modicum of objectivity and fairness in administering your moderator responsibilities... i'm not the only one who has made this apparent to you...

plus... you have succeeded in carrying over your arguement from the other post to this one... in direct disregard to the request made ny Neal to let it rest...

discussing the topic at hand is one thing... you've forced this beyond that...


--Mike

[The Avon Lady]

Please contact Kofi Anan for the pics.
i did... and this is what he said (read from the very site you directed me to)
He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair."
the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes.

well...

me thinks that Union Carbide had more gas producing facilites that could've been termed WMDs, than what was found in Iraq... and the related disaster in Bopal India in the late 80s killed almost half as many people as Saddam's savagery...
The same article also states:

Before the first Gulf War in 1991, those facilities played a major part in the production of precursors for Iraq's chemical warfare program

So you think they converted these facilities over to manufacturing sausage casings perhaps?

This is what happens when you snip a sentence out of an entire article and remove it from its context.
also...

http://hnn.us/articles/1242.html

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Stephen Pelletiere argued that the March, 1988, gassing of Kurds during the waning months of the Iran-Iraq war may have been perpetrated by Iran, not Iraq. This issue has taken on importance because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds is often given as one ground for the U.S. to go to war to effect regime change. As it happens, Pelletiere, a former CIA analyst, is just plain wrong and appears not to have kept up with documentation made available during the past decade.

Gee............... when I say something MAY HAVE BEEN, you get all berserk and go into a conniption but it's OK for you to quote people who theorize.

and also...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1779.htm

The former CIA official revealed that immediately after the battle the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report that said it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds
So the whole worlld has been lied to and our hero, Mike, here, has revealed the truth and changed history through linking to crackpot sites like the Information Clearing House?
nahhh, your purpose and agenda is clear here... facts have no bearing in your arguement... only your obviously anti Arabic agenda...
Frankly, I wonder what your agenda is. It isn't truth. It isn't objectivity. Well, I have some ideas about ilk like you that call people like me worse that Nazi concentration camp kommandants. The shoes fit you Mike. Wear them in good health.
you see only what you want to see, and you use it as fuel to your ignorance of anything remotely factual...

Have you ever tried looking in a mirror, Mike?
what you say has very little to do with terrorism... and more to do with what is obviously your inbred hate for an entire ethnicity...
:zzz:

[Konovalov]

I thought that to win an argument you had to present facts that were beyond dispute. Unfortunately it seems the trend here is just to "muddy the waters" with and if here, and maybe there, and you win the debate. I'm surprised no one here has dragged out the Iraqi guy that Fox news presented a little while back to claim that all the WMD's were flown to Syria. So excuse me while I continue to hold onto the "Marvin the Martian stole Iraq's WMD's" line.

http://www.gargaro.com/webpages/marvnotebook.jpg

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

Frankly, I wonder what your agenda is.
i have no agenda... like i told you before... if i could, i would lock all you over there who find it so easy to hate and kill, in a big cube, and lock the door... and forget about you...

you call yourself the Avon Lady... but your foul mouth and ethnic bias suggestes that you are, in fact, no lady at all...

decorum prevents me from giving you a proper title...

So the whole worlld has been lied to and our hero, Mike, here, has revealed the truth
as this madness continues... the truth will surface... just has it has been slowly doing all along...

i'm an American... i've served in the military... i'll defend our country against any and all threats... right now the biggest threat is the ignorance of people like you...

and as a side note, i am a member of this community... a long standing member... and i will be happy to do the same here as well...

in short... you have no facts... your reasoning is biased, therefore whatever you say is flawed and to be suspect...

your right to say it is one thing... your right to publicly condemn a whole group of peoples because of your bias is another... and that i won't stand for... and hopefully, the forum admins will address this...

--Mike

[Happy Times]

Geopolitics, Energy, China, Russia, India, Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, Islam, Terrorism. Someone thought it would be good to have a democratic state in the region to spread the idea to the rest of them. A loyal ally from where to conduct diplomacy and possible operations in the region. A reliable supplier of energy, and from where you could control and observe the energy supply of your rivals. These may have been miscalculatons of different levels. I honestly dont care. Im tired of this discussion, in the future everybody have to think really hard what their best interest is. I have chosen my side, it wasnt hard to do when you look at this facked up world. Some call me a pessimist, i consider myself a realist.

[scandium]

Well actually they were there in the first place.

Of course, we have the receipts.


They were there when Kurds were gassed by Saddam.

Right, the revolt the US encouraged but then stood by and did nothing when it occured or was subsequently brutally surpressed. In any case, it predates the disarmament inspections so it doesn't prove that Iraq still had them.

They were there when Iranian soldiers were gassed in the Iraq-Iran war.

Well we know gas was used, that this war went on for 8 years, but we don't know for certain who (first) used gas. Let's assume that only Iraq used gas though, an ironic assumption considering the current debate to pre-emptively nuke Iran to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But I guess we can give them the benefit of the doubt when it suits us. However its irrelevant since this also predates the disarmament inspections.

They were there when Iraqi Scud's were fired at Israel - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).

See above.

They were there during the First Gulf War - although they were not used (I have a gut feeling I know why).

See above.

They were there when many were found and destroyed after the First Gulf War.

Found and destroyed after the first Gulf War. Now we seem to be getting somewhere.

And it turned out that there was a widespread WMD-program on it's way after the First Gulf War.

Which, like the WMD, was destroyed after the first Gulf War.

And yes, with hindsight it seems that they are not there anymore - although only a small part of all the confiscated Iraqi documentation on the subject is translated yet.

History will eventually teach us how far the WMDs were develloped or ready or non-existant.
History also teaches us to err preferrably on the safe side...
;)

I guess we have very different opinions as to what erring on the safe side is. My opinion at the time, and to this day, was that it was safer to remain focused on the people who actually had something to do with 9/11 (Bin Laden, remember that guy?) rather than spend enormous resources invading a country that had no connection; that it was safer to continue the ongoing weapons inspections than it was to inflame the already volatile region by invading a sovereign country on the most transparent of pretexts and thereby motivating a new generation of extremists for absolutely no gain whatsoever; that a disarmed and contained Iraq was safer than the terrorist breeding ground that, to date, has claimed the lives of over 2,300 service personnel - and counting.

[Abraham]

This is a surrealistic discussion.

Stage 1: About weapons of mass destructionthey may have never been there at all in the first place.I read the word "never".

Stage 2: I found this too much honour for Saddam Hussein, whom as we all known was elected by an overwhelming majority, used to caress little blond children over their hair, loved his German shephard dog and hated Jews, in other words: a guy who tried to karaoke Herr Adolf Hitler. Even played with poisoned gas, mind you.
So I gave Mike some facts about WMDs.

Stage 3: Scandium seems not to like my facts so he tells me that my facts don't count because Mike's statement that Saddam "never" had WMDs in the first place suddenly means only during UN inspections. So we should never complain about Saddam or anybody having WMDs - and using them - as long as there are no inspections.

O.K., now I see why Saddam disliked those inspectors so much...

History will teach us in the future about these WMDs.

[Onkel Neal]

Friendly suggestion: if you want to argue against someone, steady pressure with facts and level assertions work better than nuking them with hyperbole about rapid dogs and Nazi comparisons.

This topic is perilously close to being locked, let's state our opinions and agree to disagree, please.

If I do lock this topic, could we resist the urge to start another just like it, for say a few days?

[scandium]

Stage 3: Scandium seems not to like my facts so he tells me that my facts don't count because Mike's statement that Saddam "never" had WMDs in the first place suddenly means only during UN inspections. So we should never complain about Saddam or anybody having WMDs - and using them - as long as there are no inspections.

It had rather more to do with the thread title and the speculation that the WMD must have been moved, than whether he ever had them at any point in time years before the invasion. I remind you that the invasion was predicated on disarmament by force, which implies that he had WMD at the time the US invaded; it was not predicated on whether or not he ever possessed them in the past, since nobody disputed that he once possessed them. That's a non-arguement, a moot point.

On edit: I read Mike's quote "they may have never been there at all in the first place" to mean they were not found because they were destroyed in accordance with UN resolutions and the disarmament inspections. Why you would assume, given the thread title and the debate, that he meant Saddam had never possessed them at any time I don't know other than that its an easy way to score debate points off an ambiguous phrase while ignoring the whole context of the debate.

In any case, if you're asserting that because he had them in 1990 that he must, after a decade of sanctions, years of monitoring and inspections, still possess them in 2003 then I doubt any of us will change your mind. You should allow for the at least as likely possibility though that they were not found simply because they had already been destroyed prior to the invasion taking place.

[Happy Times]

Like i said, the WMDs were not the reason for the invasion. They were a reason given for the public. But you have to remember, the countries in that neigbourhood are allmost all dictatorships. They are outlaws in my wiew, and depending on our interests we can do what ever is required. Now that every thing isnt going as planned, plan B would be good to have. If one waits, he can loose the upperhand. When China grows in power, it will start to openly defend its energy supply. And the most important and reliable supply for China could in the future be the middle east. The new domino theory could be that these countries fall for the Islamists. These two might find each other and common interests. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050901faessay84503/david-zweig-bi-jianhai/china-s-global-hunt-for-energy.html

[scandium]

Like i said, the WMDs were not the reason for the invasion. They were a reason given for the public. But you have to remember, the countries in that neigbourhood are allmost all dictatorships. They are outlaws in my wiew, and depending on our interests we can do what ever is required. Now that every thing isnt going as planned, plan B would be good to have. If one waits, he can loose the upperhand. When China grows in power, it will start to openly defend its energy supply. And the most important and reliable supply for China could in the future be the middle east. The new domino theory could be that these countries fall for the Islamists. These two might find each other and common interests. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050901faessay84503/david-zweig-bi-jianhai/china-s-global-hunt-for-energy.html

Odd how you juxtapose a reason that was not a real reason, but only a reason to be "given to the public", with proclaiming the ME a neighbourhood of dictatorships and outlaws who we'd be justified in doing whatever our "interests" dictate to. Whatever happened to consent of the people? Isn't this one of the pillars of democracy?

I assume the irony of bringing the people to do the government's bidding, through Pravda style propaganda, for the purposes of bringing "democracy" - at gunpoint no less - to the ME is lost on you.

[Happy Times]

Like i said, the WMDs were not the reason for the invasion. They were a reason given for the public. But you have to remember, the countries in that neigbourhood are allmost all dictatorships. They are outlaws in my wiew, and depending on our interests we can do what ever is required. Now that every thing isnt going as planned, plan B would be good to have. If one waits, he can loose the upperhand. When China grows in power, it will start to openly defend its energy supply. And the most important and reliable supply for China could in the future be the middle east. The new domino theory could be that these countries fall for the Islamists. These two might find each other and common interests. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050901faessay84503/david-zweig-bi-jianhai/china-s-global-hunt-for-energy.html

Odd how you juxtapose a reason that was not a real reason, but only a reason to be "given to the public", with proclaiming the ME a neighbourhood of dictatorships and outlaws who we'd be justified in doing whatever our "interests" dictate to. Whatever happened to consent of the people? Isn't this one of the pillars of democracy?

I assume the irony of bringing the people to do the government's bidding, through Pravda style propaganda, for the purposes of bringing "democracy" - at gunpoint no less - to the ME is lost on you. I didnt say i except the method used, i just understand the reasoning behind it. My wiew is that it should be openly told to the puplic what are the realities of international politics. Wonder how many would shait themselfs? It pisses me constantly when people comment about news events when they dont have knowledge about the the history or interests behind the events.

[Abraham]

In any case, if you're asserting that because he had them in 1990 that he must, after a decade of sanctions, years of monitoring and inspections, still possess them in 2003 then I doubt any of us will change your mind. You should allow for the at least as likely possibility though that they were not found simply because they had already been destroyed prior to the invasion taking place.
I think any further discussion on this subject is repeating the same moves.

I am certainly not convinced that there were no WMDs in Iraq in 1943, but I fully agree that that it is a possibility.
If they were not there it is because of international (mostly US) pressure and not because Saddam Hussein had a change of heart like South African P.M. De Klerk in the early '90 (or Libyan Gadaffi lately). On the contrary; Saddam Hussein did his utmost to hide WMDs and harras the UN inspection teams.
Who can be sure and who could at the time, be sure about WMDs not being there after the inspections when you have a record of lying and cheating like Saddam Hussein?
:hmm:

As Happy Times wrote, WMDs were used but hardly necessary as a justification for a regime change. The Kurds and the Shiítes are better off today, and yes, the Sunni's have to swallow the bitter pill of losing their strongman. And however bad the situation is with almost daily suicide attacks, it still doesn't compare with state organised terror and suppression of complete ethnic groups, punishing the male population of a village where an assasination attempt was made, organised rape, enfin, whatever a real bad dictatorship brings to its subjects...
:down:

About changing my mind, well, that sometimes happens during the discussions on this board. But not by politically coloured wild guessing about subjects that are not yet fully investigated. Historic proof can change my mind, so I will leave the final outcome of this question to historic research, which will take some more time.
;)

[Tchocky]

i dont think the truth will ever get out about WMD's and the extent but i would love it to be made public when they find them for i think they do exist because alot of people on this forum would be force to accept they were wrong,i always look back at the weapons search's in ireland to find ira arms caches and in over 30 years of searching and hunting down these caches they only ever found a hand full and iraq is alot bigger than ireland. as a matter of historical fact it has always been easier to disprove than to prove and unfortunatley the proof may be a chemical attack in a major city by terroist that got there weapons from iraq

Ok.



What?

Equating the Troubles with the war in Iraq isn't helpful. Two very different scenarios that dont apply to each other. Hiding guns and explosives is very different to hiding a small chemical plant.


A loyal ally from where to conduct diplomacy and possible operations in the region. A reliable supplier of energy, and from where you could control and observe the energy supply of your rivals. These may have been miscalculatons of different levels. I honestly dont care. Im tired of this discussion, in the future everybody have to think really hard what their best interest is.

Fair enough. But why the need to lie about it? Why the need to deceive and blind people?

AlQaeda-Saddam-9/11-AlQaeda-Saddam-9/11-AlQaeda-Saddam-9/11-AlQaeda-Saddam-9/11-AlQaeda-Saddam-9/11-AlQaeda-Saddam-9/11-AlQaeda-Saddam-9/11-AlQaeda-Saddam-9/11-


Say it enough times and it becomes the truth. Lesson courtesy of Bush-Cheney

[The Avon Lady]

But we digress.
:yep:

I've found the site: FMSO (http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/).
Someone found this document (http://70.169.163.24/released/04-07-06/CMPC-2003-005412.pdf) in the FMSO archive. (The IP address is the current FMSO archive address - this is not hosted somewhere else).

Note the document is dated 2002 in the Arabic header.

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

all of this fog... this fog of wmds... all of this, along with the other twisting of intelligence information... all of it seems be evaporating right before the eyes of a shocked and awed public...

the recent events concerning the cia leaks, and much, much more, will be quite revealing over the next couple of days (weeks)...


a lot of you people must really learn to recognize when you are being prospected... when you are being fed a line of bs... for that is one of the tools of the trade for the forces of ignorance and stupidity... to put up a fog in an attempt to blind you to the facts, and therefore, to the truth of the matter...

you must also learn to recognize the subtle racism and bias that also rears it's head during times like this... they are different, therefore it is ok to see them all as the enemy... god is on our side...

every proponent of hate and intolerance has used this sort of thing to seduce the weak of mind into their legion... don't be victims of this sort of stuff... see through the fog... don't let unfounded fears be your guide... don't always accept everything at face value, especially if it is on tv... try and quantify the source of facts, as well as the information that those sources present as facts...

don't fall willing victim to someone elses agenda...

at the very least, if you are gonna be wrong about something... be wrong because that is your choice, and not someone elses...

one wmd... just one... that's all i wanna see...

--Mike

[The Avon Lady]

Wow! Almost like Shakespeare.

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

almost like Shakespeare you say... obviously you haven't read Shakespeare... or at least you haven't understood what you've read...


--Mike

[The Avon Lady]

almost like Shakespeare you say... obviously you haven't read Shakespeare... or at least you haven't understood what you've read...
You're right.

More like Jackie Collins.

But let's backtrack.
all of this fog... this fog of wmds...
What fog?

Other than some cache's of sarin filled shells and several missiles, overall WMDs were not found.

This thread's topic is discussing whether there were any and if so, what happened to them. Now indeed that's foggy.
all of this, along with the other twisting of intelligence information...
Who is twisting what exactly?
all of it seems be evaporating right before the eyes of a shocked and awed public...
It's been quite a while since Bush's administration has admitted that they cannot find anything. This didn't happen yesterday.
the recent events concerning the cia leaks, and much, much more, will be quite revealing over the next couple of days (weeks)...
Which leaks are you referring to? Let us in on the Beltway gossip.
a lot of you people must really learn to recognize when you are being prospected... when you are being fed a line of bs... for that is one of the tools of the trade for the forces of ignorance and stupidity... to put up a fog in an attempt to blind you to the facts, and therefore, to the truth of the matter...
That's very foggy on it own.
you must also learn to recognize the subtle racism and bias that also rears it's head during times like this... they are different, therefore it is ok to see them all as the enemy... god is on our side...
Gee..... what do we do with the right wing aethiests?
every proponent of hate and intolerance has used this sort of thing to seduce the weak of mind into their legion... don't be victims of this sort of stuff... see through the fog... don't let unfounded fears be your guide... don't always accept everything at face value, especially if it is on tv... try and quantify the source of facts, as well as the information that those sources present as facts...
So when documents are made public indicating that something was being covered up by Iraq, we should ignore these sources?

Are you claiming the FMSO document archive is phoney?
don't fall willing victim to someone elses agenda...

at the very least, if you are gonna be wrong about something... be wrong because that is your choice, and not someone elses...

one wmd... just one... that's all i wanna see...
At the end of 2002, the UN itself still reported tons of WMDs as unaccounted for, including:
Nearly four tons of VX nerve agents

Growth media for 20,000 litres of biological warfare agents

15,000 shells for use in biological warfare

6,000 chemical warfare bombs

Unspecified amounts of nuclear material and information
Source: Iraq's 'unaccounted for' weapons (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2590265.stm).

Who was lying then? The UN? The US government? The BBC? Who?

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

then... given all these so called facts... just show me one

that's all... one captured WMD... just one...

how many thousands of people have reportedly seen BigFoot...
how many documented UFO sightings have there been...
the Loch Ness 'monster'...

show me one of these as well... show me just one BigFoot... a single Nessy... one lil green alien...

just one!!!!

can you see the sort of reasoning (and i use that word very generously here) you subscribe to...
and that you would try to seduce others into following you down the yellow brick road on looney tunality... :D well, it's almost comical... :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
and it would be if it weren't linked to the biased agenda that you, by your very own words here, that you exhibit and try to pass off as fact...

on the contrary... you have no facts...

there is only one undeniable fact... no WMDs have been located and or taken into custody... period.


as far as the fog of war thing... educate yourself

The Fog of War
Submitted by MJS on Sun, 2006-03-19 19:06.


I got to thinking about the three year anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq, and how I believe that war is a bestial game rich people play upon each other, all the while using poor people to do their fighting. Maybe that’s a result of reading George Orwell, who wrote the following:

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

+++

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

+++

In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

+++

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

+++

With all that in mind I bring forth a song to acknowledge the third anniversary of our murderous state’s intrusion into Iraq:

The Fog of War*
(an mp3 version of this song [sung acapella, natch] can be heard here.)

three years ago, in the dark of night
we invaded Iraq and proceeded to fight
there were few in DC who opposed the war
with blood on their hands they cried for more

the earth said sons, why do you choose to kill?
nothing ever grows from the blood you spill
the soldiers who fought could not hear the voice
they had all been trained that they had no choice

(chorus)
they walk in the sand in the fog of war
shoot into the sky, blow off heaven’s door
Nobody stops them, nobody can
Nobody left to stand

oh, the grave’s are dug and the earth is cold
the men in suits clap their hands and crush their souls
but late at night, when screams rise from hell
gather up the children for this tale you should tell

(repeat chorus)

+++

The mp3 recording was sung to the tune “The Long Black Veil� by Danny Dill with Marijohn Wilkin. The version I have heard the most (and was referencing in my rendition) was performed by Mick Jagger (Bono sang backup) and The Chieftains on their album The Long Black Veil.

+++


“In case you haven’t noticed, we…dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything. Piece of cake.�

Kurt Vonnegut

+++

» MJS's blog | front page | | | | | 100 reads

Try facts
Submitted by Nudnik (not verified) on Mon, 2006-03-20 00:50.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we…dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything. Piece of cake.�

What utter nonsense. The composition of the US Army does not differ substantially from the composittion of the US. It is utterly false that soldiers are of “low social class�. Here is one study that completely disproves your assertion.

In 2003, however, only 14.6 percent of military recruits came from the poorest quintile, whereas the wealth­iest quintile provided 22.0 percent. Enlistments from wealthier areas surged, resulting in a 3.4 per­centage point upturn. The middle-class quintiles (the third and fourth wealthiest areas) consistently provided disproportionately high numbers of sol­diers in both year groups. (See Chart 1.)

» reply
Orwell quotes
Submitted by Wintermute (not verified) on Mon, 2006-03-20 02:27.
Where’d you get ‘em?

» reply
Where he got 'em
Submitted by dr sardonicus on Mon, 2006-03-20 03:16.
Heritage. ‘Nuff said.

And the mourners are all singin’
As they drag you by your feet
But the hangman isn’t hangin’
And they put you on the street

» reply
My bad
Submitted by dr sardonicus on Mon, 2006-03-20 03:42.
Heritage is where Nudnik gets his garbage. As for Orwell, best to leave that to MJS…

And the mourners are all singin’
As they drag you by your feet
But the hangman isn’t hangin’
And they put you on the street

» reply
Logical fallacy?
Submitted by Nudnik (not verified) on Mon, 2006-03-20 08:39.
Sardonicus, no need to dispute the facts….just attack the source. Great way of arguing.

» reply
Who said I was arguing?
Submitted by dr sardonicus on Mon, 2006-03-20 10:06.
But I tend to smell a rat whenever I see one of those studies that makes generalizations based upon “quintiles�. You know the story - Bill Gates walks into the bar, and the average net worth of all the patrons goes up to over a billion. Now, take your highest quintile of Americans - you’re catching some people making less than $100,000 per year. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I’m pretty sure that the number of Americans over $100,000 per year isn’t yet 20%. And a $100,000 annual income, although not chump change, still makes you no more than upper middle class, a wannabe - to be really wealthy in America these days, if you really want to matter, you better be in seven figures, baby…

So now I see these charts. We got this one, says “Differences between Military and Civilian Income Distribution�. We see the biggest upward bulge, where there’s the biggest number of recruits relative to income level, in the $30-50K/year group. That’s working class these days, man, what with the price of gas and all - you can’t touch middle class for less than $50K/year today. And guess what - that’s where the bars dip back under the baseline. Who knew?

I’ve only got time for one more, ‘cos my dog wants to go for a walk. This one says, “Change in Enlistments after 9/11, by Household Income�. Looks good for you at first - it says enlistments rose most in the $40-80K/year group; I’ll concede that as middle class. But as we go over $80K/year, into that fifth quintile - damn, there go those bars dipping under the baseline again. And one more problem - 9/11 was over four years ago, man. Looking at this graph, there’s no way of separating out those who enlisted in the first flush of patriotic fervor as opposed to those coming along after the Iraq invasion, into the current quagmire. Just not a lot of meat on dem bones…

Oh yeah, Heritage. Damn straight I will disparage, badmouth, slander, and cut Heritage, Eagle Forum, and anything else that dried-up old biddy Phyllis Schlafly ever had a hand in. Every woman in America, and every man with any sense, should piss on her for her role in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment. Yeah, I take it personally - friends of mine were once beaten up by the goons guarding her nice little gated enclave on the bluffs in Alton, Illinois. I curse Phyllis Schlafly and all of her descendants, even unto their seventh generation.
And the mourners are all singin’
As they drag you by your feet
But the hangman isn’t hangin’
And they put you on the street

» reply
Orwell linkage
Submitted by MJS on Mon, 2006-03-20 13:38.
Wintermute:

Just google “george orwell quotes� and you will find loads of quotes—but here are a couple of direct links:

Brainyquote.

Here’s one I just found:

“Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.�

from Thinkexist.com

Also, George-orwell.org

+++

» reply
nuddikins sweet, come to suck the bones of little children?
Submitted by kelley b on Mon, 2006-03-20 16:42.
Read this, nuddikins.

We’ll do the weeping.

Being old enough to remember the VietNam war, I tell you even the best and highest are brought low when they return smelling of the sweat of blood and burnt flesh and hearing the screams from afar in the night.

But you wouldn’t know, nuddikins, ‘cause all your heros are too important to fight.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

» reply
Interesting this is the thread nudnik surfaced on
Submitted by lambert on Mon, 2006-03-20 17:00.
The Republicans must be afraid they’re losing the Army….

As indeed they deserve to.

Ceterum censeo, Bush delenda est!



http://www.correntewire.com/the_fog_of_war

and all you can counter with is some childish reference to Jackie Collins...

you make it all too easy for me to show your ignorance on this topic... with every word you post, you sink yourself deeper into you self created quagmire...

so just keep posting away... :yep:

--Mike

[Sharkstooth]

I'm pretty much just following this thread as impartially as I can.......but I do have one question.


you're not by any chance a Democrat are you?
:cool:

[TLAM Strike]

Wow! Almost like Shakespeare.
What Mike said wasn't Shakespeare (sorry Mike) I think Shakespeare would say, "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." (Hamlet Act II Scene II.) Or “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.� (Othello Act I Scene II)

[MadMike]

Does this count?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.S. officials confirm an artillery shell used in a roadside bomb in Baghdad did contain the nerve agent sarin.



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The recent discovery of two chemical artillery shells in Iraq has raised concerns among weapons inspectors that other shells may turn up in the hands of insurgents battling American troops, the head of the U.S. search team said Wednesday.

"We need to investigate whether there are more where that came from, wherever that is, and we need to make certain that they're not finding their way into anti-coalition or terrorist hands," said Charles Duelfer, head of the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group, in an interview via satellite from Baghdad.

Laboratory tests of an artillery shell used in a May roadside bomb in the Baghdad area confirmed the presence of the nerve agent sarin, and a shell found two weeks before then contained the decayed residue of mustard gas. (Full story)

Those are the first nonconventional weapons to turn up in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein -- a move the United States said was necessary because Iraq was violating U.N. resolutions requiring it to disarm.

Before the conflict, Iraqi officials told U.N. weapons inspectors that they had destroyed the country's stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

The Iraq Survey Group reported last fall that it had found evidence of weapons research that Iraqis had concealed from U.N. inspectors.

But Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, predicted in January that no large stockpiles of banned weapons would be found.

Duelfer said he did not think that chemical shells would be found in the thousands. But given the number of weapons Iraq was unable to account for after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he said it is likely that others will turn up.

The insurgents who rigged the sarin shell -- which was unmarked -- as a roadside bomb "didn't know what they had," he said.

But now that one chemical shell has been found, insurgents may figure out how to use others against coalition forces, Duelfer said.

"There is evidence they have a lot of desire to connect themselves with either or both the intellectual capital of the previous regime with respect to weapons of mass destruction and quite conceivably materials," Duelfer said. "That is a very strong concern, and it's something that fuels a lot our investigation at the moment."

He declined to discuss whether any evidence suggested that insurgents such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have linked up with former Iraqi weapons technicians. U.S. officials have said that al-Zarqawi has links to al Qaeda and that he has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks on U.S. troops, Iraqis and others.

Iraq used chemical weapons in its 1980-88 war with Iran and to put down a Kurdish uprising against Saddam in 1988. Baghdad admitted to the United Nations in 1990 that it had built some artillery shells to carry sarin -- prototypes that it insisted had all been destroyed during testing.

"We have found one. We don't know if that means there are more," Duelfer said. "We don't know if that means they are making their way into hands of those who would use them against the coalition. But certainly, it is important, because there were not supposed to be any."

The sarin shell was designed to mix two precursor chemicals after being fired from a cannon, and it was ineffective as a roadside bomb. The mustard gas shell was "less troublesome" because the contents had deteriorated to the point that it was no longer an active chemical weapon, Duelfer said.

He said the Iraq Survey Group's work has been hampered by a reluctance among second- and third-tier engineers and scientists to cooperate with U.S. inspectors amid the ongoing violence in Iraq.

Two soldiers assigned to the survey group were killed in an explosion last month at a Baghdad laboratory suspected of producing chemical weapons.

"In some ways it appears things are getting better for many people -- there's commerce and so forth," he said. "And yet the security is not good. You know, not a night goes by where you don't hear gunfire."

Duelfer has met with several once-high-ranking Iraqis -- many of them depicted on the deck of playing cards issued to U.S. troops in the early days of the occupation -- who are now held by U.S. troops.

He described the meetings as "poignant" since he had met with many of those people as a U.N. weapons inspector in the 1990s. But he said it was "still hard to determine whether they are telling the truth or not."

Inspectors also are trying to elicit some answers from Saddam, whom American troops captured in December.

Duelfer called the ousted leader a "special case."

"He is of course of great interest because if one person knows the real story it's him," Duelfer said.

But attempts to question him have been difficult, he said "because the incentives for being candid are not necessarily strong."

Duelfer said he hopes to present a full report within the next few months. He denied the search is a wild goose chase, as some critics have suggested.

"A wild goose chase is when you're looking for something that may not exist," he said. "We're looking for something that does exist, and that is the truth. You know I wasn't sent here to find weapons of mass destruction. I was sent out here to find the truth about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/26/iraq.duelfer/


Yours, Mike

[The Avon Lady]

Does this count?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.S. officials confirm an artillery shell used in a roadside bomb in Baghdad did contain the nerve agent sarin.
Personally, I would say it doesn't. Google around and you'll find claims that the shell was some 1980s-90s leftover - not part of a major stockpile.

Let's assume that's true because they have yet to find the stockpile. Also, I would assume it would not be difficult to estimate the shell's age from fragments of the explosion.

There have also been small quantities of mustard gas found but these, too, were confirmed as old stock and the quantities were not major.

In any case, the US didn't go to war over a single sarin shell, did they? :nope:

Now if you google for, say "+iraq +sarin", you'll also find some small sarin lab kits found in Iraq. Yet I cannot find an official confirmation as to what they are and for what they were used.

[Abraham]

Does this count?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.S. officials confirm an artillery shell used in a roadside bomb in Baghdad did contain the nerve agent sarin.



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The recent discovery of two chemical artillery shells in Iraq has raised concerns among weapons inspectors that other shells may turn up in the hands of insurgents battling American troops, the head of the U.S. search team said Wednesday.

... "We have found one. We don't know if that means there are more," Duelfer said.

So what do we do now that two WMDs have been found that were not supposed to be there "in the first place":

1.
We deny the facts, because they may require us to re-evaluate our earlier position, which brings a level of uncertainty to our mind that we don't like.

2.
We study were these WMDs came from and check the context of their use with an open mind, likeDuelfer said he hopes to present a full report within the next few months. He denied the search is a wild goose chase, as some critics have suggested.
"A wild goose chase is when you're looking for something that may not exist," he said. "We're looking for something that does exist, and that is the truth. You know I wasn't sent here to find weapons of mass destruction. I was sent out here to find the truth about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/26/iraq.duelfer/Then we all swallow the truth - whatever that may be - and try to live with our previous opinion...

3.
We take one, just one, of those WMDs to somebody who is dying to see one.then... given all these so called facts... just show me one
that's all... one captured WMD... just one...
just one!!!!

there is only one undeniable fact... no WMDs have been located and or taken into custody... period.Then we all tightly watch from a stand for it to... be evaporating right before the eyes of a shocked and awed public...

Many 'dogmatics' might take option 1, personally I'll chose option 2, although option 3 is funnier and far more spectacular...
:D

[Abraham]

Does this count?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.S. officials confirm an artillery shell used in a roadside bomb in Baghdad did contain the nerve agent sarin.
Personally, I would say it doesn't. Google around and you'll find claims that the shell was some 1980s-90s leftover - not part of a major stockpile.
Whatever it comes from, it's kind of unnerving that unmarked chemical shells are spread around the country from leftover stockpiles that supposedly were destroyed.
The multi million dollar question is: Is this incidental or was there a policy of using unmarked chemical shells and dispersing them...
If so, why? To hide them from weapon inspections seems the obvious answer...

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

well... all i can say, in the light of your obviously superior logical deductive powers is...


http://www.livinginthelightms.com/ufomerchbendablealiens.JPG
http://www.steveniles.com/gallery/albums/bigfoot/bigfoot01_001.jpg http://cryptozoo.monstrous.com/pictures/nessy.jpg

http://www.action-tv.org.uk/features/books/pics/ufo.jpg
http://www.dred.unh.edu/bigfoot.jpg

http://www.superiorbroadcast.org/images/Neighbors/Liebaert/3%20saucers.jpg



... in the light of such an overwhelming amount of 'proof'... you two must be right...


--Mike

[Abraham]

well... all i can say... in the light of such an overwhelming amount of 'proof'... you two must be right...-
--Mike
Fair enough, case settled. WMDs have been found; let's wait till the final report what that means.

P.S.:The only thing that worries me is that you refer to me as: "you two".
I checked the memberlist and there is only one "Abraham" registered. Furthermore my postings are not syndicated with Mr. George W. Bush. What I write is my responsability, not shared with anybody else.

P.P.S.S. It is hard to take your last posting as a serious answer to a serious problem. You obviously switched into denial mode. But if you just want to make fun, I'll play along...
:D

[Iceman]

http://www.danzfamily.com/pictures/pictures02/hijackers.jpg

CONFIRMED DEAD: 2948 • REPORTED DEAD: 24 • REPORTED MISSING: 24 • TOTAL: 2996

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/lists/by-name/

I guess it depends on your personal definition of WMD....this little group of dirt bags killed almost 3000 people....hum.
Wonder what 3000 dirt bags with EXACTLY the SAME ADMITTED mentality could do....it is only a question of when,where,how,how many more victims there will be....it is an unstoppable chain reaction already ..like a meltdown.....just keep throwing dirt on it...maybe it will stop....yea right.
Call those aliens Red Oct...maybe they'll beam ya up lol.
An entire religions guidelines dictate to them they're duty of forcibly submitting all who oppose or rejct they're way of life....period...what parts of this are unclear to anyone anymore?
To ignore this is Total and Complete failure on the part of my government.Funny I personally don't subscribe to the solution but it is crystal clear what must be done for the world to survive.....China,Russia, and the U.S. along with all the peoples of the world will have to pull together and take away the dangerous sharp objects from the children of the world by FORCE and be made to submit like a whipped dogs....

you know it won't happen...maybe that's why some obscure carpenter had a thought on this years ago...

Matthew 24
[21] For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
[22] And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

Enjoy your day little children.

[scandium]

How many of them were from Iraq?

http://www.danzfamily.com/pictures/pictures02/hijackers.jpg

CONFIRMED DEAD: 2948 • REPORTED DEAD: 24 • REPORTED MISSING: 24 • TOTAL: 2996

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/memorial/lists/by-name/

I guess it depends on your personal definition of WMD....this little group of dirt bags killed almost 3000 people....hum.
Wonder what 3000 dirt bags with EXACTLY the SAME ADMITTED mentality could do....it is only a question of when,where,how,how many more victims there will be....it is an unstoppable chain reaction already ..like a meltdown.....just keep throwing dirt on it...maybe it will stop....yea right.
Call those aliens Red Oct...maybe they'll beam ya up lol.
An entire religions guidelines dictate to them they're duty of forcibly submitting all who oppose or rejct they're way of life....period...what parts of this are unclear to anyone anymore?
To ignore this is Total and Complete failure on the part of my government.Funny I personally don't subscribe to the solution but it is crystal clear what must be done for the world to survive.....China,Russia, and the U.S. along with all the peoples of the world will have to pull together and take away the dangerous sharp objects from the children of the world by FORCE and be made to submit like a whipped dogs....

you know it won't happen...maybe that's why some obscure carpenter had a thought on this years ago...

Matthew 24
[21] For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
[22] And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

Enjoy your day little children.

[Kapitan]

Id bet 2 or 3 maybe from iraq.

[Tchocky]

What I fail to see is the necessity of posting the 9/11 terrorists on a thread about Iraqi arms.

I dont see the connection.

Were they from Iraq?
Were they trained there?
Did Iraq aid or fund them in any way?

Why are the two events connected?

In my mind, the only connection is due to the 12 months of repetition from the US Government; never explicitly stating but always implying. There's your connection.

Enjoy your day little children

Oh, thanks. That's just made my ****ing day

[Takeda Shingen]

Id bet 2 or 3 maybe from iraq.

None of them were Iraqi, Kapitan. 14 of them were Saudis, though, with one Egyptian, one Lebanese, and three from the UAE. Not one of them even had ties to either Iraq or the Hussien regime.

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

good points, indeed, from the last four postings...

ya see... clear and concise thinking evades a lot of people... like i said before, they are the ones who are most susceptible to be blinded by the amorphous clouds of ignorance and propaganda... add religion to the mix (iceman is quoting, transliterations mind you, from the books of the bible), and the cloud becomes a whirlwind of misinformation, and worst of all, a breeding ground for all sorts of unjustified hatreds...

at least the last four posters have been able to see through the fog, and raise questions about factual events and circumstances... they base their reasonings on facts... real events and circumstances...

you are so religious iceman... you outta thank god for these people...

the others are part of the crop circles/bigfoot/ufo crowd... eyes wide shut to anything but what they've been indoctrinated into believing... facts mean nothing to them... they derive their conclusion based on their irrational fears, and their lack of vision...


--Mike

[Happy Times]

How many of them were from Iraq? None, as someone allready pointed out, reality is that Saudi Arabia is a bigger threat than Iraq ever was. Red Mike, i dont have any fog in this issue either, but pure clarity. :P

[The Avon Lady]

Bigfoot's buddy says:

But I can assure you, they didn’t find everything. Because of his rapid rebuilding capabilities, Saddam managed to hide many of these weapons, along with the raw materials for building weapons of mass destruction. During the times when these weapons were not actually in production – mainly because of the threat posed by the United Nations inspectors – Saddam gave orders that the scientists who had been working on these programmes were to keep their plans, diagrams, formulas, raw materials and everything else in highly secure underground vaults so that they could continue their work the minute they were no longer being observed...

If Saddam ever suspected that there was any chance the inspectors would find something, he would have everything destroyed. But even then, nothing was really destroyed: the scientists had the knowledge and the budget, and when the time was right they would simply begin again. This was even true in the nuclear weapons programme. Even though we had not yet developed actual nuclear warheads, we were working on them. We had some components, and Saddam had developed sources in Europe, Asia and America who were willing to supply whatever we needed.

Read it all:

Melanie Phillips Diary: Saddam's Secrets (http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001665.html).

Bah! What does Saddam's former Air Force Vice Marshal know anyway, right Mikey?

[Iceman]

I see that you fail to see....


What I fail to see is the necessity of posting the 9/11 terrorists on a thread about Iraqi arms.

I dont see the connection.



The statement I made was about WMD and the definitions...

Does it matter where or what country it comes from?

The connection is Islam...and the twisted warped evil view it takes on the world....and it is your free choice to ignore this.

[Kapitan]

The connection is Islam...and the twisted warped evil view it takes on the world....and it is your free choice to ignore this

The connection is islam but you cant tar everyone with the same brush, you christian yes so your a pacifist some one who hates to fight and who loves god ect ect.

Did you know im the same gawd dam religion, how the heck can you lay the blame soley on a person simply because of thier religion?

if you walked down street and crossed over cause a muslim was walking on the same side because you were scared he / she might blow themselves up dont you even think that you are offending them ?

They might be decent folk i know muslims who are decent there was a few who went to my school and two were from afghanistan ! if i detoured to avoid them, then i could be labeld couldnt i!

Basicaly the way you said this it seems you are totaly against islamic people.

[Kapitan]

Oh and i forgot islam isnt warped its george bush, i wouldnt be surprised if we went into iran tommorrow libya next tuesday and europe the following friday, thats all bush wants war war war if anyone is a warmonger its him, he creates his own problems and expects the rest of the world to bail him out, which might i add we stupidly do !

[scandium]

Bigfoot's buddy says:

But I can assure you, they didn’t find everything. Because of his rapid rebuilding capabilities, Saddam managed to hide many of these weapons, along with the raw materials for building weapons of mass destruction. During the times when these weapons were not actually in production – mainly because of the threat posed by the United Nations inspectors – Saddam gave orders that the scientists who had been working on these programmes were to keep their plans, diagrams, formulas, raw materials and everything else in highly secure underground vaults so that they could continue their work the minute they were no longer being observed...

If Saddam ever suspected that there was any chance the inspectors would find something, he would have everything destroyed. But even then, nothing was really destroyed: the scientists had the knowledge and the budget, and when the time was right they would simply begin again. This was even true in the nuclear weapons programme. Even though we had not yet developed actual nuclear warheads, we were working on them. We had some components, and Saddam had developed sources in Europe, Asia and America who were willing to supply whatever we needed.

Read it all:

Melanie Phillips Diary: Saddam's Secrets (http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001665.html).

Bah! What does Saddam's former Air Force Vice Marshal know anyway, right Mikey?

I guess it comes down to which is more credible: David Kay and his team who've scoured Iraq and interogated members of the regime, or an uverified book written by a single Iraqi defector and published by a small christian publishing firm. Personally I put about as much stock into this as I would a similar book written by Baghdad Bob.

[The Avon Lady]

Bigfoot's buddy says:

But I can assure you, they didn’t find everything. Because of his rapid rebuilding capabilities, Saddam managed to hide many of these weapons, along with the raw materials for building weapons of mass destruction. During the times when these weapons were not actually in production – mainly because of the threat posed by the United Nations inspectors – Saddam gave orders that the scientists who had been working on these programmes were to keep their plans, diagrams, formulas, raw materials and everything else in highly secure underground vaults so that they could continue their work the minute they were no longer being observed...

If Saddam ever suspected that there was any chance the inspectors would find something, he would have everything destroyed. But even then, nothing was really destroyed: the scientists had the knowledge and the budget, and when the time was right they would simply begin again. This was even true in the nuclear weapons programme. Even though we had not yet developed actual nuclear warheads, we were working on them. We had some components, and Saddam had developed sources in Europe, Asia and America who were willing to supply whatever we needed.

Read it all:

Melanie Phillips Diary: Saddam's Secrets (http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001665.html).

Bah! What does Saddam's former Air Force Vice Marshal know anyway, right Mikey?

I guess it comes down to which is more credible: David Kay and his team who've scoured Iraq and interogated members of the regime, or an uverified book written by a single Iraqi defector and published by a small christian publishing firm. Personally I put about as much stock into this as I would a similar book written by Baghdad Bob.
I suggest you read exactly what David Kay said (http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/28/kay.transcript/) very carefully. What Kay says does not contradict what a senior high ranking Iraqi airforce general claimed. To sum it up, read What David Kay really said, by Charles Krauthammer (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20040130.shtml).

And to throw in another old piece of the puzzle, almost ignored by the major press agencies, have a peak here (http://www.2la.org/syria/iraq-wmd.php) and follow the links.

And if you think that anti-Syrian dissidents could never provide you with serious reliable intel, go back and read the David Kay transcript, where he reminds all of us who told the world about Iran's nuclear program - and it wasn't the CIA or MI5.

But go ahead. Dismiss a book because it's published by a "small christian publishing firm." How blinkered can you get?! :nope:

[The Avon Lady]

It seems I need to make a small retraction. I said that David Kay does not contradict what Vice General Sada has been claiming.

My mistake.

David Kay is much in agreement (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml) with Sada.

[scandium]

But go ahead. Dismiss a book because it's published by a "small christian publishing firm." How blinkered can you get?! :nope:

You left out the part I mentioned about it being written by a former Iraqi henchman and his claims not having any independent verification. The usual standard of evidence for a claim to be taken seriously is independent corroboration and there is none here, so why shouldn't I dismiss it?

[scandium]

It seems I need to make a small retraction. I said that David Kay does not contradict what Vice General Sada has been claiming.

My mistake.

David Kay is much in agreement (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml) with Sada.

This is what Kay says in that article:

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved"

How does this corroborate anything when Kay can't state exactly what supposedly went to Syria? He says we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials, and this guy Sada is presumably one of those officials... so Sada says... and Kay says basically that people like Sadda are saying... and this is proof? So if I say Bigfoot exists and someone confirms I said that, then by this standard of "proof" Bigfoot must exist. Boggling.

[The Avon Lady]

It seems I need to make a small retraction. I said that David Kay does not contradict what Vice General Sada has been claiming.

My mistake.

David Kay is much in agreement (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml) with Sada.

This is what Kay says in that article:

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved"

How does this corroborate anything when Kay can't state exactly what supposedly went to Syria? He says we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials, and this guy Sada is presumably one of those officials... so Sada says... and Kay says basically that people like Sadda are saying... and this is proof? So if I say Bigfoot exists and someone confirms I said that, then by this standard of "proof" Bigfoot must exist. Boggling.
Your logic is indeed boggling.

First you say you'd rather believe in Kay than in some former Iraqi vice general. Then you say that Kay's informational is surely unreliable because certainly this guy Sada is in your exact words "presumably one of those officials".

Make up your mind.

BTW, If Sada is "presumably one of those officials", how many more were there? Did Kay's interviews with them indicate that Sada was not the only one to state that Syria was involved? Or may this simply be a case of 10 bigfoots dancing around David Kay, of whom you stated:

"I guess it comes down to which is more credible: David Kay and his team who've scoured Iraq and interogated members of the regime."

Actually, you're not boggling. You're juggling. Advice: keep your eye on the ball. Lord knows the west's intel agencies didn't.

[scandium]

It seems I need to make a small retraction. I said that David Kay does not contradict what Vice General Sada has been claiming.

My mistake.

David Kay is much in agreement (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml) with Sada.

This is what Kay says in that article:

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved"

How does this corroborate anything when Kay can't state exactly what supposedly went to Syria? He says we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials, and this guy Sada is presumably one of those officials... so Sada says... and Kay says basically that people like Sadda are saying... and this is proof? So if I say Bigfoot exists and someone confirms I said that, then by this standard of "proof" Bigfoot must exist. Boggling.
Your logic is indeed boggling.

First you say you'd rather believe in Kay than in some former Iraqi vice general. Then you say that Kay's informational is surely unreliable because certainly this guy Sada is in your exact words "presumably one of those officials".

Make up your mind.

BTW, If Sada is "presumably one of those officials", how many more were there? Did Kay's interviews with them indicate that Sada was not the only one to state that Syria was involved? Or may this simply be a case of 10 bigfoots dancing around David Kay, of whom you stated:

"I guess it comes down to which is more credible: David Kay and his team who've scoured Iraq and interogated members of the regime."

Actually, you're not boggling. You're juggling. Advice: keep your eye on the ball. Lord knows the west's intel agencies didn't.

Its pretty straight forward actually, at least to me: Kay says only that based on interrogations, some components went to Syria. However he doesn't indicate exactly what, and he states clearly that this is only based on interrogations. He never says definitively that anything went to Syria, nor does he claim anything has corroborated these interrogations. Therefore I can accept exactly what he's saying at face value, and this doesn't contradict my unwillingness to believe whatever was told to him in these interrogations as nowhere does he say that info has been verified. In fact, he says this is something that still needs to be resolved. Which is exactly my own position: that nothing has yet been proven as far as these claims that Iraqi WMD were shipped to Syria.

[The Avon Lady]

What you have now stated is pretty much my opinion.

These are things that need to be resolved.

Nothing has been proven yet.

As I said in the very first sentence of this thread:

"There have been a number of recent relevant stories and documentation regarding the existance or not of Iraq's WMDs."

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

As I said in the very first sentence of this thread:

"There have been a number of recent relevant stories and documentation regarding the existance or not of Iraq's WMDs."

yes... the media is repleat with em... just as the media is full of stories of Bigfoot sightings, UFO sightings... Close Encounters...

only an irrational mentality would use these as a basis for any arguement...

and miss philips is a journalist... not an authority on any military weaponry, iraq, or the geopolitical nature of the hussien regime...

again, only an irrational mentality would use anything as a sound basis for any arguement on this topic...

your ability to operate in a contimuum that ignores fact is absoulutely amazing...


--Mike

[The Avon Lady]

As I said in the very first sentence of this thread:

"There have been a number of recent relevant stories and documentation regarding the existance or not of Iraq's WMDs."

yes... the media is repleat with em... just as the media is full of stories of Bigfoot sightings, UFO sightings... Close Encounters...
I'm sorry but I do not subscribe to the National Enquirer. Send me your old copies.
only an irrational mentality would use these as a basis for any arguement...
An emotionally irrational statement in itself.
and miss philips is a journalist... not an authority on any military weaponry, iraq, or the geopolitical nature of the hussien regime...
So then we can discount all journalistic sources around the world for news, with that logic.

Oh well, maybe it really is time to subscribe to National Enquirer.
again, only an irrational mentality would use anything as a sound basis for any arguement on this topic...
David Kay is irrational. General Sada is irrational. The translators of documents found so far in the FMSO archives are irrational. Paul Gaubatz, interviewed in the 1st article I linked to at the start of the thread, is irrational.

Mike, here, is rational.

End of argument.
your ability to operate in a contimuum that ignores fact is absoulutely amazing...
:rotfl:

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

just as i thought Avon...

in the light of irrefutable facts, you have nothing to say... and it took you all of 8 lines to say it in.

--Mike

[The Avon Lady]

As I said in the very first sentence of this thread:

"There have been a number of recent relevant stories and documentation regarding the existance or not of Iraq's WMDs."

yes... the media is repleat with em... just as the media is full of stories of Bigfoot sightings, UFO sightings... Close Encounters...

only an irrational mentality would use these as a basis for any arguement...

and miss philips is a journalist... not an authority on any military weaponry, iraq, or the geopolitical nature of the hussien regime...

again, only an irrational mentality would use anything as a sound basis for any arguement on this topic...

your ability to operate in a contimuum that ignores fact is absoulutely amazing...
There are no facts in your previous post.

:-j Surprise! :-j

:zzz:

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

one big, obvious fact... one that seems to illude your obscurred vision...

no WMDs have been confiscated by the US military or any other allied forces as todays date

none... zero... ziltch... nada...


--Mike

[CCIP]

:zzz:

Wake me up when they find some actual weapons.

Speculation-speculation. And the fact remains that, no matter how you want to slice it, Iraq was not invaded because of WMD concerns or immediate security threats, but for political reasons.

Shock and awe! - a war for political reasons! What else is new? :hmm:

[The Avon Lady]

one big, obvious fact... one that seems to illude your obscurred vision...

no WMDs have been confiscated by the US military or any other allied forces as todays date

none... zero... ziltch... nada...

Let's ignore the missiles that were indeed found.

If Saddam had planned to move all banned weapons systems out of the country and had maybe over a decade to do so, do you think that he could have succeeded, in your opinion?

[The Avon Lady]

Iraq was not invaded because of WMD concerns or immediate security threats, but for political reasons.
Which are?

[CCIP]

Iraq was not invaded because of WMD concerns or immediate security threats, but for political reasons.
Which are?

There's a lot of ways of putting it. Washington seems to like the title "regime change".

I think it's fairly obvious that the US is pursuing a certain agenda towards the Middle East; and tossing aside whatever ideological slants I might have - there's really nothing unusual or neccesarily wrong with that.

My view of this whole thing has really been as more or less an excuse rather than a real reason. Frankly, in realpolitik terms, the long-term benefits of a more "US-friendly" arab world almost certainly outweigh the risks of a chemical attack in the United States. Not that anyone in Washington (who wants to keep their post) would be willing to admit that. :hmm:

[The Avon Lady]

Iraq was not invaded because of WMD concerns or immediate security threats, but for political reasons.
Which are?
There's a lot of ways of putting it. Washington seems to like the title "regime change".
And why was that?
I think it's fairly obvious that the US is pursuing a certain agenda towards the Middle East; and tossing aside whatever ideological slants I might have - there's really nothing unusual or neccesarily wrong with that.
The fact that there is an agenda does not mean that the war was started to implement that agenda but rather that the agenda was considered possible once the US went to war.

In any case, I think the agenda is terribly flawed.

[CCIP]

I guess the question I should ask is "was Saddam's Iraq a real threat to US security?"

Personally, I never really saw it that way. Probably not more than Saudi Arabia (a fertile breeding ground for extremists a-la Bin Laden), and certainly less than Iraq as it is now.

As far as the WMDs though, to me the US administration's backpedalling on their original claims has been a good indicator.

Again, it's not that it'd shock me if Saddam had WMDs (he had them in the 80's); I'd just like to see an actual WMD (not a delivery system or raw-and-needing-a-lot-of-processing materials) before coming to a conclusion.

[Mike 'Red Ocktober' Hense]

you can talk and talk and talk to her... and present her with the all the facts as they stand today... but you'd be wasting your time...

she obviously isn't interested in facts at all...

http://waltonfeed.com/pic/ostrich.gif

--Mike

[The Avon Lady]

I like your new sig, Mike. :up:

[The Avon Lady]

Another document gets translated: 2001 Top Secret Document: Production of Prohibited Nerve Gas Detectors (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1624797/posts).

Sorry, Mike. Still no pictures.

[HM.Medico]

It's really quite simple, Sadam slept with Satan (like in the southpark movie) and there all in hell :D

[The Avon Lady]

Guess what?

Bump.

Video interview of former Iraqi Fedayeen Major General Ali Ibrahim Al-Tikriti (http://www.worldthreats.com/AliWMVpage.htm).

[Takeda Shingen]

Oh goody, the Iraqi WMD thread is back. Bring forth the childish banter!

For our new readers: When we last left, Mike was a 'meenie-weenie' and The Avon Lady was a 'poopy-head'. That should catch you all up; enjoy the show.

[The Avon Lady]

Oh goody, the Iraqi WMD thread is back. Bring forth the childish banter!

For our new readers: When we last left, Mike was a 'meenie-weenie' and The Avon Lady was a 'poopy-head'. That should catch you all up; enjoy the show.
The idea was to see if we could move past the childish banter.

[scandium]

Guess what?

Bump.

Video interview of former Iraqi Fedayeen Major General Ali Ibrahim Al-Tikriti (http://www.worldthreats.com/AliWMVpage.htm).

An interview is not a WMD. Unless it happens to be an interview of Bush giving an unscripted press conference. :D

[The Avon Lady]

An interview is not a WMD.
There was no claim as such, nor was that my claim when I started this thread.

The question is whether Al Generalisimo is telling the truth or not. This is the 2nd high ranking Iraqi officer that has gone public with the claims that the Russians wisked everything out of the country prior to the US invasion.

If it's false, then it would definitely seem that there are no WMDs anywhere.

If it's true, that would explain why they can't be found.

For all I know, these 2 guys are paid CIA stooges, puting on a nice show to excuse US blunders. Fact of the matter is, however, they are being shunned for the most part. No one is listening.

In addition to these Iraqi's stories, there's also the translated documents that have been publicized, several of which are linked to in this thread. Those aren't imaginary and their meaning is pretty clear.

[scandium]

For all I know, these 2 guys are paid CIA stooges, puting on a nice show to excuse US blunders. Fact of the matter is, however, they are being shunned for the most part. No one is listening
That could be because the issue to most of us, with thousands of civilian lives on the line who's only crime would be having been born in Iraq, not whether or not Iraq possessed WMD at some point in time (we know there were some there at some point), or whether they possessed unmanned model airplanes or a couple mustard gas shells, the issue was did Iraq actually pose a threat to the US or its allies? That was the bill of goods that Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rice, and Powell were pushing daily for 6 months: the talk of "mushroom clouds", of "thousands of litres of sarin gas", etc, etc. That was the issue that people who supported the war rallied around (the other reasons came later). Its been 3 years now and no credible evidence of these kinds of weapons (let alone the weapons themselves) has surfaced.

People have woken up to the reality that Iraq has been turned into hell on earth for the people who have to be there (both US troops as well as the Iraqis themselves), that there is no end in sight, and that the bill of goods they were sold was a false one. I don't think anyone cares anymore what a couple of Iraqi stooges have to say (look at what believing Ahmed Chalabi led to). As GW Bush once said: "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. But fool me twice... can't get fooled again!"

[Konovalov]

That could be because the issue to most of us, with thousands of civilian lives on the line who's only crime would be having been born in Iraq, not whether or not Iraq possessed WMD at some point in time (we know there were some there at some point), or whether they possessed unmanned model airplanes or a couple mustard gas shells, the issue was did Iraq actually pose a threat to the US or its allies? That was the bill of goods that Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rice, and Powell were pushing daily for 6 months: the talk of "mushroom clouds", of "thousands of litres of sarin gas", etc, etc. That was the issue that people who supported the war rallied around (the other reasons came later). Its been 3 years now and no credible evidence of these kinds of weapons (let alone the weapons themselves) has surfaced.

People have woken up to the reality that Iraq has been turned into hell on earth for the people who have to be there (both US troops as well as the Iraqis themselves), that there is no end in sight, and that the bill of goods they were sold was a false one. I don't think anyone cares anymore what a couple of Iraqi stooges have to say (look at what believing Ahmed Chalabi led to). As GW Bush once said: "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. But fool me twice... can't get fooled again!"

:yep: Well said sir.

[The Avon Lady]

Hi. Me again!:lol:

CHEMICAL MUNITIONS IN IRAQ (http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005420.htm).

No, this is not an "aha!" moment. Just mentioning it as relevant to the thread. Make sure to read all the way through, especially through the quote from this Powerline blog entry (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014466.php).

[PeriscopeDepth]

Fantastic. Iraq MAY HAVE had chemical weapons, IF THE SHELF LIFE WAS NOT UP, at the time of the invasion. AFTER WE BOMBED THAT COUNTRY INTO IMPOTENCE FOR MORE THAN A DECADE. Something we'll never know. And frankly, after years of exhaustive searching something that probably wasn't true at the time of the invasion.

Oh, by the way. North Korea is about to test an ICBM that they are probably capable of marrying to their nuclear weapons that they almost certainly have after more than a decade of telling us to shove it. They have even been courteous enough to be up front about being completely dishonest.

Sorry, just that kind of night for me...

PD

[The Avon Lady]

North Korea is about to test an ICBM that they are probably capable of marrying to their nuclear weapons that they almost certainly have after more than a decade of telling us to shove it. They have even been courteous enough to be up front about being completely dishonest.
Don't blame NK. The west has been dishonest with itself in believing that this would not happen.

[aaken]

Oh, by the way. North Korea is about to test an ICBM that they are probably capable of marrying to their nuclear weapons that they almost certainly have after more than a decade of telling us to shove it. They have even been courteous enough to be up front about being completely dishonest.

It's also quite possible that NK, unlike Irak, was never subject to a prehemptive invasion just because of that.

[STEED]

Oh, by the way. North Korea is about to test an ICBM that they are probably capable of marrying to their nuclear weapons that they almost certainly have after more than a decade of telling us to shove it. They have even been courteous enough to be up front about being completely dishonest.

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/8434/northkorea4tn.jpg
“Thank you, thank you very much” :p

[The Avon Lady]

Separated at birth?
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/8434/northkorea4tn.jpg http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6890/0041zy.jpg

[STEED]

Oh, by the way. North Korea is about to test an ICBM that they are probably capable of marrying to their nuclear weapons that they almost certainly have after more than a decade of telling us to shove it. They have even been courteous enough to be up front about being completely dishonest.

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/8434/northkorea4tn.jpg
“Thank you, thank you very much” :p


Kim Jong Seok is to busy doing Elvis impersonations. http://www.langkawi.dk/smileys/s23.gif

[The Avon Lady]

Fantastic. Iraq MAY HAVE had chemical weapons, IF THE SHELF LIFE WAS NOT UP, at the time of the invasion. AFTER WE BOMBED THAT COUNTRY INTO IMPOTENCE FOR MORE THAN A DECADE. Something we'll never know. And frankly, after years of exhaustive searching something that probably wasn't true at the time of the invasion.
Follow through the video clip in this blog item (http://hotair.com/archives/top-picks/2006/06/21/video-santorum-hoekstra-mcinerney-talk-wmd-on-hc/) and listen to the remarks of former UN weapons inspector Tim Trevan towards the end of the clip.

[PeriscopeDepth]

That actually makes sense to me AL. Interesting vid. Don't know if it's true or not, but interesting vid.

Concerning NK, I don't think the West actually believed they would stop trying to obtain nukes. They just had to be overly optimistic because military action couldn't be used with impunity as it had been against Iraq.

PD

[DeepSix]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v676/PocketPlane/KJI_Aloha.jpg

I want nukes!
I need nukes!
I-I-I luv nukes!
With aaaalll myyy heaaart....

[STEED]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v676/PocketPlane/KJI_Aloha.jpg

I want nukes!
I need nukes!
I-I-I luv nukes!
With aaaalll myyy heaaart....

Brilliant:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

[Ishmael]

I'll weigh in with a question. Let's assume that everything that Avon Lady says is true. If Iraqi chemical and biological agents and missle systems were smuggled into Syria and the Israeli government knows they are there and what locations they are stored in, why doesn't Israel use it's nuclear weapons to destroy these stockpiles? You remember, the ones they didn't develop at Dimona in the late '70s-early '80s. After all, they would present a far more significant and immediate threat to Israel than to the US. Even if they weren't totally destroyed in a strike, the resultant residual radioactivity in the areas would keep the Syrians away. If not, a repeat strike could be used in the event an attempted removal was tried.

Regarding North Korea, There are two reasons the US will do nothing. The first reason is that they have no oil. The second reason is because that would offend the Republican party's Chinese masters. If they did that, who would finance Mr. Bush's spiraling deficits?

[The Avon Lady]

I'll weigh in with a question. Let's assume that everything that Avon Lady says is true. If Iraqi chemical and biological agents and missle systems were smuggled into Syria and the Israeli government knows they are there and what locations they are stored in, why doesn't Israel use it's nuclear weapons to destroy these stockpiles?

You remember, the ones they didn't develop at Dimona in the late '70s-early '80s. After all, they would present a far more significant and immediate threat to Israel than to the US. Even if they weren't totally destroyed in a strike, the resultant residual radioactivity in the areas would keep the Syrians away. If not, a repeat strike could be used in the event an attempted removal was tried.

Israel has stated many times that it will not be the first state to introduce the use of nuclear weapons into the region.

So that leaves aerial bombings, ground-based sabotage operations or an all-out assault against Syria and Lebanon.

What if they're not all in the Beqa Valley?

What if they're secured deep underground?

What if precision information on the location of all such materials is not assured?

There are a myriad of variables that leave much doubt to the success of such an operation under the circumstances.
Regarding North Korea, There are two reasons the US will do nothing. The first reason is that they have no oil.
No. That's just a parameter of priority.
The second reason is because that would offend the Republican party's Chinese masters. If they did that, who would finance Mr. Bush's spiraling deficits?
If one has a deficit, one is not being funded.:roll:

[Yahoshua]

I'll just throw in a quick 2 cents here.

A guy posted a political thread up in the darkwaters section and I made a long-winded analysis about NK, Iran, etc. You might wanna read it. I was really tired when I wrote it but it should provide a larger picture of the situation.

[Ishmael]

Avon Lady was right. the Chemical weapons were there and the proof is posted below. But go to the last few paragraphs and see where they came from:

Excerpt from, "Our Generals Don’t Even Know Who We Are"
Copyright 2006 by David DeBatto
www.davedebatto.com
Coming From by Cumberland House Publishing in October


Amar Abdul Rahman was a survivor. He was also a fiercely patriotic Iraqi and thought of himself as an honest man – two things that did not always go together. Rahman had served for over fifteen years in the Iraqi Air Force as a Chief Warrant Officer in charge of all munitions in Region 6 – a vast, mostly desert area in north-central Iraq straddling the Tigris River approximately 80 kilometers north of Baghdad. There were several military installations located within Region 6, the largest being his current duty station, al-Bakr Air Force Base, named after Iraq’s fourth president - Hassan Ahmed al-Bakr. Al-Bakr was a very popular president and he was especially beloved by the female population of Iraq. He even had his own contingent of “groupies” present whenever he would appear in public. Many public statues of Al-Bakr were built all over Iraq as a tribute to his popularity. The common people just adored him.

He was of course assassinated. It was nothing personal. That was just the Iraqi way.

As a Shiite Muslim, Rahman knew that he would never have a chance at becoming a high ranking military officer. Those positions were all reserved for the suck-up Sunni loyalists who composed nearly all of the senior officer positions in the Saddam military. Yes, a few token Shia and even the odd Kurd here and there had been given some meaningless staff officer jobs from time to time, just to appease the masses, but everyone knew that all of the important roles in the Iraqi military and civilian leadership were reserved for members of Saddam’s own religious sect - the minority Sunni population. The most inner circles of Saddam loyalists were restricted further still to include only members of his own Tikriti tribe, all of whom were directly related to Saddam. At the innermost circle of all were immediate family members that made up what was referred to as the “Circle of 40.” They alone had direct and daily access to the Iraqi dictator. Their access to Saddam was trumped only by that of his two sons – Uday and Qusay. Tribal affiliation and blood ties are absolutely everything in Iraq. They always have been and were made even more important under Saddam.

Rahman accepted that fact, just as he had accepted everything else about life in Iraq since the reign of Saddam began in the late 1970’s. In fact, at age 34, he had really never known any other way of life. It could be harsh and unforgiving to be sure, but if one did as they were told, stayed away from politics and did well in school as well as with their compulsory service in the military, one could manage to have an acceptable, if not well to do life. That was the most Rahman had ever expected and for the most part, he was happy with his lot in life.

As fate would have it however, Rahman is a distant relative of the number two man in the Iraqi government – Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri. Al-Duri is Saddam’s right hand man and second in charge to Saddam of the ruling Ba’ath Party, Deputy Commander of the Iraqi Military and the Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. This fact had enabled Rahman to bypass the compulsory one-year service in the Iraqi Army as a lowly infantry soldier in 1988 and to enlist in the more respected and better paid Iraqi Air Force as a Warrant Officer, a position usually reserved for career service members as a reward for their loyalty and for bribes paid to senior officers over the years. Rahman considered himself extremely fortunate to have such a relative, even if it was a distant relative by marriage only – a distant in-law to be more accurate. But family was family and in Iraq, that was usually enough.

After receiving his initial military training in 1988 at Taji Air Force Base just north of Baghdad, Rahman was next stationed at the large air base in the As-Sulaymaniyah province located in northeastern Iraq and very close to the Iranian border. During the 10-year Iran-Iraq war that had just ended a few months’ earlier, As-Sulaymaniyah was one of the most active military posts in the country and had been on the receiving end of several Iranian Air Force bombing sorties into Iraq. There was still considerable damage to the base when he arrived in early fall 1989 and some basic services like sewage and electricity were not fully restored. Rahman was placed under the supervision of a senior Warrant Officer who would mentor him in his new occupation. Rahman was a very good student and he soaked up all of his training just like the parched Iraqi desert after a thunderstorm. He was proud to serve in such a trusted position.

During his six year tour at As-Sulaymaniyah, he received advanced training in the identification, transportation and storage of munitions and ordinance – in lay terms, weapons - all kinds of weapons ranging from landmines and machineguns to high explosive bombs and - WMD, specifically, chemical WMD. Of course, Iraqi had no WMD, right? Well, whatever WMD that Iraq didn’t have in Region 6 was about to be placed under the direct supervision of Munitions and newly promoted Chief Warrant Officer Amar Abdul Rahman - and Rahman had become a very good munitions officer.

In 1995 Rahman was transferred to al-Baker Air Force Base and for the first time in his career, he alone now assumed the responsibility of all munitions in his region. He was ready. Al-Baker was located in one of the most rural areas of Iraq. In fact, when the base was built in 1982 by Yugoslav and German contractors, Saddam had to seize thousand of acres of prime farmland and fruit orchards from the local farmers in order to build his immense new base. That did not sit well with the farmers and local tribal leaders, many of whom were Shia. They protested to Baghdad over the illegal land grab. Saddam soon sent in some agents from the Mokabarat (Iraqi Secret Service) and after several farmers disappeared and/or turned up beheaded, the controversy came to an abrupt end and the base was completed as scheduled.

Rahman enjoyed his new assignment and he dutifully cataloged everything in his charge and followed his orders to the letter, just as he had been taught since grade school. He had two junior officers and over 20 Air Force technicians assigned directly under him to assist with the inventorying, packing, labeling and transportation of the massive amounts of weapons systems and ammunition that he was responsible for. In addition to the 25 square km base at al-Baker, Rahman was also responsible for the 5 square km base munitions annex located approximately 3 km south of the base. It was at this sub-post that Rahman actually had his office and also where he kept his records.

Shortly after arriving at al-Bakr in the summer of 1996, Rahman received an unexpected visit from the Iraqi Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, Maj. General Hamid Raja Shalah. Shalah had made a special trip from Air Force headquarters in Baghdad to speak with Rahman in person because he felt that the subject was so sensitive that he did not trust talking on the telephone and he certainly would not use the unreliable Iraqi military radio communications system. No, this was a matter to be handled in person, one to one, face to face.

Gen. Shalah met with his eager new officer in Rahman’s cramped and dusty office at the annex. Rahman was understandably nervous since this was the highest ranking officer he had ever met and he did not know what to expect. The general spoke first. “Rahman, what I am about to tell you does not leave this room.” Now Rahman was really nervous, but he managed to spit out a short, “Yes Sir.”

“As chief munitions officer for Region 6, you will be responsible for some sensitive items that very few people in this country even know about, including your base commander. I am talking about chemical weapons that have been banned by the United Nations. Weapons that our president has sworn we no longer have. Do you understand me so far?” Banned weapons? I will be responsible? I don’t need this! But a crisp “Yes Sir!” was what actually came out of his mouth. “You will be receiving a shipment of some of these items next week on two unmarked flatbed trucks accompanied by Mukhabarat personnel. Obey their instructions exactly Rahman and you will be well rewarded by me. Understand?” “Thank you sir” was the only thing Rahman could think of to say, at least to this guy anyway.

The “items” were indeed delivered the next week as the general had promised and Rahman followed the instructions he was given by the plainclothes intelligence agents accompanying the shipment. The weapons were inventoried, cataloged in his records and stored in a reinforced bunker on the main base. No one was told of their arrival or location, not even the base commander. Damn! Rahman thought. I just hope we never to go to war with the Americans again. I don’t want to have to deal with this!

He spent the next seven years playing a kind of shell game with the UNSCOM inspectors sent by the UN to monitor Iraq’s WMD program. Whenever UNSCOM sent one of its inspectors such as Scott Ritter or Hanz Blix, he would bury the WMD before they arrived, deny their existence and when they were gone, the large construction equipment, always under the watchful eye of the Mukhabarat, would dig them up and move them to another location in the region. Rahman became very good at the game and he thought he would do so until retirement.

However, on April 9, 2003 all that changed.

That was the day the Iraqi forces defending al-Bakr deserted their posts after several days of bombing and brutal assaults by the American Air Force as well as units of infantry and armored forces of the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Division. The cavernous main hanger had a huge crater in the middle of the roof and floor, the two main runways were pockmarked with bomb craters and the base was littered with burnt out hulks of Iraqi military vehicles and giant MIG-29s as the Iraqis attempted to tow them out of harms way. They didn’t make it. Rahman himself had ordered his men to destroy all of their munitions records. As per an impassioned phone call from Shalah the day before, Rahman had burned all records of the chemical WMD on file in his office. He gladly complied as he wanted no part of any war trials after this was all over, whenever that would be. Maybe he will be killed or taken prisoner and it will never be over for him.

But eventually, it was over.

Within a week or so after the initial American troops had captured and then bypassed al-Bakr on their way north to Tikrit and Mosel, a new group of U.S. soldiers arrived in a large convoy from Kuwait. They entered the sprawling, deserted and charred base through the battered south gate and set up camp in a vacant dirt field just east of the airbase control tower. These were the troops of the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, California Army National Guard. Among their number were a contingent of Counterintelligence Special Agents whose primary missions, among others, were the location of Saddam Hussein and Iraqi WMD. One of those agents was named David DeBatto, in Arabic, Daoud, or as he would eventually be referred to by both Iraqis and Americans alike – Mr. David, his host in this furnace of a tent on his former base.

“It was a new day for Iraq”, he thought.

*****

After relating his background and experience to us, Rahman told us that there was indeed WMD in this area and that he would be willing to lead us to it. Not being overly trusting of Iraqi’s at that point and certainly not of a prior Iraqi military officer, I was very skeptical of anything he told us. I asked Rahman why he was telling us all of this and he said very matter-of-factly, “Because I love my country and I want things to change.”

I looked at Weichert and asked him with my eyes what he thought. Weichert’s response was to Ask Rahman if he would lead us to the weapons right now and Rahman said, “Yes, of course.” With that, the three of us got into our Humvee and drove to a bunker located at the southeast quadrant of the base, not even one mile from where were sitting.

The bunker sat in a deserted part of the base that had several similar bunkers spread throughout a large area and connected by a single serpentine road. All of the bunkers were constructed of concrete covered by tan stucco, which blended in perfectly with the surrounding desert. They were of various sizes, but all had two, large metal doors which either slid to the side or opened outward, leading into the one large storage area inside.

As we pulled up to the Bunker that Rahman indicated contained the WMD, I noticed that the dry, desert field surrounding the area was littered with ordinance, primarily aerial bombs. Some were rusted beyond recognition and lay half- covered in sand. Others were neatly stacked in the original shipping crates and surrounded by a high earthen berm, which looked like a small crater.

The high, steel doors of the bunker were ajar. Weichert and I each pulled one of them open and the three of us entered the dark and musty storage room. Immediately upon entering, I noticed a chemical detection kit lying open on the floor, just inside the entrance. The hair on the back of my neck went up and I looked over at Weichert, who was also staring at the kit. “Holy ****!” we both said at almost the same time. That was not what I wanted to see at that particular time. I looked closer at the detection kit and saw that it had Russian lettering - not that unusual, since Iraq had many contacts with Russian scientists, engineers and military personnel over the years. They had also purchased a large assortment of military hardware and munitions from them – to include chemicals and related equipment.

Rahman pointed to a number of long wooden crates stacked up in rows three high along the wall to the left of the entrance. There appeared to be 25-30 crates in all. Two or three had their tops removed and grey, aerial bombs, about six feet in length, sat inside. Weichert and I walked over to the crates and looked at one of the open ones. It appeared to be a conventional high explosive bomb used on any number of military aircraft, both in Iraq and in elsewhere.

Rahman motioned for us to come over to where he was standing next to another of the open crates. He pointed to the midsection of the bomb and to what appeared to be a small, thin metal door or covering bolted shut with small metal pins and possibly covering a slot or chamber. Inside, Rahman, explained, was a small parachute. He told us that after the bomb was dropped from the aircraft, the metal covering was blown open and the parachute deployed at about two hundred feet, slowing the descent of the bomb. A chemical agent, which was located in another chamber located at the rear of the bomb, was then dispersed into the air in an aerosol spray and spread over as large an area as the prevailing winds allowed.

Rahman led us around to the rear of the bomb and pointed to the tail assembly. It had a circular piece of metal connected to spokes in a conventional sort of design, but the similarity stopped there. Where ordinarily the rear end of a conventional high explosive bomb would taper into a point, this bomb had apparently had the tail section cut off about six inches from the tip resulting in a flat, circular end. Into that flat end, a small handle was inserted like one on a drawer. Rahman motioned with his hand near the handle and said that this device was twisted in order to open the compartment and then the technician pulled the drawer out and inserted a chemical agent in the slot. When finished, the drawer was reinserted into the bomb and the handle was once again secured.

The chemical WMD was now ready to be loaded onto the aircraft.

Rahman next pointed to the hand lettered numbers on the side of the crates. They were numbered from 1-29. Rahman said that he placed hand-lettered numbers on each one personally and can assure us that were 29 chemical WMD bombs under his supervision. Not 28 or 30 – but 29. He seemed to be very proud of his accuracy and neatness in numbering each crate. He went on to say how he had spent the last eight years or so playing “cat and mouse” with UNSCOM (the UN inspectors). Every time they were due to come to his region for an inspection, he would be notified by his superiors. Then he would arrange for the bombs to be transported to a different area that was not going to be inspected. Sometimes, he told us, he would simply dig a deep hole near the storage facility and bury the bombs, crates and all, until the inspectors left and then dig them up again and put them back where they were. He was familiar with Scott Ritter and Hans Blix in particular and said they never found any WMD in his region.

He even ran his hand along one of the crates and brushed off some dried clay, which was clinging to the outside. These were dug up after the last inspection before the war and placed back into the bunker with the large areas of clay still covering some of the crates. He was right – every one of the wooden boxes had varying amounts of dry, reddish clay – which is the common soil found at that location – caked to their wooden exteriors. These bombs had definitely been buried locally at some point just before being placed into that bunker – that was a fact.

Looking around the rest of the bunker interior, I could see dozens of metal chemicals containers – some apparently unopened, and some with their tops open and with dried, powdery substances on the floor all around them and inside the containers. Some containers were covered with what appeared to be dried liquids, almost like dry paint, streaming down the sides.

I can honestly say that I was having a hard time comprehending what I was seeing. Unless my senses were deceiving me, Weichert and I had actually found the mother lode of Operation Iraqi Freedom – actual Iraqi WMD. I walked over to one of the crates and saw a plastic sheath containing what appeared to be a bill of laden. I cut it open with my Leatherman and pulled the documents out.

At this point I want to say that loud and clear that I very much regret not having either shoved that document in my pocket or made a copy of it and sent it home for safe keeping. At the time I actually thought that a report would be written and normal Army and intelligence protocol would be followed, so there would be no need for me to have to prove anything. But I digress…

I opened the folded off-white paper form and noticed several interesting things right away. The bombs had been purchased in the United States in 1988 from what appeared to be a government contractor called The Carlyle Group. I am almost embarrassed now to say that I had not heard of The Carlyle Group at that time so the name meant nothing to me. The only reason I remember it at all is that I was amazed that the bill was in English and I was stunned to see that a bomb that was used by Iraq in delivering chemical WMD – the only WMD found during the entire Iraq war – was in fact supplied to Saddam Hussein by the United States. Un-blanking believable.

The date on the bill was either 1987 or 1988, I don’t recall exactly. I do recall that the bomb was manufactured in Spain and shipped through France. So much for their claims of being holier-than-thou. I checked several more bills and they were all identical. These bombs had all been shipped together. Rahman told us that similar weapons had been used all throughout the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s as well as against the Kurds. We were staring at what could have possibly been some of the same type of WMD used in one of the most heinous attacks in recorded history - the gassing of Halabja in March of 1988 which killed an estimated 5,000 Kurdish civilians.

I instructed Weichert to both videotape and take digital still photos of the bunker and its contents. The outside area which included many more chemical containers and HAZMAT suits were documented as well. At least fifteen minutes of video and 50 still photos were taken at that location. These were then incorporated and attached to the detailed written report that I wrote and sent up the chain of command through CI channels.

I also personally reported the discovery to the battalion commander of the 223rd MI, CA ARNG, Lt. Col. Timothy Ryan. Ryan seemed excited by the news and asked to be taken to the bunker immediately. Weichert and I drove Ryan to the bunker within minutes after his request and showed him our discovery. He seemed genuinely impressed with the authenticity of our find. He commented to me, “You guys have found the real deal.”

So we had. Too bad it was ours.

*****
So apparently The Bush family and their Saudi friends supplied the gas used in Hallabja.

[Iceman]

*****
So apparently The Bush family and their Saudi friends supplied the gas used in Hallabja.

Just get your stuff straight there buddy.....Guns don't kill people....people do.

Hate the game not the player....GWB it not solely responsible for the worlds muked up state no matter how you try to pin it on him....take some responsibility....do you recycle?...do you drive an automobile fueled by decaying dino parts?...no one is without fault so pull the mote from your own eye, Saddam, Osama and you and me will ALL answer for our own deeds.

[The Avon Lady]

Big bad bump. :p

The NYT-IAEA Conspiracy (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23217_The_NYT-IAEA_Conspiracy).

[The Avon Lady]

If I'm already here, I'll post all the other relevant LGF links over the past few days:

Hoekstar Responds to NYT Nuke Article (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23210_Hoekstra_Responds_to_NYT_Nuke_Article ).

Thank You, President Bush (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23209_Thank_You_President_Bush).

Saddam's Nuclear Plans (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23208_Saddams_Nuclear_Plans).

Saddam Was Close to a Nuclear Bomb (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23202_Saddam_Was_Close_to_a_Nuclear_Bomb).

[The Noob]

Why is everyone calling him "Saddam"? If i call bush "Georgie" i get flamed, if you call him saddam nothing happends.

[The Avon Lady]

Why is everyone calling him "Saddam"? If i call bush "Georgie" i get flamed, if you call him saddam nothing happends.
Please try to stay on topic, Noobie. ;)

[Sailor Steve]

Why is everyone calling him "Saddam"? If i call bush "Georgie" i get flamed, if you call him saddam nothing happends.
1) Respectable news sources commonly call him by his first or last names. If someone were to call him "Saddie" or even "Sadie" I would give a response similar to the one I gave you.

2) I didn't flame you; I said that I thought it was demeaning and indicated a prior animosity which was not conducive to progressive discussion. If I had said something like "Shut up, you ignorant twit; show a little respect!"...well, that would have been flaming. I also mentioned at the time that I thought it was equally rude when opponents of the previous president used terms like "Billary", "HillBilly" and "Klinton".

[The Avon Lady]

I posted this on another thread. Post here for future reference:

When believing Saddam had WMDs was cool (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfeBROshZ0M)

[Tchocky]

:zzz:

Wake me up when they find some actual weapons.

Speculation-speculation. And the fact remains that, no matter how you want to slice it, Iraq was not invaded because of WMD concerns or immediate security threats, but for political reasons.

Shock and awe! - a war for political reasons! What else is new? :hmm:

Nothing new about the reasons, but the lies got my back up. Absolutely disgusting, in a malevolent sense.

[The Avon Lady]

Nothing new about the reasons, but the lies got my back up. Absolutely disgusting, in a malevolent sense.
Yes. Been through this. What lies?

[Tchocky]

Nothing new about the reasons, but the lies got my back up. Absolutely disgusting, in a malevolent sense. Yes. Been through this. What lies?
Every speech from 9/11 up until St Patrick's Day 2003 - "Saddam...9/11...Osama...WMD". Extensive lying to a public too ready to swallow it.

Tony Blair's 45 minutes, yellowcake, mobile laboratories, this rag (http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page1470.asp)

*posted when i meant to preview* oh well

Cheney - Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

President - Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

[The Avon Lady]

Nothing new about the reasons, but the lies got my back up. Absolutely disgusting, in a malevolent sense. Yes. Been through this. What lies?
Every speech from 9/11 up until St Patrick's Day 2003 - "Saddam...9/11...Osama...WMD". Extensive lying to a public too ready to swallow it.
Please prove that these were lies and not at the worst the intelligence blunders they have been uncovered to be.
Tony Blair's 45 minutes, yellowcake, mobile laboratories, this rag (http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page1470.asp)
Ditto. Seems like you were left out of the loop (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11732&only).

But please, conspire on. :roll:

[The Avon Lady]

Cheney - Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

President - Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
Just like all the Democratic party bigwigs that believed the same thing. Yet you feel the urge to cherrypick 2 Republicans out. Or did you not bother watching what I linked to a few posts ago?

[Tchocky]

Every speech from 9/11 up until St Patrick's Day 2003 - "Saddam...9/11...Osama...WMD". Extensive lying to a public too ready to swallow it. Please prove that these were lies and not at the worst the intelligence blunders they have been uncovered to be.


That wasn't an intelligence blunder, it was a pointed attempt to propose a policy justified by an external, irrelevant event. I wasn't talking about the intelligence failures there, they were present later on, after the associations had been made.

George - "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

In a similiar way, the war was put to the country. The backlash we see now is the after effects of that particular date rape, in my opinion.

As regards Niger, the intelligence used as the basis of the State of The Union address was not that quoted by LittleGreenFootballs. The twice rejected (CIA & State) forgeries were then brought directly to the White House. Dubious, no? Actually, the CIA labelled it "highly dubious".

and there's this, too http://mostlyafrica.blogspot.com/2004/07/niger-intelligence-reports-on-iraq.html

[Tchocky]

Cheney - Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

President - Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. Just like all the Democratic party bigwigs that believed the same thing. Yet you feel the urge to cherrypick 2 Republicans out. Or did you not bother watching what I linked to a few posts ago?
Yes, Democrats believed it too, what does that change? Frankly, its easier to find the President and VP on record, regarding this topic. Cherrypicking? Hardly, when its the President and VP. I'm not making a party political broadcast for the Dems, I didnt vote for them, I can't.

[The Avon Lady]

That wasn't an intelligence blunder, it was a pointed attempt to propose a policy justified by an external, irrelevant event. I wasn't talking about the intelligence failures there, they were present later on, after the associations had been made.
Care to document this claim?
George - "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
What a classic out of context quotation.

For the record, this is part of a discussion by the President on prior plans to modify the Social Security system (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050524-3.html):

"Now, a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system. It would be a part of what you would have to retire when you reach retirement age. As you -- as I mentioned to you earlier, we're going to redesign the current system. If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)"

Fake but accurate? Better luck next time. Who's feeding you this junk?
In a similiar way, the war was put to the country. The backlash we see now is the after effects of that particular date rape, in my opinion.
<sarcasm>Yes, the US has been swimming in oceans of Iraqi oil since 2003.</sarcasm>
As regards Niger, the intelligence used as the basis of the State of The Union address was not that quoted by LittleGreenFootballs. The twice rejected (CIA & State) forgeries were then brought directly to the White House. Dubious, no? Actually, the CIA labelled it "highly dubious".
Let's again look at those last words and get the facts straight. Here's who labeled it "highly dubious", from Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1005234-3,00.html):

"In October, Tenet personally intervened with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, to remove a line about the African ore in a speech that Bush was giving in Cincinnati, Ohio. Also that month, CIA officials included the Brits' yellowcake story in their classified 90-page National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs. The CIA said it could neither verify the Niger story nor "confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake" from two other African nations. The agency also included the State Department's concerns that the allegations of Iraq's seeking yellowcake were "highly dubious"--though that assessment was printed only as a footnote."

It was the CIA's conveying the State Dept's opinion - not the CIA's - and this was all in a footnote - not in the main text of the report.

Context. Context.

Must stop. 10:15PM. Dryer duty! :doh:

[Safe-Keeper]

OK, so let me just drop in and make a request:

ACTUALLY READ/LISTEN TO RITTER'S REPORT.

And while you're at it, read the Downing Street Memo. I know it disagrees with you. I know it can be a boring read. I know it's not from a propaganda source. And I know it utterly shoots down the "OMG dey had teh WMDZ!!!!!"-argument. But read it nonetheless.

According to Ritter's report:
Inspectors oversaw the destruction of 90-95% of the WMDs. The rest were unaccounted for. Read that again: Unaccounted for. Could be destroyed, could be shipped off to Syria, Heck, could technically be sent to Iceland for demolition purposes.
The weapon the USA kept bringing up, liquid anthrax, nerve gas, etc., can only be used a few days after its production, then it's useless. You can't store it for years more than you can store ice-cream for years in a sauna. Guess what, after a very short time it's not ice-cream anymore, but liquid.
The Iraqi regime co-operated with the inspectors, except when the inspectors asked to see government sites such as presidential palaces. Would the USA ever allow inspectors inside NORAD? Or Area 51? I highly doubt it. You're barely letting the Red Cross into Guanánamo. The fact that Saddam suspected (rightfully, it turned out) that the CIA had infiltrated the inspection program and was using it to gain intelligence on the Iraqi military didn't help matters.
The inspectors were not "kicked out of" Iraq in 1998, they were ordered to leave by the Chairman of the inspection process, Richard Butler, due to Operation Desert Fox.There were no Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction in Syria or elsewhere. Bottom line. If you'd actually read Ritter's report, you'd know as much.

Oh, and:If Saddam had WMD when the US invaded, why didn't he use them?See, the whole WMD argument is an oxymoron.

Us: "Why do we need to invade Iraq?"
You: "He's got WMDs and he'll use them first chance he gets! He used them on the Kurds!"
[WAR ERUPTS]
Us: "Er, those WMDs?"
You: "The clever bastard shipped them off to Syria when he heard we were coming! See, that's what I told you all along, he had WMDs and he was going to hide them, so we had to... Er, wait... Uh..."

Right.

Care to document this claim?Care to do a little research yourself? You know, reading other things than neo-con propaganda?

Downing Street Memo, gal.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh here. I mean, you've only had since May 1st 2005, and it's not like it's ever been mentioned in the media or in debates. And of course, Google-searches for the subject take a whole of ,11 seconds and only yield 1 460 000 results, and it's not like the first hit is a very easy-to-comprehend site (http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/).

You're excused.

[Tchocky]

That wasn't an intelligence blunder, it was a pointed attempt to propose a policy justified by an external, irrelevant event. I wasn't talking about the intelligence failures there, they were present later on, after the associations had been made. Care to document this claim?
Speeches and press releases such as this from Cincinnati, October 2002

Bush - The attacks of September the 11th showed our country that vast oceans no longer protect us from danger. Before that tragic date, we had only hints of al Qaeda's plans and designs. Today in Iraq, we see a threat whose outlines are far more clearly defined, and whose consequences could be far more deadly. Saddam Hussein's actions have put us on notice, and there is no refuge from our responsibilities.

It's not very hard to work out the intent here, at least to me. Several million people swallowed it readily

George - "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." What a classic out of context quotation.

For the record, this is part of a discussion by the President on prior plans to modify the Social Security system (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050524-3.html):

"Now, a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system. It would be a part of what you would have to retire when you reach retirement age. As you -- as I mentioned to you earlier, we're going to redesign the current system. If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)"

Fake but accurate? Better luck next time. Who's feeding you this junk?
I used this quotation to further enforce what i believe was going on before the war. Speeches by Bush and Cheney consistently proposed the idea that not going to war in Iraq would lead to a nuclear/chemical/biological 9/11 funded and supplied by Saddam Hussein. This concept was broadcast through repetition and implicit suggestion, creating the associations I've mentioned, "catapulting the propaganda".

I know that he was talking about SS reform, I dont see how that changes anything. If you can tell me why my use of this quote is worth the "junk" comment, go ahead, I don't particularly care.

In a similiar way, the war was put to the country. The backlash we see now is the after effects of that particular date rape, in my opinion. <sarcasm>Yes, the US has been swimming in oceans of Iraqi oil since 2003.</sarcasm>
Ok. I never mentioned oil at all, and I cant work out what you are getting at. The public are angry for being duped, what did you mean?

[The Avon Lady]

It's not very hard to work out the intent here, at least to me.
That sums up nicely the level of documentation you have provided to back up your claim.

[The Avon Lady]

OK, so let me just drop in and make a request:

ACTUALLY READ/LISTEN TO RITTER'S REPORT.
I hope the shouting made you feel better. :roll:

You mean this Scott Ritter?
"Over the past two years, Mr. Ritter has taken $400,000 from Shakir Al- Khafaji, an Iraqi-American businessman with ties to Saddam, to produce a documentary called, "In Shifting Sands." Mr. Ritter concedes that Mr. Al-Khafaji is "openly sympathetic with the regime in Baghdad." And that may be an understatement. Mr. Al-Khafaji runs propaganda sessions for Saddam. Euphemistically known as "expatriate conferences," the biannual gatherings decry the "terrorism and genocide" the U.S. commits against the Iraqi people through U.N. sanctions."
- Ritter of Arabia (http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1032311705619084835,00.html?mod=opinion_main_ commentaries), Wall Street Journal, Stephen F. Hayes, 2002/09/18
You mean this Scott Ritter?
"ALBANY, New York (CNN) -- Scott Ritter, a former U.S. Marine and U.N. weapons inspector who has been an outspoken critic of a possible war with Iraq, was arrested in 2001 and charged with a misdemeanor after allegedly communicating with an undercover officer posing as a 16-year-old girl, a source close to the investigation has told CNN."

More ....................

"The source also said Ritter was confronted by police in April 2001 after communicating with an undercover officer posing as a 14-year-old."
- Ex-arms inspector, war foe Ritter confirms 2001 arrest (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/22/ritter.arrest/), CNN, 2003/01/23

Or the Scott Ritter who writes for Aljazeera (http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:oIRtED9h7dkJ:english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ADCA48CC-9307-466B-BA18-82724CAA7484.htm+%2Bscott+%2Britter+%2Baljazeera&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1).

Would anyone buy a used car from this man? :nope:

I hope you enjoyed his book and the trees that were killed to publish it. Poor trees! :oops:

[Tchocky]

It's not very hard to work out the intent here, at least to me. That sums up nicely the level of documentation you have provided to back up your claim.
I agree, thanks.



Having a poke around the interweb released this - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/09/eveningnews/main1990644.shtml . Obviously not a copper-bottomed bluechip, but close enough.
From the horse's mouth - http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61903-2002Oct21
It even ran right up to the mark - And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. (Cheney, Meet The Press 16th March 2003)

He later claimed that he "misspoke", was it this kind of mis-speaking? http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/23/fernandez.statement/index.html
What is this mi-speaking, anyway? Is it when you cant remember the word 'lie"?
This was an after-the-fact nugget http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60140-2003May30?language=printer

Ari Fleischer said in a conference - "If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world." - I think this illuminates the atmosphere of the time. We're going in, and now for a reason...

I'm going to throw in a quotation, yes yes i know, refuge of the groundless argument, but as stated previously I don't care.

Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
— General Herman Goering

[micky1up]

lets put this to bed look in over 30 years of occupation of northern ireland the uk forces only discovered a hand full of weapons caches that in a country about 30 times smaller than iraq if you want to hide something in a country that largeyour going to suceed weather they where there or not is beside the point sadaam was a wicked a ruthless dictator no matter who supported him in the past and who supplied him with funds and weapons he killed millions and gassed his own people he would have built up his army again after gulf war 1 if left unchecked and would have invaded other countries and would have used WMD as he did against iran the world is a better place without him in power next though we have to sort out iran and syria the two main sponsors of the insurgency in iraq

[August]

lets put this to bed look in over 30 years of occupation of northern ireland the uk forces only discovered a hand full of weapons caches that in a country about 30 times smaller than iraq if you want to hide something in a country that largeyour going to suceed weather they where there or not is beside the point sadaam was a wicked a ruthless dictator no matter who supported him in the past and who supplied him with funds and weapons he killed millions and gassed his own people he would have built up his army again after gulf war 1 if left unchecked and would have invaded other countries and would have used WMD as he did against iran the world is a better place without him in power next though we have to sort out iran and syria the two main sponsors of the insurgency in iraq

Geez Dude. There's these things called punctuation and capitalization which would make your post much easier to read. You should give them a try.

[micky1up]

lets put this to bed look in over 30 years of occupation of northern ireland the uk forces only discovered a hand full of weapons caches that in a country about 30 times smaller than iraq if you want to hide something in a country that largeyour going to suceed weather they where there or not is beside the point sadaam was a wicked a ruthless dictator no matter who supported him in the past and who supplied him with funds and weapons he killed millions and gassed his own people he would have built up his army again after gulf war 1 if left unchecked and would have invaded other countries and would have used WMD as he did against iran the world is a better place without him in power next though we have to sort out iran and syria the two main sponsors of the insurgency in iraq

Geez Dude. There's these things called punctuation and capitalization which would make your post much easier to read. You should give them a try.


sorry dude if you need to see a full stop to take a breath then i do feel sorry for ya

[Konovalov]

I find this whole thread amusing because this "WMD debate" topic comes up every six months or so and is starting to look like a dead horse. At this very moment in time I really couldn't give two hoots if there were or weren't WMD's in Iraq. I would rather have what I see as a more important debate. How is the current situation in Iraq going to be solved?

[August]

sorry dude if you need to see a full stop to take a breath then i do feel sorry for ya

The purpose of posting is to communicate a message. Aside from the implied lack of intelligence and education you're displaying by your lack of punctuation and capitalization, your message becomes garbled and unreadable.

Surely that is not your intent, is it?

[Yahoshua]

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k84/yahoshua/popcorn.gif

[micky1up]

sorry dude if you need to see a full stop to take a breath then i do feel sorry for ya

The purpose of posting is to communicate a message. Aside from the implied lack of intelligence and education you're displaying by your lack of punctuation and capitalization, your message becomes garbled and unreadable.

Surely that is not your intent, is it?


so for instance a man hands you a message on a bit of paper that reads " im about to set your house on fire " you say that thats unreadable and garbled because of no capaitals or punctuation in the message and you would disgard the message i think not i would question who has the lack of intelligence

[XabbaRus]

LOL

August give up now. micky hasn't used punctuation for as long as I can remember. You get used to it and micky knows a thing or two about subs....

[Fish]

Guess what?

Bump.

Video interview of former Iraqi Fedayeen Major General Ali Ibrahim Al-Tikriti (http://www.worldthreats.com/AliWMVpage.htm).

AL, your not going the way CT's do? They have the same approach. :hmm:

[Fish]

lets put this to bed look in over 30 years of occupation of northern ireland the uk forces only discovered a hand full of weapons caches that in a country about 30 times smaller than iraq if you want to hide something in a country that largeyour going to suceed weather they where there or not is beside the point sadaam was a wicked a ruthless dictator no matter who supported him in the past and who supplied him with funds and weapons he killed millions and gassed his own people he would have built up his army again after gulf war 1 if left unchecked and would have invaded other countries and would have used WMD as he did against iran the world is a better place without him in power next though we have to sort out iran and syria the two main sponsors of the insurgency in iraq

Saw the trucks moving the labs on the satelite pics? :up:

[August]

LOL

August give up now. micky hasn't used punctuation for as long as I can remember. You get used to it and micky knows a thing or two about subs....

I will give it up but I could never take anything he says seriously. Bad writing is like random static to me. Unintelligable.

[micky1up]

LOL

August give up now. micky hasn't used punctuation for as long as I can remember. You get used to it and micky knows a thing or two about subs....

I will give it up but I could never take anything he says seriously. Bad writing is like random static to me. Unintelligable.



your loss matey ive served on royal navy nuclear subs for 19 year and 8 days from today i do have a small dyslexia problem which make it hard for me to type post correctley it take me along time to type posts such as these many people on rely on my experience in the sub world after all im a tactical picture supervisor i wish i could put down all that i have expeerienced in the service but that would break a few rules

[August]

your loss matey ive served on royal navy nuclear subs for 19 year and 8 days from today i do have a small dyslexia problem which make it hard for me to type post correctley it take me along time to type posts such as these many people on rely on my experience in the sub world after all im a tactical picture supervisor i wish i could put down all that i have expeerienced in the service but that would break a few rules

Interesting. I was not aware of this but I've never heard of dyslexia affecting punctuation and capitalization. Now that I know i'll make an effort to read your posts but it is difficult.

[micky1up]

your loss matey ive served on royal navy nuclear subs for 19 year and 8 days from today i do have a small dyslexia problem which make it hard for me to type post correctley it take me along time to type posts such as these many people on rely on my experience in the sub world after all im a tactical picture supervisor i wish i could put down all that i have expeerienced in the service but that would break a few rules

Interesting. I was not aware of this but I've never heard of dyslexia affecting punctuation and capitalization. Now that I know i'll make an effort to read your posts but it is difficult.

there are many types for instance einstein didnt use any capitals or hardly any punctuation a very fampus dyslexia sufferer not that i match up to einstien but i know more about subs than he duz

[The Avon Lady]

I find this whole thread amusing because this "WMD debate" topic comes up every six months or so and is starting to look like a dead horse.
Yes, sort of. And the more time that passes, the less attention is paid to it.
At this very moment in time I really couldn't give two hoots if there were or weren't WMD's in Iraq.
Well there I totally diagree because if there weren't any, there was a major blunder here on the part of the US and some of its allies. If there were, then that paints a much different picture of the war's justification than exists now. It would also mean that their disappearance may still be of concern and relevance.
I would rather have what I see as a more important debate. How is the current situation in Iraq going to be solved?
No problem. I understand that this forum software supports more than 1 thread. :o

[The Avon Lady]

Sorry, Knovalov, this pesky issue can't seem to go away:

Melanie Phillips: That non-existent Saddam threat (http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1391).

[Takeda Shingen]

Rehash. Give something new or let this sink. Circular discussions are bad for the forum's well-being.

Thanks,
The Management

[The Avon Lady]

Here I am about to get some of you folk's dander up again. :D

Read A Trip Down Memory Lane (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016745.php) and make sure to watch the Clinton era 1999 ABC news broadcast showing the connections between Saddam, Bin Laden and WMDs.

Sorry to interrupt the "Libby lied, people died" trendsetters. ;)

[bradclark1]

Maybe you should watch it again AL. It's all speculation. there is no denying contact but thats about it.

Speculation:

A conclusion, opinion, or theory reached by conjecture.
Reasoning based on inconclusive evidence; conjecture or supposition.

[Konovalov]

Re this thread: The dead horse returns to be flogged once more. :rotfl: :rotfl:

[Konovalov]

Maybe you should watch it again AL. It's all speculation. there is no denying contact but thats about it.

Speculation:

A conclusion, opinion, or theory reached by conjecture.
Reasoning based on inconclusive evidence; conjecture or supposition.

I think though that such is the aim. To muddy the waters so to speak. :zzz:

[STEED]

Well............:roll:

[MadMike]

Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered over 500 munitions containing sarin and degraded mustard ("degraded" is still a WMD)-

http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Iraq_WMD_Declassified.pdf


Iraq's nuclear weapons efforts were pretty well established-

Tuwaitha had facilities and infrastructure for all Group Four activities except for the fabrication, handling, and testing of high explosives.

Experimented with high explosives to produce implosive shock waves.

Developed a 32-point electronic firing system using detonators and lenses developed at Al Qa Qa.

Tested firing system.

Tested flash X-ray systems, gas gun systems, fiber optics with fast response electronic equipment, high speed electronic streak cameras towards nuclear weapons.

Produced and recovered polonium by irradiating bismuth.

Created special unit at Al Qaqaa for the production of high explosive lenses, detonators and propellants for nuclear weapons.

Compiled large stocks of imported HMX and RDX and own operating RDX production plant.

Al Atheer designed to accommodate all technical activities related to nuclear weapon development, including experiments with high explosives for which an elaborate complex was designed and constructed.

Iraq’s primary focus was a basic implosion fission design, fuelled by HEU.

Using open-source literature and theoretical studies, ran various computer codes through Iraq’s mainframe computer to adapt the codes and develop the physical constants for a nuclear weapon development programme.

Was aware of more advanced weapon design concepts.

Invested significant efforts to understand the various options for neutron initiators

Tested high explosive lenses.

Made significant progress in developing capabilities for the production, casting and machining of uranium metal

Casted a uranium sphere of about five centimeter diameter, several hemispheres of similar size and a small number of rods weighing 1.2 kg per piece, from which to machine "sub-calibre munitions"

http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/nwp2.html


Iraq and terrorism link-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Nidal


Yours, Mike :|\\

[elite_hunter_sh3]

lol i heard bush is using the same words as an excuse for Iran nuclear program as he said to iraqi program, anyone else notice this??:doh: :doh:

[The Avon Lady]

lol i heard bush is using the same words as an excuse for Iran nuclear program as he said to iraqi program, anyone else notice this??:doh: :doh:
So to counter him, why don't you just come out and state as a fact that there is no Iranian nuclear program?

:smug:

[Konovalov]

lol i heard bush is using the same words as an excuse for Iran nuclear program as he said to iraqi program, anyone else notice this??:doh: :doh:
So to counter him, why don't you just come out and state as a fact that there is no Iranian nuclear program?

:smug:

Girls and guys, the thread is on Iraq not Iran. Starting a new flogging a dead horse thread would be a good idea. :smug: :smug:

[elite_hunter_sh3]

everyone knows that iran has a nuclear program but no one is sure what kind of program. is it for nuclear reactors and electricity? or is it for nuclear weapons??

enyways this is off topic but wut im saying is, people are noticing hes talking the same b.s about iran as he did for Iraq, whats he gonna do attack iran?? he does have the balls to do that but the rest of the country is gonna castrate him cuz they r tired of war with iraq etc... they dont believe in him enymore.

[Iceman]

everyone knows that iran has a nuclear program but no one is sure what kind of program.

You really can't be that stupid?..Iran's nuclear program is for baking cookies and creating nice friendly energy....and that Sarin gas munitions found in Iraq was for exterminating rats in the Iraqi sewers...dork.

[elite_hunter_sh3]

everyone knows that iran has a nuclear program but no one is sure what kind of program.
You really can't be that stupid?..Iran's nuclear program is for baking cookies and creating nice friendly energy....and that Sarin gas munitions found in Iraq was for exterminating rats in the Iraqi sewers...dork.
very nice comment there now well all know who to ignore:up: , if anyone here hasnt noticed cnn is pure pro american propaganda they are known to be the "stupidest" reporting news agency in the world, they didnthave good reports on any wars, for ex (nato bombing of yugoslavia was greatly exagerated, iraq war was greatly pro american, doesnt even show any dead civilians or civialians dieing or any insurgents, cnn makes the iraq war look like battlefield 2 when the americans are winning.)

dont believe every single word cnn tells u , just because a moron in the white house says iraq has nucular (and he prounounces it like that:rotfl::roll:) WMDS, all of a sudden Iran has em, what next iran is gonna get invaded, if he does attack iran i hope iran wins and ill be cheering for iran to teach american government a lesson not to police the world.

[ASWnut101]

[ if anyone here hasnt noticed cnn is pure pro american propaganda....

....dont believe every single word cnn tells u


Now THAT's funny!:rotfl: I don't really know where you've been for the past six years....take another look at it.

[ASWnut101]

if he does attack iran i hope iran wins and ill be cheering for iran to teach american government a lesson not to police the world.


Heh, keep dreaming.....or smoking....or whatever. Iran winning is like a baby rat trying to attack a hawk. Not `gunna happen.

[elite_hunter_sh3]

then go right ahead attack for all i care i live in canada wats gonna happen to us lol:rock: , we dont go around pounding countries into dust for stupid little reasons which not even the craziest country even cares about, stop meddling in other peoples business and fix ur own dam problems such as ur welfare and social systems, and ffs please fix ur gun laws, mor pple die of gun deaths every year then soldiers die every 10 years in iraq. btw about 13000 peopl;e die every year if gun related deaths.,

[elite_hunter_sh3]

but meh who gives a sh** about america ur gonna get murkkedd by china in a few months, they can overrun america in under 2 weeks if they mobilized their entire reserves, which btw is around 330 MILLION which im pretty sure is more then ur ENTIRE population of America.:roll::roll:

so good luck with that, i suggest u personally stockpile on food and water that will last a good 10-15 years, and make urself a nuclear underground bunker.

[ASWnut101]

hehe, nice source. Got one for the gun laws?


And can we PLEASE stay on topic?

[ASWnut101]

but meh who gives a sh** about america ur gonna get murkkedd by china in a few months, they can overrun america in under 2 weeks if they mobilized their entire reserves, which btw is around 330 MILLION which im pretty sure is more then ur ENTIRE population of America.:roll::roll:

so good luck with that, i suggest u personally stockpile on food and water that will last a good 10-15 years, and make urself a nuclear underground bunker.


Jesus, did the brig do that to you?

The Pop of America is 360,000,000+ and counting.

[elite_hunter_sh3]

but meh who gives a sh** about america ur gonna get murkkedd by china in a few months, they can overrun america in under 2 weeks if they mobilized their entire reserves, which btw is around 330 MILLION which im pretty sure is more then ur ENTIRE population of America.:roll::roll:

so good luck with that, i suggest u personally stockpile on food and water that will last a good 10-15 years, and make urself a nuclear underground bunker.

Jesus, did the brig do that to you?

The Pop of America is 360,000,000+ and counting.

LMFAO

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/us.html

ur own goverment screwed u rofl

and links for gun deaths
http://www.guncite.com/cnngunde.html

[Tchocky]

but meh who gives a sh** about america ur gonna get murkkedd by china in a few months, they can overrun america in under 2 weeks if they mobilized their entire reserves, which btw is around 330 MILLION which im pretty sure is more then ur ENTIRE population of America.:roll::roll:

so good luck with that, i suggest u personally stockpile on food and water that will last a good 10-15 years, and make urself a nuclear underground bunker.


Jesus, did the brig do that to you?

The Pop of America is 360,000,000+ and counting.

Nope http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

[elite_hunter_sh3]

edit cia link is outdated looking for current will be up soon

edit* nvm kudos to tchocky for showing current pop

[elite_hunter_sh3]

so 330 million armed chinese troops with fighters, tanks, apc, navy, subs and ICBMS and nukes, hmm 330 million armed forces vs 109,305,756 armed us forces, hmmm whos gonna win???:doh:

edit* like a said before ASW , for ur safety of u and ur family get a nuclear undergound bunker ASAP with 10-15 years of food and water and supplies and wait out the nuclear barrage . then when u survive u can continue postinf for this excellent forums (pending on the survival of this forum and neal lol)

[elite_hunter_sh3]

Ok back to iraq WMD, which i have no interest in cuz iraq is a crater(thank u US Marines) and since they dont got wmd's enymore cough*canada tooke em*cough* cough*:rotfl::rotfl::|\\ , then theres no poiint so good bye thread.

[MadMike]

According to the latest FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, U.S. Firearms deaths amounted to 14,860. Pales in comparison to motor vehicle deaths and those attributed to "medical misadventures" by surgeons (discussed on the forum a few months ago)...

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/offenses/expanded_information/murder_homicide.html

Say, doesn't Canada require registration of flintlock "assault weapons"?

Yours, Mike

[elite_hunter_sh3]

u cant even say gun in canada without getting stopped by the government and police lol, in t.o theres huge increase in handguns and gun violence and boyoboy are they cracking down on those gangs. thats y my parents chose canada, peaceful and no threats (like war, gangs(L.A, detroit type cities))

[Takeda Shingen]

There will be no zombie horses this time. Out of the pool kiddies: It's time for the adult swim.