One thing the American public doesn’t understand about Iraq
 

Very interesting interview and slide show of a Marine who served in Afghan and Iraq. I was particularly struck by this exchange:

I think he had them as well.

Link reminder: "Iraq's WMDs Revisited" thread.

I think there are tons of things the American public doesn't understand about Iraq, starting at the top of the government, as already being discussed on the "Saddam hung" thread.

Doc Block: If you could go back in time to the moment when you signed up for the Marines, would you do it again?
Orth: In a heartbeat.

This is a hero.

Great post Neal...Happy New Year All.

Why has he been discharged at aged 22? We aren't being given the entire story.

We are only seeing part of the interview and only that part based on the negative questions being asked. MSM and Neal Stevens framing the argument to their liking.

I'd also like to know why a Marine knows about the WMDs that even the administration can't show us :hmm:

As much as I'd like to be proven wrong, I think the public is right to assume what they assume - no evidence has yet surfaced that I'd consider half-convincing.

4 years active duty with 2 tours in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. Isn't that enough for you?

Well, some of them have been used in IED preparation. But it seems to be old stuff, left probably from before the previous gulf war. https://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq...ap5_annxF.html

Also (nitpicking here), it was not about the administration but about public perception.

Quote:

Doc Block (interviewer): If you had to pick one, what is the one thing the American public doesn’t understand about Iraq? Orth (Marine sniper): That there were WMD and the people talk about them all the time.

I think that the word "were" is the important part of this exchange. Nobody argues that Saddam did have WMD, he had them some time ago, the question is whether or not he had a stockpile as of the time of the invasion, and the clear answer is that he did not. Yes, some old weapons, left over from Iraqs conflict with Iran are still around and have been found and used by insurgents, in addition to being found and destroyed by US EOD teams, but most of these weapons have degraded well beyond any sort of usefulness and when they have gone off, have barely injured anyone. The Iran-Iraq conflict was a long nasty war and left all sorts of junk all over the battlefields, including WMD. This enlisted Marine's assertion says nothing of consequence to the "did Saddam have WMD's or not" issue-if that issue even matters as to whether or not this war should have been fought in the first place.

I didn't intend to frame any arguement, just thought the article was interesting.

A Wacky Menacing Dictator? :smug:

One thing the American public doesn’t understand about Iraq
 

:D Indeed!
But alas, a negative picture has been framed about the US/British?Australian intervention in Iraq, mostly because the aftermath of it was badly managed from a security and from a public relations point of view.
The reality is that any military intervention triggers a tumultuous time and it might take ten years or so for the small percentage of extremists - who are the ones that cause the problems - to realise that the past is dead and gone. Often reconciliary or progressive forces take the upper hand.
Evidence: Germany after World War II, Vietnam and - quite illustrative - the Balkan war in the '90s.

History will judge this conflict (and President Bush). Since the conflict isn't history yet, it's still too soon to judge.
But I hope to start a thread "History lessons about the Second Gulf War" vife years from now, on Jan. 1st., 2012.

I think that he just hid them well. As a kid, if someone hid one of your toys in the sandbox, you might never find it. Saddam had a pretty damn big sandbox to hide his toys in.

In any case, that's a good article. A Marine recruiter at my school told us about the same thing that the sniper said: the media just shows the negative. Marines even do things like airdrop soccer balls to the Iraqi kids but they don't get credit for it from Americans.

Considering the Hizballah managed to sneak in a bunch of high-tech anti-tank missiles inside tiny little Lebanon, you can take anything out of Iraq undetected.

The fact that thousands of Kurds were killed in Chemical weapons attacks not enough evidence for you?

Did he have Nukes, no.

WMDs, certainly.

March 1988. A little too far back. In fact we(U.S.) probably supplied the gas or the ingredients to make it to Sadam.
Politics is such a nasty business.

^^ that is spot on.

Thus the accuracy of the statement that Iraq did have WMDs in its possession. Lets not fool ourselves, the US (defence chiefs, senior politicians) knows how much was used against Iran and the Kurds, and knows how much was supplied in the first place. the reference by someone earlier on about toys in a sandpit is a perfect analogy.

And yet, here at the Australian National University you still get leftwing nutters proclaiming that Iraq has never had weapons in any form, and their use against Iran was really the work of Israel and the US....:damn:

Gas or other chemicals are not WMDs
you need a hell of a lot of gas and very large deployment systems before you can achieve the kind of "mass destruction" you get from WMDs.
Whilst chlorine may not be the most potent of chemicals, many hundreds of tonnes where used in WW2 with only limited effect. To cause mass destruction you would need to release 100s of tonnes quickly in a populated area; impossible with any standard delivery system. Kurdish villages is one thing, mass destruction is another.
Biological and nuclear weapons are the only weapons capable of mass destruction with a single use.

Prahaps a mute point tho.
*edit* I'm not trying to make any political point.

Weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a term used to describe a munition with the capacity to indiscriminately kill large numbers of living beings. The phrase broadly encompasses several areas of weapon synthesis, including nuclear, biological, chemical (NBC) and, increasingly, radiological weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons...ss_destruction

Some chemical weapons are WMDs, some are not.

There is no publicly known weapons system that can deliver enough chemical material to directly kill more than ten - one hundred thousand people* as a result of chemical exposure in one use** of the weapon.
That's under optimal conditions for chemical weapons, using the most powerful toxins most effectively. The chemical weapons in Iraq didn't come close to this level of effectiveness and even if they did, one hundred thousand people isn't really "mass" destruction by the standards that other modern "wide-effect" weapons, such as nuclear and biological weapons, can achieve with the densely populated cities around the world.

However, where ever you draw the line between destruction and mass destruction, a chemical weapon is only a WMD if it is effective enough to cause mass destruction. Some chemical weapons are, some are not. The ones found in Iraq are not by any sensible standard.
Just like you wouldn't call the chlorine taps in WW1 "mass destruction" weapons, we shouldn't call Iraq's chemical weapons WMD's.
In short: just because it is chemical weapon, doesn't mean it is a WMD.
The common cold could be used as a biological weapon, but it would not be effective enough to be a Biological WMD.

*A wide guess broadly based on a number of different estimates and guesses Iv'e come across.
**We can not count multiple deployments as that would make any weapon a WMD.

Back on topic:

A Marine who served in Afghan and Iraq is hardly a unbiased witness to the conflict in Iraq. A 22 year old Sergeant may have interesting views about the situation there, but not views anyone should use to form a political opinion with, without understanding a lot more in order to put the Marines views in the proper context and be able to view them critically.