The Dixie Chicks were right.

[Perinquus]

The weapons inspectors would never have found anything, no matter what was there, because the Iraqis weren't cooperating.

Not according to the UN. Are you calling Hans Blix a liar?

Actually, I'm going by one of Blix's own statements:

United Nations, February 27, 2003 -- Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said February 26 that even with increased interaction between Iraq and the inspectors he has not seen any indication that Baghdad has made the fundamental decision to disarm.

Also, Blix slammed the Iraqis for submitting a report filled with inconsistencies, contradictions and old material – their famous 12,000 word report. And neither Blix not El Baradei's teams had been able to privately interview Iraqi scientists believed to have the best information about Iraq's weapons programs. And the Iraqis were blocking inspectors from conducting U-2 reconnaissance flights.

here's a source for the above info:

http://idsnews.com/profile.php?byline=Dafna%20Linzer

All the inspectors were ever supposed to do was confirm that the Iraqis were disposing of their weapons in accordance with the UN resolutions that ended the Gulf War. Well the Iraqis weren't.

Proof?

See above. They were stalling. Even Kofi Annan, UN secretary general admitted that there was no doubt in anyone's mind that military pressure - the pressure of troops moving closer to Iraq - was what got the inspectors back in after a four year absence. I'm amazed that people can review facts like the Iraqis kicking the weapons inspectors out in the first place, and not letting them back in until menaced with military force, and conclude that we can't say for sure that the Iraqis were not cooperating.

What terms did he break?

Sea Skimmer fielded that one. And I really don't care whether the terms we imposed were in accordance with the UN charter or not. As the nation that spent by far the most blood and treasure in the First Gulf War, I maintain we had every right to impose conditions of our own. An age old law of warfare is "to the victors belong the spoils".

And the best available intel

I hardly think a research paper written by a grad student on "Iraq in 1991" qualifies as "best available intel".

And of course, everything we did was based on that one source.

[Perinquus]

OK, Perinquus, let me ask you this:

Why, if Clinton actually did perjure himself, did the Senate refuse to try him? If the evidence was as ironclad as the Republican Party would like you to believe, why did the Senate not hold the impeachment trial that they would otherwise be constitutionally charged to do?

They did impeach him you nitwit! Clinton was one of only two presidents in US history ever to be impeached. (Can you guess who the other one was? And no, it wasn't Richard Nixon.) The reason Clinton wasn't removed from office is that despite the fact that he was clearly guilty of perjury, the Democrats closed ranks and defended him. The Republican majority was not enough to get him out of office. I think Clinton was rightfully impeached, though politically I'm glad he wasn't removed from office, as it would have enabled Gore to run in 2000 as an incumbent, increasing the likelihood he would have won. I don't think Gore is nearly as oily a character as Clinton was, but I still think his presidency would not have been good for the country, especially with the war on terrorism having been thrust upon us.

You know, it's becoming increasingly obvious that you don't know what you are talking about. This is the third egregious error of fact to come from you on this topic. The first was an incorrect definition of sexual relations as defined by the court. The second was a completely incorrect definition of entrapment - which frankly it looks like you made up yourself. Now you seem to be completely unaware of the fact that Clinton was impeached (he just wasn't removed from office - it's not the same thing). What you are offering on this matter of Clinton's impeachment is uninformed opinion, or at least badly informed opinion. Apparently you haven't bothered to look into the story and get your facts straight, but you don't let this stop you from pontificating on the matter. Since you did not get your facts straight, and are demonstrably wrong on certain points, I can only conclude that you are uncritically defending Clinton out of political partisanship.

At any rate, Clinton is NOT at issue, at issue is the fact that George W. Bush is a lousy president, and a liar who drew America into a "preemptive war" against a nation which posed us no threat at all. Bringing up Clinton is a red herring, as his behavior has no bearing on an analysis of George W. Bush.

Mike brought up Clinton's blowjob. Blame him for the red herring if you like. I merely responded to that point, and clarified that it was the perjury, not the blowjob that was at issue. That point having been raised, everything that followed was me providing evidence to prove that he did, in fact, commit perjury, and those who think otherwise are mistaken.

And as to your other points.

1) We have gone over this already, ad nauseam, and it has not been firmly established that Bush lied.

2) It is hardly a fact that he is a "lousy president", that's merely your opinion, which neither I nor the majority of voters happen to share.

3) And the "pre-emptive" war was actually the continuation of hostilities brought about by Saddam's ongoing violation of the terms of a cease fire, which halted those same hostilities in '91.

[Sobbastchianno]

Perinquus stated "2) It is hardly a fact that he is a "lousy president", that's merely your opinion, which neither I nor the majority of voters happen to share."

If I remember correctly, the majority of voters did NOT vote for Bush. He won (sic) the electoral college because of the debacle in Florida. Gore, even with the electoral votes counted, won the popular vote. Hence Bush has never had a mandate as president as the majority of Americans did NOT vote for him.

[Axis Kast]

Stuart Slade made what is perhaps the most cogent of technical arguments as to why the United States of America selected the Gulf War cease-fire as its legal point of contention just prior to Operation: Iraqi Freedom. His argument is that the cease-fire - as a negotiated condition between two military combatants rather than a political solution – could have been broken by either side, at any time (under the unspoken “rules of war”).

lot of this stuff isn't written down, or if it is, I haven't been able to find it. Hence the title of this comment, the distinction being that laws are written down and customs are not. However, the laws, where written down, give equal weight to the customs that are not written down.

There are three separate terms here that are often treated as being analagous when, in fact, they are not.

An armistice is a political agreement to suspend fighting while negotiations to end hostilities are undertaken. The onus is on the political authorities on either side to determine if a political agreement can be reached or whether fighting should resume. Note that World War One "ended" in 1918 with an Armistice; the actual agreement that the war was over wasn't reached until 1919.

A truce is a military agreement between combatants to suspend fighting for a specific period for a specific period. Usually this is to clear a battlefield of wounded. A truce will last either for a specific period (say two hours) or until a specific time (say 16:00) after which fighting automatically resumes. It can resume sooner if either side breaks the terms of the truce.

A cease-fire is a halfway point between a truce and an armistice. It is a military agreement between two combatant forces to cease fighting on certain specific terms. The ceasefire automatically is cancelled if any of those terms are broken. Cease-fires and truces are agreements between military forces, not between political authorities.

In any event, the two sides were not America and friends against Saddam Hussein, but the United Nations against Iraq. The UN declared the war and the ceasefire, it follows then that the UN is the authority that can decide if Iraq has broken the ceasefire and what actions to take.

If the war had ended in an Armistice, this argument would be correct. However, it ended in a ceasefire which is a military matter so the two sides are the Iraqi military and the US military. On paper, the politicians have nothing to do with it. The US Army can simply decide that it doesn't like the cease-fire anymore and restart fighting.

However, as I say, I don't think any of this has been written down, its custom not law.

I also wish to point out that while President Bush might have been able to get away with war on the United Nations’ behalf (according to very broad interpretation of older Security Council Resolutions dating back to 1991 and 1992), it should never have been allowed to come into question whether or not we were actively carrying Kofi Annan’s mantle in abstention. Rather, even at the cost of clearly circumventing the global community, Washington should have put forth a justification as follows: the United States was no longer possessed of the belief that the United Nations was capably managing the containment of the country of Iraq – despite the presence of an inspectorate led by Hans Blix on behalf of UNSCOM -, with evidence of material circumvention by Saddam Hussein and corroborating arguments in the guise of the refusal of his neighbors to cooperate with the so-called “Smart Sanctions,” let alone any conventional embargoes. President Bush could then have made a correspondingly convincing insistence that American national security was at risk so long as a man as delusional as Saddam Hussein remained in Baghdad, and that action was being taken “on our terms, and in our time” before Iraq could launch its own gambit somewhere down the road. This approach would of course have required fancy diplomatic footwork (Iran and North Korea might have cringed, whined, and whistled – alone with isolationists in Europe fearful of some new “militant precedent”), though Bush would have been relatively safe on the home front.

[Axis Kast]

Exactly when did people on this board because so fuckin' Naive that they think a President getting laid and lying about it is either unique or damaging? Good fuck, FDR had a mistress when he couldn't fuckin' walk, is he now a man of 'little or no integrity'? Modern Republicans make me sick. Democrats too, most of hte time, but mostly right now it's the Republicans.

Never in my adult life have I held that Clinton should be impeached on grounds of having lied about his sexual misconduct. Not only do I feel relatively safe and justified in saying that he was almost certainly one of many in a long line of Presidents to possesses mistresses and sustain improper relations with staff members, but also that he was simply unfortunate enough to have been caught by fortune- and attention-seekers. If ever one applied to the notion that punishment comes of capture rather than crime, this is the situation on which to stake an opinion.

Certainly, scandals such as Watergate and the Monica Lewinsky affair hurt our nation. It is almost impossible for an administration to avoid sinking while dealing with media frenzy and partisan power politics – rather than concentrating, of course, on the day-to-day business of running a nation. Richard Nixon’s issue may have been so important as to warrant such a crisis; William Jefferson Clinton’s was not by any means. Even if one takes the situation outside of his perjury (which shouldn’t matter anyway, since the man was defending his private life in a fashion that didn’t necessarily harm our country other than by placing suspicion on his shoulders), the entire business was folly.

Perinquus stated "2) It is hardly a fact that he is a "lousy president", that's merely your opinion, which neither I nor the majority of voters happen to share."

If I remember correctly, the majority of voters did NOT vote for Bush. He won (sic) the electoral college because of the debacle in Florida. Gore, even with the electoral votes counted, won the popular vote. Hence Bush has never had a mandate as president as the majority of Americans did NOT vote for him.

A majority of the United States now feels that President Bush is a good President, period. That’s independent of the large margin he possesses in terms of public confidence as compared to Democratic hopefuls.

No, the majority of voters didn’t vote for President Bush. No, he wasn’t given a mandate by the American electorate. He was however confirmed to office by the highest court in the land – confirmed, of course, by the Constitution of the United States of America. Like it or not, he is our President. Period. Griping will not change the issue, and neither will criticism on account of the situation.

… And, by the way, if you want to talk about popularity and right-to-govern, at least our President wasn’t running against a neo-Nazi named Jean Marie Le Pen – for whom the only option was defeat in the face of a fourteen-year incumbent.

[Sobbastchianno]

Exactly when did people on this board because so fuckin' Naive that they think a President getting laid and lying about it is either unique or damaging? Good fuck, FDR had a mistress when he couldn't fuckin' walk, is he now a man of 'little or no integrity'? Modern Republicans make me sick. Democrats too, most of hte time, but mostly right now it's the Republicans.

Never in my adult life have I held that Clinton should be impeached on grounds of having lied about his sexual misconduct. Not only do I feel relatively safe and justified in saying that he was almost certainly one of many in a long line of Presidents to possesses mistresses and sustain improper relations with staff members, but also that he was simply unfortunate enough to have been caught by fortune- and attention-seekers. If ever one applied to the notion that punishment comes of capture rather than crime, this is the situation on which to stake an opinion.

Certainly, scandals such as Watergate and the Monica Lewinsky affair hurt our nation. It is almost impossible for an administration to avoid sinking while dealing with media frenzy and partisan power politics – rather than concentrating, of course, on the day-to-day business of running a nation. Richard Nixon’s issue may have been so important as to warrant such a crisis; William Jefferson Clinton’s was not by any means. Even if one takes the situation outside of his perjury (which shouldn’t matter anyway, since the man was defending his private life in a fashion that didn’t necessarily harm our country other than by placing suspicion on his shoulders), the entire business was folly.

Perinquus stated "2) It is hardly a fact that he is a "lousy president", that's merely your opinion, which neither I nor the majority of voters happen to share."

If I remember correctly, the majority of voters did NOT vote for Bush. He won (sic) the electoral college because of the debacle in Florida. Gore, even with the electoral votes counted, won the popular vote. Hence Bush has never had a mandate as president as the majority of Americans did NOT vote for him.

A majority of the United States now feels that President Bush is a good President, period. That’s independent of the large margin he possesses in terms of public confidence as compared to Democratic hopefuls.

No, the majority of voters didn’t vote for President Bush. No, he wasn’t given a mandate by the American electorate. He was however confirmed to office by the highest court in the land – confirmed, of course, by the Constitution of the United States of America. Like it or not, he is our President. Period. Griping will not change the issue, and neither will criticism on account of the situation.

… And, by the way, if you want to talk about popularity and right-to-govern, at least our President wasn’t running against a neo-Nazi named Jean Marie Le Pen – for whom the only option was defeat in the face of a fourteen-year incumbent.

I wasn't complaining, merely pointing out a fact. No, I will not pretend to like President Bush, but I do understand he is our president, at least until 2005.

[Iceberg]

And as to your other points.

1) We have gone over this already, ad nauseam, and it has not been firmly established that Bush lied.

So at what point does it become "firmly established?" I'd like to have a point of establishment a little short of Bush coming out and saying he lied on national television. We've already had at least three important statements out of Bush that contradict fact - the statement that Saddam and al-Qaeda are closely linked (in defiance of all known intelligence), the widely discredited British yellowcake intelligence (which was known to be false by the CIA THREE MONTHS before Bush gave SotU), and the statement that Iraq had failed to allow inspectors back in (your claims aside, Saddam DID let inspectors back in before we attacked, and Bush made no qualifiers or modifiers on his statement). How many more caught-in-the-act lies does it take before it becomes firmly established!?

2) It is hardly a fact that he is a "lousy president", that's merely your opinion, which neither I nor the majority of voters happen to share.

Let's see, ballooning deficit, two ongoing pacification efforts that appear to have little thought or planning behind them and seem to be going nowhere fast, continuing economic decay despite Bush's claims to the contrary... sure, he's doing a bangup job as president! Compared to that, eight years of peace, prosperity and unprecedented peacetime economic expansion under Clinton look downright drab!

3) And the "pre-emptive" war was actually the continuation of hostilities brought about by Saddam's ongoing violation of the terms of a cease fire, which halted those same hostilities in '91.

A war which had been cold for over a decade. Bush sold the war as a preemption of a clear and present danger, not as a continuation of the 1991 war.

Please, Perinquus. You're being as blindly partisan as you're accusing me of being.

[Axis Kast]

He will probably be your President to 2008, no matter what kind of optimistic front Democrats put forth.

And I never asked you to like him. I'm just pointing out the futility of criticism on grounds of "never having recieved a mandate." It's akin to telling me nobody should obey President Bush because they dislike him.

[Iceberg]

He will probably be your President to 2008, no matter what kind of optimistic front Democrats put forth.

His approval rating is tanking and more voters at this point - a full year and a half before the election - want a different man in the next election than want him. He's back to the point he was just before 9/11/01, approval-wise, and unless his policy starts showing a coherent direction, he's going to get hammered mercilessly in the presidential debates next year.

Remember that in July 1991, nobody thought that anybody the Democrats could put up could possibly beat George H.W. Bush, either.

[Sobbastchianno]

He will probably be your President to 2008, no matter what kind of optimistic front Democrats put forth.

And I never asked you to like him. I'm just pointing out the futility of criticism on grounds of "never having recieved a mandate." It's akin to telling me nobody should obey President Bush because they dislike him.

No, I don't believe such criticism is futile. He was not elected, he was selected. I do believe that when you didn't get a majority of the popular vote, you lose the mandate. It is like getting in on a technicality. The SAME exact thing happened to John Qunicy Adams (the other son of a President to become president), who by the way, was a one termer.

It is still VERY early in the election cycle to decide the Bush will be President until January, 2009. There are lots of economic issues that are coming to the forefront, as well as the LACK of WOMD in Iraq and other issues related to the Iraqi war that may well sink his heinie in the elections in 2004.

[Perinquus]

So at what point does it become "firmly established?" I'd like to have a point of establishment a little short of Bush coming out and saying he lied on national television. We've already had at least three important statements out of Bush that contradict fact - the statement that Saddam and al-Qaeda are closely linked (in defiance of all known intelligence),

We have sources such as:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightlin ... 20927.html

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq ... 46,00.html

Which indicate strong possibilities of some links. But even if these stories don't stand up under investigation, that does not mean that there is some great lie to link Iraq and Al Quaeda. It may simply mean the intel, at first thought to be good, turns out to be less than reliable. You are simply assuming the Bush administration is being deliberately deceptive when another possibility exists. You will not even admit this other possibility, but you have yet to provide the kind of solid evidence that would eliminate it from consideration.

the widely discredited British yellowcake intelligence (which was known to be false by the CIA THREE MONTHS before Bush gave SotU),

It was not "known to be false". It was suspected of being less than completely reliable (and not too strongly suspected, or the CIA would not have allowed the statement in question to be included in the SOTU address). This is not the same thing. Again, you are choosing to impute the worst possible motives to the president, when the facts will bear another interpretation.

and the statement that Iraq had failed to allow inspectors back in (your claims aside, Saddam DID let inspectors back in before we attacked, and Bush made no qualifiers or modifiers on his statement).

They let them in because we were threatening them with military action. Deny it all you want, even the secretary general of the UN concedes this. SADDAM WAS NOT GOING TO COOPERATE VOLUNTARILY. HE HAD TO BE FORCED TO DO IT! And then is was simply a case of "sorry Mr. Hussein, you had your chance, and you blew it."

How many more caught-in-the-act lies does it take before it becomes firmly established!?

What proof have you provided that he told lies? In every case the facts will bear a different interpretation than the one you are choosing, and you have not eliminated those alternatives from consideration. All you do is keep repeating "Bush lied!" Well sorry, constant repetition does not constitute proof.

2) It is hardly a fact that he is a "lousy president", that's merely your opinion, which neither I nor the majority of voters happen to share.

Let's see, ballooning deficit,

I will give you the point that Bush, along with congressional Republicans, is being fiscally irresponsible. I have been critical of several of the presidents domestic policies, and this is one of them. I believe the tax cuts are a good idea to stimulate the economy, but they have to be coupled with spending cuts, and he's not doing this.

two ongoing pacification efforts that appear to have little thought or planning behind them and seem to be going nowhere fast,

More "Oh my God the sky is falling!" alarmist bullshit. It's far too soon to tell how our efforts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan are going. It's only been a couple of months since the war was ended. Do you have any conception at all of how long it took to get Germany and Japan back on their feet after WWII? Nation building is not an overnight project.

And you are selectively listening to reports of doom and gloom, when there are also reports out there that are not nearly as negative. Here's a link to one:

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedc ... ts/774.htm

continuing economic decay despite Bush's claims to the contrary... sure, he's doing a bangup job as president! Compared to that, eight years of peace, prosperity and unprecedented peacetime economic expansion under Clinton look downright drab!

Eight years when Clinton and his administration appeased North Korea, with the same results appeasement always gets; now we're trying to cope with that mess - and it's a BIG one. Eight years in which Clinton's lax security allowed the Chinese to obtain our ballistic missile technology, compromising national security. Eight years of things like sending troops to places such as Haiti and Somalia where we had no national interests at stake and getting US soldiers killed - to no purpose, since both places are still big messes. Eight years of undermining Taiwan's security; frightening Japan and damaging our relations with them; overlooking Chinese proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea, and ignoring Beijing's crackdowns on democracy activists.

Oh what a splendid record he had!

Please, Perinquus. You're being as blindly partisan as you're accusing me of being.

No, because I will actually criticize Bush on issues where I think he is wrong, whereas I have yet to see a shred of evidence that you will criticize anyone but Bush and the Republicans; and more importantly, because I will check my facts, and make sure I have them straight before sounding off on something. You don't.

[Axis Kast]

His approval rating is tanking and more voters at this point - a full year and a half before the election - want a different man in the next election than want him. He's back to the point he was just before 9/11/01, approval-wise, and unless his policy starts showing a coherent direction, he's going to get hammered mercilessly in the presidential debates next year.

Remember that in July 1991, nobody thought that anybody the Democrats could put up could possibly beat George H.W. Bush, either.

More voters want a different man in the Oval Office, yes. That doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for one out of the options presented. George W. Bush might not be well loved, but he’s sure as hell understood to be the best hope for national security (as compared to a Democrat).

On side note, I’d love to see a third party candidate step up to the presidential debates. I wouldn’t vote for one, but I would sure as hell listen. Unfortunately, I know that’s about as likely to happen as the Statue of Liberty getting off its pedestal and dancing down Broadway.

No, I don't believe such criticism is futile. He was not elected, he was selected. I do believe that when you didn't get a majority of the popular vote, you lose the mandate. It is like getting in on a technicality. The SAME exact thing happened to John Qunicy Adams (the other son of a President to become president), who by the way, was a one termer.

It is still VERY early in the election cycle to decide the Bush will be President until January, 2009. There are lots of economic issues that are coming to the forefront, as well as the LACK of WOMD in Iraq and other issues related to the Iraqi war that may well sink his heinie in the elections in 2004.

Your criticism of that “selection” is only worthwhile in order to say “never again,” not to decry the current President – who won’t be removed – on the basis of what you believe was a poor Supreme Court decision.

They let them in because we were threatening them with military action. Deny it all you want, even the secretary general of the UN concedes this. SADDAM WAS NOT GOING TO COOPERATE VOLUNTARILY. HE HAD TO BE FORCED TO DO IT! And then is was simply a case of "sorry Mr. Hussein, you had your chance, and you blew it."

Give it up, Perin. This issue is a lost cause. I agree with you entirely, but there are always those who insist that Hussein was going to let the inspectors in regardless of American deployments.

Eight years when Clinton and his administration appeased North Korea, with the same results appeasement always gets; now we're trying to cope with that mess - and it's a BIG one. Eight years in which Clinton's lax security allowed the Chinese to obtain our ballistic missile technology, compromising national security. Eight years of things like sending troops to places such as Haiti and Somalia where we had no national interests at stake and getting US soldiers killed - to no purpose, since both places are still big messes. Eight years of undermining Taiwan's security; frightening Japan and damaging our relations with them; overlooking Chinese proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea, and ignoring Beijing's crackdowns on democracy activists.

Oh what a splendid record he had!

The jury’s still out as to whether the economic benefits wrought by Bill Clinton are worth September 11th and degrading national security. We’d have been a hyperpower anyway.

[Vympel]

His argument is that the cease-fire - as a negotiated condition between two military combatants rather than a political solution – could have been broken by either side, at any time (under the unspoken “rules of war”).

*snip*

While an interesting jaunt into semantics, it's entirely besides the point. Essentially, he admits his view is hardly enshrined in law but instead in 'custom'. Which is not law or in any way recognized by the United Nations in its resolutions, which are the exlcusive mechanism that it uses. But, I'll comment on it anyway.

He's arguing that despite the UN constructing a clear regime of resolutions regarding the end of the campaign to eject Iraq from Kuwait, they really shouldn't have because the end of the war was a ceasefire instead of an armistice- his argument the politicians don't have anything to do with it even thought they did.

The war was started by a UN resolution. The evidence from all points of view is that while the fighting was naturally ended by a ceasefire, the creation of the resolutions regime and it's acceptance by all countries involved, and the continued appeals to them (rightly or wrongly, mostly wrongly) to justify countries points of view, necessarily shows that even if it was *called* a cease-fire, what happened was obviously more in line with an armistice- negotiations were undertaken and completed and the war to eject Iraq from Kuwait ended, with terms being imposed on Iraq- which via the resolution in question (600 something) gave the Security Council exclusive authority to decided what, if anything, to do about Iraq in the case of noncompliance. Simple.

But, to reiterate, he's not arguing a point of UN law, he's making an argument on custom based largely on the semantics of 'cease fire and armistice'- so it's obviously not very useful in a legal argument, and it'd hardly fly in the international community (which, rightly or wrongly, invests much 'legitimacy' in the stamp of approval of the UN).

[Vympel]

Actually, I'm going by one of Blix's own statements:

Maybe you should refer to his more recent statements- in March, for example, rather than using obsolete information. U-2 overflights, and independent interviews were all allowed subsequent to late February.

See above. They were stalling.

Interesting. They were only stalling if you already have decided if Iraq had WMD.

I'll repost my reply that you didn't see/didn't respond to:

Problem: it is a fact that Iraq unilaterally disposed of much WMD before an inspections regime was in place. Inspectors could verify that WMD of the type in question had been destroyed, but could not fully account for the amounts. Hardly anyone ever mentions this. To categorically state that Iraq was or was not doing something is false.

and later in that reply:

Iraq couldn't confirm it had destroyed some of the WMD that it did destroy immediately after the Gulf War. In addition, there has been various testimony out there for years by various people, for example, Scott Ritter (denounced as a Saddam apologist at the time and smugly saying I told you so now) and Hussein Kemal (in his 1995 debriefing when he defected) who affirmed that Iraq did not have the WMD claimed.

Furthermore, to this day not a single Iraqi scientist, soldier, officer, engineer, or anyone else has offered the US a single scrap of information regarding Iraq's supposed WMD stockpiles. The argument that they're afraid of Saddam doesn't fly anymore, I'm afraid- but surprise, they still say the same thing, despite a massive reward, assurances of immunity from prosecution, and offers of safe haven.

Even Kofi Annan, UN secretary general admitted that there was no doubt in anyone's mind that military pressure - the pressure of troops moving closer to Iraq - was what got the inspectors back in after a four year absence. I'm amazed that people can review facts like the Iraqis kicking the weapons inspectors out in the first place,

Iraq didn't kick the inspectors out, Richard Butler ORDERED them out back in 1998. Iraq had nothing to do with it. Check the news articles back in 1998, a certain mythology has arisen about this.

and not letting them back in until menaced with military force

Then the US shouldn't have violated the inspections regime with spies, like they did in 1998 and which directly resulted in the bombing campaign that saw Richard Butler tell his inspectors to leave (on advisement from the United States).

and conclude that we can't say for sure that the Iraqis were not cooperating.

Save the for when you've actually read the facts of the situation rather than the convenient half-truth/outright lie version.

Sea Skimmer fielded that one.

And he was wrong, as I showed.

And I really don't care whether the terms we imposed were in accordance with the UN charter or not. As the nation that spent by far the most blood and treasure in the First Gulf War, I maintain we had every right to impose conditions of our own. An age old law of warfare is "to the victors belong the spoils"

So much for the letter of the law then. That seems to apply only if Bill Clinton is getting head.

Regardless, you didn't impose conditions of your own, and it was a UN operation by a Coalition, not the US. Bush 41 understood the realities of the situation, you seem to be pining for an alternate reality.

And of course, everything we did was based on that one source.

Then go ahead and read what I wrote in response to your best available intel claim. It was fucking shit intel.

I'll write it again, since you ignored my reply:

And what wonderful intel that was. Forged documents about purchasing uranium, plagiarized university papers years out of date, claims about aluminum tubes while outright ignoring dissent from both the US Dept of Energy or the IAEA to the effect that they were not suitable for their stated purpose, and outright dishonesty by Colin Powell in his February 2003 presentation (the very same one where he brandished the 'dodgy dossier' as "solid intelligence"):

As pointed out by Gilbert Cranberg (Washington Post, 6/29/03), Powell embellished an intercepted conversation about weapons inspections between Iraqi officials to make it sound more incriminating, changing an order to "inspect the scrap areas and the abandoned areas" to a command to "clean out" those areas. He also added the phrase "make sure there is nothing there," a phrase that appears nowhere in the State Department's official translation. Further, Powell relied heavily on the disclosure of Iraq's pre-war unconventional weapons programs by defector Hussein Kamel, without noting that Kamel had also said that all those weapons had been destroyed

What good intel can you present?

We have sources such as:

LOL! Three prisoners in a Northern Iraqi prison and a vague claim by the leader of the IRAQI NATIONAL CONGRESS- really strong possibilities there.

But even if these stories don't stand up under investigation, that does not mean that there is some great lie to link Iraq and Al Quaeda. It may simply mean the intel, at first thought to be good, turns out to be less than reliable

Then the claim should not have been made at all. If JFK had got up before the world with this standard of evidence back when the missile crisis was on, the world would've laughed in his face. Luckily, he had undeniable proof.

You will not even admit this other possibility, but you have yet to provide the kind of solid evidence that would eliminate it from consideration.

Wrapping it up with asking him to prove a negative?

It was not "known to be false". It was suspected of being less than completely reliable

The IAEA spotted the forgery in short order, that's all I know, or care about (frankly, this partisan Dem vs Rep thing bores me).

They let them in because we were threatening them with military action.

So? Iceberg didn't deny it. His point was that he let them in before they were attacked.

SADDAM WAS NOT GOING TO COOPERATE VOLUNTARILY. HE HAD TO BE FORCED TO DO IT! And then is was simply a case of "sorry Mr. Hussein, you had your chance, and you blew it."

If the US had clean hands in its dealing with the weapons inspections, you might have a point, but it had already shown bad faith back in 1998 when it seeded the inspectors with spies (in their inspection efforts, UNSCOM used surveillance techniques that would be very useful for spying on the Iraqi government- so the US went ahead with the plan), which directly resulted in the inspectors leaving before the impending US attack because of supposedly unsatisfactory Iraqi compliance. If you wish to challenge this uncontroversial fact, I have plenty of contemporary news sources on hand that attest to it- that the US had been using UNSCOM to spy on Iraq, in violation of their mandate, was reported as fact.

[Perinquus]

Actually, I'm going by one of Blix's own statements:

Maybe you should refer to his more recent statements- in March, for example, rather than using obsolete information. U-2 overflights, and independent interviews were all allowed subsequent to late February.

The Bush administration had lost faith in Blix, to put it bluntly. He was an inspector who was acceptable to the French, the Russians, and the Germans, and I don't think the U.S. government ever trusted him to press the issue sufficiently. But even he came to the conclusion that the Iraqis were not cooperating. I also think the U.S. government was of the opinion that Blix was soft soaping the Iraqi side of things, toward the start of hostilities, in order to try and head off a war.

Really, it comes down to trust. Why would the Iraqis have dragged their feet so long if they were cooperating? I don't think they were up until the very last minute - which was when they realized "oh shit, they really mean it this time". It wasn't until the suddenly awoke to the realization that the U.S. was, honestly and no shit, going to take military action that they started to become more cooperative. Well, it was too late by then. This is something I am well acquainted with dealing with suspects on the street who play exactly this game. They bullshit you right up until the last minute, then when they cop on to the fact that your about to make them pay, they suddenly become little angels. And if you play along with that game, then before long, all the shitbags on the street know you for a chump they can play. International relations have some parallels to this. A nation's credibility is undermined when a little tinpot dictator like Saddam Hussein can play that game and win it. So Bush didn't let him get away with it, and I for one, am not sorry for it.

Interesting. They were only stalling if you already have decided if Iraq had WMD.

Then why did they obfuscate and obstruct so long if they were really cooperating? I have yet to hear anyone give me a credible answer to that question.

As I said, I am building up a large body of experience dealing with deceitful people. There's another aspect of that experience I apply to this: there's what you know, and what you can prove.

I'll repost my reply that you didn't see/didn't respond to:

Problem: it is a fact that Iraq unilaterally disposed of much WMD before an inspections regime was in place. Inspectors could verify that WMD of the type in question had been destroyed, but could not fully account for the amounts. Hardly anyone ever mentions this. To categorically state that Iraq was or was not doing something is false.

and later in that reply:

Iraq couldn't confirm it had destroyed some of the WMD that it did destroy immediately after the Gulf War. In addition, there has been various testimony out there for years by various people, for example, Scott Ritter (denounced as a Saddam apologist at the time and smugly saying I told you so now) and Hussein Kemal (in his 1995 debriefing when he defected) who affirmed that Iraq did not have the WMD claimed.

Again, I have yet to hear a credible explanation for why they were obfuscating and obstructing if they were actually being cooperative.

Furthermore, to this day not a single Iraqi scientist, soldier, officer, engineer, or anyone else has offered the US a single scrap of information regarding Iraq's supposed WMD stockpiles. The argument that they're afraid of Saddam doesn't fly anymore, I'm afraid- but surprise, they still say the same thing, despite a massive reward, assurances of immunity from prosecution, and offers of safe haven.

The search is still ongoing. I for one, am willing to give U.S. forces in Iraq at least as much time to find these things as people like you were to give the UN inspectors. If the war hadn't happened yet, you'd still be squawking to give the UN more time. But when the US doesn't find things right away, your minds are made up.

Even Kofi Annan, UN secretary general admitted that there was no doubt in anyone's mind that military pressure - the pressure of troops moving closer to Iraq - was what got the inspectors back in after a four year absence. I'm amazed that people can review facts like the Iraqis kicking the weapons inspectors out in the first place,

Iraq didn't kick the inspectors out, Richard Butler ORDERED them out back in 1998. Iraq had nothing to do with it. Check the news articles back in 1998, a certain mythology has arisen about this.

Butler ordered them out after the Iraqis not only obstructed them to the point where they couldn't carry out their mission, but to a point where Butler perceived at least some element of danger if they attempted to continue. And the Iraqis did this in order to make the inspectors give up and leave.

And your point is this shows the Iraqis were cooperating and had nothing to hide?

The spin machine is in overdrive isn't it?

and not letting them back in until menaced with military force

Then the US shouldn't have violated the inspections regime with spies, like they did in 1998 and which directly resulted in the bombing campaign that saw Richard Butler tell his inspectors to leave (on advisement from the United States).

I have never understood this sort of complaint. Spying is a wise and necessary precaution against military disaster. According to reports, U.S. spies inserted a a high-tech "black box" device in Baghdad that year to eavesdrop on Saddam Hussein's phone calls, among other Iraqi communications, former inspectors say. The signals then were encrypted in other U.N. data and transmitted via satellite to the National Security Agency headquarters at Ft. Meade, Md. this strikes me as an eminently sensible precaution against a regime which was known to be bloody, repressive and dishonest. What would you have had us do? Blindly trust Saddam to be a good little boy and play nice like he promised? Are you really this naive?

Save the for when you've actually read the facts of the situation rather than the convenient half-truth/outright lie version.

Then give me a credible explanation for why the Iraqis were obfuscating and obstructing, and violating the terms of the cease fire for twelve years if they were actually coopperating the whole time. I'm still waiting for one.

And I really don't care whether the terms we imposed were in accordance with the UN charter or not. As the nation that spent by far the most blood and treasure in the First Gulf War, I maintain we had every right to impose conditions of our own. An age old law of warfare is "to the victors belong the spoils"

So much for the letter of the law then. That seems to apply only if Bill Clinton is getting head.

There I was talking about the laws of the U.S. concerning an internal matter of the United States government and the conduct of an elected official of the United States. In that situation U.S. law is paramount, and there can be no dispute over that point.

However, I have never contended that the UN charter trumps US sovereignty, and no one could ever have gotten the idea that I did from reading any of my posts on any topic. I simply refuse to consider it reasonable to subordinate US security interests to an organization that puts Libya in charge of a human rights commission, and appoints Iraq as chair of a disarmament committee, with Iran as co-chair.

Regardless, you didn't impose conditions of your own, and it was a UN operation by a Coalition, not the US. Bush 41 understood the realities of the situation, you seem to be pining for an alternate reality.

The no-fly zones were imposed by the UN then? Despite the fact that they are supposed to violate the UN charter. Then Saddam was violating a UN resolution!

Then go ahead and read what I wrote in response to your best available intel claim. It was fucking shit intel.

I'm sure there was nothign else. Including classified material.

I'll write it again, since you ignored my reply:

And what wonderful intel that was. Forged documents about purchasing uranium, plagiarized university papers years out of date, claims about aluminum tubes while outright ignoring dissent from both the US Dept of Energy or the IAEA to the effect that they were not suitable for their stated purpose, and outright dishonesty by Colin Powell in his February 2003 presentation (the very same one where he brandished the 'dodgy dossier' as "solid intelligence"):

As pointed out by Gilbert Cranberg (Washington Post, 6/29/03), Powell embellished an intercepted conversation about weapons inspections between Iraqi officials to make it sound more incriminating, changing an order to "inspect the scrap areas and the abandoned areas" to a command to "clean out" those areas. He also added the phrase "make sure there is nothing there," a phrase that appears nowhere in the State Department's official translation. Further, Powell relied heavily on the disclosure of Iraq's pre-war unconventional weapons programs by defector Hussein Kamel, without noting that Kamel had also said that all those weapons had been destroyed

What good intel can you present?

Me personally, none. But then again, you still have MI6 standing by claims that Saddam really was trying to buy uranium in Africa. There is also information like that available here:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/

which, dated Feb. 26 on the last update, is the sort of thing that they would have been relying on at the time. And I would also point out that there are certain to be a great many classified sources, whose value we cannot judge.

Then the claim should not have been made at all. If JFK had got up before the world with this standard of evidence back when the missile crisis was on, the world would've laughed in his face. Luckily, he had undeniable proof.

Missiles are rather easier to spot on satellite photos than chemical weapons or biological weapons.

Wrapping it up with asking him to prove a negative?

Don't be an ass! He's the one claiming that Bush must be lying and there is no other explanation. If someone can point out a credible alternative explanation to refute that assertion, it is up to him, as the person making that claim, to support his assertion by showing that that credible alternative cannot be so.

So? Iceberg didn't deny it. His point was that he let them in before they were attacked.

I don't care. When I tell a person I encounter in my job that if he doesn't quit acting the maggot, I'll arrest him for disorderly conduct, and he keeps it up, causing me to take out my handcuffs and tell him to turn around and place his hands on his head, whereupon he suddenly starts apologizing and behaving himself, tough shit! He's still under arrest. He had his chance and he blew it.

If you do it any other way, the word will get out that you don't really mean what you say, and they will start walking all over you. The same principle applies on the national level. We put our prestige and credibility on the line when we told Saddam, "you will cooperate or else you will pay". When he stops cooperating, that order better have more than just verbage behind it.

If the US had clean hands in its dealing with the weapons inspections, you might have a point, but it had already shown bad faith back in 1998 when it seeded the inspectors with spies (in their inspection efforts, UNSCOM used surveillance techniques that would be very useful for spying on the Iraqi government- so the US went ahead with the plan), which directly resulted in the inspectors leaving before the impending US attack because of supposedly unsatisfactory Iraqi compliance. If you wish to challenge this uncontroversial fact, I have plenty of contemporary news sources on hand that attest to it- that the US had been using UNSCOM to spy on Iraq, in violation of their mandate, was reported as fact.

Once again, I see no need to apologize for this. When you are dealing with a dictator as unscrupulous as Saddam Hussein incontrovertibly was, I do not think it unethical to take the precaution of gathering a little intelligence on him.

[Perinquus]

Also, to clarify a point: Bush and Blair were not, in fact claiming that Iraq was an immediate threat.

To save myself quite a deal of typing, I'll paste some excerpts from a column on this very subject by Charles Krauthammer, a columnist for the Washington Post. Here's the relevant article:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/char ... come.shtml

He's summed it up more succinctly than I could (which is probably why he's making his living at this sort of thing and I'm not).

What Bush and Blair were actually contending was:

...in Bush's first post-9/11 State of the Union address (January 2002), he framed Iraq as a part of a larger and more enduring problem, the overriding threat of our time: the conjunction of terrorism, terrorist states and weapons of mass destruction. And that unless something was done, we faced the prospect of an infinitely more catastrophic 9/11 in the future.

Later that year, in a speech to the U.N., he spoke of the danger from Iraq not as ``clear and present'' but ``grave and gathering,'' an obvious allusion to Churchill's ``gathering storm,'' the gradually accumulating threat that preceded the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. And then nearer the war, in his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush plainly denied that the threat was imminent. ``Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent.'' Bush was, on the contrary, calling for action precisely when the threat was not imminent because, ``If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions ... would come too late.''

The threat had not yet even fully emerged, Bush was asserting, but nonetheless it had to be faced because it would only get worse. Saddam was not going away. The sanctions were not going to restrain him. Even his death would be no reprieve, as his half-mad sons would take over. The argument was that Saddam had to be removed eventually, and that with Saddam relatively weakened, isolated and vulnerable, now would be more prudent and less costly than later.

I agree with that assessment. So do most of the American people, which is why the public is still behind the president on this issue.

I think that sums up our case for going to war very well. It certainly sounds more plausible than what some of the Bush bashers are contending. As Krauthammer says elsewhere in the article:

Aside from the fact that Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction was posited not just by President Bush but by just about every intelligence service on the planet (including those of countries that opposed war as the solution), one runs up against this logical conundrum: Why then did Bush want to go to war? For fun and recreation? Because of some cowboy compulsion?

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

On the contrary, the war was a huge political gamble. There was no popular pressure to go to war. There was even less foreign pressure to go to war. Bush decided to stake his presidency on it nonetheless, knowing that if things went wrong -- and indeed they might still -- his political career was finished.

It is obvious he did so because he thought that, post-Sept. 11, it was vital to the security of the United States that Saddam be disarmed and deposed.

Not an immediate threat, no, but a long term one that was better neutralized now, not later.

[Vympel]

The Bush administration had lost faith in Blix, to put it bluntly. He was an inspector who was acceptable to the French, the Russians, and the Germans, and I don't think the U.S. government ever trusted him to press the issue sufficiently. But even he came to the conclusion that the Iraqis were not cooperating. I also think the U.S. government was of the opinion that Blix was soft soaping the Iraqi side of things, toward the start of hostilities, in order to try and head off a war.

That's not true. He did not make any such determination. At most, he said that the Iraqis were cooperating, but not as much as he'd like- he wanted them to be proactive. On the eve of the war, in his final report, he said that they *had* started being proactive.

Really, it comes down to trust. Why would the Iraqis have dragged their feet so long if they were cooperating? I don't think they were up until the very last minute - which was when they realized "oh shit, they really mean it this time". It wasn't until the suddenly awoke to the realization that the U.S. was, honestly and no shit, going to take military action that they started to become more cooperative. Well, it was too late by then. This is something I am well acquainted with dealing with suspects on the street who play exactly this game. They bullshit you right up until the last minute, then when they cop on to the fact that your about to make them pay, they suddenly become little angels. And if you play along with that game, then before long, all the shitbags on the street know you for a chump they can play. International relations have some parallels to this. A nation's credibility is undermined when a little tinpot dictator like Saddam Hussein can play that game and win it. So Bush didn't let him get away with it, and I for one, am not sorry for it.

I just hope the thousands of people you approved of killing for the high-minded idea of the credibility of the greatest power on the Earth died for something, because right now they died for jack and shit, and jack just left town. Mafia bosses are interested in their 'credibility'- they break people's legs to jeep it. I would think that supposedly freedom-loving democracies are held to a better standard, but then again, the US has broken many legs over it's credibility in the past, to the detriment of the population in question. (See for example: Iran).

This would be the point where someone with a strong sense of morality would take me to task for 'supporting' Saddam, but frankly, I don't give a shit. Killing 6-10,000 people wasn't going to ressurect the thousands of those already gone at that butcher's hands (all of them killed under the uncaring or conniving watch of the rest of the world), and I'm not impressed by recent previous efforts (Afghanistan for one) or the recent history of the United States in the matter of 'nation-building' whatsoever. What's worse, the US went precisely the wrong way about it to ensure that it could get international support after the fact. Talk about a way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Then why did they obfuscate and obstruct so long if they were really cooperating? I have yet to hear anyone give me a credible answer to that question.

Define *really* cooperating? What would satisfy you? In case you don't remember, the Iraqis were meant to show that they had destroyed all their B and C stockpiles. How exactly do you meet that standard of proof?

As I said, I am building up a large body of experience dealing with deceitful people. There's another aspect of that experience I apply to this: there's what you know, and what you can prove.

Nope, there's what you can prove, and there's assumptions that may or may not be the case, irrespective of your gut feeling.

Again, I have yet to hear a credible explanation for why they were obfuscating and obstructing if they were actually being cooperative.

Now you're down to completely ignoring what I said and just repeating yourself. Have fun with the dogma, don't bother to see if an answer might actually be in what I wrote there.

The search is still ongoing.

"Iraq is the size of California" only flies for so long.

I for one, am willing to give U.S. forces in Iraq at least as much time to find these things as people like you were to give the UN inspectors.

? I didn't set any time limit for the inspectors because I saw them as a way to ensure compliance, not as a mechanism for easter egg hunting to prove a case for war.

If the war hadn't happened yet, you'd still be squawking to give the UN more time. But when the US doesn't find things right away, your minds are made up.

I never cared one way or the other that Iraq had the laughably misnamed 'WMD'. I was ahppy to see the inspectors there for as long as that regime existed- because I never assumed WMD to be there in the first place. I waited for the evidence.

Furthermore, if I was one of *those* people, I'd point out that the inspection effort was still growing when war was declared, and you have totally occupied the place now for some months.

Butler ordered them out after the Iraqis not only obstructed them to the point where they couldn't carry out their mission, but to a point where Butler perceived at least some element of danger if they attempted to continue. And the Iraqis did this in order to make the inspectors give up and leave.

And your point is this shows the Iraqis were cooperating and had nothing to hide?

The spin machine is in overdrive isn't it?

No, I called you on your error that the Iraqis kicked the inspectors out. The US placed spies and sabotaged the process- and then you have the gall to claim that it's ok to turn around and use that as an excuse for war? Who's spin machine is in overdrive? Hell, let's just call the Reichstag fire legitimate while we're at it!

I have never understood this sort of complaint. Spying is a wise and necessary precaution against military disaster. According to reports, U.S. spies inserted a a high-tech "black box" device in Baghdad that year to eavesdrop on Saddam Hussein's phone calls, among other Iraqi communications, former inspectors say. The signals then were encrypted in other U.N. data and transmitted via satellite to the National Security Agency headquarters at Ft. Meade, Md. this strikes me as an eminently sensible precaution against a regime which was known to be bloody, repressive and dishonest. What would you have had us do? Blindly trust Saddam to be a good little boy and play nice like he promised? Are you really this naive?

No, you're a bullshit artist. The inspectors used their surveillance techniques specifically to monitor compliance in accordance with their mandate to disarm Iraq, which is SUPPOSEDLY what this war was all about. Then you say it's ok to pervert their mandate to spy on the Iraqi government, not part of it's mandate, and try and dress it up as legitimate? Goebbels would be taking notes right now if he could hear this.

Then give me a credible explanation for why the Iraqis were obfuscating and obstructing, and violating the terms of the cease fire for twelve years if they were actually coopperating the whole time. I'm still waiting for one.

Assuming what you're trying to prove- they were only 'obfuscating and obstructing' if you're already decided on the issue of what they were 'obfuscating and obstructing' about. Sorry.

There I was talking about the laws of the U.S. concerning an internal matter of the United States government and the conduct of an elected official of the United States. In that situation U.S. law is paramount, and there can be no dispute over that point.

However, I have never contended that the UN charter trumps US sovereignty, and no one could ever have gotten the idea that I did from reading any of my posts on any topic. I simply refuse to consider it reasonable to subordinate US security interests to an organization that puts Libya in charge of a human rights commission, and appoints Iraq as chair of a disarmament committee, with Iran as co-chair.

Ah I see, because we all know blowjobs are more important than the invasion of another country. But keep your irrelevant sovereignty nitpick.

The no-fly zones were imposed by the UN then?

No, they weren't part of the cease-fire/armistice. Duh.

Despite the fact that they are supposed to violate the UN charter. Then Saddam was violating a UN resolution!

Only in the fevered dreams of US spin doctors they were.

I'm sure there was nothign else. Including classified material.

Ah yes, the publically provided material to make the case for war is all bullshit, but you appeal to the unknowable instead.

Me personally, none. But then again, you still have MI6 standing by claims that Saddam really was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

Without evidence.

There is also information like that available here:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/

which, dated Feb. 26 on the last update, is the sort of thing that they would have been relying on at the time. And I would also point out that there are certain to be a great many classified sources, whose value we cannot judge.

That's some democracy you got there. They make rubbish claims in public, but in private I'm sure the information is really quite good.

Missiles are rather easier to spot on satellite photos than chemical weapons or biological weapons.

On the contrary, Bush made the unsubstantiated claim that Iraq was rebuilding certain facilities for the purpose of reconstituting its programs. No evidence was produced to that effect.

Don't be an ass! He's the one claiming that Bush must be lying and there is no other explanation. If someone can point out a credible alternative explanation to refute that assertion, it is up to him, as the person making that claim, to support his assertion by showing that that credible alternative cannot be so.

I was referring to the Al-Qaeda/Iraq link claim. It is not up to anyone to prove that they are not connected, it's up to those who says they are to prove that they are.

I don't care. When I tell a person I encounter in my job that if he doesn't quit acting the maggot, I'll arrest him for disorderly conduct, and he keeps it up, causing me to take out my handcuffs and tell him to turn around and place his hands on his head, whereupon he suddenly starts apologizing and behaving himself, tough shit! He's still under arrest. He had his chance and he blew it.

If you do it any other way, the word will get out that you don't really mean what you say, and they will start walking all over you. The same principle applies on the national level. We put our prestige and credibility on the line when we told Saddam, "you will cooperate or else you will pay". When he stops cooperating, that order better have more than just verbage behind it.

Applying how you arrest individuals to declaring war on millions of people, killing thousands of them and possibly inspiring a generation of increased hate for the goal of credibility is ill-advised, IMO.

Once again, I see no need to apologize for this. When you are dealing with a dictator as unscrupulous as Saddam Hussein incontrovertibly was, I do not think it unethical to take the precaution of gathering a little intelligence on him.

It's unethical to do something to sabotage the very inspections process that was setup to disarm him, and then turn around and use your own fuckign sabotage as an excuse for WAR! Jesus.

[Iceberg]

There's another aspect of that experience I apply to this: there's what you know, and what you can prove.

And if you act on what you "know" and arrest a suspect, only to find out later that you can't make what you "know" stick in court, who's the fool? And if you forged the evidence that allowed you to make that arrest, who's going to prison?

Going to war is a great deal more important, and requires a MUCH higher standard of proof, than arresting a con man on the streets. I can only form judgments based on the evidence that the government has presented, and discounting the evidence that appears to have been forged, the government did not meet the standard needed to start Mr. Bush's War.

George W. Bush has made a mockery of the good intentions of the American people, and this I cannot forgive.

[BoredShirtless]

The weapons inspectors would never have found anything, no matter what was there, because the Iraqis weren't cooperating.

Not according to the UN. Are you calling Hans Blix a liar?

Actually, I'm going by one of Blix's own statements:

United Nations, February 27, 2003 -- Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said February 26 that even with increased interaction between Iraq and the inspectors he has not seen any indication that Baghdad has made the fundamental decision to disarm.

That's right, because there were still open issues on Feb the 26th. For example, U2 flights [this issue was resolved by the time Blix made his oral report to the Security Council on March the 7th].

You can't say Iraq wasn't cooperating by not agreeing to demands straight away, because they raised LEGITIMATE issues/concerns which would have affected the success of the demand. Let's look at U2 flights. Iraq didn't say yes immediatly because they couldn't guarentee the saftey of the flights thanks to the US patrolling ILLEGAL no fly zones.

In fact, you can say Iraq was cooperating beyond there obligations by raising issues the U.N. should have seen beforehand.

Also, Blix slammed the Iraqis for submitting a report filled with inconsistencies, contradictions and old material – their famous 12,000 word report. And neither Blix not El Baradei's teams had been able to privately interview Iraqi scientists believed to have the best information about Iraq's weapons programs. And the Iraqis were blocking inspectors from conducting U-2 reconnaissance flights.

Rubbish:
1. Scientists were interviewed privately.
2. U2 flights: see above.

All the inspectors were ever supposed to do was confirm that the Iraqis were disposing of their weapons in accordance with the UN resolutions that ended the Gulf War. Well the Iraqis weren't.

Proof?

See above. They were stalling. Even Kofi Annan, UN secretary general admitted that there was no doubt in anyone's mind that military pressure - the pressure of troops moving closer to Iraq - was what got the inspectors back in after a four year absence. I'm amazed that people can review facts like the Iraqis kicking the weapons inspectors out in the first place,

That isn't fact, that's right wing fiction. Iraq never kicked them out, Richard Butler withdrew them on Washington's advice only hours before Operation Desert Fox in December 1998.

What terms did he break?

Sea Skimmer fielded that one. And I really don't care whether the terms we imposed were in accordance with the UN charter or not.

YOU didn't impose the terms, the Member States of the Coalition did. And naturally as the terms were in the form of a binding UN resolution, they were in accordance with the UN charter.

As the nation that spent by far the most blood and treasure in the First Gulf War, I maintain we had every right to impose conditions of our own. An age old law of warfare is "to the victors belong the spoils".

See directly above.

And the best available intel

I hardly think a research paper written by a grad student on "Iraq in 1991" qualifies as "best available intel".

And of course, everything we did was based on that one source.

What about the forged nuclear doc? Or how about the aluminium tubes? The link between Al-Queda and Iraq? Man the list goes on and on...the US has been spinning shit so thick and fast, and I find it totally amazing that a rational person can deny this.

[phongn]

Stuart Slade made what is perhaps the most cogent of technical arguments as to why the United States of America selected the Gulf War cease-fire as its legal point of contention just prior to Operation: Iraqi Freedom. His argument is that the cease-fire - as a negotiated condition between two military combatants rather than a political solution – could have been broken by either side, at any time (under the unspoken “rules of war”).

Axis, you should be careful about appeals to authority. Secondly, Slade did note that this was custom as opposed to law and held no legal weight.

[phongn]

No, I don't believe such criticism is futile. He was not elected, he was selected.

No, he was elected, for better or worse.

I do believe that when you didn't get a majority of the popular vote, you lose the mandate.

Unfortunately for your point-of-view, the US system is not based on the popular vote but on the electoral system - a system designed to curb the influence of the masses.

It is like getting in on a technicality.

It most certainly is not.

[Iceberg]

No, I don't believe such criticism is futile. He was not elected, he was selected.

No, he was elected, for better or worse.

Every electoral cycle, the old arguments for ditching the electoral college and electing the president by popular election comes up and, unfortunately, dies immediately after the election.

We have the technology to make a national popular election of the President feasible. Why we don't escapes me.

[Beowulf]

I dunno... maybe the fact that New York City has a larger population than Montana?

[Axis Kast]

"Iraq is the size of California" only flies for so long.

You’re digging your own grave here. That statement is true, but the length of time necessary for a thorough inspection remains in dispute. The Allies took five years to unearth the last hidden stockpiles left behind by Hitler’s Reich. The Soviets spent two years tracking all manner of military movements on the ground in South Africa – via both electronic and human intelligence sources -, and yet still managed to miss the construction of a pair of nuclear boreholes. We’ve been in Iraq since March, a total of less than five months (two of which were spent in open war and the rest fighting guerillas). The United States is in nominal but not absolute control; there are still holdout neighborhoods to which our troops haven’t gained safe and extended access. A proper search will take a year or more.

By the way, Hans Blix verified North Korea as “clean” in 1994 when asked to determine the extent of their nuclear weapons programs. He didn’t exactly come to the table with an enviable track record.

No, I called you on your error that the Iraqis kicked the inspectors out. The US placed spies and sabotaged the process- and then you have the gall to claim that it's ok to turn around and use that as an excuse for war?

From where do you draw this argument?

Axis, you should be careful about appeals to authority. Secondly, Slade did note that this was custom as opposed to law and held no legal weight.

A proper citation is an appeal to authority? I simply directed the present company to a point made by somebody at another board. Excuse me for the engagement.

[Vympel]

You’re digging your own grave here. *snip*

I'm not going to bother going over your same old tired arguments for the umpteenth time.

You can respond to this first

By the way, Hans Blix verified North Korea as “clean” in 1994 when asked to determine the extent of their nuclear weapons programs. He didn’t exactly come to the table with an enviable track record.

Oh really?

Doesn't look like Hans Blix, or the IAEA, said anything of the sort. Need I remind you what the IAEA's mission in North Korea was? It certainly didn't have carte blanch authorization or capability to make any such declaration- it was watching the seals on the fuel rods.

I'll just reuse a post I already made on the subject when you last repeated this falsehood:

The facts, as laid out in the May 3rd-9th issue of the Economist:

- Before 1994, the CIA suspected that NK had material with which to make two nuclear bombs.

- When this latest crisis started in October 2002, America had surprised North Korea with the evidence that it was secretly started up a second weapons program, and North Korea surprised everyone by owning up to it.

Most importantly:

- The 'observers' were not on-site in the way that you mean- they had nothing to do with verifiying whether NK had nuclear weapons. Their only job was watching over a stash of spent fuel-rods at North Korea's single working nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Only after it kicked out the IAEA observers did it restart the mothballed reactors, removed the seals on the stored fuel rods, and is either about to start or about to finish (depending on which translation of its recent statement on the subject you choose to believe) extracting their bomb-useable plutonium, sufficient for another five or six bombs.

From where do you draw this argument?

Uh ... from his post? Like many others (most of whom who don't know all the facts but anyway) he pointed to the Iraqis 'kicking out' inspectors in 1998 as justification for his view, and when I pointed out the reason why, he tried to justify the corruption of UNSCOM's mandate. That implicitly told me what his point of view was.