WoMD ... so where are they?

by Simon 865 Replies latest social current

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  searchfothetruth

  As has been said...our pro-war friends are awfully quiet on this thread, aren't they?

  HELLO.........is there anybody there?
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  jelly

  I quit reading most war threads because arguing the point in this environment is a waste. As far as the WMD, I think he had them; if he hadn’t why did not he come clean with the inspectors and stop the sanctions. Why would Saddam carry on the game with inspectors if he had nothing to gain and was being economically hurt by the sanctions? Any way there are many things people don’t seem to want to talk about like: the UN coming clean about the complete corruption for the food for oil program (the real reason for starving Iraqi kids), mass graves, children’s prisons, etc, etc. My point is the world is a better place now so I really don’t care about WMD as long as the don’t turn up in a bomb in some American city.
  
  Terry
• 

  searchfothetruth

  Terry.

  The reason the replies have dried up is because you know we were right before the war, that there were NO WMD and have been proven right.

  I would have loved to be proven wrong...but I wasn't.
• 

  jelly

  Reading back through some threads LMAO. Because people quit responding is not evidence that you won some argument. You may all now begin to flame, if I read anything interesting i will respond.

  Terry
• 

  patio34

  it shows clearly that the US is a pseudo-democracy ruled by BIG money and a few super influencial lobbyist groups.

  I'm beginning to agree with you. It's just so depressing to see.......what can we do if we aren't rich and powerful? I think we're all kind of doomed to be washed out with the tide, no matter who takes power after Bush.

  This was said, I think, by Ashitaka. Well one thing we can all do is boycott some of the companies that advertise on the pro-war stations (Fox) and let the companies know it too via email. Nothing long winded (they don't care or listen) just that some of their pro-war stance is offensive and that you (and friends you tell) will not be buying their products.

  That can be very powerful. After all, we're just consumers to them, so let's use the consumerism. As a lot of people think, it's all big business. What does big business care about? Profits by us buying their stuff.

  And they may say people will lose jobs. Baloney. How many people lose jobs when they close a factory and move the work to a slave labor nation (e.g., Nike)?

  Pat
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  Simon

  Big Businesses are like the Elders ... they only have the power that we give them.

  They rely on us to buy their goods

  If we stop buying, their power evaporates.

  Buy wisely from socially aware companies and invest in ethical stocks.
• 

  Simon

  jelly ... do you really think the world is a better, safer place now than before when ... oooh, George W was elected say. ?
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  searchfothetruth

  		Search the Web and ABCNEWS.com

  June 4, 2003 HOMEPAGE NEWS SUMMARY US INTERNATIONAL MONEYScope WEATHER LOCAL NEWS ENTERTAINMENT ESPN SPORTS SCI/TECH POLITICS HEALTH TRAVEL FEATURED SERVICES RELATIONSHIPS SHOPPING DOWNLOADS WIRELESS INTERACT VIDEO & AUDIO BOARDS CHAT NEWS ALERTS CONTACT ABC ADVERTISEMENT Citibank Offers

  (AP Photo) Report: No Signs of Iraq Weapons Found

  U.N. Inspectors Found No Evidence of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, New Report Says
  The Associated Press
  
  

  UNITED NATIONS June 2 — U.N. inspectors found no evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but had many questions and leads to pursue when their searches were suspended just before the U.S.-led invasion, chief inspector Hans Blix said in his final report Monday. But the United States and Britain have barred U.N. inspectors from returning to Iraq. Instead, Washington and London have deployed their own teams and Blix said they have not requested any information or assistance from U.N. inspectors. In the report to the Security Council, Blix said U.N. inspectors "did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items." But, he said, the inspectors had many questions about its chemical and biological programs when they left shortly before the March 20 invasion. Inspectors also didn't have time to follow up on some late information provided by the Saddam Hussein government including interviewing a list of Iraqis who helped destroy anthrax after the 1991 Gulf War, he said. The United States and Britain used the claim that Iraq had illegal weapons programs as a major reason for the war that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. The failure of U.S. and British teams to find any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the 11 weeks since combat ended has become a major issue in Washington, London and other international capitals. President Bush said this weekend that weapons had been found. As evidence, however, he pointed to two two suspected mobile biological laboratories, which both the Pentagon and American weapons hunters have said do not constitute arms. Blix said in his 40-page report that Iraq denied any such units existed and had provided U.N. inspectors "with pictures of legitimate vehicles, which, they suggested, could have led to the information." He noted, however, that "none of the vehicles in these pictures look like the trucks recently described and depicted" by the U.S.-led teams hunting for weapons. Blix is retiring after his contract as executive chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, ends on June 30. His report detailed the efforts of his inspectors, who were only allowed back in late November after a four-year absence. Their searches for banned weapons were suspended on March 18. U.N. inspections uncovered "a small number of undeclared empty chemical warheads which appear to have been produced prior to 1990," he said. These were destroyed along with a few other proscribed items and some 70 Al Samoud 2 missiles with a range beyond the 92-mile limit allowed under U.N. resolutions. While Iraq's cooperation with U.N. inspectors started improving in late January and inspectors got "a better understanding of past weapons programs," Blix said, "little progress was made in the solution" of outstanding disarmament issues. Extensive excavations by the Iraqis, which were witnessed by U.N. inspectors, showed that Iraq had destroyed a large number of R400 bombs containing a biological agent, as it had claimed. But the excavations couldn't verify the amount of agent produced or destroyed, he said. Similarly, an Iraqi chemical analysis of soil samples from the site where anthrax was declared to have been dumped in 1991 showed it had been dumped there. Blix said U.N. inspectors also didn't have time to complete their investigation on whether pilotless Iraqi drones were designed to disperse chemical or biological weapons, or had a range beyond the 92-mile limit. He said UNMOVIC inspectors are ready to resume work, to confirm any findings since their departure, and to continue monitoring Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs. The council is expected to discuss Blix's report on Thursday. photo credit and caption: U.S. soldiers unload an Iraqi prisoner from a Humvee vehicle in Fallujah, a city 30 miles west of Baghdad, Monday, June 2, 2003. Two U.S. soldiers were killed and nine injured during an attack last week. Resentment of the United States runs deep since American troops fired on crowds in April, killing 18 Iraqis and wounding at least 78. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)
• 

  Guest 77

  Informationclearinghouse keeps taps on current events, they offer a free subscription. Here's a sample of a recent article,

  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3596.htm

  Guest 77
• 

  Realist

  NY TIMES ARTICLE! from May 30, 2003. A MUST read.

  Waggy Dog Stories

  By PAUL KRUGMAN

  n administration hypes the threat posed by a foreign power. It talks of links to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism; it warns about a nuclear weapons program. The news media play along, and the country is swept up in war fever. The war drives everything else — including scandals involving administration officials — from the public's consciousness.

  The 1997 movie "Wag the Dog" had quite a plot.

  Although the movie's title has entered the language, I don't know how many people have watched it lately. Read the screenplay. If you don't think it bears a resemblance to recent events, you're in denial.

  The Iraq war was very real, even if its Kodak moments — the toppling of the Saddam statue, the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch — seem to have been improved by editing. But much of the supposed justification for the war turns out to have been fictional.

  The war was justified to the public by links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. No evidence of the Qaeda link has ever surfaced, and no W.M.D.'s that could have posed any threat to the U.S. or its allies have been found.

  The failure to find W.M.D.'s has been described as an "intelligence failure," but this ignores the fact that intense pressure was placed on intelligence agencies to tell the Bush and Blair administrations what they wanted to hear. Even before the war began we learned of such pratfalls as the presentation of a plagiarized, decade-old report about Iraqi capabilities as hot new intelligence, and the use of crudely forged documents as evidence of a nuclear program.

  Last fall the former head of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism efforts warned that "cooked intelligence" was finding its way into official pronouncements. This week a senior British intelligence official told the BBC that under pressure from Downing Street, a dossier on Iraqi weapons had been "transformed" to make it "sexier" — uncorroborated material from a suspect source was added to make the threat appear imminent.

  It's now also clear that George W. Bush had no intention of reaching a diplomatic solution. According to The Financial Times, White House sources confirm that the decision to go to war was reached in December: "A tin-pot dictator was mocking the president. It provoked a sense of anger inside the White House," a source told the newspaper.

  Administration officials are now playing down the whole W.M.D. issue. Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, recently told Vanity Fair that the decision to emphasize W.M.D.'s had been taken for "bureaucratic reasons . . . because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." But it was the W.M.D. issue that stampeded the Senate into giving Mr. Bush carte blanche to wage war.

  For the time being, the public doesn't seem to care — or even want to know. A new poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes finds that 41 percent of Americans either believe that W.M.D.'s have been found, or aren't sure. The program's director suggests that "some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance." And three-quarters of the public thinks that President Bush showed strong leadership on Iraq.

  So what's the problem? Wars fought to deal with imaginary threats have real consequences. Just as war critics feared, Al Qaeda has been strengthened by the war. Iraq is in chaos, with a rising death toll among American soldiers: "We have reports of skirmishes throughout the central region," a Pentagon official told The Los Angeles Times.

  Meanwhile, the administration has just derived considerable political advantage from a war waged on false premises. At best, that sets a very bad precedent. At worst. . . . "You want to win this election, you better change the subject. You wanna change this subject, you better have a war," explains Robert DeNiro's political operative in "Wag the Dog." "It's show business."

  A final note: Showtime is filming a docudrama about Sept. 11. The producer is a White House insider, working in close consultation with Karl Rove. The script shows Mr. Bush as decisive and eloquent. "In this movie," The Globe and Mail reports, "Mr. Bush delivers long, stirring speeches that immediately become policy." And we can be sure that the script doesn't mention the bogus story about a threat to Air Force One that the White House floated to explain Mr. Bush's movements on the day of the attack. Hey, it's show business.

  
  
  Guest77,

  great link you posted!