Some Historical Facts:

What a lot of old Jism.We can't find them therefore they must exist because of a spurious and quite laughable counter-example. Just because I don't post on those Iraq threads don't assume I don't read them, the last time you were rubbished. No wonder holmes et al eat you alive.This message has been edited by Charles Knight, 12-Jul-2005 02:26 PM

But how could that be? We knew he had them, then they were gone. It must mean they were never there to begin with, yea, that’s it, sure, that’s the ticket.You see, in this satellite photo of the Al qa qaa weapons site taken before the invasion, those aren’t 18 wheel trailers loading weapons from the bunkers, no, that’s just plain silly. Sadaam was merely storing food rations for his people. Iraq’s concealment of WMD’s

Get used to it because you're going to see that Jism again.

quote:

---

Saddam used his WMD on people in Iraq.

---

Yes, Saddam used WMDs. He used them in the 1980s. He used them with the knowledge of the Republican US administration at that time. He used them without eliciting a comment of disapproval from that administration. He used them before the first gulf war in the early 1990's destroyed much of his military capacity. He used them before a sanctions regime in the 1990s prevented his ability to acquire materials to maintain and produce WMDs. He used them before an inspections regime located and recorded the materials that he possessed that could be used to produce WMDs.Why on earth do you think that possessing WMDs in the 1980s has any bearing on whether he possessed WMDs in 2003? Look at what monk is doing: monk is at least trying to provide evidence relevant to the actual time at which it is claimed that Saddam was a threat.

If we knew that the weapons had been removed, moved somewhere else ...?Doesn't it make more sense to go where the weapons ARE than where they WERE?

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You know it, the one about a man found on his hands and knees on a certain street corner. When asked what he's doing he replies that he's searching for his contact lense, which he lost several blocks away. When asked why he isn't searching at that corner, he replies that the light is much better at this particular corner.

Only in hindsight. They were there before the invasion, we know this from the weapons inspectors. Sadaam never showed they were destroyed as mandated by the UN. Either he continued to lie to the world community and he really knew where they were or his people lied to him and he thought they were destroyed, but couldn't prove it. Either way, we couldn't take the chance.We, along with a lot of other countries, believed they were still there. Without proof of their destruction, we assumed they were being hidden inside Iraq. What else could we assume? We found out after the invasion they were not there. We should have known they weren't there before the invasion, but we didn't.I'm not sure if anyone knows exactly where they went. Probably a lot of different places. Syria is a likely candidate, but to my knowledge it is unknown where they went or if known, it hasn't been made public.

LOLDid you say: Which is it?

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well, I'm no expert on satellite imagery and tracking. I don't know where the truck went after it left Al Qa Qaa. Can the military track an 18 wheeler from a satellite and watch it move around the country wherever it goes? What are the limits to satellite tracking?They zoomed in on this site, so I would assume they were monitoring it over time. Maybe the materials were moved to another site in Iraq. If the material was offloaded at one of Sadaam's palaces, it could have been moved again by several smaller vehicles. Do we have the capability to put a satellite eye on all potential hiding places in Iraq and all vehicles moving in and out of these places?

Actually, until we drove them out, we had feet on the ground watching sites like that.Monk; come on. Even I have trouble believing that this Administration is as dumb as you make them seem.First, it's impossible to believe they did not realize that as soon as they began planning for invasion the Iraq regime would do all they could to move any assets they had to safer locations. Now if they did not have the capability to monitor that action then they were negligent in the extreme by creating a situation that simply made the situation even worse. I don't know but that wouldn't surprise me. But what I know is we had the capability to monitor the borders of Iraq to check on anything that was passing across, and odds are we could have done that for something less than $1,000,000,000.00 a day.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I don't usually disagree with you but... You know what our HUMINT, ELINT and SATINT assets are with regard to Iraq and Syria? Who are you...the CIA director?
Sarcasm aside, there are limits on those intelligence resources. Those limits became more restricted when we invaded, specifically. in the human intelligence area.While there is doubt about the complete set of reasons we invaded, some things are known.
1. They had WMD's (gassing the Kurds and Iranians was evidence.)
2. They had a delivery system of short range missiles and a developing medium range missile program. (these were found in after-invasion inspections)
3. They could not show proper evidence of destroying of the WMD's that it was known that they had.
4. They did not cooperate with UN inspectors until their butts were in a sling. Even then, they still did suspicious things to delay inspections.
5. The UN was perfectly content to sit on its ass and do nothing to change this unsatisfactory condition.I don't know if the WMD's exist now or if they were destroyed. Neither do you. None of Tal's or Monk's speculations on what happened can be anything more than mere assertion. But your assessment of our intelligence capability at the time of the invasion is just a guess also. Unless, of course, you are a high ranking CIA or military analyst.Based on what we did know, was there reason to invade? We suspected that they had WMD's and were building a medium range missile program (Hi Israel!!!!!). Was that enough reason to threaten invasion and, when the requirements of the threat were not met, follow up on that threat?Turns out we were proven right in one case.

and LinearAg rightly responds:

quote:

---

You know what our HUMINT, ELINT and SATINT assets are with regard to Iraq and Syria? Who are you...the CIA director?

---

You're right of course to call me on that. It was poorly worded. Let me try again.The job of securing the borders and monitoring traffic crossing those borders is smaller by several orders of magnitude than that of searching the area within those borders.The first statement you quote though I stand behind. I believe that the folk making the descisions had to be dumber than a red brick to not understand that the first action when invasion became very likely would be to move assets outside the borders.If I can, let me try to respond to the rest of your points. That is a given. However so do many other countries. Again, a given and also true of many other countries. We new this well before the invasion. Remember they used missles capable of reaching the Med in the last war. Well,I disagree there. Iraq was blockaded. There was broad international support to continue the blockade. Things were being done. I think this is the really important part of your message.IMHO the major threat from Iraq was towards Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, Turkey and other middle eastern nations. Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Iraq had fought a war with Iran. Iraq had fired missles at Israel. Iraq did have troops, weapons and capabilities to threaten evey other nation in the area.The threat was not aimed at the US. Iraq did not have the capability to destroy the US or even seriously harm the US.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You think we had feet on the ground that was adequate to monitor all of the sites? I don’t see how you can arrive at this conclusion. The "feet on the ground" was not adequate to monitor all locations. Who is we anyway? What resources did we have on the ground before the invasion? The weapons inspectors? Covert agents?Besides that, Iraq did not suddenly begin to move assets to safer locations because of the invasion. They have a very long and extensive track record of concealment which includes moving assets from place to place, using decoy truck convoys to show faked relocation of materials, and on and on. It goes back to the first Gulf War.Iraq’s concealment apparatus was personally sanctioned by Hussein and involved the creation of entire Iraqi departments after 1991. The sole purpose of these national level agencies was the concealment of selective information related to their weapons programs.The Iraqi’s were moving stuff around all the time. It was part of the game. You are correct in saying we should have had a better handle on their activities, but since we were relying primarily on weapons inspectors and aerial or satellite reconnaissance, our coverage was limited. Besides, the level of deceit on the part of Iraqis was so vast and so prevalent, it’s no wonder we couldn’t catch all of it.

How long should we have maintained the blockade? How many years before we could feel comfortable that everything is Ok with Sadaam such that we could withdraw inspectors, no fly zones, sanctions, etc.? When Jar?

What possible difference would that make? Who cares?The point is that Iraq was never a significant threat to the US. Iraq was a problem for the other nations in the Middle East and they should have taken a lead in deciding and implementing any resolution.Iraq offered the world a unique opportunity which the US blew. Here was a threat to both the Muslim and Jewish nations in the area, a valid opportunity to bring the two parties together, to put aside their differences in order to oppose a bigger outside threat.Frankly, we blew it and it's likely that the result will haunt us for many, many decades if not centuries.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion