WASHINGTON -- The flatbed gun truck failed in the desert night, leaving Sgt. Nicholas Pulliam and his freight of cut vehicle armor easing to the Iraq roadside.
The Chelmsford resident was near the end of a 25-truck convoy, following a “slacker” full of fuel, whose tail lights didn't work. The green chemical glow sticks taped to the rig as replacements slowly faded before the whole convoy rumbled to a stop.
“I was not in a safe place and I knew it,” Pulliam wrote in an e-mail received by his parents on Saturday.
The convoy, now towing Pulliam's truck, finally reached the restive city of Ramadi, a 35-mile trip that lasted more than three hours. It was received by insurgent gunshots; all seemed to miss, trailing bright tracers.
But Pulliam, a 43-year-old engineer with a law degree, had a bigger breakdown on his mind than an engine mishap: the United States' policy in Iraq.
Yesterday, he called for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops before September 2006, titling his proposal “Rational Disengagement.” He posted it on an Internet blog, an online journal operated by Bedford activist Brian Hart, whose 20-year-old son, Army Pvt. First Class John Hart, was killed nearly two years ago in Iraq during an ambush near Kirkuk.
“I am just an American citizen-soldier who wants to see an end to this hemorrhaging and get back to my life away from Iraq,” writes Pulliam, who resides on Main Street with his wife, Awilda, and their two children, ages 8 and 10.
“Iraq will have some very hard times to follow our disengagement, but I see this as inevitable anyway so why should we (Americans) continue to bleed only to prolong the pain that is coming,” Pulliam writes. “I don't view this as defeatism, I view it as rationalism.”
In an age where soldiers are increasingly using the Internet to relay instant information about their experiences to spouses, family members and the public, some are going too far, says Lt. Col. Steven Bloyan, an Army communications director in Baghdad who tries to track soldiers' commentary on blogs (Web logs) and newspaper editorials.
Soldiers sometimes are admonished for violating operational security, such as discussing troop movements, or when and how convoys are attacked. The enemy can intercept such information and use it against coalition forces, he said.
But Bloyan and an Army spokeswoman in Washington said they'd never encountered an active-duty soldier proposing troop withdrawals. It could violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits soldiers from engaging in political discourse while in uniform.
“Most soldiers at the unit level don't have the information at hand to make decisions on policy,” Bloyan said in a telephone interview. “We implement the policy of elected leadership.”
Maj. Elizabeth Robbins in Washington said: “A blog is not significantly different than writing an editorial.
It's not a private communication with one's family members. Blogs are a form of publishing.”
In July, Spc. Leonard A. Clark of the Arizona National Guard was punished for criticizing the war on his blog. He was demoted one rank to private first class, fined $1,640 and sentenced to 45 days restriction and 45 days extra duty.
Robbins described those steps as administrative and nonjudicial punishments. She added that soldiers could face a court-martial in the most severe cases.
But high-profile disciplinary action of troops could be politically tenuous.
“There's a whole new generation of troops deeply concerned about the administration's policy in Iraq, and their voices must not be ignored,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. “Is the White House going to try and silence them?”
Next month, Pulliam will complete his second eight-year commitment in the military, first in the National Guard, then the Army Reserve. He joined in the early 1980s as a way to pay for college, said his parents, Brown and Lois Pulliam of Bedford. He has been serving in Iraq for about a year and his parents expect him to be discharged by early December.
A machinist at Al Taqaddum Air Base near Falluja, Pulliam harbors deep distrust of President Bush and vehemently opposes the war, his father said.
“He thinks it's a crime,” Brown Pulliam said of the war, “and that Bush ought to be impeached.”
His parents are unconcerned about possible disciplinary action, saying such possibilities are friendly compared to the threats of war.
“I don't see how that would be more dangerous,” Lois Pulliam said of military discipline.
She and her husband twice traveled to Washington during the 1960s to protest the Vietnam War.
“We thought we were helping to make sure nothing like that happened again,” Lois Pulliam said of that conflict. “Here it is happening again.”
Three months after the Oct. 15 referendum to approve Iraq's new constitution, the United States should designate Iraq security forces “competent,” Nicholas Pulliam says in his plan.
“American troop withdrawals would begin rapidly and be complete before September, 2006,” he said, noting that civil war is likely to occur.
“This result is nothing to fear or regret,” Pulliam said, pointing to the Vietnam War as an example of a sudden American withdrawal.
He also said the overthrow of Saddam Hussein could hasten democracy in Iraq, “even if anarchy, civil war and national partition is the ultimate cost for their better future.”
Brian Hart created the blog -- www.minstrelboy.-********.com -- as an alternative to the deluge of e-mails he received following the death of his son. He's become a vocal critic of the war and an advocate for increased supply of body and vehicle armor.
He doesn't track the number of people who visit the blog, but hopes an intelligent discussion on an exit strategy will fuel a grassroots uprising. Pulliam is the first soldier he's aware of to call for a withdrawal.
“We're going to start a parade, and then let the politicians jump in front of it,” Hart said in an interview yesterday.
Pulliam, too, hopes his words cause a stir, saying too many soldiers have died.
“We need to start somewhere,” he writes in the blog posting. “We need to save our soldier's futures.”
Soldiers sometimes are admonished for violating operational security, such as discussing troop movements, or when and how convoys are attacked. The enemy can intercept such information and use it against coalition forces, he said.
But Bloyan and an Army spokeswoman in Washington said they'd never encountered an active-duty soldier proposing troop withdrawals. It could violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits soldiers from engaging in political discourse while in uniform.
unless they are in the room with the president?????
troops aren't allowed to express opinions....
Posted by Wallace#1 on :
And where has he had that thumb?
Posted by glassman on :
LOL hey wallace....
when i was "In" the other BIG NO-NO was to write a letter to your congressman or Senator without sending a copy up the chain of command first...
they don't like surprises, and quite frankly, the "gag" rules are there for a good reason, i'm not complaining about them,
BUT,
i do tend to get annoyed when i read "letters from the troops" that are passed around saying how the media is lying about what is relly going on over there...the troops are doing their jobs, and they should take pride in them, and themselves...the politicians are the ones that are supposed to answer to the voters ....
and i get annoyed when the troops have orders to pose with the CIC.... no doubt there are planty of volunteers to pose with him so i doubt they "have to be ordered", but orders are orders...
Posted by IWISHIHAD on :
I agree with you glassman. In most cases the soldiers words are harmless and come out of frustration, but they might say something out of frustration that seems harmless at the time, but ends up causing harm. The military has to have a gag rule for the sake of all the soldiers.
Posted by glassman on :
i feel bad for the guy...
no doubt he's frustrated at feeling like his efforts/risks are wasted, there's no solution to the problem, he misses his family, and he MAY even BE right.... but his is not to question why...
that IS our job as citizens.....
Posted by tuck on :
Agree Glassman.... I am sure there are more there that feel the same. I agree with him.. When we pull out, now, next year, five years... Iraq will go back to civil war amoung its different factions.. No way to stop that... Unless you use the same tatics as Sadam.... But.. as I have learned, when the shooting starts.. It is not for the Country, Army, or Marines... You fight to keep you and your buddies alive.. That is all......
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
The correct title of this thread should be soldier, not soldiers.
As a former member of the military, it is easy to find people that are not satisfied with where they are, what they are doing or their leadership. There are on average 100 individuals in a unit, there are bound to be at least five out of those 100 that are not happy in their current situation.
The mistake is in saying those 5 represent the views of the other 95. They usually don't.
Posted by 4Art on :
I can provide quotes from hundreds of soldiers that concur, if you wish.
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: The correct title of this thread should be soldier, not soldiers.
[ October 13, 2005, 16:49: Message edited by: 4Art ]
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
No need there have been hundreds of thousands of soldiers who served in Iraq. 5% of 200,000 is 10,000. Those 10,000 don't represent the other 190,000.
I could just as easily come up with hundreds of quotes that support the Iraq effort from soldiers who have served there. I could also point out that retention rates among soldiers who served in Iraq are higher than among those that have not.
Posted by 4Art on :
Thou Shalt Not Kill (Unless Otherwise Instructed).
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Obviously, the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" does not apply to governments and wars. The Bible is filled with wars. Again, that little context issue.
Posted by 4Art on :
To paraphrase the NRA, Governments and wars don't kill people, people do!
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
I believe the correct phrase is "guns don't kill people, people kill people". The NRA doesn't generally take stands on war.
Posted by 4Art on :
Okay!
"Governments and wars don't kill people, people kill people."
Works for me.
Posted by 4Art on :
This is in no way a just war.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
Actually it is.
Hussein was in violation of 16 UN Resolutions. He was also in violation of the Cease Fire Agreement which TEMPORARILY ended hostilities in 1991.
The Gulf War of 1990-91 never ended, there was never a treaty, nor any sort of peace agreement. Hussein had certain conditions placed upon him at that time which if he failed to meet, he was subject to further attack. He failed to meet those conditions. Clinton opted on several occasions to launch missiles or shoot down Hussein's aircraft as part of enforcing the conditions of the cease fire. Bush took it a very large step further.
Posted by 4Art on :
That isn't the reason we were given for the war, Aragorn243.
You find the murder of close to 30,000 Iraqis to be just?
You must ask yourself, "who would Jesus bomb?"
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
No it isn't the reason we were given for the war. I suspect we were given the WMD reason because the majority of people would not go to war over violations of a cease fire agreement. That's the main reason why we are a Republic, not a Democracy.
The violations of the cease fire agreement were sufficient but no war can be won without public support.
I never find "murder" to be just. There have been many murders in Iraq. Hussein murdered hundreds of thousands, the current insurgency has murders thousands. US forces have murdered a few, I can recall at least two instances where murder was determined, they have also been punished.
As a whole, the United States military has not murdered anyone. They have acted within the laws of war and worked to minimize collateral damage.
You really seem to have a serious hangup with Jesus. I recommend you see someone about that.
Posted by IWISHIHAD on :
I think I have got a little lost in the last few posts. The only thing that has to stay the same is a gag oder on the troops. The Percentage of troops that talk to the media about the war should be 0.
Posted by shlik on :
Bring em home the iraqis will be fine.
Posted by jordanreed on :
"War is over..............if you want it"........John Lennon
Posted by glassman on :
hmmmmmmmm...
Hussein murdered hundreds of thousands, the current insurgency has murders thousands.
that's another of the propagandists BS that has been accepted as fact... there is no credibility to any reports that Sadam murdered hundreds of thousands
Sadam hasn't even been proven to have gassed his own people if you bother to read the analysts reports? it happened during the Iran Iraq war while we were openly backing Sadam and then there's the question of how much we were helping Iran with spare parts via Oliver North et al....
the current insurgency has no place in justifying our ENTRY in to the war.... last i heared it? Rumsfeld and Bush both said that the insurgency will be Iraqs problem when we leave.....
i think we have a lot more work to do before we can leave..... and then we can sit back and take c redit for creating another Islamic State....
Posted by 4Art on :
Hang-up... Jesus... Get it?
You're fine with being lied to, apparently. I'm not.
Anyway, the crimes you are accusing Hussein of were committed (allegedly) while he was a US ally.
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: 4Art,
No it isn't the reason we were given for the war. I suspect we were given the WMD reason because the majority of people would not go to war over violations of a cease fire agreement. That's the main reason why we are a Republic, not a Democracy.
The violations of the cease fire agreement were sufficient but no war can be won without public support.
I never find "murder" to be just. There have been many murders in Iraq. Hussein murdered hundreds of thousands, the current insurgency has murders thousands. US forces have murdered a few, I can recall at least two instances where murder was determined, they have also been punished.
As a whole, the United States military has not murdered anyone. They have acted within the laws of war and worked to minimize collateral damage.
You really seem to have a serious hangup with Jesus. I recommend you see someone about that.
Posted by glassman on :
the amazing part is how many people are saying Bush SHOULD have lied to US to circumvent the democratic process because we are a republic....
our elected representatives were lied to also....
that destabilzes the republican system as well.... might as well do away with voting altogether...
when Hillary voted to give the authority to invade Iraq( note: Bush and Bush alone asssumes responsibilty for the final decision to attack) i assumed the intell was authentic....
it has now been proven that the intell was not only wrong, but fabricated almost in its entirety, and that at least some of intell community was aware that it was suspect at the time the president used it in his state of the union address....
Posted by 4Art on :
True enough, Glass!
Is seems that, to some, as long as Bush isn't getting a BJ from an intern, all is well. Lying to the country to start a war based on another agenda? So what!
(If you ask me, Bush needs a BJ very badly.)
Might as well do away with voting altogether? They might just be working on that, too. Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Glassman,
The deaths caused by Hussein are documented. They've been digging up the mass graves all over Iraq. There are reports that the true numbers are 5 million dead attributed to Hussein, mostly ****es, with some Kurds.
I agree that Iraq will most likely disintegrate into civil war sometime after we leave. I doubt it will result in an Islamic state. It will most likely divide into three parts, Kurdistan in the north and a ****e nation in the south with a radical islamic Sunni state in the center creating havoc for all.
4Art,
I wasn't lied to and neither were you. WMD's were a concern. They existed, were documented by the United Nations and steps were taken to ensure their destruction by the cease fire agreement of 1991 and various UN resolutions. Every intelligence agency in the world and the United Nations said Hussein had WMD's.
This arguement was the one that would get support. Not the best arguement and not an arguement that was needed to justify the war.
Hussein was never an ally of the United States. Allies are nations you enter treatys with to set up agreements for security purposes, etc. What occured was we re-established diplomatic relations with Iraq in 1984 that had been broken in 1967. We sold them 5 airliners and gave them a $400 million credit guarantee for U.S. exports to Iraq. Not much of an alliance. His country remained closed, we had no way of knowing what he was doing there.
Posted by 4Art on :
It's called diplomatic ties and if you read the articles, we condemn the use of chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war.
As for the second article. It does not say "2001: Powell & Rice Declare Iraq Has No WMD and Is Not a Threat" That is the TITLE, the actual article outlines:
"He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors"
"And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and nuclear -- I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There's no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago."
Headlines are good, if they are accurate, this one clearly is not.
They were pursuing and possessed WMD's.
Posted by 4Art on :
RICE: "But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
Hardly the threat of a "mushroom cloud" that she conveyed to the public not long thereafter.
Diplomatic ties then, war justified now?
You're in powerful denial.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
He didn't control either the northern part of the country because the Kurds were well armed and protected by a US no fly zone. He did control the southern portion because the ****es were never able to get weapons or outside support. His controlling faction, the Sunnis did possess the WMD's
I don't believe Rice every spoke of a mushroom cloud scenario. Hussein did not yet possess nuclear weapons. The goal was to prevent him from doing so.
Posted by 4Art on :
RICE: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
"All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time...I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing." --President Dwight Eisenhower, 1953, upon being presented with plans to wage preventive war to disarm Stalin's Soviet Union
"Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions." --Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, in his opening statement to the tribunal
Posted by 4Art on :
It's clear to me that dangerous radicals have hijacked the US Government.
Posted by 4Art on :
Bush's Father Foresaw Costs of Iraq War by George Gedda
Published on Wednesday, August 25, 2004
WASHINGTON - Not many people foresaw the postwar difficulties the administration has endured in Iraq. Of the few who did, two stand out, both lions of the Republican Party.
One was President George H.W. Bush. The other was his secretary of state, James A. Baker.
"Incalculable human and political costs" would have been the result, the senior Bush has said, if his administration had pushed all the way to Baghdad and sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect rule Iraq," Bush wrote. "The coalition would have instantly collapsed. ... Going in and thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish.
"Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome."
The senior Bush's thoughts are outlined in "A World Transformed," published well before his son became president. After Desert Storm, the nation was deeply split over whether Bush was right to bring the troops home while leaving Saddam's regime intact.
Although the political context of the region at the time was different from what the incumbent President Bush faced in 2003, the father's predictions about a post-Iraq war situation were eerily prescient.
Baker had a similar view on the perils of a regime change policy in Iraq after Desert Storm.
In a September 1996 opinion piece, he said, "Iraqi soldiers and civilians could be expected to resist an enemy seizure of their own country with a ferocity not previously demonstrated on the battlefield in Kuwait.
"Even if Hussein were captured and his regime toppled, U.S. forces would still have been confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government in power.
"Removing him from power might well have plunged Iraq into civil war, sucking U.S. forces in to preserve order. Had we elected to march on Baghdad, our forces might still be there."
Seven years after Baker wrote those words, in 2003, the political situation in the region had changed dramatically. As the incumbent administration saw it, Saddam had systematically ignored for 12 years U.N. Security Council demands that he eliminate his weapons of mass destruction.
Also, the administration believed, perhaps wrongly, that Saddam had reconstituted weapons programs that had been uncovered and destroyed since 1991.
So the Iraq war that former President Bush chose not to fight in 1991 was carried out by his son in 2003, and cast by the current President Bush as part of the global war on terrorism that had begun with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks 18 months earlier.
Saddam was perceived — at least by the current President Bush — as a far greater menace in 2003 than he had been in 1991 when the senior Bush was content with liberating Kuwait and foregoing regime change in Baghdad.
The current President Bush undoubtedly was warned about the possibility of heavy U.S. troop casualties in the 2003 war. But one wonders whether those warnings were as clear-sighted as those of Baker when he wrote about the perils of ousting Saddam militarily.
If that had been the policy in 1991, Baker said, it "would certainly have resulted in substantially greater casualties to American forces than (Desert Storm) itself. For this reason, our military and the president's senior advisers were properly dead-set against it."
Defense Department figures show that, as of Tuesday, 109 U.S. soldiers died during the 2003 Iraq war as a result of hostile action, compared with 611 since Bush declared an end to major combat actions in Iraq on May 1, 2003.
[ October 14, 2005, 01:47: Message edited by: 4Art ]
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
This was not a war of aggression. This was a continuation of the Gulf War of 1991. There was never a peace treaty, their was a cease fire agreement which was conditional on Hussein meeting certain requirements. He violated that agreement, nulifing the cease fire.
Bush Sr did not continue the war because he felt diplomacy could succeed. He was proven incorrect. Diplomacy had failed. The conditions of the cease fire agreement were not met, the 16 UN Resolutions that Hussein violated were also clear indications that diplomacy had failed and finally, the explulsion in 1998 of the UN Weapons inspectors was an open active defiance.
People today obviously have no clue what heavy casualties are. 2000 deaths over a 2 year period are not heavy casualties. They are extremely light, even by Vietnam standards.
Posted by glassman on :
diplomacy failed when Bush decided it failed...
the State dept tried to stop the war.... many in the state dept left because of the war..diplomacy? what diplomacy?
it clearly states how the intel debacle unfolded, and if you read carefully? you might even see that Iran is behind the bad intel.... who is winning this war???
shooting a few POS anti-aircraft weps at our fly-boys? LOL they needed the practice..... it was like swatting gnats for them
the LATEST CIA report is finally out and de-classified... The admin did force the CIA to come up the WMD intel by demending results too quickly....
AND the CIA did predict the mess we are in right now..almost exectly, but the admin didn't want to hear that....
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Glassman,
How long do you think diplomacy should go on? It was 10 years with no progress, and 3 years without any UN weapons inspectors. Diplomacy failed and that should be obvious to anyone.
The report you gave is 20/20 hindsight. It's easy to look back and say it really wasn't that way, etc, etc.
The big question remains, why if Hussein was in compliance did he not allow the UN inspection teams to prove it. It would have been very easy for him to have done so yet he did not.
The reason is he was not in compliance. The report you site states no significant (large) stockpiles of chemical weapons were found. Chemical weapons were found in small amounts. What was also not found was the documented stockpiles of WMD's that the UN inspection teams located and itemized. There is also no evidence of said WMD's destruction. There is also the delivery system which your report does state existed.
What mess are we in now? The only thing you ever see on the news is the negative. Rebuilding takes time and if you look past the constant negative reports by the mainstream media is progressing. Will it last? I doubt it but I could be wrong.
Posted by jordanreed on :
chemical weapons were not found. what was found were very small amounts of chemicals which could be combined to make weapons . not unlike what you might have under your sink. I cannot understand why some people still believe the horseshiit this administration continues to shove down our throats.
Posted by glassman on :
Strider576, you are arguing points that have already failed the test of time...
the report i gave was not hindsight, i figured the basics of that out after we walked into Baghdad untouched...
and in case you've been looking the other way? i direct your attention to Joseph Wilson, who was screaming bloody murder about the lies as soon they were uttered....
sadam was defeated and caged in a jail the size of a country, we flew over it night and day with IMPUNITY.....
Posted by glassman on :
the UN inspection teams that were told to LEAVE Iraq so we could start bombing were saying they were being sent on wild-goose chases....
the admin shouted everybody down using fear loathing...
Posted 3/17/2003 5:40 AM Updated 3/17/2003 1:16 PM U.S advises weapons inspectors to leave Iraq VIENNA, Austria (AP) — In the clearest sign yet that war with Iraq is imminent, the United States has advised U.N. weapons inspectors to begin pulling out of Baghdad, the U.N. nuclear agency chief said Monday.
-------------------------------------------- Wolfowitz Had CIA Probe UN Diplomat in Charge By Walter Pincus and Colum Lynch Washington Post
April 15, 2002 Officials gave contradictory accounts of Wolfowitz's reaction to the CIA report, which the agency returned in late January with the conclusion that Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could operate" as chief of the Vienna-based agency between 1981 and 1997.
A former State Department official familiar with the report said Wolfowitz "hit the ceiling" because it failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program.
Iraq war wasn't justified, U.N. weapons experts say Blix, ElBaradei: U.S. ignored evidence against WMDs
Monday, March 22, 2004 Posted: 1:34 AM EST (0634 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United Nations' top two weapons experts said Sunday that the invasion of Iraq a year ago was not justified by the evidence in hand at the time.
"I think it's clear that in March, when the invasion took place, the evidence that had been brought forward was rapidly falling apart," Hans Blix, who oversaw the agency's investigation into whether Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." ------------------------------------------ Posted by bond006 on :
Jordan of course the kool aide drinkers still believe Mr. Bush and i myself have never seen the likes of it in America. Lots of people think WMD were smuggled out of the country, that Sodam is responsible for 9/11.And we need to stay the couse so to speak.When the truth of the matter is put before them with written reports from the highest government officials they don't believe it. And that scares me more than the war it self.
Posted by glassman on :
i've gotten so tired of repeating the simple truth i can practically remember the url's in my sleep...
people hate to admit they've been conned... look at some of the stock market scams, and how long they go on......
it's very similar to a religion to some of these people....
people can pull a quote out of context from any number of places in the bible to argue three sides of the same debate...sometimes using the same quote to support opposing arguments....
Posted by 4Art on :
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: 4Art,
This was not a war of aggression.
Posted by 4Art on :
It is truly amazing that, while the Bush Klan consistently rapes the country and the world, so many US citizens keep screaming "More! Please sir, more?!"
quote:Originally posted by jordanreed: chemical weapons were not found. what was found were very small amounts of chemicals which could be combined to make weapons . not unlike what you might have under your sink. I cannot understand why some people still believe the horseshiit this administration continues to shove down our throats.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Jordan Reed,
Chemical weapons were found on at least two seperate occassions, once by US troop, once by Polish troops.
Sarin, Mustard Gas Discovered Separately in Iraq Monday, May 17, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq — A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent (search) recently exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday.
Bush administration officials told Fox News that mustard gas (search) was also recently discovered.
Two people were treated for "minor exposure" after the sarin incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.
"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt (search), the chief military spokesman in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy."
The round detonated before it would be rendered inoperable, Kimmitt said, which caused a "very small dispersal of agent."
However, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the results were from a field test, which can be imperfect, and said more analysis was needed. If confirmed, it would be the first finding of a banned weapon upon which the United States based its case for war.
Polish Troops Find Sarin Warheads Friday, July 02, 2004
WARSAW, Poland — Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin (search) that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.
Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, which date back to Saddam Hussein's (search) war with Iran in the 1980s, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw.
"We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," Dukaczewski said. "An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these warheads."
Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.
In May, a booby-trapped artillery shell apparently filled with the sarin nerve agent exploded alongside a Baghdad road but caused no serious injuries to the U.S. forces who discovered it. At the time, officials stopped short of claiming the munition was definite evidence of a large weapons stockpile in prewar Iraq or evidence of recent production by Saddam's regime.
You guys still haven't explained where the weapons went. The United Nations documented very specific number and stockpiles of WMD's. They inventoried the items. These were all WMD's which Hussein acknowledged existed and they visually inspected them and photgraphed them.
Where are they now? They were required under the cease fire agreement to be destroyed under UN supervision, this never happened. Hussein just prior to the war took UN inspectors to a site where he said he destroyed them but they could find no evidence of that occuring.
Glassman,
Joe Wilson doesn't have any credibility
Hans Blix never explained where the weapons went, he wanted more time. He was out of a job otherwise. I question his credibility as well.
Bond 006,
I suggest you check a couple of the links I've provided. I don't automatically believe anything Bush says but I do look at the available evidence. The following link details the UN involvement in the WMD inspections. It also lists the various UN Resolutions Hussein was in violation of.
It is truly amazing that people continue to buy into propaganda the media puts out every day and then spread around exagerated inflamatory statements to "legitimize" their claims.
Posted by bdgee on :
Hmmmmm? Seems to me I recall the absolute guarantees that there were huge store houses of poison gas and bio-weapons already arming illegal rockets set in position and capable of landing on US targets and hundreds completed and functional atomic devises, only awaiting the command of Saddam, before being unleashed on our shores.
No no no....I correct that. It doesn't "seem" that I remember. I remember definitely It was said! Over and over and over......
WHERE ARE THEY?
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
bdgee,
If you remember that being said, you were hearing it from the wrong people.
It never came from anyone in the Bush administration.
Where are they? What you are asking about never existed. Hussein did not have the capability YET of hitting the United States although he did have the capability of hitting our allies in the region. He also never had any nuclear weapons capability.
The stockpiles of poison gas exited in various forms.
What I want to know is where are they, the ones documented by the United Nations.
Posted by turbokid on :
aragorn243: i was curious to know why iraq was attacked for violating UN resolutions when the following countries have violated several themselves by my count they are as follows turkey-23 morocco-18 croatia-6 israel- 32 armenia-4 russia-1 indonesia-4 sudan-3 so why arent we at war with turkey, morocco,and israel they have violated more than iraq, and on top of that if i recall correctly there were weapons inspectors in iraq, but we were ignoring what they were telling us because it wasnt what we wanted to hear. heres a (few) quotes from reputable news agencies reguarding iraq and weapons inspections. enjoy:
In a report to the Security Council Chief Inspector, Hans Blix, stated that before leaving on the eve of the US-UK led invasion, he had found no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. (Associated Press)
Hans Blix, UN Chief Weapons Inspector, suspects that the Iraqi government possessed little more than "debris" from a former, secret weapons program before the US-led invasion. The US inability to find weapons of mass destruction after the fall of the Hussein regime has led Blix to downgrade his original assessment of the threat Iraq posed. (Washington Post)
On the eve of retirement, UN Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix has made sharp criticisms of Washington. He referred to “*******s” in the Bush administration who consistently undermined his efforts to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and "leaned on" his staff to tailor their reports. (Guardian)
After weeks of fruitless searching, the Bush administration has come close to conceding that Iraq may not have had any biological or chemical weapons. Admitting this raises questions about the justification for the war. Some are calling it "the greatest intelligence hoax of all time."(Independent)
US have not found any weapons of mass destruction and questions are raised about the justification for a war on Iraq. If no WMD’s are found, the world is going to be “even more suspicious of US intentions in the future.” (Reuters)
US National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, acknowledged that it is difficult to prove Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and it is possible that no actual weapons will ever be found. (Sydney Morning Herald)
Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix accuses the Bush administration of lacking credibility in its hunt for weapons of mass destruction. Blix states that only the UN inspectors can provide an objective assessment of the material found. (Independent)
Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix stated that US officials tried to discredit the UN weapons inspectors to win Security Council support for war on Iraq. (Middle East Online)
Weapons inspectors supervised the destruction of Al Samoud 2 missiles by Iraq. The government of Iraq also plans to hand over a report about its unilateral destruction of anthrax and VX nerve agent. (Associated Press)
While the short-range Al Samoud 2 missiles discovered by UN inspectors can fly a few miles further than allowed by UN resolutions, the inspectors have reported no sign of any longer-range missiles that could strike Israel or neighboring nations. (Associated Press)
According to South African disarmament experts, Iraq is fully cooperating and the inspectors should be given more time before the UN Security Council authorizes war. (Associated Press)
UN weapons inspectors are complaining about information received from US intelligence because it leads the inspectors to “one dead end after another.” (CBS News)
A presidential decree issued by Saddam Hussein banned all weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, meeting a longtime demand of UN arms inspectors. (Associated Press)
UN chief weapon inspector Hans Blix challenged the Bush administration's false statements regarding the recent inspection report. Blix stated that he had not seen any persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda. (Sydney Morning Herald)
In his report on Iraq’s weapons program, Chief US weapons inspector in Iraq Charles A. Duelfer concludes that Saddam Hussein’s ability to produce nuclear weapons had "progressively decayed" since 1991 and that there was no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program." The same conclusions apply to programs for chemical and biological weapons. The report thus contradicts the coalition’s justifications to invade Iraq. (Washington Post)
A report commissioned by US President George W. Bush found that by the time Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, "every piece of fresh evidence" of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction "had been tested -- and disproved -- by UN inspectors." (Washington Post)
Posted by 4Art on :
"British intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.–President Bush, 2003 State of the Union Address
"They could still be there like the 50 tons of mustard gas hidden on a turkey farm." —President Bush, clinging to the claim that weapons of mass destruction may still be found in Iraq, April 13, 2004
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason." --Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, "Vanity Fair" interview, May 28, 2003
"Had we to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day." —President Bush, telling Time magazine that he underestimated the Iraqi resistance, Aug. 2004
"We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." –Vice President Dick Cheney, "Meet The Press" March 16, 2003
"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." —President Bush, discussing the Iraq war with Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, after Robertson told him he should prepare the American people for casualties
Posted by 4Art on :
"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States." • White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03
"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." • President Bush, 7/17/03
Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time." • White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03
"Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now." • President Bush, 7/2/03
"Absolutely." • White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03
"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended." • President Bush 4/24/03
"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed." • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03
"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended." • Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03
"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." • President Bush, 3/19/03
"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations." • President Bush, 3/16/03
"This is about imminent threat." • White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies." • Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03
Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world." • Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03
Iraq "threatens the United States of America." • Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03
"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa." • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03
"Well, of course he is.” • White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question “is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?”, 1/26/03
"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction." • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03
"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat." • President Bush, 1/3/03
"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands." • President Bush, 11/23/02
"I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?" • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02
"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America." • President Bush, 11/3/02
"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq." • President Bush, 11/1/02
"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein." • President Bush, 10/28/02
"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace." • President Bush, 10/16/02
"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." • President Bush, 10/7/02
"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." • President Bush, 10/2/02
"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is." • President Bush, 10/2/02
"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined." • President Bush, 9/26/02
"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02
"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons." • Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02
"Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness." • Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/02
Posted by 4Art on :
Watch this great video of Rumsfeld caught lying on "Face The Nation." The Bas-tard!
Sadly, you simply don't have a clue, Aragorn243.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
turbokid
Iraq was violating UN Resolutions that were connected to a cease fire agreement. Iraq had a record of invading its neighbors and was on probation.
It's pretty amazing that Hans Blix couldn't find what his own organization inventoried and documented in 1991. That's one reason he isn't the most reliable of sources.
Hans Blix also said the following which contradicts what you posted:
Iraq's al-Samoud missile
By Jonathan Marcus BBC defence correspondent
When chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix delivered his first report to the Security Council at the end of January, he drew attention to two Iraqi missile programmes, the al-Samoud Two and the al-Fatah.
Both of these, he said, had been tested to ranges in excess of the permitted 150 kilometres (93 miles).
For the British and the Americans this may be as close to a smoking gun as they are going to get
In a move seen as key test of the Iraqi's willingness to comply with the inspectors Mr Blix demanded their destruction - a task which has now begun.
This limit was set by the UN after the last Gulf war as part of the stringent efforts to contain Iraq's weapons programmes.
The development of long-range missiles capable of delivering chemical, biological, and even nuclear warheads, was seen as one of Saddam Hussein's central strategic goals.
He had already used his existing missile force against Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, with conventional warheads.
It was expected that over time, Iraqi scientists would develop increasingly accurate missiles with greater ranges and payloads.
Violation
Inspectors confirmed that the al-Samoud II missile does indeed exceed the limits set by Security Council.
There are indications that the weapon may already have been supplied to the Iraqi Army
The fact that it has a larger than permitted diameter and that it may also have an engine derived from a surface-to-air missile are two further facts that contravene UN restrictions.
Both of these facts suggest that the missile could be intended to have an even longer range, since it could carry additional fuel and could perhaps be fitted with an even more powerful motor.
Iraq's missile programme, like the early stages of North Korea's and other countries' missile efforts tend to take a basic Soviet-era design and re-manufacture it, gradually extending its range and payload.
Thus, quite apart from being a violation in itself, the al-Samoud II could be the basis for further development.
And Mr Blix pointed to additional signs that Iraq had taken steps to refurbish its missile manufacturing capability.
Owning up?
The exact operational status of the al-Samoud II is unclear. There are indications that the weapon may already have been supplied to the Iraqi Army.
Al-Samoud missiles are based on a Soviet-era design But what is going to be more controversial is the sourcing of this evidence - it seems that the inspectors learnt about the new missiles from data provided by the Iraqis themselves.
So is this an example of wilful disregard for the UN's strictures, or of the Iraqis coming clean on some proscribed activity?
One has to assume that the Americans already had a pretty good idea about these missile tests from satellite data. The Iraqis would know that too.
Many will say that developing the weapon does indeed put Iraq in material breach of its obligations.
For the British and the Americans, this may be as close to a smoking gun as they are going to get.
The US has found WMD's, so has Poland, see previous post.
The following is a partial list of WMD's and other weapons violations found since the end of the war:
Investigative Report Saddam's WMD Have Been Found Post April 26, 2004 By Kenneth R. Timmerman
New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported. Key assertions by the intelligence community that were widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all. But this stunning news has received little attention from the major media, and the president's critics continue to insist that "no weapons" have been found.
In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors.
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), whose intelligence analysts are managed by Charles Duelfer, a former State Department official and deputy chief of the U.N.-led arms-inspection teams, has found "hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited" under U.N. Security Council resolutions, a senior administration official tells Insight. "There is a long list of charges made by the U.S. that have been confirmed, but none of this seems to mean anything because the weapons that were unaccounted for by the United Nations remain unaccounted for."
Both Duelfer and his predecessor, David Kay, reported to Congress that the evidence they had found on the ground in Iraq showed Saddam's regime was in "material violation" of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, the last of 17 resolutions that promised "serious consequences" if Iraq did not make a complete disclosure of its weapons programs and dismantle them in a verifiable manner. The United States cited Iraq's refusal to comply with these demands as one justification for going to war.
Both Duelfer and Kay found that Iraq had "a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses with equipment that was suitable to continuing its prohibited chemical- and biological-weapons [BW] programs," the official said. "They found a prison laboratory where we suspect they tested biological weapons on human subjects." They found equipment for "uranium-enrichment centrifuges" whose only plausible use was as part of a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. In all these cases, "Iraqi scientists had been told before the war not to declare their activities to the U.N. inspectors," the official said.
But while the president's critics and the media might plausibly hide behind ambiguity and a lack of sensational-
looking finds for not reporting some discoveries, in the case of Saddam's ballistic-missile programs they have no excuse for their silence. "Where were the missiles? We found them," another senior administration official told Insight.
"Saddam Hussein's prohibited missile programs are as close to a slam dunk as you will ever find for violating United Nations resolutions," the first official said. Both senior administration officials spoke to Insight on condition that neither their name nor their agency be identified, but their accounts of what the United States has found in Iraq coincided in every major area.
When former weapons inspector Kay reported to Congress in January that the United States had found "no stockpiles" of forbidden weapons in Iraq, his conclusions made front-page news. But when he detailed what the ISG had found in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last October, few took notice. Among Kay's revelations, which officials tell Insight have been amplified in subsequent inspections in recent weeks:
A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and "that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N." Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn't have a biological-weapons program?
"Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents were found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist. "We thought it was a big deal," a senior administration official said. "But it has been written off [by the press] as a sort of 'starter set.'"
New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.
A line of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, "not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 kilometers [311 miles], 350 kilometers [217 miles] beyond the permissible limit."
"Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the U.N."
"Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] - well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1,000-kilometer range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara [Turkey], Cairo [Egypt] and Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emirates]."
In addition, through interviews with Iraqi scientists, seized documents and other evidence, the ISG learned the Iraqi government had made "clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300-kilometer-range [807 miles] ballistic missiles - probably the No Dong - 300-kilometer-range [186 miles] antiship cruise missiles and other prohibited military equipment," Kay reported.
In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed that the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents. The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials. That came in addition to 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged to Insight had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."
In taking apart Iraq's clandestine procurement network, Duelfer said his investigators had discovered that "the primary source of illicit financing for this system was oil smuggling conducted through government-to-government protocols negotiated with neighboring countries [and] from kickback payments made on contracts set up through the U.N. oil-for-food program" [see "Documents Prove U.N. Oil Corruption," April 27-May 10].
What the president's critics and the media widely have portrayed as the most dramatic failure of the U.S. case against Saddam has been the claimed failure to find "stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons. But in a June 2003 Washington Post op-ed, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus called such criticism "a distortion and a trivialization of a major threat to international peace and security."
Lt. Gen. Amer Rashid al-Obeidi (left) and Lt. Gen. Amer Hamoodi al-Saddi (right) speak to an unidentified French intelligence officer at the Baghdad International Arms Fair in April 1989, and another French officer listens in (behind al-Saadi, facing camera)
The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction concluded that Saddam "probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW [chemical warfare] agents - much of it added in the last year." That assessment was based, in part, on conclusions contained in the final report from U.N. weapons inspectors in 1999, which highlighted discrepancies in what the Iraqis reported to the United Nations and the amount of precursor chemicals U.N. arms inspectors could document Iraq had imported but for which it no longer could account. Until now, Bush's critics say, no stockpiles of CW agents made with those precursors have been found. The snap conclusion they draw is that the administration "lied" to the American people to create a pretext for invading Iraq.
But what are "stockpiles" of CW agents supposed to look like? Was anyone seriously expecting Saddam to have left behind freshly painted warehouses packed with chemical munitions, all neatly laid out in serried rows, with labels written in English? Or did they think that a captured Saddam would guide U.S. troops to smoking vats full of nerve gas in an abandoned factory? In fact, as recent evidence made public by a former operations officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA's) intelligence unit in Iraq shows, some of those stockpiles have been found - not all at once, and not all in nice working order - but found all the same.
Douglas Hanson was a U.S. Army cavalry reconnaissance officer for 20 years, and a veteran of Gulf War I. He was an atomic demolitions munitions security officer and a nuclear, biological and chemical defense officer. As a civilian analyst in Iraq last summer, he worked for an operations intelligence unit of the CPA in Iraq, and later, with the newly formed Ministry of Science and Technology, which was responsible for finding new, nonlethal employment for Iraqi WMD scientists.
In an interview with Insight and in an article he wrote for the online magazine AmericanThinker.com, Hanson examines reports from U.S. combat units and public information confirming that many of Iraq's CW stockpiles have indeed been found. Until now, however, journalists have devoted scant attention to this evidence, in part because it contradicts the story line they have been putting forward since the U.S.-led inspections began after the war.
But another reason for the media silence may stem from the seemingly undramatic nature of the "finds" Hanson and others have described. The materials that constitute Saddam's chemical-weapons "stockpiles" look an awful lot like pesticides, which they indeed resemble. "Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena," Hanson says. "In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the 'grandfather' of modern-day nerve agents."
The United Nations was fully aware that Saddam had established his chemical-weapons plants under the guise of a permitted civilian chemical-industry infrastructure. Plants inspected in the early 1990s as CW production facilities had been set up to appear as if they were producing pesticides - or in the case of a giant plant near Fallujah, chlorine, which is used to produce mustard gas.
When coalition forces entered Iraq, "huge warehouses and caches of 'commercial and agricultural' chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists," Hanson writes. "What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches."
Caches of "commercial and agricultural" chemicals don't match the expectation of "stockpiles" of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. "At a very minimum," Hanson tells Insight, "they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly." Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment's notice.
At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. "More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."
That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles, Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin - a nerve agent. Nearby were surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, gas masks and a mobile laboratory that could have been used to mix chemicals at the site. "Of course, later tests by the experts revealed that these were only the ubiquitous pesticides that everybody was turning up," Hanson says. "It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'"
At Taji - an Iraqi weapons complex as large as the District of Columbia - U.S. combat units discovered more "pesticides" stockpiled in specially built containers, smaller in diameter but much longer than the standard 55-gallon drum. Hanson says he still recalls the military sending digital images of the canisters to his office, where his boss at the Ministry of Science and Technology translated the Arabic-language markings. "They were labeled as pesticides," he says. "Gee, you sure have got a lot of pesticides stored in ammo dumps."
Again, this January, Danish forces found 120-millimeter mortar shells filled with a mysterious liquid that initially tested positive for blister agents. But subsequent tests by the United States disputed that finding. "If it wasn't a chemical agent, what was it?" Hanson asks. "More pesticides? Dish-washing detergent? From this old soldier's perspective, I gain nothing from putting a liquid in my mortar rounds unless that stuff will do bad things to the enemy."
The discoveries Hanson describes are not dramatic. And that's the problem: Finding real stockpiles in grubby ammo dumps doesn't fit the image the media and the president's critics carefully have fed to the public of what Iraq's weapons ought to look like.
A senior administration official who has gone through the intelligence reporting from Iraq as well as the earlier reports from U.N. arms inspectors refers to another well-documented allegation. "The Iraqis admitted they had made 3.9 tons of VX," a powerful nerve gas, but claimed they had never weaponized it. The U.N. inspectors "felt they had more. But where did it go?" The Iraqis never provided any explanation of what had happened to their VX stockpiles.
What does 3.9 tons of VX look like? "It could fit in one large garage," the official says. Assuming, of course, that Saddam would assemble every bit of VX gas his scientists had produced at a single site, that still amounts to one large garage in an area the size of the state of California.
Senior administration officials stress that the investigation will continue as inspectors comb through millions of pages of documents in Iraq and attempt to interview Iraqi weapons scientists who have been trained all their professional lives to conceal their activities from the outside world.
"The conditions under which the ISG is working are not very conducive," one official said. "But this president wants the truth to come out. This is not an exercise in spinning or censoring."
Posted by 4Art on :
The inspectors were not allowed to complete their work. End of story.
Posted by 4Art on :
Wrong!
RICE: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: 4Art, I don't believe Rice every spoke of a mushroom cloud scenario.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
The inspectors had 7 years, from 1991 to 1998 Hussein had 4 years to hide everything without supervision 1998 to 2002.
They never did see what they documented from 1991 to 1998 nor did they find any evidence of its destruction. End of story.
Posted by 4Art on :
Wrong!
RICE: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: 4Art, I don't believe Rice every spoke of a mushroom cloud scenario.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
Yes, she didn't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. He did not yet possess nuclear weapons. What's your point? You take that little sentence and create a "scenario" out of it. Interesting.
2 minutes to read my 7:31pm post is really good. I read it myself and it took 5. Or did you just skip over it?
Posted by 4Art on :
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: 4Art, I don't believe Rice every spoke of a mushroom cloud scenario.
Posted by turbokid on :
aragorn243: in my post i talked about the al samoud 2 missles and i also said that they were being destroyed. in your post it says: "For the British and the Americans this may be as close to a smoking gun as they are going to get
In a move seen as key test of the Iraqi's willingness to comply with the inspectors Mr Blix demanded their destruction - a task which has now begun.
This limit was set by the UN after the last Gulf war as part of the stringent efforts to contain Iraq's weapons programmes.
The development of long-range missiles capable of delivering chemical, biological, and even nuclear warheads, was seen as one of Saddam Hussein's central strategic goals.
He had already used his existing missile force against Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, with conventional warheads.
It was expected that over time, Iraqi scientists would develop increasingly accurate missiles with greater ranges and payloads."
the UN teams acknowledged this and saw that they were destroyed and there was no ability for them to be repaired or improved. As posted below.
Iraq Says It's Destroying More Missiles By Bassem Mroue Associated Press March 3, 2003
Iraq was destroying at least seven more Al Samoud 2 missiles on Monday, quickening the pace in an attempt to avoid war. U.N. weapons inspectors said Iraq would hand over a report about its unilateral destruction of anthrax and VX nerve agent.
Odai al-Taie, an Information Ministry official, said Iraq had begun destroying more Al Samoud 2 missiles at 9 a.m., and expected to destroy between seven and nine on Monday. With weapons inspectors supervising the work, Iraq crushed four missiles on Saturday and another six on Sunday. It also destroyed two casting chambers used to make engines for another kind of missile, the Al Fatah.
Iraq said it would submit a detailed written report to the weapons inspectors in about a week with a proposal for verifying its claims that it unilaterally destroyed anthrax stores and about 1.5 tons of VX, a deadly nerve agent, inspectors' spokesman Hiro Ueki said Monday.
Saddam Hussein's scientific adviser, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, said Sunday night that Iraq wanted to use DNA testing to help determine the characteristics of the destroyed anthrax. The weapons inspectors went Monday to a chemical and explosives plant and a rocket factory where they have been before, and to two import companies and a plastics factory, Iraq's Information Ministry said. The inspectors do not comment on their day's work until evening.
Iraq also said inspectors returned to al-Aziziya, an abandoned helicopter airfield 60 miles southeast of Baghdad, where Iraq says it destroyed R-400 bombs filled with biological weapons in 1991. Al-Saadi said 157 of the R-400 bombs contained anthrax, aflotoxin and botulin toxin. He said Iraq has been excavating them and so far has uncovered eight intact bombs, as well as many fragments of destroyed bombs.
On Sunday, U.N. weapons inspectors took samples of the material in the bombs to confirm their composition. The destruction of the Al Samoud 2 missiles complies with an order from chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who said they exceeded the 93-mile range set by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War.
The casting chambers had been banned and destroyed in the 1990s, but Iraq rebuilt them. Blix's deputy, Demetrius Perricos, said this time they are destroying them in a manner in which they can't be rebuilt. Calling the missile destruction "proactive cooperation from the Iraqi side," al-Saadi said Sunday night that "We hope that it will be to the satisfaction of UNMOVIC," the U.N. inspections program.
But al-Saadi said that if the United States indicated it would go to war anyway, Iraq might stop destroying the missiles. "If it turns out at an early stage during this month that America is not going to a legal way, then why should we continue?" he said.
The United States, which is leading the push for war against Iraq, had dismissed the missile destruction. The White House called it part of Iraq's "game of deception." Iraq has agreed to destroy all unassembled pieces, software, launchers, fuel and equipment used to make the Al Samoud 2 in "a few days or a very short few weeks," according to Perricos.
it looks to me like they were destroying the weapons they admitted to having to me. Its not like they had the missles, lied about them and kept building them. We knew about them, had them destroyed and we still invade. Sounds like a good tactic to me, disarm your enemy using the UN as a tool and attack them knowing full well they are defenseless.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
Did you just skip over my post of 7:31pm?
Posted by 4Art on :
That sums it up nicely, turbokid: "Disarm your enemy using the UN as a tool and attack them knowing full well they are defenseless."
Posted by 4Art on :
No. I'm a speed reader. Admit you were wrong about Rice, and I'll comment further. Now, please reply to turbokid's brilliant post. He deserves a response.
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: 4Art,
Did you just skip over my post of 7:31pm?
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Turbokid,
Did they destroy all or just some? Sounds like some to me. It is interesting that you at this point admit that Iraq had WMD's at the time of the attack. That Iraq was in the process of digging them up to show to the inspectors. Don't you even consider that these were probably stored in many different locations, not just the one that they were digging up? And why were they digging them up, they weren't even supposed to have them and had claimed they did not possess them.
Posted by 4Art on :
quote:Originally posted by turbokid: aragorn243: in my post i talked about the al samoud 2 missles and i also said that they were being destroyed. in your post it says: "For the British and the Americans this may be as close to a smoking gun as they are going to get
In a move seen as key test of the Iraqi's willingness to comply with the inspectors Mr Blix demanded their destruction - a task which has now begun.
This limit was set by the UN after the last Gulf war as part of the stringent efforts to contain Iraq's weapons programmes.
The development of long-range missiles capable of delivering chemical, biological, and even nuclear warheads, was seen as one of Saddam Hussein's central strategic goals.
He had already used his existing missile force against Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, with conventional warheads.
It was expected that over time, Iraqi scientists would develop increasingly accurate missiles with greater ranges and payloads."
the UN teams acknowledged this and saw that they were destroyed and there was no ability for them to be repaired or improved. As posted below.
Iraq Says It's Destroying More Missiles By Bassem Mroue Associated Press March 3, 2003
Iraq was destroying at least seven more Al Samoud 2 missiles on Monday, quickening the pace in an attempt to avoid war. U.N. weapons inspectors said Iraq would hand over a report about its unilateral destruction of anthrax and VX nerve agent.
Odai al-Taie, an Information Ministry official, said Iraq had begun destroying more Al Samoud 2 missiles at 9 a.m., and expected to destroy between seven and nine on Monday. With weapons inspectors supervising the work, Iraq crushed four missiles on Saturday and another six on Sunday. It also destroyed two casting chambers used to make engines for another kind of missile, the Al Fatah.
Iraq said it would submit a detailed written report to the weapons inspectors in about a week with a proposal for verifying its claims that it unilaterally destroyed anthrax stores and about 1.5 tons of VX, a deadly nerve agent, inspectors' spokesman Hiro Ueki said Monday.
Saddam Hussein's scientific adviser, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, said Sunday night that Iraq wanted to use DNA testing to help determine the characteristics of the destroyed anthrax. The weapons inspectors went Monday to a chemical and explosives plant and a rocket factory where they have been before, and to two import companies and a plastics factory, Iraq's Information Ministry said. The inspectors do not comment on their day's work until evening.
Iraq also said inspectors returned to al-Aziziya, an abandoned helicopter airfield 60 miles southeast of Baghdad, where Iraq says it destroyed R-400 bombs filled with biological weapons in 1991. Al-Saadi said 157 of the R-400 bombs contained anthrax, aflotoxin and botulin toxin. He said Iraq has been excavating them and so far has uncovered eight intact bombs, as well as many fragments of destroyed bombs.
On Sunday, U.N. weapons inspectors took samples of the material in the bombs to confirm their composition. The destruction of the Al Samoud 2 missiles complies with an order from chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who said they exceeded the 93-mile range set by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War.
The casting chambers had been banned and destroyed in the 1990s, but Iraq rebuilt them. Blix's deputy, Demetrius Perricos, said this time they are destroying them in a manner in which they can't be rebuilt. Calling the missile destruction "proactive cooperation from the Iraqi side," al-Saadi said Sunday night that "We hope that it will be to the satisfaction of UNMOVIC," the U.N. inspections program.
But al-Saadi said that if the United States indicated it would go to war anyway, Iraq might stop destroying the missiles. "If it turns out at an early stage during this month that America is not going to a legal way, then why should we continue?" he said.
The United States, which is leading the push for war against Iraq, had dismissed the missile destruction. The White House called it part of Iraq's "game of deception." Iraq has agreed to destroy all unassembled pieces, software, launchers, fuel and equipment used to make the Al Samoud 2 in "a few days or a very short few weeks," according to Perricos.
it looks to me like they were destroying the weapons they admitted to having to me. Its not like they had the missles, lied about them and kept building them. We knew about them, had them destroyed and we still invade. Sounds like a good tactic to me, disarm your enemy using the UN as a tool and attack them knowing full well they are defenseless.
Posted by 4Art on :
That sums it up nicely, turbokid: "Disarm your enemy using the UN as a tool and attack them knowing full well they are defenseless."
Home of the brave?
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
Sorry but I don't consider the mention of a mushroom cloud as the creation of a scenario. You obviously do. I consider a scenario from a government official to be a more detailed description of potential or event planning than an off hand remark.
As for responding to any other poster, I will do that in my own time and manner.
Posted by 4Art on :
Search for "Rice mushroom cloud" on Google.
You've been so wrong about so many things for so long that I now just hope it's not terminal. LOL
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
You saying I'm wrong doesn't make me wrong. LOL
I did the google search and came up with numerous references to the same sentence. Still no scenario.
You want to get back to the real discussion or stick with this change of subject?
You read the post of 7:31pm and get back to me. I'm going out into the real world for a while.
Posted by 4Art on :
Good! Now google "failure" and see what comes up #1.
The real topic is: Soldiers in Iraq Call for War's End, Impeachment.
Posted by shlik on :
The US gave all poison gas to sadam, helped him deploy it, in Iran, Looked the other way when he gassed the kurds. The US blocked the UN when it tried to condemn the use of chemical weapons.
Posted by turbokid on :
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: Turbokid,
Did they destroy all or just some? Sounds like some to me. It is interesting that you at this point admit that Iraq had WMD's at the time of the attack. That Iraq was in the process of digging them up to show to the inspectors. Don't you even consider that these were probably stored in many different locations, not just the one that they were digging up? And why were they digging them up, they weren't even supposed to have them and had claimed they did not possess them.
I dont think they said they never possesed the weapons we knew they had them because we gave them to them in the 80's.
"In an October 1, 2002, article entitled “Iraq Got Germs for Weapons Program from U.S. in ’80s,” Associated Press writer Matt Kelly wrote,
[The] Iraqi bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records that are getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, saying it needed them for legitimate medical research.
The CDC and a biological-sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin, and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including West Nile virus.
The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States backed Iraq in its war against Iran."
"An eight-year-old Senate report confirms that disease-producing and poisonous materials were exported, under U.S. government license, to Iraq from 1985 to 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war. Furthermore, the report adds, the American-exported materials were identical to microorganisms destroyed by United Nations inspectors after the Gulf War. The shipments were approved despite allegations that Saddam used biological weapons against Kurdish rebels and (according to the current official U.S. position) initiated war with Iran"
so i reiterate, the weapons were were ordering iraq to destroy were weapons we supplied them with in the first place. we knew full well that they had those weapons. The question was, did they expand their research and development program to have the ability to deploy weapons on US cities or mid eastern allies, and according to all UN inspectors reports this answer was a definate NO.
source:http://www.fff.org/comment/com0406g.asp
Posted by shlik on :
In the drizzly late afternoon of April 16, the villagers had returned home from the fields and were preparing dinner when they heard the drone of aircraft approaching. Some stayed put in their houses; others made it as far as their air-raid shelters before the planes, a dozen of them, came in sight, wheeling low over the two villages to unload their bombs. There were a number of muffled explosions.
Until this moment no government had ever used chemical weapons against its own civilian population. But the plummeting enlistment rate among Iranian volunteers over the previous year, when poison gas was widely used on the battlefield, was vivid testimony to the Iraqi government of the power of this forbidden weapon to instil terror. More gruesome yet was the decision to record the event on videotape.
The Iraqi regime had long conducted its record-keeping in meticulous fashion. (Those in neighboring countries say, only half-jokingly, that the Iraqis are the "Prussians of the Middle East.")20 From the grandest decree to the most trivial matter, all the business of the security forces was recorded in letters and telegrams, dated, numbered and rubber-stamped on receipt. Even when an original command carried a high security classification, abundant numbers of handwritten or typed copies were later prepared, to be handed down the chain of command and filed, the writers apparently confident that prying eyes would never see these secrets. In the mid-1980s, the Iraqi security services developed a fascination for video technology as a valuable new form of record-keeping. The actions of the security forces were now to be routinely documented on tape: village clearances, executions of captured peshmerga, even chemical weapons attacks on civilians.
The official videotape of the Balisan Valley bombing, reportedly made by a member of the jahsh, shows towering columns and broad, drifting clouds of white, gray and pinkish smoke. A cool evening breeze was blowing off the mountains, and it brought strange smells--pleasant ones at first, suggestive of roses and flowers, or, to others, apples and garlic. Other witnesses still say there was the less attractive odor of insecticide. But then, said one elderly woman from Balisan, "It was all dark, covered with darkness, we could not see anything, and were not able to see each other. It was like fog. And then everyone became blind." Some vomited. Faces turned black; people experienced painful swellings under the arms, and women under their breasts. Later, a yellow watery discharge would ooze from the eyes and nose. Many of those who survived suffered severe vision disturbances, or total blindness, for up to a month. In Sheikh Wasan, survivors watched as a woman staggered around blindly, clutching her dead child, and not realizing it was dead. Some villagers ran into the mountains and died there. Others, who had been closer to the place of impact of the bombs, died where they stood.21 One witness, a peshmerga, told MiddleEast Watch that a second attack followed an hour later, this one conducted by a fleet of helicopters.22
The few fighters who had been at home when the raid occurred were taken by the PUK for treatment in Iran, fearing that they would not survive a visit to an Iraqi hospital. (The presence of peshmerga in the village is, one should add, quite irrelevant from a legal point of view. By their very nature, chemical weapons make no distinction between civilian and military targets, and their use is outlawed under any circumstances.)23
The following morning, ground troops and jahsh entered Balisan, looted the villagers' deserted homes and razed them to the ground. The same day, or perhaps a day later--having presumably left sufficient time for the gas to dissipate--army engineers dynamited and bulldozed Sheikh Wasan. But the surviving inhabitants had already fled during the night of the attack. Some made their way to the city of Suleimaniyeh, and a few to Shaqlawa. But most headed southeast, to the town of Raniya, where there was a hospital. They were helped on their way by people from neighboring villages, some of which--including Barukawa, Beiro, Kaniberd and Tutma--had also suffered from the effects of the windborne gas.
Posted by shlik on :
the helecopters were suplied by the US
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Do you really expect people to believe that the United States provided Iraq with biological weapons, mustard gas, sarin and the means to deliver these agents?
CDC transfers probably did occur, for research purposes. I would be interested in the full details of this transfer if you have access to it.
As for the mustard gas, sarin and the means of delivery, you're fantasizing.
Posted by glassman on :
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: Do you really expect people to believe that the United States provided Iraq with biological weapons, mustard gas, sarin and the means to deliver these agents?
CDC transfers probably did occur, for research purposes. I would be interested in the full details of this transfer if you have access to it.
As for the mustard gas, sarin and the means of delivery, you're fantasizing.
strider? you are joking right?
January 28, 2003
Army gave chem-bio warfare training to Iraqis
By David Ruppe, Global Security Newswire
The U.S. Army trained 19 Iraqi military officers in the United States in offensive and defensive chemical, biological and radiological warfare from 1957 to 1967, according to an official Army letter published in the late 1960s.
--------------------------------------------------- Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
SIPRI FACT SHEET Chemical Weapons I May 1984 Authors: Julian Perry Robinson and Jozef Goldblat
NB: This material may be quoted freely, with attribution to SIPRI. CHEMICAL WARFARE IN THE IRAQ-IRAN WAR
ORIGIN OF THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS
The UN report provides only negative evidence of the origin of the mustard gas sample. The absence in the sample analysed in Sweden and Switzerland of polysulphides and of more than a trace of sulphur indicates that it is not of past US-government manufacture, for all US mustard was made by the Levinstein process from ethylene and mixed sulphur chlorides. That process is also said to have been the one used by the USSR. From similar reasoning, British-made mustard, too, can probably be ruled out, even though substantial stocks were once held at British depots in the Middle East. For more positive evidence other sources of information must be used.
----------------------------------------- Mark Phythian, in his book Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War Machine" (Northeastern University Press, 1997) stated:
" the Secretaries of Commerce and State (George Baldridge and George Shultz) lobbied the NSC (National Security Council) advisor into agreeing to the sale to Iraq of 10 Bell helicopters, officially for crop spraying. It is believed that US-supplied choppers were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village Halabja, which killed 5000 people." -------------------------------------------------- It is public record that the U.S. not only armed Iraq from 1983 thru August 1, 1990, but that they also provided the money to Iraq to purchase the weapons via the Atlanta branch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), George Bush, Sr., and the Export-Import Bank. Iraq received $5 Billion dollars funneled through the Commercial Credit Corporation ostensibly for food credits. It is also public information that at least $2 Billion dollars from the defaulted loan was repaid by the U.S. citizen taxpayers. Posted by glassman on :
i know this is a long report strider but if you still don't believe after you readit? you have a closed mind.... all of these agents were made available by our govt...
The Riegle Report
U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Gulf War A Report of Chairman Donald W. Riegle, Jr. and Ranking Member Alfonse M. D'Amato of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration
United States Senate, 103d Congress, 2d Session May 25, 1994 Chapter 1, Part 2 Vesicants and Blood Agents Blister Agents Related Chemical Agent Information Biotoxins Biological Warfare Capability U.S. Exports of Biological Materials to Iraq UNSCOM Biological Warfare Inspections U.S. Exports of Biological Materials to Iraq
The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs has oversight responsibility for the Export Administration Act. Pursuant to the Act, Committee staff contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce and requested information on the export of biological materials during the years prior to the Gulf War. After receiving this information, we contacted a principal supplier of these materials to determine what, if any, materials were exported to Iraq which might have contributed to an offensive or defensive biological warfare program. Records available from the supplier for the period from 1985 until the present show that during this time, pathogenic (meaning "disease producing"), toxigenic (meaning "poisonous"), and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Records prior to 1985 were not available, according to the supplier. These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction. According to the Department of Defense's own Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, released in April 1992: "By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq had developed biological weapons. It's advanced and aggressive biological warfare program was the most advanced in the Arab world... The program probably began late in the 1970's and concentrated on the development of two agents, botulinum toxin and anthrax bacteria... Large scale production of these agents began in 1989 at four facilities in Baghdad. Delivery means for biological agents ranged from simple aerial bombs and artillery rockets to surface-to-surface missiles."
Included in the approved sales are the following biological materials (which have been considered by various nations for use in war), with their associated disease symptoms:
Bacillus Anthracis: anthrax is a disease producing bacteria identified by the Department of Defense in The Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Contress, as being a major component in the Iraqi biological warfare program.
Anthrax is an often fatal infectious disease due to ingestion of spores. It begins abruptly with high fever, difficulty in breathing, and chest pain. The disease eventually results in septicemia (blood poisoning), and the mortality is high. Once septicemia is advanced, antibiotic therapy may prove useless, probably because the exotoxins remain, despite the death of the bacteria.
Clostridium Botulinum: A bacterial source of botulinum toxin, which causes vomiting, constipation, thirst, general weakness, headache, fever, dizziness, double vision, dilation of the pupils and paralysis of the muscles involving swallowing. It is often fatal.
Histoplasma Capsulatum: causes a disease superfically resembling tuberculosis that may cause pneumonia, enlargement of the liver and spleen, anemia, an influenza like illness and an acute inflammatory skin disease marked by tender red nodules, usually on the shins. Reactivated infection usually involves the lungs, the brain, spinal membranes, heart, peritoneum, and the adrenals.
Brucella Melitensis: a bacteria which can cause chronic fatique, loss of appetite, profuse sweating when at rest, pain in joints and muscles, insomnia, nausea, and damage to major organs.
Clostridium Perfringens: a highly toxic bateria which causes gas gangrene. The bacteria produce toxins that move along muscle bundles in the body killing cells and producing necrotic tissue that is then favorable for further growth of the bacteria itself. Eventually, these toxins and bacteria enter the bloodstream and cause a systemic illness.
In addition, several shipments of Escherichia Coli (E. Coli) and genetic materials, as well as human and bacterial DNA, were shipped directly to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.
The following is a detailed listing of biological materials, provided by the American Type Culture Collection, which were exported to agencies of the government of Iraq pursuant to the issueance of an export licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department:
Date : February 8, 1985 Sent To : Iraq Atomic Energy Agency Materials Shipped:
Ustilago nuda (Jensen) Rostrup
Date : February 22, 1985 Sent To : Ministry of Higher Education Materials Shipped:
Histoplasma capsulatum var. farciminosum (ATCC 32136) Class III pathogen
Date : July 11, 1985 Sent To : Middle and Near East Regional A Material Shipped:
Histoplasma capsulatum var. farciminosum (ATCC 32136) Class III pathogen
Date : May 2, 1986 Sent To : Ministry of Higher Education Materials Shipped:
1. Bacillus Anthracis Cohn (ATCC 10) Batch # 08-20-82 (2 each) Class III pathogen
Date : January 17, 1989 Sent To : Iraq Atomic Energy Commission Materials Shipped:
1. Hulambda4x-8, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) Chromosomes(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57237) Phage vector; Suggested host: E. coli
2. Hulambda14, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57540), Cloned from human lymphoblast, Phase vector Suggested host: E. coli
3. Hulambda15, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57241) Phage vector; Suggested host: E. coli
Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control has compiled a listing of biological materials shipped to Iraq prior to the Gulf War. The listing covers the period from October 1, 1984 (when the CDC began keeping records) through October 13, 1993. The following materials with biological warfare significance were shipped to Iraq during this period.
Date : November 28, 1989 Sent To : University of Basrah, College of Science, Department of Biology Materials Shipped:
1. Enterococcus faecalis
2. Enterococcus faecium
3. Enterococcus avium
4. Enterococcus raffinosus
5. Enteroccus gallinarium
6. Enterococcus durans
7. Enteroccus hirae
8. Streptococcus bovis (etiologic)
Date : April 21, 1986 Sent To : Officers City Al-Muthanna, Quartret 710, Street 13, Close 69, House 28/I, Baghdad, Iraq Materials Shipped:
1. 1 vial botulinum toxoid (non-infectious)
Date : March 10, 1986 Sent To : Officers City Al-Muthanna, Quartret 710, Street 13, Close 69 House 28/I, Baghdad, Iraq Materials Shipped:
1. 1 vial botulinum toxoid #A2 (non-infectious)
Date : June 25, 1985 Sent To : University of Baghdad, College of Medicine, Department of Microbiology Materials Shipped:
1. 3 years cultures (etiologic) Candida sp.
Date : May 21, 1985 Sent To : Basrah, Iraq Materials Shipped:
1. Lyophilized arbovirus seed (etiologic)
2. West Nile Fever Virus
Date : April 26, 1985 Sent To : Minister of Health, Ministry of Health, Baghdad, Iraq Materials Shipped:
1. 8 vials antigen and antisera (r. rickettsii and r. typhi) to diagnose rickettsial infections (non-infectious)
did you note #1, 2,and 5 of the August 31, 1987 shipment ???
there is only one use for that and several of the other "specimenns", but that one is the one they used to try to really scare us....
5. Bacillus anthracis (ATCC 8705) Batch # 06-27-62 (3 each) Class III pathogen
Posted by glassman on :
tracking down and isolating the precursor chemicals to sarin and mustard is a little more legwork, but we did supply them....
and?
sadam believed he had the green light to RE-annex Kuwait when he invaded them too....
Posted by 4Art on :
Aragorn243 is never wrong. Posted by glassman on :
Date : May 21, 1985 Sent To : Basrah, Iraq Materials Shipped:
1. Lyophilized arbovirus seed (etiologic) 2. West Nile Fever Virus
now that one really makes ya wonder huh?????
this book here? i don't recomend you read it if you suffer from RANT's (random automatic negative thoughts)
Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It (Paperback) by Ken Alibek, Stephen Handelman "Late in the winter of 1988, I was called to a meeting at Soviet army headquarters on Frunze Street in Moscow..." (more) SIPs: myelin toxin, anthrax production, smallpox weapon, plague weapon, biological warfare program (more)
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Glassman,
Do you even know what chemical weapons training is? I do. I was a nuclear, biological, chemical officer for two different army units for a period of 7 years. We continue to train foreign officers in this type of warfare because it is a fact of life that other nations have these capabilities and there must be defences against them. To create a defense, you must learn the possible deployment options.
Anything can be worded to sound ominous, the wording doesn't make it so.
The same with crop dusting helicopters. Iraq isn't allowed to have crop dusting helicopters? You make it sound like we purposely gave them helicopters for spraying troops when we actually gave them the helicopters for say........crop dusting?
The public record does show who armed Iraq and it wasn't the United States. The public record shows we provided Iraq with 5 airliners and a $400 million credit guarentee. Iraq obtained its weapons from France and the Soviet Union.
As for the chemicals and biological agents sent to Iraq. None of them are in substantial enough quantities to be "weapons". Thus we did not provide Iraq with WMD's as you claim. There is no sarin, there is no mustard gas. What I see when I read the list is nothing more than the same items passed from research facility to research facility, nation to nation all the time. Research must be done using these items to protect against them, most occur naturally in nature and this research is a standard preventative health measure.
I'm sure you are familier with the concept that as bacteria passes from one host to another and it is subjected to various "cures", some survive thus creating stronger strains. Constant research needs to be done to try to stay one step ahead of the next major outbreak of fatal illness.
We probably did send the precourser chemicals for sarin and mustard gas to Iraq. Chemicals are used for dozens of different applications in industry. Some have no substitutes. It's how they are combined that determine the results. If we send someone fertilizer because they say they have a farm and plan to grow crops and they create a bomb and blow up their neighbors house is it our fault? These chemicals have valid civilian uses and are not on prohibited shipping lists.
West nile virus doesn't make me wonder at all. We have cases of that right here where I live. It is transmitted by birds and is a potentially serious problem. So far we are averaging less than a dozen cases a year but there have been fatalities. As Iraq is much closer to the source than the United States, it only makes sense that they have the ability to do research on this virus to prevent outbreaks among their own people.
One thing you need to understand is that biological agents are not very effective in a desert environment. Chemical agents have limited effectiveness as well. The heat and the dryness act very quickly to neutralize the agents, one reason field tests have shown positive and lab tests have not. By the time they get to the lab, the agent as been neutralized. Biological agents to be effective need a vector. Vectors are very unpredictable. Vectors include birds, rats, fleas, mosquitoes, etc. Wind can be considered a vector for only a few biological agents, contact with air kills most of them. You can also contaminate the supply source such as a food stockpile or a well.
Chemical agents are most effective at night or early morning when the air is cooler and more damp. Helicopters do not make good dispersal agents as they provide obvious and early warning (you can see the spray), must fly very close to the ground and are very vulnerable to being shot down. Use against unarmed civilians would work, against armed troops would not.
So yes, we probably did send all those things to Iraq, just as we sent them to dozens of other nations, for the intent of research into civilian applications. One fault the United States has always had is we tend to be naive about what some people will do with what we provide them. Iraq may have used these to create thier WMD programs but that does not prove that is why we sent the items to them.
Posted by bdgee on :
No, 4Art, just the Republican extreme.
Posted by 4Art on :
What doesn't bend, breaks.
Posted by bdgee on :
Even God?
Posted by 4Art on :
God is different for everyone. Therefore She is flexible.
Posted by bdgee on :
I always prefered that my chicks to be very flexible....lol...
Posted by bdgee on :
And understanding!
Posted by 4Art on :
Good information, Glass.
quote:Originally posted by glassman: i know this is a long report strider but if you still don't believe after you readit? you have a closed mind.... all of these agents were made available by our govt...
The Riegle Report
U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Gulf War A Report of Chairman Donald W. Riegle, Jr. and Ranking Member Alfonse M. D'Amato of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration
United States Senate, 103d Congress, 2d Session May 25, 1994 Chapter 1, Part 2 Vesicants and Blood Agents Blister Agents Related Chemical Agent Information Biotoxins Biological Warfare Capability U.S. Exports of Biological Materials to Iraq UNSCOM Biological Warfare Inspections U.S. Exports of Biological Materials to Iraq
The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs has oversight responsibility for the Export Administration Act. Pursuant to the Act, Committee staff contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce and requested information on the export of biological materials during the years prior to the Gulf War. After receiving this information, we contacted a principal supplier of these materials to determine what, if any, materials were exported to Iraq which might have contributed to an offensive or defensive biological warfare program. Records available from the supplier for the period from 1985 until the present show that during this time, pathogenic (meaning "disease producing"), toxigenic (meaning "poisonous"), and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Records prior to 1985 were not available, according to the supplier. These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction. According to the Department of Defense's own Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, released in April 1992: "By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq had developed biological weapons. It's advanced and aggressive biological warfare program was the most advanced in the Arab world... The program probably began late in the 1970's and concentrated on the development of two agents, botulinum toxin and anthrax bacteria... Large scale production of these agents began in 1989 at four facilities in Baghdad. Delivery means for biological agents ranged from simple aerial bombs and artillery rockets to surface-to-surface missiles."
Included in the approved sales are the following biological materials (which have been considered by various nations for use in war), with their associated disease symptoms:
Bacillus Anthracis: anthrax is a disease producing bacteria identified by the Department of Defense in The Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Contress, as being a major component in the Iraqi biological warfare program.
Anthrax is an often fatal infectious disease due to ingestion of spores. It begins abruptly with high fever, difficulty in breathing, and chest pain. The disease eventually results in septicemia (blood poisoning), and the mortality is high. Once septicemia is advanced, antibiotic therapy may prove useless, probably because the exotoxins remain, despite the death of the bacteria.
Clostridium Botulinum: A bacterial source of botulinum toxin, which causes vomiting, constipation, thirst, general weakness, headache, fever, dizziness, double vision, dilation of the pupils and paralysis of the muscles involving swallowing. It is often fatal.
Histoplasma Capsulatum: causes a disease superfically resembling tuberculosis that may cause pneumonia, enlargement of the liver and spleen, anemia, an influenza like illness and an acute inflammatory skin disease marked by tender red nodules, usually on the shins. Reactivated infection usually involves the lungs, the brain, spinal membranes, heart, peritoneum, and the adrenals.
Brucella Melitensis: a bacteria which can cause chronic fatique, loss of appetite, profuse sweating when at rest, pain in joints and muscles, insomnia, nausea, and damage to major organs.
Clostridium Perfringens: a highly toxic bateria which causes gas gangrene. The bacteria produce toxins that move along muscle bundles in the body killing cells and producing necrotic tissue that is then favorable for further growth of the bacteria itself. Eventually, these toxins and bacteria enter the bloodstream and cause a systemic illness.
In addition, several shipments of Escherichia Coli (E. Coli) and genetic materials, as well as human and bacterial DNA, were shipped directly to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission.
The following is a detailed listing of biological materials, provided by the American Type Culture Collection, which were exported to agencies of the government of Iraq pursuant to the issueance of an export licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department:
Date : February 8, 1985 Sent To : Iraq Atomic Energy Agency Materials Shipped:
Ustilago nuda (Jensen) Rostrup
Date : February 22, 1985 Sent To : Ministry of Higher Education Materials Shipped:
Histoplasma capsulatum var. farciminosum (ATCC 32136) Class III pathogen
Date : July 11, 1985 Sent To : Middle and Near East Regional A Material Shipped:
Histoplasma capsulatum var. farciminosum (ATCC 32136) Class III pathogen
Date : May 2, 1986 Sent To : Ministry of Higher Education Materials Shipped:
1. Bacillus Anthracis Cohn (ATCC 10) Batch # 08-20-82 (2 each) Class III pathogen
Date : January 17, 1989 Sent To : Iraq Atomic Energy Commission Materials Shipped:
1. Hulambda4x-8, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) Chromosomes(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57237) Phage vector; Suggested host: E. coli
2. Hulambda14, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57540), Cloned from human lymphoblast, Phase vector Suggested host: E. coli
3. Hulambda15, clone: human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) Chromosome(s): X q26.1 (ATCC 57241) Phage vector; Suggested host: E. coli
Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control has compiled a listing of biological materials shipped to Iraq prior to the Gulf War. The listing covers the period from October 1, 1984 (when the CDC began keeping records) through October 13, 1993. The following materials with biological warfare significance were shipped to Iraq during this period.
Date : November 28, 1989 Sent To : University of Basrah, College of Science, Department of Biology Materials Shipped:
1. Enterococcus faecalis
2. Enterococcus faecium
3. Enterococcus avium
4. Enterococcus raffinosus
5. Enteroccus gallinarium
6. Enterococcus durans
7. Enteroccus hirae
8. Streptococcus bovis (etiologic)
Date : April 21, 1986 Sent To : Officers City Al-Muthanna, Quartret 710, Street 13, Close 69, House 28/I, Baghdad, Iraq Materials Shipped:
1. 1 vial botulinum toxoid (non-infectious)
Date : March 10, 1986 Sent To : Officers City Al-Muthanna, Quartret 710, Street 13, Close 69 House 28/I, Baghdad, Iraq Materials Shipped:
1. 1 vial botulinum toxoid #A2 (non-infectious)
Date : June 25, 1985 Sent To : University of Baghdad, College of Medicine, Department of Microbiology Materials Shipped:
1. 3 years cultures (etiologic) Candida sp.
Date : May 21, 1985 Sent To : Basrah, Iraq Materials Shipped:
1. Lyophilized arbovirus seed (etiologic)
2. West Nile Fever Virus
Date : April 26, 1985 Sent To : Minister of Health, Ministry of Health, Baghdad, Iraq Materials Shipped:
1. 8 vials antigen and antisera (r. rickettsii and r. typhi) to diagnose rickettsial infections (non-infectious)
strider? i don't care if you do claim to be a . a nuclear, biological, chemical officer for two different army units for a period of 7 years
you have a closed mind...
if you really were what you are claiming then you'll know what i mean when i tell i was a "keyholder" and i am closely related to a vector biologist who is also an expert in molecular biology and i read Science on a regular basis...
so much for the pi$$ing contest.....
you couldn't possibly have been "in a key role" if you are saying we didn't supply, and encourage Iraq to develop and use the WMD..... we may not have shipped them the finished product? but we made sure they could do it... and? we made sure Pakistan could too..we friggin trained their scientists, and they are the ones that sold the crap to N Korea....
and i do know what the training i mentioned entails..all good training involves BOTH offensive and defensive measure so that you have a comprehensive understanding of how to wage war.... sheeshh that's just basic to miltraining...
i know a lot more about WNV than i want to, and a few other vector born diseases... i even know how the WNV got into the US (according to the "experts") it doesn't matter... we DID send the cultures to them and if you had been reading here for the last year? you would have seen that i agree with you about the uselessness of MOST of the supposed WMD agent, and that is my argument why the war was started using a pack of lies.....and i have been posting that position for over a year now...
if you really analysed what you read? you would have noted who the delivery of the Anthrax was too, but i think you just gloss over what you don't want to see.....
weaponised anthrax is only useful in a powder form so difficult to produce that nobody can "cook it in their kitchen" without killing themselves anyway....
Iraq was already lame and under control, now we have a problem.... a real expensive problem, what a waste...
Posted by Wallace#1 on :
GO! GO! Glass.
Posted by glassman on :
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: [QB] Glassman,
How long do you think diplomacy should go on?
Diplomacy goes on FOREVER as long as there is no imminent threat of attack...guess what? the PROOF is IN: there was no imminent threat of attack, and there is NOW plenty of public evidence that this was KNOWN at the highest levels...all you have to do is look for it...
furthermore? i noted in an early post in this thread
Glassman,
The deaths caused by Hussein are documented. They've been digging up the mass graves all over Iraq. There are reports that the true numbers are 5 million dead attributed to Hussein, mostly ****es, with some Kurds.
that you are fond of quoting Shia news sources as reliable ( see hundreds of thousands murdered in Iraq) LOL you are quoting the enemy (Iran = Shia) for your supposedly credible intel.... that is sad....
.... that is how we got into this mess in the first place...once again i say IRAN has engineered this war ....
funny i just found this at the end of the "propaganda" article too ROFLMAO Disclaimer: This article is provided by the person mentioned above. Shia News is not responsible for the contents of this article.
Search The Shia News
[ October 15, 2005, 15:52: Message edited by: glassman ]
Posted by bdgee on :
Such a pitiful show. He has no idea who Big Brother is and runs about shaking an extreamly questionable resume in the face of people who have legitimate hefty ones and expect them to be impressed with his quasi-name-dropping.
Wonder what his major was? Somehow I doubt it required just a whole lot of science and he provided evidence it didn't include much in the way of literature.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Glassman,
No, I have a very open mind, I simply don't see subterfuge behind every bush literally and figuratively.
I have no idea what you are talking about in being a keyholder, that term means nothing to me. I also have a degree in Biology, which was the main reason I became the nuclear, biological, chemical officer of the various units I belonged to.
I want to see the evidence that we purposely supplied any of those items with the intent to create WMD's. The United States has a policy of no use on Biologicals, and no first use of Chemicals. We also have a policy of non-proliferation of any of the three.
Their scientists came to our universities, just as they still come to our universities from all over the world. That's because our universities are often better than theirs, it isn't because OUR GOVERMENT is training them to build nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
I haven't been reading here for the past year. I've been reading for the past 3 or 4 days so unfortunately, I have no idea who is standing for what in here until I see a post from them.
If I read your post correctly, the anthrax was shipped to the ministry of trade. I'm missing the subterfuge here. Who do you believe should have gotten it?
No, diplomacy doesn't go on forever. We tried that numerous times throughout history and in the most recent similar situation it failed miserably and led to the deaths of anywhere between 40-60 million people. Had France and Britain done to Hitler what we did to Hussein, WWII never would have occured. Instead, they chose the diplomatic route, they chose appeasment. They chose to ignore blatent violations of the Treaty of Versaise and the League of Nations was shown to be a weak body that had no power whatsoever. The parallels are there and obvious to anyone with an open mind.
Hussein sought power, he sought control over his neighbors. He invaded Kuwait. This time we showed some balls and pushed him back. We then gave him a chance he didn't deserve. We placed conditions on him which he first ignored and then finally cut us off completely from the ability to supervise him. The WMD's disappeared in the meantime.
I have seen no proof that the government knew he posed no threat. You have presented opinion pieces and reports from individuals who have since been determined to be unreliable at best and outright liers at worst. But then again, the counter is that it is alwasy a right wing conspiracy to discredit these individuals. Convenient.
Shia news was the first link to come up, I felt is was sufficient.
Here's a quote from Tony Blair:
"We've already discovered just so far the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair on November 20 in London.
And several other organizations:
The United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) all estimate that Saddam Hussein's regime murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. "Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been 'disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades," said the group in a statement in May. "Many of these 'disappeared' are those whose remains are now being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq."
Big Brother is a fictional concept created by a writer and since made into one, possibly two movies.
My resume is what it is, I have no need to embelish it. I find it amusing that you close your mind once again and resort to name calling rather than trying to make a valid point.
My major was Biology as I mentioned to Glassman. Heavy in human physiology, chemistry, and military science as I was also commissioned as an officer in the US Army upon graduation.
After college graduation, I completed my officer basic course which qualified me as an Ornance officer at Aberdeen Proving Ground Maryland. After that, I completed the course which qualified me as an NBC officer. I have also completed training in hazardous materials handling and completed the advanced officer course of transportation. I also served one combat tour in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. I was the officer responsible for the training of everyone in the unit in how to prepare for an NBC attack. I was also the officer responsible for making decisions during said attacks on how to survive said attacks. Fortunately, I never had to act on that portion of my responsibility.
My major did not require any literature although I did need 6 credits of huminities which included a study of Dante's Inferno which I found quite interesting but basically useless in everyday living.
I hope your next "show" gets better because the last one truely was "pitiful".
Posted by glassman on :
I have no idea what you are talking about in being a keyholder, that term means nothing to me. I also have a degree in Biology, which was the main reason I became the nuclear, biological, chemical officer of the various units I belonged to.
i will neither confirm nor deny ANYTHING: if you don't know what a keyholder is? you were probaly a paper pusher.....
put it this way? i had marine guards with loaded rifles when i went to work...
and i already gave you the proof..it's in the report i posted, you just don't want to see the truth, and the truth is that war by definition is a lack of civilisation....
why on earth would we send anthrax cultures to a third world country??
you are ready to grasp negative rumors about how bad sadam was, (and even quote proapgandist materials)
i never said he was a good guy, i'm saying you are trying hard not to see the truth... you aren't reading these articles and using critical thinking here. i hate to sound rude, but youare asking for it...look here: from the State Dept site? they admit thay are speculatng Over 250 sites have been reported, of which approximately 40 have been confirmed to date. Over one million Iraqis are believed to be missing in Iraq as a result of executions, wars and defections, of whom hundreds of thousands are thought to be in mass blah blah blah so on so farth ad infinitum...
Posted by bdgee on :
Maybe the squirrels will find and burry the nut.
Posted by glassman on :
well, he's asking for the kind of evidence that people die to get and to protect, the actual transcripts of the backroom deals.... not reasonable....
we were supporting Iraq in the Iran/iraq war, and he just doesn;t want to believe how war works.....
we were quite cozy with sadam.... and he writes it off..... it's not like i'm saying we should pull out of Iraq, just that i think we have just witnessed the BIGGEST waste of taxpayers dollars in the history of the world...
Posted by turbokid on :
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: If I read your post correctly, the anthrax was shipped to the ministry of trade. I'm missing the subterfuge here. Who do you believe should have gotten it?
NOBODY!!! especially not any sort of leader in the middle east, either friend or foe.
i'd like to post this link on how we used to like saddam hussein. Kinda wierd how things work out. i wonder which of our current friends will be enemies next time. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,82317,00.html Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Glassman,
I wasn't a paper pusher, I was active in the command and control structure of small units.
No, you did not give me any proof. I read your reports, they say nothing about any deliberate act of the United States Government to provide WMD's to Iraq. You imply that is what they say, they don't say that.
We send anthrax cultures to third world countries for the same reason we would transfer any biological culture, because anthrax exists in its natural form in third world countries. In scientific research, it is important to have PURE cultures for study so that protections can be made against accidental exposure.
From the CDC:
"How common is anthrax and who can get it?
Anthrax is most common in agricultural regions where it occurs in animals. These include South and Central America, Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. When anthrax affects humans, it is usually due to an occupational exposure to infected animals or their products. Workers who are exposed to dead animals and animal products from other countries where anthrax is more common may become infected with B. anthracis (industrial anthrax). Anthrax in wild livestock has occurred in the United States."
I don't grasp negative rumors about anyone. I read the reports that are readily available, detailed reports that outline the atrocities that he has committed. This is a man who invaded two neighboring nations so he could secure their oil wealth. I have quoted UN reports. I have quoted CIA reports. I have quoted mass media reports. Which is propaganda?
Yes, 40 have been confirmed. Weren't you saying just a bit ago that none existed? It takes time to investigate 250 sites. It seems to by you that is trying very hard not to see the truth. A mass grave is a mass grave, 40 had been confirmed at the time that report was made.
I know how war works as well. I had three years of training, 9 years of pratical experience and a lifetime of reading since elementary school on the history of warfare. I believe I have a pretty good idea of how war works.
I ask you why you are so ready to grasp rumors against the President of the United States.
I know we were supporting Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war. I've already pointed it out. 5 airliners and $400 million dollars in credit. You claim we supplied them with weapons and WMD's yet have no proof to that claim. The $400 million gave them cash to purchase weapons from France and the Soviet Union which they did.
We were never cozy with Iraq. We re-established diplomatic relations with them. We've had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations, weren't cozy with any of them.
The biggest waste of taxpayer money in the world is the welfare system. The Iraq war doesn't even come close.
Tubokid,
They already had anthrax, check the CDC report. It is throughout the middle east. Pure cultures are the same as white lab rats. They allow legitimate research to take place where impurities would make the research nearly worthless.
The article you mention has nothing to do with how "we used to like Saddam Hussein". It has to do with one specific church in Detroit that established a relationship with Saddam. This once again is how you take an article or a report and twist it to serve your purposes.
Posted by turbokid on :
U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds
By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 30, 2002; Page A01
High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.
Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions.
In the Kurdish village of Halabjah in northern Iraq on March 20, 1988, a father holds his baby. Both were believed killed by an Iraqi chemical attack.
The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys."
A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.
Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction.
"It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now," says Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm," which makes the case for war with Iraq. "My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State Department."
"Fundamentally, the policy was justified," argues David Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. "We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible."
What makes present-day Hussein different from the Hussein of the 1980s, say Middle East experts, is the mellowing of the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait that transformed the Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition, the United States itself has changed. As a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. policymakers take a much more alarmist view of the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. Shifts in Iran-Iraq War
When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an Iraqi attack across the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf, the United States was a bystander. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either Baghdad or Tehran. U.S. officials had almost as little sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand of Arab nationalism as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries fought their way to a stalemate, nobody in Washington was disposed to intervene.
By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had changed dramatically. After its initial gains, Iraq was on the defensive, and Iranian troops had advanced to within a few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. U.S. intelligence information suggested the Iranians might achieve a breakthrough on the Basra front, destabilizing Kuwait, the Gulf states, and even Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening U.S. oil supplies. (turbo) i wonder what sort of benifit the US has now that they will have the entire iraqi government in thier pocket, with reguard to saudi and kuwaiti oil. And what this means for iran this time. )
"You have to understand the geostrategic context, which was very different from where we are now," said Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official, who worked on Iraqi policy during the Reagan administration. "Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation from getting worse."
To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran.
The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle, Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory.
Thus, on Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against the Iranians. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president's recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Secret talking points prepared for the first Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad enshrined some of the language from NSDD 114, including the statement that the United States would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West." When Rumsfeld finally met with Hussein on Dec. 20, he told the Iraqi leader that Washington was ready for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a State Department report of the conversation. Iraqi leaders later described themselves as "extremely pleased" with the Rumsfeld visit, which had "elevated U.S.-Iraqi relations to a new level."
In a September interview with CNN, Rumsfeld said he "cautioned" Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, a claim at odds with declassified State Department notes of his 90-minute meeting with the Iraqi leader. A Pentagon spokesman, Brian Whitman, now says that Rumsfeld raised the issue not with Hussein, but with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz. The State Department notes show that he mentioned it largely in passing as one of several matters that "inhibited" U.S. efforts to assist Iraq.
Rumsfeld has also said he had "nothing to do" with helping Iraq in its war against Iran. Although former U.S. officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq -- he was a private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy -- the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer U.S.-Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts. Washington was willing to resume diplomatic relations immediately, but Hussein insisted on delaying such a step until the following year.
As part of its opening to Baghdad, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department terrorism list in February 1982, despite heated objections from Congress. Without such a move, Teicher says, it would have been "impossible to take even the modest steps we were contemplating" to channel assistance to Baghdad. Iraq -- along with Syria, Libya and South Yemen -- was one of four original countries on the list, which was first drawn up in 1979.
Some former U.S. officials say that removing Iraq from the terrorism list provided an incentive to Hussein to expel the Palestinian guerrilla leader Abu Nidal from Baghdad in 1983. On the other hand, Iraq continued to play host to alleged terrorists throughout the '80s. The most notable was Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, who found refuge in Baghdad after being expelled from Tunis for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, which resulted in the killing of an elderly American tourist.
Iraq Lobbies for Arms
While Rumsfeld was talking to Hussein and Aziz in Baghdad, Iraqi diplomats and weapons merchants were fanning out across Western capitals for a diplomatic charm offensive-cum-arms buying spree. In Washington, the key figure was the Iraqi chargé d'affaires, Nizar Hamdoon, a fluent English speaker who impressed Reagan administration officials as one of the most skillful lobbyists in town.
"He arrived with a blue shirt and a white tie, straight out of the mafia," recalled Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East specialist in the Reagan White House. "Within six months, he was hosting suave dinner parties at his residence, which he parlayed into a formidable lobbying effort. He was particularly effective with the American Jewish community."
One of Hamdoon's favorite props, says Kemp, was a green Islamic scarf allegedly found on the body of an Iranian soldier. The scarf was decorated with a map of the Middle East showing a series of arrows pointing toward Jerusalem. Hamdoon used to "parade the scarf" to conferences and congressional hearings as proof that an Iranian victory over Iraq would result in "Israel becoming a victim along with the Arabs." (turbo) once again israel comes up.
According to a sworn court affidavit prepared by Teicher in 1995, the United States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Teicher said in the affidavit that former CIA director William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian human wave attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit.
At the same time the Reagan administration was facilitating the supply of weapons and military components to Baghdad, it was attempting to cut off supplies to Iran under "Operation Staunch." Those efforts were largely successful, despite the glaring anomaly of the 1986 Iran-contra scandal when the White House publicly admitted trading arms for hostages, in violation of the policy that the United States was trying to impose on the rest of the world. (turbo) very interesting.
Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to the export of "dual use" items such as chemical precursors and steel tubes that can have military and civilian applications. According to several former officials, the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political leverage over Hussein.
When United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, they compiled long lists of chemicals, missile components, and computers from American suppliers, including such household names as Union Carbide and Honeywell, which were being used for military purposes.
A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee turned up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the mid-'80s under license from the Commerce Department, including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare.
The fact that Iraq was using chemical weapons was hardly a secret. In February 1984, an Iraqi military spokesman effectively acknowledged their use by issuing a chilling warning to Iran. "The invaders should know that for every harmful insect, there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it . . . and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide."
Chemicals Kill Kurds
In late 1987, the Iraqi air force began using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq that had formed a loose alliance with Iran, according to State Department reports. The attacks, which were part of a "scorched earth" strategy to eliminate rebel-controlled villages, provoked outrage on Capitol Hill and renewed demands for sanctions against Iraq. The State Department and White House were also outraged -- but not to the point of doing anything that might seriously damage relations with Baghdad.
"The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is . . . important to our long-term political and economic objectives," Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy wrote in a September 1988 memorandum that addressed the chemical weapons question. "We believe that economic sanctions will be useless or counterproductive to influence the Iraqis."
Bush administration spokesmen have cited Hussein's use of chemical weapons "against his own people" -- and particularly the March 1988 attack on the Kurdish village of Halabjah -- to bolster their argument that his regime presents a "grave and gathering danger" to the United States.
The Iraqis continued to use chemical weapons against the Iranians until the end of the Iran-Iraq war. A U.S. air force intelligence officer, Rick Francona, reported finding widespread use of Iraqi nerve gas when he toured the Al Faw peninsula in southern Iraq in the summer of 1988, after its recapture by the Iraqi army. The battlefield was littered with atropine injectors used by panicky Iranian troops as an antidote against Iraqi nerve gas attacks.
Far from declining, the supply of U.S. military intelligence to Iraq actually expanded in 1988, according to a 1999 book by Francona, "Ally to Adversary: an Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall from Grace." Informed sources said much of the battlefield intelligence was channeled to the Iraqis by the CIA office in Baghdad.
Although U.S. export controls to Iraq were tightened up in the late 1980s, there were still many loopholes. In December 1988, Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million of pesticides to Iraq, despite U.S. government concerns that they could be used as chemical warfare agents. An Export-Import Bank official reported in a memorandum that he could find "no reason" to stop the sale, despite evidence that the pesticides were "highly toxic" to humans and would cause death "from asphyxiation."
The U.S. policy of cultivating Hussein as a moderate and reasonable Arab leader continued right up until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, documents show. When the then-U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein on July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she assured him that Bush "wanted better and deeper relations," according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. "President Bush is an intelligent man," the ambassador told Hussein, referring to the father of the current president. "He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq."
(turbo) maybe this is why saddam thought he could invade kuwait because he thought that the US supported his actions in the middle east, or would at least turn a blind eye.
"Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam," said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. "Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation."
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Turbokid,
Thanks for the article supporting just about everything I said.
US provided Credit not weapons.
US provided dual use items, not weapons.
US wanted improved diplomatic relations (I thought that's what you guys wanted)
US provided items the Iraq's converted for military use, not weapons.
Still no proof (which you see but is not there) that the US provided them with weapons, provided them with dual use items and encouraged them to make weapons.
Maybe Saddam invaded Kuwait because he felt he could get away with it. The UN was always a bunch of weinies up to that point, why change now.
Posted by glassman on :
strider says:Glassman,
I wasn't a paper pusher, I was active in the command and control structure of small units.
No, you did not give me any proof. I read your reports, they say nothing about any deliberate act of the United States Government to provide WMD's to Iraq. You imply that is what they say, they don't say that.
i don't know how on earth you can say that? you are playing semantic games... and it really isn't worth the effort to try to 'splain to you that sadam was a dictator of a tiny country that we sent anthrax cultures to, because even a junior high school student would understand that a dictator has complete control over a country...
your logic is very circular....
the fact: it doesn't matter what part of the friggin country we sent it to cuz everybody there was working for sadam... you don't work for OUR govt anymore i hope, cuz if you do we are in even worse trouble that i thought...
furthermore? you yourself did say that bioweps are hightly environmentally sensitve...if you read some of my older posts you will find that i used that statement months ago to argue why it was always unlikelty that sadam had bioweps....and that it was even more unlikely they were stashed in the desert since they have to be carefully maintained in controlled environments
sadam invaded kuwait because kuwait WAS actually a breakaway state from Iraq... he believed we gave him a green light to do it...
and kuwait was drilling into iraq oil....
[ October 16, 2005, 01:03: Message edited by: glassman ]
Posted by glassman on :
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Aragorn243: Turbokid,
Thanks for the article supporting just about everything I said.
US provided Credit not weapons.
you musta missed this part of the article:
Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to the export of "dual use" items such as chemical precursors and steel tubes that can have military and civilian applications. According to several former officials, the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political leverage over Hussein.
US provided dual use items, not weapons.
US wanted improved diplomatic relations (I thought that's what you guys wanted)
US provided items the Iraq's converted for military use, not weapons.
Still no proof (which you see but is not there) that the US provided them with weapons, provided them with dual use items and encouraged them to make weapons.
Maybe Saddam invaded Kuwait because he felt he could get away with it. The UN was always a bunch of weinies up to that point, why change now. Posted by turbokid on :
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: Tubokid,
They already had anthrax, check the CDC report. It is throughout the middle east. Pure cultures are the same as white lab rats. They allow legitimate research to take place where impurities would make the research nearly worthless.
The article you mention has nothing to do with how "we used to like Saddam Hussein". It has to do with one specific church in Detroit that established a relationship with Saddam. This once again is how you take an article or a report and twist it to serve your purposes.
I wasnt trying to twist anything, just pointing out the fact that Saddam made visits to the united states and was welcomed as a good person. Also, you say we didnt provide saddam with any sort of WMD's, well we may not have gave them the weapons already assembled but we did provide them with the necessary parts to do so themselves. We also helped with intelligence during the iran-iraq war to insure iraq's victory for the reasons in my above post including oil supplies in kuwait, saudi arabia and attempting to keep iran from upsetting the region with its radical religion throughout the middle east and from destroying israel. It was very important to the US to make sure iraq won the war at any cost.
its kinda like this. "officially" the US opposes using biological warfare but if it benifits our interests (oil, for example) then we pretend to oppose it but secretly help in any way we can. The same thing goes for israel, a country which has violated more UN resolutions than any country in the world but we allow anything they want because they are an ally and help keep radical arab countries in check with its huge military might(supplied by america) and its nuclear arsenal. Saddam thought he was getting the same treatment. He was wrong, and then we accuse him of having weapons that we gave him. Of coarse he gassed the kurds they were giving support to iran. quote: "During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, which Saddam Hussein launched against his neighbor, the Kurds sought Iranian support for their insurgency. The Baath regime, threatened, responded by destroying Kurdish villages in strategic zones, resorting to ethnic cleansing.
These brutal conventional measures failed to achieve their objective, and for that reason the Baath regime initiated its chemical warfare on the Kurds in 1988. The operation was headed up by Saddam's cousin, Ali Hasan al-Majid, the Secretary-General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba'th Organization. For this reason, Iraqis call him "Chemical Ali." source:http://hnn.us/articles/1242.html
again i repeat the reason nothing was done to saddam for these attacks against the kurds is because they were supporting iran and america needed iran to loose. So we allowed it, period.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Glassman,
You are playing semantic games.
You want to show me proof that what you are saying is in the reports, post the sentences where is says what you are claiming. Leave out the rest, bring it into focus so to speak. It isn't there. You have to infer that it is there and that, is word games.
Kuwait was not a breakaway state of Iraq, unless you want to go deep into history when Iraq was Babylon and ruled the entire region. By that logic, Hussein had ever right to go to war with anyone he pleases, they were all "breakaway provinces".
As an entity, Kuwait has existed since 1756 as an independant shiekdom under nominal Ottoman control. In 1899 Kuwait became a protectorate of Great Britain and obtained formal independance in 1914. Formal borders were drawn between Iraq and Kuwait in 1923, Iraq made its first claim on Kuwait in 1960 and drops this claim in 1963.
Iraq remained part of the Ottoman Empire until the break up of that empire at the end of WWI adn did not have full independance until 1932. So in reality, I guess that Iraq is a breakaway province of Turkey.
This is what I have a hard time with. You are fully willing to believe the statements from a dictator such as Hussein, Kuwait is a breakaway republic, Kuwait is drilling into Iraq oil supplies, yet read so much that isn't there into anything involving our own Presidents.
I didn't miss that part of the article, dual use items are NOT weapons. They can be used to make weapons, they can also be used to make the primary item they are intended for which are NOT weapons.
Turbokid,
Read the article again. Hussein never visited the United States. He donated money to a church in Detroit, a denomination of which Hussein donated money to all around the world. The members of this church later traveled to Iraq and presented him with the key to the city. This also was shortly after he became president, not recently and he was not welcomed as a good person by the United States people or government, just a small group from a local Detroit church.
I'm not going to contest that we gave Hussein many of the ingredients to make WMD's. We did not give them to him with the express purpose of creating WMD's. This is something you assume yet there is nothing which lends any substantial proof of that in anything posted thusfar. Flour is an ingredient for how many different final products? Fertilizer is an ingredient for how many different products? If an item is not on a prohibited trading list, it is not a "threat" by itself and is internationally recognized as a tradable commodity. Nothing on any of these lists was prohibited.
You can infer that the US "secretly wants to promote biological warfare" but you have no proof of that. It is you that is creating things out of nothing and ignoring the truth.
I'm not sure what it is you want, you don't seem to want the United States to interfere with Iraq when they take over Kuwait, but want them to interfere when they gas the Kurds. The United States doesnt' interfere with other nations unless they pose a threat to either us or our allies. There are genocides going on all over the globe that we do nothing about. We are not the world police.
The United States doesn't want ANYONE messing with biological weapons. I can see this from public records. I can also use common sense. Biologicals are a threat to us, much more so than in the Middle East. We have very highly concentrated populations, we have regions where the conditions required for successfull biological attack can easily be met. We have very vulnerable food supplies nationwide and some areas such as NY City have vulnerable water supplies which come from only a few sources. So what point would be served in encouraging anyone to develop biologicals which could come back at a later date to affect us?
Posted by 4Art on :
Topic: Soldiers in Iraq Call for War's End, Impeachment
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
Yes we all know what the topic is, we all know that the topic is bogus because the views of a few soldiers don't represent the majority and it has moved on through a natural progression of the discussion.
You want to re-address how a few disgruntled soldiers don't represent all of them?
Posted by 4Art on :
It's well more than a few.
President George W. Bush's job approval rating has fallen to a new low of 39% in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday.
Bush's approval rating dipped in the poll below a mid-September ranking of 40%. The survey also found only 28% of respondents believed the country was headed in the right direction, NBC reported.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
And Bushes poll numbers have what to do with
Topic: Soldiers in Iraq Call for War's End, Impeachment
Try again.
Oh and by the way, Bush's numbers at their lowest of 39% are still higher than the lowest poll numbers of the previous 4 Presidents. He doesn't have much further to go to get to Clinton's who I believe were 37% but he has a long way to go to Jimmy Carters 28%.
Posted by 4Art on :
Last I checked, soldiers in Iraq were still Americans.
What's Clinton got to do with this?
Posted by bdgee on :
He's trying to change the subject, 4Art......means either that he has lost the train of thought again or he recognises he's unable to support his position and wants to change the subject, hoping you won't notice. I think they learn that tactic in night classes taught by the Party under the direction of some of Delay's group.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
Last time I checked solders were polled differently than the population at large.
Cliton has nothing to do with this. His poll numbers however show that Bush's poll numbers are not that dramatic or different than previous Presidents.
bdgee,
I'm sure people notice who is in the habit of changing the subject and being unable to support my position. that would be a post similar to tihs one:
"He's trying to change the subject, 4Art......means either that he has lost the train of thought again or he recognises he's unable to support his position and wants to change the subject, hoping you won't notice. I think they learn that tactic in night classes taught by the Party under the direction of some of Delay's group."
Just to set the record straight, the topic is:
Soldiers in Iraq Call for War's End, Impeachment
I've already shown in earlier posts that this is representative of a few or for 4Art's benefit, a minority of soldiers.
Since then, neither you or 4Art have done anything to counter that other than......changing the subject.
Posted by 4Art on :
You've done no such thing! You've merely stated your opinion, (as usual), with no facts to back it up.
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: I've already shown in earlier posts that this is representative of a few or for 4Art's benefit, a minority of soldiers.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
You have posted an opinion piece by one soldier and used it to be representative of all soldiers.
I pointed out that it is easy of find disgruntled soldiers, a fact not opinion, and get statements such as this from the individual in question.
Your response was you could get hundreds of quotes, also a fact but still not representative of the majority.
I replied that 5% of 200,000 troops is 10,000 so it would be easy to get 10,000 quotes but that still is not representative of the remaining 190,000.
It was at this point, rather than showing how this statement was wrong that you went into a religious attack, thus changing the subject.
Since the majority of soldiers are not demanding an impeachment, since they are performing thier jobs and since the vast majority of them are coming home with good feelings about their missions and that troops who served in Iraq are re-enlisting in higher proportions than troops that have not served there, that is enough factual evidence to discredit this one soldier's opinion.
Posted by 4Art on :
You could end this once and for all by showing me the actual statistics.
Posted by 4Art on :
In any case, I never said all soldiers. You did.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
You could do the same.
You wouldn't be taking words out of context again would you?
When you show us all where I said "all soldiers" be sure to provide the entire sentence.
Posted by 4Art on :
Jesus Christ!
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: You have posted an opinion piece by one soldier and used it to be representative of all soldiers.
You have posted an opinion piece by one soldier and used it to be representative of all soldiers.
You have posted an opinion piece by one soldier and used it to be representative of all soldiers.
You have posted an opinion piece by one soldier and used it to be representative of all soldiers.
You have posted an opinion piece by one soldier and used it to be representative of all soldiers.
You have posted an opinion piece by one soldier and used it to be representative of all soldiers.
You have posted an opinion piece by one soldier and used it to be representative of all soldiers.
Posted by 4Art on :
You could end this once and for all by showing me the actual statistics.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
So you are saying that you did not intend for this thread to be representative of all soldiers?
If not, I apologize.
So you accept that is just one man's view and that there may be others that support it but that they are not representative of all soldiers?
I can show one very important statistic, George W. Bush won re-election.
Here is an article publishes by one of the "propaganda mills" (Army Times)
October 11, 2004
Who you chose for president and why
By Gordon Trowbridge Times staff writer
President Bush retains overwhelming support among the military’s professional core despite a troubled mission in Iraq and an opponent who is a decorated combat veteran, a Military Times survey of more than 4,000 readers indicates. Bush leads Democratic Sen. John Kerry 73 percent to 18 percent in the voluntary survey of 4,165 active-duty, National Guard and reserve subscribers to Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times and Air Force Times.
Though the results of the Military Times 2004 Election Survey are not representative of the opinions of the military as a whole, they are a disappointment to Democrats who hoped Kerry’s record and doubts about Bush would give their candidate an opening in a traditionally Republican group with tremendous symbolic value in a closely contested election. Click here to view result graphics, complete active duty results or complete Guard and reserve results.
“For a long time, Kerry thought he had a chance to win the mantle and beat Bush on the issue of who could be the better commander in chief,” said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who has written extensively on civil-military relations and the political opinions of those in uniform.
Feaver said journalists and political analysts focus heavily on the opinions of military members because of a situation the nation hasn’t faced in more than 30 years: a heated presidential race amid a difficult and controversial war.
While the survey found some readers with doubts about Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq, there was remarkable consistency in their views of the two candidates.
Officers and enlisted troops, active-duty members and reservists, those who have served in combat zones and those who haven’t, all supported Bush by large margins. And the survey hints that Kerry’s emphasis of his decorated service in Vietnam may have done more harm than good with those in uniform.
‘From the heart’
“It’s about honesty and integrity,” said Marine Sgt. Jason Jester, who was interviewed separately from the survey.
Jester, a recruiter from Winston-Salem, N.C., voted for Bush in 2000 and plans to do so again.
“He might not always make the right decisions, but I think the decisions he makes come from the heart.”
To conduct the survey, Military Times e-mailed more than 31,000 subscribers Sept. 15. They were invited to access an Internet site seeking their opinions on the presidential race and related issues. From Sept. 21 to 28, and before the first presidential debate on Sept. 30, a total of 2,754 active-duty and 1,411 reserve and Guard members took part.
The nature of the survey led experts to caution against reading the results as representative of the military as a whole.
Unlike most public opinion polls, the Military Times survey did not randomly select those to question. Instead, subscribers with e-mail addresses on file were sent an invitation. That means there is no statistical margin of error for the survey — so it’s impossible to calculate how accurately the results reflect the views of Military Times readers.
The surveyed group is older, higher in rank and more career-oriented than the military as a whole. Junior enlisted troops in particular are underrepresented in the group that responded.
But as a snapshot of the careerist core of the armed services, the survey holds little good news for Kerry, revealing a group with strong Republican leanings that the Democratic challenger has not shaken. Among the findings:
• Echoing previous Military Times polls and other research, the survey found a group with a close affinity for the Republican Party. About 60 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as Republicans, while 13 percent consider themselves Democrats and 20 percent independents. Among the general population, pollsters usually find voters evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats and independents.
• Just more than two-thirds said they voted for Bush in his 2000 victory, compared to 14 percent who voted for Al Gore. A large majority, 87 percent, said they voted in 2000.
• Though a solid majority said they attach some importance to the military backgrounds of the candidates, when asked specific questions about Bush’s Air National Guard service and Kerry’s Navy service in Vietnam, most said those records would have little impact on their vote.
• Still, among those with an opinion, Kerry’s military biography — a centerpiece of his campaign — may hurt with military voters as much as it helps. More than one in five respondents said his Vietnam service made them less likely to vote for him. Two-thirds said Kerry’s anti-war activities when he returned from Vietnam made them less likely to vote for him.
A much smaller group said Bush’s controversial service in the Texas Air National Guard made a difference. Among those who said his Guard service mattered, most said it would make them less likely to vote for the president.
• The results are not all good news for the president. Bush the candidate won significantly higher marks than Bush the commander in chief: Nearly one-quarter of those surveyed said they did not approve of the president’s handling of Iraq.
That’s a much lower rate than in the U.S. population, but it represents a striking willingness to question a commander in chief’s decisions. About 15 percent of those responding said they had no opinion or declined to reveal their opinion — results that experts such as Feaver said hint at a group privately questioning Iraq policy but unwilling to publicly express those doubts, even anonymously.
• About two-thirds of those surveyed listed Iraq as among the most important issues they will consider in casting their vote. Almost the same number said they consider the character of the candidates important, while just over half said they consider the condition of the economy important.
The Vietnam question
At the start of the campaign, a wide range of political analysts speculated that for the first time in decades, the Democratic candidate could have significant appeal for military voters.
Kerry brought a record of decorated combat service in Vietnam. Military and veterans groups have been harshly critical of several Bush administration policies on pay and benefits. And from the start of Bush’s term, senior military officials have chafed at the policies and attitudes of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The war in Iraq added to those questions. Political analysts increasingly wondered whether the mounting casualty toll, Democratic criticism of Bush’s policies, independent analysts’ pessimism about the war and public questioning of strategy by military and intelligence officials would drain Bush’s support among military members.
Kerry stepped up his criticism in recent weeks, painting the Bush administration as having rushed into a war without sufficient planning for its aftermath. But Feaver said Kerry has so far failed to capitalize on those doubts.
“An unfortunate side effect for Kerry of his new message on Iraq is that it reinforces his image as a flip-flopping commander in chief, which matters most to soldiers in wartime,” Feaver said.
And while much of the media coverage of the race has focused on the candidates’ Vietnam-era actions, Feaver said it’s the current war that’s foremost in the minds of those in uniform.
“I don’t think they’re questioning the patriotism of Kerry’s critique, and I don’t think they’re worried about its impact on the Iraqi enemies,” he said. “Where they’re worried is the impact on the American public, whether it will undermine public confidence in the war.”
In individual interviews, troops such as Marine Lance Cpl. Jesse Bragdon said they have no illusions about what it will take to achieve Bush’s goals of a free and democratic Iraq.
“With the way the operations are going, I think they are needed. It may take 10 or 20 years to sort it out,” said Bragdon, a 21-year-old rifleman, who was running errands with several friends in downtown Oceanside, Calif., a few miles from Camp Pendleton’s main gate.
“I’m all for change, but I don’t think it’s the right time for change now,” said Army Spc. John Bass, 26, serving with 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq.
“I want to keep Bush in there because I want him to finish what he has started.”
Others see it differently.
“I think I might be leaning toward Kerry,” said Spc. Robert Anderson, 24, of the 145th Combat Support Company, an Army Reserve unit from St. Louis attached to the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq. “Maybe Kerry has got something new to bring to the table.”
“[Bush] might be the commander in chief, but I don’t agree with everything he’s done,” said Marine Pvt. Elizabeth Boran, 18, an avionics technician from Tampa, Fla., planning to vote in her first presidential election this fall.
The ‘civil-military problem’
While results of the Military Times survey may not be representative of the military as a whole, Feaver and other experts on civil-military relations question the wisdom of trying to seek survey data across the military, saying the attention likely to be drawn by the results could lead the general public to view the military as a partisan institution and poison the relationship between those in uniform and a potential Kerry administration.
“It underscores the civil-military problem of partisanship in wartime,” Feaver said.
Paul Rieckhoff, an Army veteran of Iraq who formed a nonpartisan group hoping to focus attention on the troops fighting that conflict, said the results could lead Americans to view the military as a monolithic Republican group.
“To assume they’re voting as a bloc is not giving them enough credit,” said Rieckhoff, whose group, Operation Truth, has been critical of several Bush administration policies.
“The Democratic Party has assumed [military members] will vote Republican and given up on them,” he said. “But both parties need to work for the military vote, and military personnel need to make both parties work for their vote.”
Posted by 4Art on :
Did you, in fact, say "all soldiers" or not?
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: When you show us all where I said "all soldiers" be sure to provide the entire sentence.
Posted by 4Art on :
Sure, he was re-selected, but did he actually get the most votes?
We'll never know for sure, thanks to our new paperless voting system.
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: I can show one very important statistic, George W. Bush won re-election.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
Add the following:
United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Netherlands, Iceland, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Philippines, Afganistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Marshall Island, Micronesia, Solomon Islands, Mongolia, Paulau, Tonga, El Salvador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Australia, Kuwait, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Croatia, Sovenia, and the Ukraine.
These are all nations that were part of the Coalition of the Willing which was larger than the first coalition against Iraq in 1990. The only major nation outside the Arab nations that contributed significant troops to Desert Storm that is missing from this list is France, and France has a bit of a problem with something called the weapons for food program.
Posted by 4Art on :
What about Kazakhstan?
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
What about them?
Posted by 4Art on :
You left the proud Kazakhstani coalition members out. Do you really expect us to win without Kazakhstan?
Posted by 4Art on :
It just occurred to me - you stated that you strongly feel that this war is just. Why aren't you in Iraq; helping to fight it?
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
I don't expect 95% of those nations to have an effect on whether we win or lose, yet they are all governments which supported the United States in its effort to remove Hussein.
Posted by 4Art on :
It just occurred to me - you stated that you strongly feel that this war is just. Why aren't you in Iraq; joining the fight?
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
I already have served in the region.
Posted by 4Art on :
So serve more. The job's not done!
I would, if I supported the cause.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
If I am called to serve I will serve, just as I have done in the past.
Can you say the same?
Posted by 4Art on :
The job is not done, so volunteer to help! Why wait to be called on?
Me? No. I feel the war is wrong on so many levels. Further, my conscience wouldn't allow me to take part in the cruel massacre of unarmed innocents.
Approximately 30,000 Iraqis have been killed so far.
Hearts and minds, indeed.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
4Art,
I have no need to serve again. Current troop levels are sufficient.
At least you are honest in admitting you would not serve.
How many of the still living Iraqis would turn back the clock to live under Saddam for those 30,000?
Hearts and minds.
Posted by 4Art on :
Good question. Has anyone bothered to ask?
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: How many of the still living Iraqis would turn back the clock to live under Saddam for those 30,000?
Posted by turbokid on :
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: Glassman,
Turbokid,
I'm not going to contest that we gave Hussein many of the ingredients to make WMD's. We did not give them to him with the express purpose of creating WMD's. This is something you assume yet there is nothing which lends any substantial proof of that in anything posted thusfar. Flour is an ingredient for how many different final products? Fertilizer is an ingredient for how many different products? If an item is not on a prohibited trading list, it is not a "threat" by itself and is internationally recognized as a tradable commodity. Nothing on any of these lists was prohibited.
You can infer that the US "secretly wants to promote biological warfare" but you have no proof of that. It is you that is creating things out of nothing and ignoring the truth.
So let me get this straight. the US shipped chemical and biological agents, anthrax, west nile fever virus, blistering agents, etc. to a country during a time of war as "dual use items" hoping they would use the anthrax virus to do "research" and perhaps make vaccines? Lets not forget how bad the US needed iraq to win this little war. To me it sounds about as logical as selling adolf hitler bomber jets and enriched uranium because the "dual use" of planes is passenger transport and enriched uranium can be used as an energy source.
This makes about as much sense as a pee wee herman body building video.
Of coarse the US isnt going to say "here iraq, heres some anthrax please go ahead and spray this on a major iranian city." But they will leave themselves and out and say "hey we just gave iraq anthrax to do reasearch and development, how were we to know they would use it on the iranians they were currently at war with, whom we really want to lose this war."
Lastly, a baseball bat is a "dual use item" but who would you be more willing to give one to, a MLB allstar or a guy who just found somebody in bed with his wife?
Posted by turbokid on :
quote:Originally posted by Aragorn243: Glassman,
Turbokid,
I'm not going to contest that we gave Hussein many of the ingredients to make WMD's. We did not give them to him with the express purpose of creating WMD's. This is something you assume yet there is nothing which lends any substantial proof of that in anything posted thusfar. Flour is an ingredient for how many different final products? Fertilizer is an ingredient for how many different products? If an item is not on a prohibited trading list, it is not a "threat" by itself and is internationally recognized as a tradable commodity. Nothing on any of these lists was prohibited.
You can infer that the US "secretly wants to promote biological warfare" but you have no proof of that. It is you that is creating things out of nothing and ignoring the truth.
So let me get this straight. the US shipped chemical and biological agents, anthrax, west nile fever virus, blistering agents, etc. to a country during a time of war as "dual use items" hoping they would use the anthrax virus to do "research" and perhaps make vaccines? Lets not forget how bad the US needed iraq to win this little war. To me it sounds about as logical as selling adolf hitler bomber jets and enriched uranium because the "dual use" of planes is passenger transport and enriched uranium can be used as an energy source.
This makes about as much sense as a pee wee herman body building video.
Of coarse the US isnt going to say "here iraq, heres some anthrax please go ahead and spray this on a major iranian city." But they will leave themselves and out and say "hey we just gave iraq anthrax to do reasearch and development, how were we to know they would use it on the iranians they were currently at war with, whom we really want to lose this war."
Lastly, a baseball bat is a "dual use item" but who would you be more willing to give one to, a MLB allstar or a guy who just found somebody in bed with his wife?
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
The United States did not send chemical and biological "agents". We sent dual use chemicals and bioligical samples for testing purposes.
It does make sense. We were not at war with Iraq and were trying to re-establish trade and diplomatic relations with them. These "trades" of chemicals for many uses and biological samples for medicinal research are common.
Every indication I ever read on the Iran/Iraq war and the position of the US was one of neutrality. We wanted neither side to win. These two nations provided a balance against each other. Had one fallen to the other, the victor would have had an open hand to conquer the rest of the Middle East.
You said:
"Of coarse the US isnt going to say "here iraq, heres some anthrax please go ahead and spray this on a major iranian city."
This indicates that you seem to believe that we sent quantities in sufficient amounts to be weapons. I have yet to see any indication this was the case.
We did not provide them with anything that could have been used directly as a weapon as you indicate.
Posted by glassman on :
check this out....
i just found it while i was trying to get a definition for the word "taliban"
note the date and the copyright date in particular..... Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban By Robert Scheer Published May 22, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times
Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.
That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.
Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.
Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.
The war on drugs has become our own fanatics' obsession and easily trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has subjected the female half of the Afghan population to a continual reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened in its treatment of women?
At no point in modern history have women and girls been more systematically abused than in Afghanistan where, in the name of madness masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates their fundamental human rights. Women may not appear in public without being covered from head to toe with the oppressive shroud called the burkha , and they may not leave the house without being accompanied by a male family member. They've not been permitted to attend school or be treated by male doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing medicine or any profession for that matter.
....The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic obsession. - - -
of course? now? they (Afgh.) are now the biggest supplier of heroin in the world, talk about a failed policy on all fronts? Posted by 4Art on :
It never ceases to amaze me.
Posted by glassman on :
what never ceases to amaze me is how people like strider are able see right past the facts and latch onto the propaganda...
strider stated and i COPY Hussein murdered hundreds of thousands, the current insurgency has murders thousands.
never mind that it was in a war we were SUPPORTING him in....
there is no proof that Hussein murdered that many...and i called him on it...
he still argued the point and when i show him why he's wrong? he still refuses to re-examine his belief system that is based on propaganda...
i never said hussein was a good guy, or that we should support him, but as far as i can tell? hussein will be tried for dispensing justice in the style of the region... much as Israel does and continues to do to the Palestinians...
hussein may have murdered tens of thousands, but the trial that has just started is for 182 men and boys in a TRIBE that attempted to assassinate him.... in our justice system? that is unacceptable, but in their justice system? those people KNEW EXACTLY what risks they were taking when they tried to assassinate him....
and?
i bet that in the US? the same sort of thing COULD happen given certain circumatances...
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Glassman,
Your opening line is very interesting and I agree that many people do look right past the facts and grasp onto the propaganda. I however am not one of them.
Most of my information comes direct from the main stream media, not some left or right wing extremist websit. This information is nearly always backed up by several other news organizations. While that doesn't always guarentee it is correct, it is a lot more reliable than some of the sources I've seen listed here.
The serious propaganda is going to come from several sources, the DNC, the RNC, Al Jazera, and any number of left wing and right wing organizations. The truth normally is somewhat in between the two extremes and while I have very little respect for the mainstream media, they remain in between. The more data and references they include with their reports, the more reliable the report.
I've seen a report on a list of chemicals and biologicals sent by the US to Iraq. That was all it was yet that list proves to several of you that we provided Hussein with WMD's. That is looking past the facts.
I provided 4 different reports from 4 different agencies confirming the Hussein murders of hundreds of thousands. I don't believe that equals you showing me wrong.
Posted by glassman on :
I provided 4 different reports from 4 different agencies confirming the Hussein murders of hundreds of thousands. I don't believe that equals you showing me wrong.
you use the word confirming.... i showed you that NONE of those CONFIRMED anything.... they suggested that hussein had done this in strong terms...big difference...
consider this my way of trying to help you be better at due dilligence in the stock world...
this kind of interrpetation is how people lose their butts...
i am not anti-war, and i am against leaving without finishing th ejob as best we can...
but i am sickened by the propaganda that has bee used inthis fiasco....
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
You showed nothing of the sort. Several of these reports stated the numbers of confirmed mass graves. They suspected something in the neighborhood of 250 sites and to that date had located 40 some odd of them. 40 confirmed mass graves in an ongoing investigation is pretty evident that Hussein was in the mass murder scene. They continue to find the graves today, they just don't get much publicity as they are "old" news to the media. They want bombers, airstrikes, etc.
The only propaganda I've seen was the WMD's being blown way out of proportion in importance to the invasion. That was propaganda. My position based on the cease fire agreement is the only reason we needed to go in. Where have you heard a public official use that arguement. I haven't, so the claim that I am following propaganda is meaningless.
I am folowing histoy. Those who don't learn it or forget it are doomed to repeat it. Hussein invaded two nations trying to get control of their oil fields. He failed in the first, succeeded in the second. As he attacked an allie of ours which also threatened our strategic security through loss of the oil field, we forced him out and placed conditions on him. He failed to meet the conditions. We have seen most obviously in 1930's Germany what happens when you allow a nation to ignore treaty conditions. Hitler did it incrimentally and in the process, conquered two neighbors without so much as firing a shot, consolidated his power and eventually became powerfull enough to conquer most of Europe for a time. People arger that Iraq was not powerfull. Prior to the first Gulf War, they had the 5th largest military in the world. They had wealth in their oil fields and without the sanctions could rebuild. Hitler at the time of Austria and Czechoslavakia was still using cardboard tanks for training purposes. Many of the tanks he used in his blitzkrieg of Poland and France were t-35's and t-38's which were captured in large numbers as well as th factories to produce them from the Czechs.
So history says you take them out while weak to prevent problems in the future.
Again, this isn't an arguement you're seeing anywhere, so how is it I'm following propaganda?
I don't like war, I would have liked for diplomacy to have worked but it wasn't. There is a time for diplomacy and a time to act. Iraq was like a little kid, you keep telling them you are going to do something and never do it, they get emboldened and the only lesson they learn is that you aren't going to do anything. The parent was the UN.
Posted by Aragorn243 on :
Also,
The kid was bribing the parent. Hussein was on the verge of getting the sanctions dropped without having ever met the conditions set upon him.
Posted by glassman on :
i see you are coming around a little....
did you read what the definition of a mass grave is???
6 OR MORE BODIES...
so the 53 confirmed sites don't prove anything about the numbers...
Tony blair is the only person saying ON RECORD there are 400,000 bodies...
however? there have been Iranians added to that count...
and i totally disagree that sadam needed to be taken out when we did...
i have always felt that we would have served our OWN interests much better by making Afghanistan a shining beacon of freedom in the mid-east instead(and captured osambinalivetoolong while we did it) instead? afghanistan is now a mockery of freedom: they are free to produce what? 2 tons of heroin a week now?????
Posted by bdgee on :
Then too, invading Iraq destroyed what hope we
had of actually succeding in Afganistan, which
before the shameful invasion of a non-threatening
country, was a reasonable consideration.
Now we are the villians over most of the
word and whatever manner of government we leave
behind, in either Iraq or Afganistan, will be
undone as soon as the people there can, in order to
erase any memory or stain from us having been there.
Posted by tuck on :
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redit for creating another Islamic State....
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quotes from reputable news agencies reguarding iraq and weapons inspections. enjoy:![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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