Dave Hinz wrote in
:


"Can't find 'em" doesn't mean "aren't here" or even "weren't here",
Nate.


Dave, you are starting to look desperate in your denial. The primary
pretext for going to war with Iraq was WMDs, but they had none prior to
the invasion.

Of course he had them 20 years earlier. At the time Saddam was using
chemical weapons, we were rooting for him in his war with Iran.

What about the Sarin shell that injured our guys, Nate? Don't they
count? Did it not exist? Couple liters of Sarin, what, that's not
enough M to be a W of MD?

No, one twenty year old leftover sarin shell from the Iran-Iraq war is
not enough for me to want to go into a war that costs thousands of lives
and hundreds of billions of dollars.

"Nominally", yes. In actual fact, not really. A US invasion could
have been averted at any time up to the moment of the actual
commencement of hostilities had Sadaam made real inspections
(unfettered, unmonitored, without threat to the Iraqi participants)
happen. He did not, he got tossed out of power.

At the end, under pressure of force, the inspectors were going
anywhere they wanted within 10 minutes notice. Palaces, military
installations, government offices.

Yeah. "Um, no, you can't come in yet...wait, couple more years...
(scramble scramble) - OK, (everything hidden? Yup, I think so...),
all right, come on in."

You're a fool if you don't think that's what was going on when the UN
was pussyfooting around saying "Oh, pleeeeease let us come in? Come
on, Pleeeeease?".

At the end the UNMOVIC guys were going anywhere they wanted with no
notice. You know that. So I think you are intentionally exaggerating.
And still nothing was found.

It's not that easy to move large quantities of WMDs, as Iraq was
supposed to have. We had surveillance overflights, satellites, etc etc
looking for just that.


Yeah, he wasn't eager about having that done. Who would be?

Someone who was still hiding or moving things he wanted to not be
found.

It's always problematic to prove a negative but the simplest explanation
that fits all available facts is that they simply didn't exist at the
time of the invasion.


Sure you are. You're only willing to have the US defend itself
*sometimes* and then only *after* its been attacked. By analogy,
if we were in a bar fight, and the guy at the end of the bar paid me
to poke you in the nose, your argument, roughly would be: 1) You
can't hit the guy at the end of the bar because he did nothing
directly to you and 2) You can't hit me until I actually poke you
in the nose. i.e., You cannot interdict while my arm is in motion
swinging at you.

Nonsense. You guys go off and engineer an ill-advised war with a
country that had no WMDs and no links to 9/11,

We know they _HAD_ WMDs. We know we haven't found much of them
yet. "no links to 9/11" is arguable at best. Why did he have those
bio-lab trailers buried, I wonder? What _is_ with those uranium
enhancing centrifuge parts? How many more sarin shells are still
"wups, forgot that one too" buried?

Bio lab trailers? That was really laughable. Do you know anything
about science ... chemical, biological, or nuclear materials? Ever seen
a chemical plant or a pharmaceutical plant? Do you suppose that
companies like Dow and Amgen spend hundreds of millions of dollars
building manufacturing plants when they could just as easily do it in a
"mobile tractor trailer?"

What centrifuge parts do you mean? The incomplete parts buried in some
guy's backyard in 1991?

You're really reaching. Relying on "evidence" that's already been
thoroughly discredited. What's next? Yellow cake? Aluminum tubes?
Drones?

and then when somebody
points out that maybe that was a stupid thing to do you all cry "Oh,
the Liberals don't want to let the US defend itself!"

I personally think we should have kicked ass, set up the new guy
(or not), and got the hell out. But, going in needed to be done.

Yeah, a bunch of you guys on the right want to get out now that the
going is messy. Unfortunately leaving now creates a much bigger mess
than if we had done nothing. So we have to stay and clean up the
problem that was created.


There have been free elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine
for the first time ever (or at least in many years). It is rather
doubtful this would have happened without the US projecting force in
these regions, directly or otherwise.

I agree with respect to Afghanistan. I don't agree with respect to
Palestine; I think you want to take credit where none is due.

You probably won't acknowledge Libya's disarming is a result of
Bush's decisions either, I suppose.

No, I don't. Libya had been trying to rejoin the international
community since 1998, when it turned over the two terror suspects for
the Lockerbie bombing. In early 2001, Libya was lobbying through
Britain for lifting of UN sanctions.


With respect to Iraq, I hope you are right that it ends up being a
free democracy. And I hope I am wrong when I fear that it ends up
either in civil war or under a Shiite fundamentalist government (a la
Iran).

Long as they're no longer a threat to us, sorry, but they can
(and will) go on killing each other without hurting my feelings.
We're not going to change their little thousand-year grudge, but
we can limit the scope of how it threatens us or our allies.

Do you really think there will be less threat to us if one of the
largest countries in the Middle East is either in civil war or under a
Shiite fundamentalist government?


The world's 5th largest standing army (iirc), lead by a murderous
dictator, was neutralized, and further (potential) deployment of
WMDs was halted.

There was no active WMD program.
^^^^^^
Active being the operative word. Now, it'll hopefully be harder for
them to restart their WMD programs as well.

Do they need WMDs? Where are those, what, 330 tons of high grade
plastic explosives that went missing? Do you suppose any of that ended
up with Al Zaqari, and through him over to Osama?

Yeah, we are definitely safer now.


Said brutal dictator is now in irons.

Funny how your type seems to think that's not important.

Brutal dictators are a dime a dozen in the world. And he's not much
different from some of the brutal dictators that we are calling allies
today.


Other villians in the neighborhood are getting nervous. This was
the *real* reason to go to Iraq. Bush wants to bring the Middle
East peace and Jesus. But what is mostly needed there, is a
deep-seated fear of ****ing off the US. It worked in Libya

Damn right it did. But, he won't give Bush any credit for that,
watch.

I'll give Bush plenty of credit for ****ing off the Middle East.


- go research the
conversation between Kaddaffi and Burlusconi in the early days of
this war - it is instructive reading. Syria, Iran, North Korea, and
all the rest of the tin pot dictator states need to develop a
healthy fear of what happens when you threaten Uncle Sam. This is
the one and only thing Bush has managed to get right, despite
himself...

Yeah, everyone is getting nervous. A bunch of us here in the US are
getting nervous, too. And when you claim that Bush wants to "bring
the Middle East peace and Jesus" it makes me even more nervous.

I don't give a damn about what religion someone practices. I get
a tad twitchy when they have shown ability and willingness to use
WMD on people, and make aggressive noises towards my country.

SH bluffed. We called his bluff. He lost.

Iran and North Korea are exhibiting their fear by making nukes as
quickly as possible.

So, do you think that's wise of them, all things considered?

Seems to be effective so far. You think we can take them all on at
once? You suppose we'll invade them once they have nukes?