In article . 201, Nate Perkins wrote:
(Doug Miller) wrote in
m:

In article 1, Nate
Perkins wrote:
"Fletis Humplebacker" ! wrote in
:
Maybe someone over there can explain in terms you
can understand that the UN had mandated that
Saddam was to destroy his WMDs under UN
supervision. Ya see, no one trusted him at that point.

Subsequent investigations have all concluded that he did exactly that,
shortly after the first Gulf War.

Ummm, no, they didn't, and, no, he didn't. What part of "under UN
supervision" do you not understand? Saddam may have destroyed those
weapons, but the UN mandated that they be destroyed under UN
supervision so that it could be *verified* that they were destroyed.
That did *not* happen.

So now you admit that all the weapons were destroyed years earlier. But
you want to claim that the invasion was still justified because the i's
weren't dotted correctly and the t's weren't crossed right?

Geez, Nate, your reading comprehension just gets worse and worse. I did *not*
"admit that all the weapons were destroyed years earlier". I acknowledged the
possibility that they might have been, while emphasizing that there was *no*
UN verification of that fact.

And you completely missed the larger point of my comment, which is that your
claim that Saddam destroyed those weapons under UN supervision is a great,
fat, thumping LIE.


From the letter of submission from Charles Duelfer's final report: "It
now appears clear that Saddam, despite internal reluctance, particularly
on the part of the head of Iraq’s military industries, Husayn Kamil,
resolved to eliminate the existing stocks of WMD weapons during the
course of the summer of 1991 in support of the prime objective of
getting rid of sanctions. The goal was to do enough to be able to argue
that they had complied with UN requirements."

So on your planet, "resolved to eliminate" is the same as "actually did
eliminate".

Readthat Duelfer quote again. As often as necessary to understand it.
Especially the last sentence. That makes it very clear that the former Iraqi
government was not to actually comply with the UN requirements, but simply to
*appear* to do so.

Si I have to wonder if it really worth thousands of American lives and
hundreds of billions of dollars just because you don't like the way the
paperwork was done??? It seems to me that this is an ideal
justification for pushing continuing inspections, but not for launching
a war.

You persistently miss the point. The problem is not with "the way the
paperwork was done". The problem is that, although the former Iraqi government
*claimed* to have destroyed the WMDs, there was, and is, *no* independent
verification that they actually did so, and hence no way of knowing that those
weapons were actually destroyed, other than taking Saddam's word for it.

Bottom line: We know he had WMDs at one point, because he actually used them.
He claimed to have gotten rid of them. Nobody can verify that claim. It's
illogical to assume that the claim is true.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt.
And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?