Originally posted by TourDeForce:
Originally posted by caltour:
Originally posted by TourDeForce:
Iraq was viewed as a rogue nation in the ME. Remember the Quaiti invasion? After the first gulf war, in light of 9/11, Iraq were viewed as a potential bio-chem weapon source for the terrorists.

Yes, I think we all understand that. We all understand that it was possible that Saddam might give terrorists some chemical weapons. And it was possible that those terrorist might then use those chemical weapons on us.

Now we get to the real issue: is that speculative possibility a sufficient basis for going to war? I say no. There are dozens of irresponsible or "rogue" regimes. Those regimes have access to uncountable tons of weapons. If would be insame for us to launch a war every time one of them refuses to account for all of its weapons. Unless we have REALLY GOOD intelligence (and UN support), such an attack would make US a rogue nation.



Show me some that are under UN restrictions, have shown hostility toward their neighbors & also possess these weapons, and I say they are also subject to some action.



I notice you said "some action," and not "war." Does that mean you now think that the circumstances might not have warranted an invasion? (At a cost of tens of thousands of lives and over $200 billion).


Originally posted by TourDeForce:
AGAIN I take you by the hand and walk you over to the Iraqi declarations to the UN of what WMD material, programs, & weapons they IN FACT had by their own admission.



Do you really take the Iraqi declarations about WMDs to be the factual truth? First of all, nobody has ever really believed anything Saddam said. Secondly, he had extremely good reasons for claiming to have weapons he may not have actually had. The perception of invincible power was all that stood between him and death. Any sign of weakness and he would have been killed or exiled. If Saddam had told the truth (i.e. that most of the chemical and bio programs were dismantled or sold off soon after the first Gulf War), he would probably have been dead meat.

Originally posted by TourDeForce:
I will grant you that the possibility of a terrorist organiztion gaining access to such things was, at the time, a conjecture, however a very real posibility - Espcially given the non-compliance with UN resolutions, and open hostility & contempt toward the US. Further, given the declarations by the Iraqis, where do YOU suppose those materials, and weapons have gone?



1. Most were probably dismantled (in anticipation of UN inspections), or allowed to degrade into uselessness due to lack of maintenance.

2. Some may have been hidden or sold (but we have absolutely no proof of that).

Originally posted by TourDeForce:
Will it take a mustard or sarrin gas attack on a major city to convince you that they were real?



We all agree that Saddam's WMDs were real at some point. Just ask the Kurds and Iranians, many of whom died in gas attacks. The question is whether they existed when we invaded. Apparently, they did not.

We had a moral and legal obligation to invade only if there were good, solid grounds for believing that the WMDs still existed AND that there was a plan afoot to use them against us (or to transfer them to one of our self-declared enemies like Al Quaeda, which would potentially use them against us). By those standards, Bush acted like a rogue.

Originally posted by TourDeForce:
As for the aluminum tubes & such, I really don't know much about that, I've never used that info as a debate item.



I commend you for not using the aluminum tubes and African uraniam as a debating point in favor of the war. You resisted the urge to use the most lurid, tabloid-quality "evidence" because you didn't feel it was solid enough, right? Don't you feel a little uneasy that the Bushmen didn't apply the same scruples you did? How can you support a president and vice president who disregard your values regarding honesty?


Originally posted by TourDeForce:
After a dozen resolutions & ample opportunities to come into compliance by allowing inspections, justification established IMHO.
Originally posted by caltour:
Are you guys just going to continue to ignore the fact that the UN mandated inspections were based solely on the authority of the UN? The U.S. is not the UN, it is a separate entity. It has no authority to claim UN resolutions as justifications for its actions, absent the approval of . . . YES THAT'S RIGHT! THE UN!

WE HAVE NO LEGAL OR MORAL RIGHT TO CLAIM THE UN RESOLUTIONS AS JUSTIFICATION FOR THE WAR, WHEN THE UN ITSELF SAID THE RESOLUTIONS DID NOT AUTHORIZE THE WAR.



Nothing wrong with the argument when the UN was shown to be in Iraqs back pocket.



Wow, you really missed my point. Or you just decided to ignore it. I don't know which.

Won't you please address my point about how Bush claims the UN resolutions as a justification for war, but on the other hand felt free to ignore the UN's final decision regarding the resolutions? Bush can't have it both ways: he wants to use UN authority for cover, but at the same time wants to be free to disregard UN authority. If he wants to use actions by the UN as a basis for the war, he also has to abide by UN rules forbidding unauthorized invasions, and the UN's collective decision that an invasion of Iraq was not yet justified.

Originally posted by TourDeForce:
Finally, I as an American, am glad that we don't put our national security solely in the hands of paper pushers like those in the UN. They've been proven to be ineffective, weak, spineless, and worst of all, despite their glorious proclaimations that they're lovers of world peace and wish good will toward all men, they're corrupt. The UN is nothing but a debate society & a money mill for spending US tax dollars.

The FACT of the matter is, we pushed for action by the UN and found some unexpected resistance after 12 years of broken promises & a regime that continued to refuse cooperation with mandated inspections. Digging deeper, the money trail in the form of oil contracts was leading to the sources of the resistance, particularly, but not solely, France. At that point, with the French having been paid for their veto power, the US was effectively blocked from gaining any assistance from the UN. If the WMD in the ME were to be secured, it would HAVE to be done without the help of the UN.



I understand your point about the sleazy French and German and Russian involvement in all this. I agree that we should not trust their judgement as to when it is right to go to war in Iraq, because they were probably corrupted (or at least influenced) by oil money and other considerations.

And I agree that the UN (as a whole) is not always the best arbiter of right and wrong.

But here's the real point: we made our own moral decision. We were not "forced" into it by the French, the UN, or anyone else. We had NO good reason to believe there was an imminent threat to the U.S., so we were not forced into anything. We had time to think.

As the British memo tells us, the Brits knew early on that Bush was dead set on going to war. Likewise, the French, Germans and Russians could see that Bush wasn't really interested in building concensus. They could see Bush was going to war for the reasons I outlined earlier (re-election, corporate profits, access to oil, revenge). As soon as the French (and Germans and Russians, etc.) understood that, they were essentially set free to pursue their own self-interested policies. Bush's self-serving decision to go to war left them with one sensible option: protect their own selfish interests as well as possible. And so they did.

I understand that you think the corruption of the French (and the UN in general) was good reason for disregarding the UN and going it alone. But your logic is faulty: just because a person is corrupt and self-interested doesn't mean he is not giving you excellent advice in a particular instance. Logically, avoiding war could well be in the best interests of the French AND the U.S. The corruption of the UN was reason for us to keep our wits about us and to avoid relying on them, but logically it was not a reason for us to disagree with their conclusions about the war. In the end, we found out they were probably corrupt and self-interested. But they were correct about whether it was right to invade Iraq.