The Individual Vs. The State, An Unusual Case

[kandrathe]

Now, if they'd ever actually found any of the chemical weapons that they were supposedly so ready to use, that might be a bit more convincing.

Well, like I said, there are probably only 3 possibilities;

1 - They destroyed it all
2 - They shipped it off to Syria
3 - They lost/buried it somewhere and it's not resurfaced

It was a far bigger threat during the Bush the elder, Stormin Norman days, than the Bush the younger days.

[eppie]

Now, if they'd ever actually found any of the chemical weapons that they were supposedly so ready to use, that might be a bit more convincing.

Well, like I said, there are probably only 3 possibilities;

1 - They destroyed it all
2 - They shipped it off to Syria
3 - They lost/buried it somewhere and it's not resurfaced

It was a far bigger threat during the Bush the elder, Stormin Norman days, than the Bush the younger days.

possibility 4:
Iraqis have all taken some WMDs and burried them in their front lawn, along the main streets of Baghdad. But it is OK because they had promised this to their leader.

The reason for invading Kuwait actually was to defend their right to do this.

[Mavfin]

Now, if they'd ever actually found any of the chemical weapons that they were supposedly so ready to use, that might be a bit more convincing.

-Jester

So, if Iraq didn't, who gassed the Kurds in northern Iraq (Halabja) toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war? Iran? Turkey?

Whoever did, had WMD capability at that time. Someone gassed them, or are you going to say that was all made up? So, it wasn't much of a stretch to take *any* possibility at a later date and extrapolate that into a capability.

People conveniently forget that Saddam already had a record of having *and using* his chemical weapons. That he turned out to not have anything to find *at that time* is what people focus on.

[eppie]

So, if Iraq didn't, who gassed the Kurds in northern Iraq (Halabja) toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war? Iran? Turkey?

Whoever did, had WMD capability at that time. Someone gassed them, or are you going to say that was all made up? So, it wasn't much of a stretch to take *any* possibility at a later date and extrapolate that into a capability.

People conveniently forget that Saddam already had a record of having *and using* his chemical weapons. That he turned out to not have anything to find *at that time* is what people focus on.

You are responding to something Jester didn't say.
Iraq had chemical weapons and they used it on the Kurds. After that they have been destroying their weapons under supervision of the international community (that is how we know they destroyed them).
The 'reason' Bush and Blair gave us to invade Iraq was that the told us Saddam had WMDs at that moment, which was a lie.

That is it: You can come up with all kinds of stories but this is as simple as it is. And after even Bush and Blair admitted they have been lying there is only former dutch prime minister Balkenende that believes all the stories of WMDs and doesn't want to admit hes was wrong.

What people should focus on is why Bush and Blair haven't been brought to trial. I know the answer, do you?

An even more amazing thing is that there are still people defending what happened there that time. Do they think they are not patriotic enough if they admit the US and UK invaded Iraq for oil, and to secure building contracts for big industry giants?
Maybe you will change your mind if you try to think about who pays all those US companies that are 'rebuilding and securing' Iraq.
Hint; it starts with 'the' and ends with 'US tax payer'.

To be fair; you get something back for it a stable and secure stock of fuel for the US army, so in that sense 'security'. Which seems to be a good reason....at least for you guys.....so why didn't they just say that in the first place??

[kandrathe]

To be fair; you get something back for it a stable and secure stock of fuel for the US army, so in that sense 'security'. Which seems to be a good reason....at least for you guys.....so why didn't they just say that in the first place??

Well, really, we did it so you could have oil.

We did it for all of us, so we could have a stable petro-dollar and to bring more of the middle east under control. But, I'm still wondering; "Under control of whom?" Who runs this empire?

Access to oil for Europe is why Libya is more of a concern for us, than Syria. Egypt has been a concern due to the Suez, but militarily, it's of less concern now due to mid-air refueling for most of our air force. Aircraft carriers take days to weeks to get into place anyway -- but we have air bases littered around the globe sufficient to begin air campaigns anywhere in the globe within minutes to hours. A successful ground campaign still takes a few months to plan, and stage logistically. Unless it is staged in advance, such as we have in Europe, Korea and the Middle East. There is the whole issue of isolation, and denial of bases of coordination for Al Queda (or other organizations of irregular fundamentalist Islamic militants). We are in a global struggle with fundamentalist Islamic militants, however all the moves during the Obama administration have been potential set backs (Northern Africa, Syria, Pakistan, etc.) depending on whether these potential democracies become theocracies or embrace tolerance and human rights.

[Jester]

So, if Iraq didn't, who gassed the Kurds in northern Iraq (Halabja) toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war? Iran? Turkey?

Iraq, clearly. Is someone disputing this?

So, it wasn't much of a stretch to take *any* possibility at a later date and extrapolate that into a capability.

So, we're going to go to war on extrapolation? Better re-invade Germany, then - extrapolating from 1914-45, they must be a serious threat.

Iraq was accused of specific crimes and breaches of its treaties. The charges were never demonstrated, the investigation was halted (in order to have a war) and nothing was ever ratified by the Security Council, who enforce them in the first place. Extrapolation isn't going to cut it. The US needed proof, and they failed utterly to provide it.

People conveniently forget that Saddam already had a record of having *and using* his chemical weapons. That he turned out to not have anything to find *at that time* is what people focus on.

And the US is the only nation in the world with a record of having *and using* NUCLEAR weapons. What, exactly, would that justify the rest of the world in doing to the US? And what would it say about the US that, when Iraq was committing these atrocities, the US was Saddam Hussein's supplier, defender, and key political ally? Sorry, but it's really not just as simple as "he did a horrible thing once, therefore we can blow up a his country whenever we like." Not unless you think the Japanese would be justified in invading the United States.

Following the first Gulf War, Iraq went through a decade of near-total collapse of the technological, military and political base that kept the Saddam Hussein regime together, and years of inspections. It is far from a foregone conclusion that they preserved that capacity. Indeed it appears, after agonizingly close inspection, that they didn't.

-Jester

[ErickTheRed]

You are responding to something Jester didn't say.
Iraq had chemical weapons and they used it on the Kurds. After that they have been destroying their weapons under supervision of the international community (that is how we know they destroyed them).
The 'reason' Bush and Blair gave us to invade Iraq was that the told us Saddam had WMDs at that moment, which was a lie.

I think this summary is missing the context that while Iraq had been destroying some WMD Saddam Hussein was also bluffing that he still had some.

Also I feel the press completely neglected its journalistic duty during all the reporting leading up to the war. The New York Times was pretty much directly printing information leaked by the government without any fact checking.

[eppie]

I think this summary is missing the context that while Iraq had been destroying some WMD Saddam Hussein was also bluffing that he still had some.

Saddam wasn't bluffing he had some*. He just tried to get rid of the arms inspectors. And in this particular case he actually had a point. I know how Bush would have reacted on the UN demanding access to all his arms facilities to have a look, he would say no, and all americans would have supported him in that.

*That would not make sense because the US and UK knew exactly what he had.


At the time of this war quite a few of us already could see that lies were being told. Now after several years, with all the information we have know and the statements that have been made by people involved I just cannot understand that there are still people defending this WMD story.

On the contrary it should have made people think not to believe all the things some TV stations and newspapers report.

[FireIceTalon]

I think this summary is missing the context that while Iraq had been destroying some WMD Saddam Hussein was also bluffing that he still had some.

Saddam wasn't bluffing he had some*. He just tried to get rid of the arms inspectors. And in this particular case he actually had a point. I know how Bush would have reacted on the UN demanding access to all his arms facilities to have a look, he would say no, and all americans would have supported him in that.

*That would not make sense because the US and UK knew exactly what he had.


At the time of this war quite a few of us already could see that lies were being told. Now after several years, with all the information we have know and the statements that have been made by people involved I just cannot understand that there are still people defending this WMD story.

On the contrary it should have made people think not to believe all the things some TV stations and newspapers report.

The western bourgeoise propaganda machine is indeed, a very powerful tool of manipulation. And it often works quite well, unfortunately.

[Kevin]

Now after several years, with all the information we have know and the statements that have been made by people involved I just cannot understand that there are still people defending this WMD story.

I can understand that people are still defending debunked information. People don't believe the holocaust happened, people don't believe we landed a man on the moon (well 12 men have walked on it). There are people that believe in a god, there are people that don't. People are very good at creating a reality that they find comfortable. It's actually impressive to be able to selectively believe things, it takes a good filter to remove all the counter information, or invent fallacies.

Basically I'm just saying that people believe in things where it is much easier to provide observable facts that are counter to their belief. It should be fairly easy to understand why people believe that the WMD excuse was legit. People believe what they want, right or wrong. You can change people's mind, you can educate people but you will never reach everyone. I'm not sure there is a single fact that you could get the entire population of a country to agree on. I'm sure I could find someone who doesn't believe in gravity if you give me enough time, and that I wouldn't be able to change their mind. I work at a university, I get to see on a daily basis how narrow minded otherwise highly educated people can be.

[eppie]

I can understand that people are still defending debunked information. People don't believe the holocaust happened, people don't believe we landed a man on the moon (well 12 men have walked on it). There are people that believe in a god, there are people that don't. People are very good at creating a reality that they find comfortable. It's actually impressive to be able to selectively believe things, it takes a good filter to remove all the counter information, or invent fallacies.

Basically I'm just saying that people believe in things where it is much easier to provide observable facts that are counter to their belief. It should be fairly easy to understand why people believe that the WMD excuse was legit. People believe what they want, right or wrong. You can change people's mind, you can educate people but you will never reach everyone. I'm not sure there is a single fact that you could get the entire population of a country to agree on. I'm sure I could find someone who doesn't believe in gravity if you give me enough time, and that I wouldn't be able to change their mind. I work at a university, I get to see on a daily basis how narrow minded otherwise highly educated people can be.

I think you are correct, at least I think about it the same as you do. I recently read an article about an autsralian psychology prof. who research this kind of behaviour (so why people like to believe in conspiracy theories, and why so many people with no scientific background at all swear that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist).

However, some cases (like the Iraq war) also have some other causes, such as patriotism, fear for not showing you are a patriot (saying you didn't believe that Saddam had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks could give you a big chance of being lynched in the fall of 2001 in certain parts of the US), and party political reasons......no republicans would state that Bush was wrong for example. And even though the reasoning might not have been correct......many of us were of course really happy to play war again.

[ErickTheRed]

I think this summary is missing the context that while Iraq had been destroying some WMD Saddam Hussein was also bluffing that he still had some.

Saddam wasn't bluffing he had some*. He just tried to get rid of the arms inspectors. And in this particular case he actually had a point. I know how Bush would have reacted on the UN demanding access to all his arms facilities to have a look, he would say no, and all americans would have supported him in that.

*That would not make sense because the US and UK knew exactly what he had.


At the time of this war quite a few of us already could see that lies were being told. Now after several years, with all the information we have know and the statements that have been made by people involved I just cannot understand that there are still people defending this WMD story.

On the contrary it should have made people think not to believe all the things some TV stations and newspapers report.

I still think you are trying to oversimplify things and see history in black and white terms. Saddam wasn't trying to bluff us that he still had WMD, but he was trying to appear strong regionally. Weapons inspections had stopped and he was interfering with them. Presumably he didn't believe we would actually invade. On the surface it was plausible that there still were some weapons remaining. From there a lot of things went wrong, from within the intelligence community, a wing of the republican party, the press, and the government.

There was another big lie being told at the time as well - that the war would be over quickly and *maybe* cost as much as $60 billion. At the time, that seemed an awful lot less plausible than the WMD arguments. A lot of people were complicit in that. At some point propaganda machines start to believe themselves.

For what it's worth, I didn't support that war at the time, mostly because I didn't believe the financial projections, which is another way of saying that I didn't believe it would leave a situation which could easily be cleaned up. I was skeptical of the WMD, but to some extent trusted the media.

I think it's a stretch to lay all the blame on the WMD lie and say Bush and Blair should be brought to trial. On the other hand, it is unlikely that I will forgive the Republican party in my lifetime. Also, whenever people say that it is a terrible thing that the decline of traditional media is leading to the end of true investigative journalism, I remember that when it really mattered to me they weren't any better than a random blogger.

[kandrathe]

I still think you are trying to oversimplify things and see history in black and white terms. Saddam wasn't trying to bluff us that he still had WMD, but he was trying to appear strong regionally. Weapons inspections had stopped and he was interfering with them. Presumably he didn't believe we would actually invade. On the surface it was plausible that there still were some weapons remaining. From there a lot of things went wrong, from within the intelligence community, a wing of the republican party, the press, and the government.

In some cases, such as when WMD's are involved, the international community requires verification, not just the leaders word. On the other hand, what does national sovereignty mean in the face of the kind of power arrayed against these little nations. Our justification for pre-emptive action, without a UN mandate was our flimsy suppositions that there was something there. We didn't find it, and therefore the justification for the war appears to be a sham. It wasn't really a "wing" of the republican party, and I don't think party identifies the group adequately. On the right, there are the "neocons", but there is also a progressive right, "strong defense" democratic group as well.

I think it's a stretch to lay all the blame on the WMD lie and say Bush and Blair should be brought to trial. On the other hand, it is unlikely that I will forgive the Republican party in my lifetime. Also, whenever people say that it is a terrible thing that the decline of traditional media is leading to the end of true investigative journalism, I remember that when it really mattered to me they weren't any better than a random blogger.

After 9-11 everyone wanted payback -- and they really didn't care where that came from. Most of the non-war "Republicans" are now moving toward Libertarians who tend to be non-war unless we've got something at stake.

The Neocon's led by Bush now used their political capital to try to stick the WMD and rope Saddam into the whole "war on terror" campaign -- while Saddam's terrorist ties are probably less than most in the region (other than his own irregular home grown Fedayeen Saddam). But, yes, the first casualty of war is truth, and mostly the propaganda machine beat the drums of war, at first. I think Bush the younger joined in the vendetta after they tried to kill his dad.