(10-03-2012, 01:14 PM)Mavfin Wrote: 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?
Quote: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.
Quote: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