Posted on 01/18/2004 7:03:58 AM PST by Right_Handed_Writer
For field troops, a false positive is preferable to false negative.
Nah. It's a result of the same sort of 'rush to the presses/airwaves' that gives us junk science. A scientific finding needs to be rigorously peer reviewed before it should ever be mentioned to the public. The way it works now though is a scientist is out there doing interviews with New Scientist magazine before he's ever submitted his work for review.
The result is, you hear something trumpeted over and over again by several different news sources who are all trying to out-do one another and later, perhaps the scientist's claims don't pan out under peer review.
Same here on the battlefield. Truth be told, the public should never have heard of those shells until they were put to rigorous testing. You get a positive on the site with crude tests- the reporter runs out and tells the world. Conservatives have been holding their breath waiting for the WMD to turn up and they grasp at the news willingly. Turns out after rigorous tests, it was a false positive. Suddenly, it looks like someone's trying to rig the game.
The entity rigging the game is the media. They do it to scoop the other guy but they do no service to the public when they act so. They do it for money, not your well being.
Personally, I don't sit around and fret about the WMD. They were never high on my list of priorities for taking Saddam out. There were other more important reasons. We've taken him down, this is all that matters to me.
Simple, people are just coming to realize that the administration lied like crazy in order to promote a fraud on the American people. The neocons wanted a war and they manufactured evidence in support of it. Anyone who mistakenly thinks that this administration has anymore honor and integrity than the last one is delusional.
"``This was a stash. They were stacked and ordered and wrapped in plastic. They weren't just lying in the ground,'' Capt. Kim Vibe Michelsen, the spokesman of the Danish army's Camp Eden in southern Iraq, told The Associated Press. He said they must have been buried at least 10 years ago."
"The U.S. official said the latest test results aren't definitive, but 'it seems to be turning away from being a blister agent.'''
No Chemical Agent in Iraq Mortar Shells
Richard W.
OMG...not the dreaded cherry bomb!
NeverGore :^)
Not everyone found the evidence soooo compelling that an invasion became necessary. Most wanted to force Iraq into further inspections. Only the neocons pushed their fear and war mongering into an actual invasion.
Richard W.
More like "The world is amazed that despite indications that Iraq had active weapons of mass destruction programs, we find that he was running a bluff for reasons known best to him. Now the OldDominantLiberalMedia is using this surprise discovery to discredit the Bush administration, claiming that it lied about the threat." To quote Kenneth M. Pollack of the Clinton administration in his Atlantic Monthly article:
"Other nations' intelligence services were similarly aligned with U.S. views. Somewhat remarkably, given how adamantly Germany would oppose the war, the German Federal Intelligence Service held the bleakest view of all, arguing that Iraq might be able to build a nuclear weapon within three years. Israel, Russia, Britain, China, and even France held positions similar to that of the United States; France's President Jacques Chirac told Time magazine last February, "There is a problem-the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is right ... in having decided Iraq should be disarmed." In sum, no one doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
Iraq had used weapons of mass destruction previously. It had resisted all efforts to monitor and curtail its weapons programs. The lack of weapons and relatively low level of weapons programs has been a surprise to all people who carefully considered the state of Iraq before the war.
Only if you believe the hype, fear and war mongering and propaganda. It was never a fact althought the administration worked real hard to prove that fiction was fact. Now, even the dumgest among us is coming to realize that Saddam had no ties to AQ, no ties to 9/11 and no WMD. 500 American sons and daughters have died as a result of the administration lies.
Richard W.
< cover=tinfoil beanie >
I can understand the logic behind that. I'll have to backtrack and see if I can get an accurate count of how many times these false positives have occurred. My initial reaction was based on a vague sense that the number of these reversals are suspicious. At this point, I'm loathe to just casually shrug and make some glib reference to coincidence.
< /cover >
...they were most likely either smoke or willy pete rounds. The chemicals can liquify over time.
Can you cite a source for this claim? I'm extremely curious at this point to try and determine what the actual facts are.
Thank God for that, many Iraqi's do...
Indeed a very apt description. But then I have never cared what the dumbest among us think.
We should have finished Saddam off when he first broke the terms of the treaty for our withdrawal, but we had a clown in office at the time. Justice served late is better than no Justice at all.
And in case you missed the news article, there is a direct trail from some of the Hi Jackers on 911 to Saddam's training camps. 3000+ Good Americans died there.
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