Posted on 10/06/2004 1:52:37 PM PDT by churchillbuff
The government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday.
The officials said that the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. ...[snip]
The official said Duelfer will tell Congress in the report and in testimony today that Hussein intended to reconstitute weapons of mass destruction programs if he were freed of the U.N. sanctions that prevented him from getting needed materials.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Hmmm. If that's true, then it seems to me to be an argument that sanctions and containment would have worked, and an invasion wasn't necessary. Nobody was more anti-Soviet than Ronald Reagan - - but he was content to defeat them through containment, not invasion - - and it worked.
You forget that Gulf War I never really "ended," per se. It ended with a ceasefire and thus such infractions warrant a different course of action given their previous hostility towards and ally and your own troops.
The report also says that Iraqi officials admitted to making limited quantities of biological agents for assasination purposes.
Draw from that what conclusions you wish.
"Duelfer, an experienced former United Nations weapons inspector..."
The same "inspectors" that Saddam conned and then threw out of his country?
You can trust what this jerk is saying. Afterall he worked for the UN.
The thing that makes me mad about all this is when the media and the dems say well Saddam didn't attack us.
He was attacking us everyday by shooting at our pilots who were enforcing the UN sanctioned "NO Fly Zones".
I don't understand why someone in the campaign doesn't call Kerry and crew on this obvious lie.
Food is a Weapon of Mass Destruction when withheld to starve people. Hussein knows this, as does Mugabe.
Under Hussein and the UN, this is called Oil for Food program.
As Cheney pointed out last night, Iraq was a nexus for terrorists and a likely place to trade WMDs.
And if Saddam was so law-abiding, why didn't he let the inspectors in and show proof?
Why would he have paid off the UN to trade illegally through Oil for Food?
Why would he have sold his oil cheaply if he didn't have to? Europe got very cheap oil from him.
How could he have racked up billions in personal assets, billions for payoffs and billions in Military debts to Russia, France and China (and others) when the oil industry was only worth $100million (total, not annual)?
Are you saying we should invade every African country where they're starving their people through corruption or incompetence? Sorry, I'm a conservative and I don't believe in worlwide invasions where the US is not imminently threatened.
Nobody wants to look at the whole history, Saddam needed to be taken out, one way or another, and our "international friends" were in bed with him. Bush shouldn't have used WMD/Al-Queda links as the only pretext, there were many reasons, including the fact that we really never finished Desert Storm and were in a low-grade state of war ever since, and the fact that Saddam paid Suicide Bombers to kill civilians in Israel.
Israeli lives are not respected by the "international community."
You just made my point. Reagan was joking -- making fun of Leftists' caricature of him, because he knew how untrue it was.
There is still the little matter of the trucks that headed for Syria and the buildings that were disassembled. Until recently people cooperating with UN inspectors were being killed. No one investigating WMDs will get substantive cooperation until all of Saddam's thugs are either arrested or dead.
Then why in the nine billion names of God did he not open his country to the U.N. inspectors?!?!?! If he'd just done that one little thing he'd be in one of his palaces now, sipping iced tea and butchering dissidents!
Bush's father thought we did - - and prophetically warned in his book that invading Iraq would create a big, dangerous mess.
I think they made that mess inevitable when they stopped short of Baghdad.
Maybe you should be "chamberlainbuff"?
Suuure, and those planes were buried in the desert by preschoolers playing in the sand. That long range missle was really within the proper limits. That abandoned truck with the a/c lab was just a neighborhood ice cream truck. Those carefully buried row upon row of canisters in that specially built building were just fertilizer. That frantic phone call between the two military dudes making sure all evidence was gotten rid of was nothing more than hiding pinking panties from one of their wives. That caravan of trucks heading to Syria was just a group of girl scouts on a camping trip. That nuclear device a scientist buried under his rose bush was really just a bone his dog buried. Every country's intelligence agencies in the world were all duped. And all those mass graves were... were... well, they just don't exist.
Yes, I do think we should.
Dictators are an imminent threat to us because of the terrorists and the funding that breed them.
Every African country that is guilty of this also happens to harbor Al Quada. Coincidence? Nope.
I don't agree with what you or the article says -
In fact, today it was pointed out that Iraq would have had those weapons up and running in a short period of time. And the sanctions were under attack from nation we now know were in support of Iraq's actions. Can one say, beyond a doubt, what would have become of those sanctions - ? S.P.(the one actor) was over there saying the sanctions were killing women and children - when now we know of the oil/food issue - and how corrupt the Iraq government was - along with France, Germany, etc. Was it not that corruption that prevented more food and medicine from getting to the people ? While the sanctions were blamed for it - as a way to get them lifted? The hold on Iraq was crumbling - and many knew this -
Those with other motives(Money,etc.) were aiding Iraq at the cost of many lives -
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