I'm not even arguing that point. My whole rationale here is that the U.S. not only must make a legitimate case about these facts (which we did, at least to my satisfaction), but that a very compelling case must be made that military action resulting in the overthrow of a government is the only means of dealing with the issue. The fact that this government felt a need to resort to such PR tactics to sell the public on the war tells me that they couldn't make a compelling case on the facts alone.
Please pass along the elaborate methodology and mathematical equations by which you have calculated this Threatness-Level thing which you seem to think you have precisely measured for Iraq and all other nations.
Those anthrax letters were mailed right here in the U.S., and the anthrax could just as easily have been produced here as anywhere else in the world. And the Tokyo sarin gas attack that was mentioned in another post (and prompted my response) involved a chemical agent that could have been produced anywhere, too.
And by the way, don't you think the US issued the exact same kind of warning to Iraq in this war? So, your claimed reason for pretending to believe that Iraq had no WMDs ("the US wouldn't have put troops there if they did") is demolished.
That's really my point. If the U.S. could issue this kind of ultimatum to Iraq to keep them from using WMDs on our troops, then the U.S. could have issued the same ultimatum to allow unfettered access to U.S. weapons inspectors without putting all those soldiers and ships over there. If Tom Clancy wrote a novel with a story line like this, he'd be out of business tomorrow.
It was, to our Congress, which approved War Powers for President Bush in the event.
The fact that this government felt a need to resort to such PR tactics to sell the public on the war
Not necessarily to "sell the [American] public" on the war - remember, the American public doesn't care all that much about the UN's imprimateur. Rather, it seems on the surface that they probably went the UN route to try to diffuse and dodge some of the inevitable World Criticism (tm), as well as to protect Tony Blair's ass.
Let us note that although the latter was accomplished (Blair survived) they were not actually very successful in doing the former (The World had a hissy-fit :-) This makes me think that another motive for going dancing with the UN was because doing so functioned as a kind of misdirection trickery against Saddam. Suppose Bush had resolved by, say, early 2002 that he was going to oust Saddam no matter what, the only question being how to do it at minimal cost. Then, it might have made sense to go through the pretense of UN votes, UN "debates", etc., etc., etc., both to give our military enough time to prepare and to trick Saddam into thinking he actually had a chance in hell of staving off the whole thing (by schmoozing France etc), even perhaps almost lulling him into complacency, at least in the sense that whatever attention he was paying to the UN debate was probably time better spent preparing Baghdad's defense.
This is merely my theory, nothing more. But I do want to say in the interest of fairness to some of your points that, as you can see, if you were to say something like: "the US used the UN as a pretext for war", I would absolutely agree with you. And, I have no objection to it. ;-)
tells me that they couldn't make a compelling case on the facts alone.
Uh, again, the only "case" which really mattered was whatever "case" was made to our Congress prior to the War Powers vote. After that, all else was PR and salesmanship (and perhaps, if my above theory is correct, disinformation and psychological warfare).
[the methodology by which you know that Iraq Is Not The Biggest Threat] Those anthrax letters were mailed right here in the U.S., and the anthrax could just as easily have been produced here as anywhere else in the world. And the Tokyo sarin gas attack that was mentioned in another post (and prompted my response) involved a chemical agent that could have been produced anywhere, too.
We seem to have mixed signals. Again, "Please pass along the elaborate methodology and mathematical equations by which you have calculated this Threatness-Level thing which you seem to think you have precisely measured for Iraq and all other nations."
[So, your claimed reason for pretending to believe that Iraq had no WMDs ("the US wouldn't have put troops there if they did") is demolished.] That's really my point.
Ok then, uh, we... uh, agree, that your earlier point was demolished. Swell! ;-)
If the U.S. could issue this kind of ultimatum to Iraq to keep them from using WMDs on our troops,
Uh, note: we didn't know for a fact that this ultimatum would prevent them from using WMDs. You speak as if by merely issuing these threats we can magically reduce the probability of WMD attacks to 0.0. However secure we may have felt in this, it was still a calculated gamble. One that most American citizens wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable making on an everyday basis for the rest of our lives.
then the U.S. could have issued the same ultimatum to allow unfettered access to U.S. weapons inspectors without putting all those soldiers and ships over there.
The soldiers are the U.S. weapons inspectors.
If Tom Clancy wrote a novel with a story line like this, he'd be out of business tomorrow.
I don't know what that means. I've never read a Clancy novel.
Can you give us some idea as to how many more 12 year periods of failure -- whilst spending tens of billions of American dollars annually on containment, and subjecting the forces implementing the containment policy to barracks bombings and other attacks -- and how many more sets of 16 consistently violated U.N. resolutions, would constitute for you a "compelling" case that forcable disarmament must be threatened, and the threat carried through if not responded to?
We'd be satisfied with a round figure, say to the nearest half a century.