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#451364 - 11/02/05 08:29 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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10K Club
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 12,846
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Quote:
we can't credibly threaten anything other than security council referral
The heck we can't - we've got troops on both sides.
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#451365 - 11/02/05 09:29 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Joined: May 2004
Posts: 10,124
Way, way south.
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Does anyone believe that Saddam Hussein actually did have WMD's? To be honest, I think he may have had them but got rid of them before the war started.
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#451366 - 11/02/05 09:55 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Gold Star
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 298
Pacific Northwest
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It seems to me we're engaged in a new era of cold war. Only I'm not so sure that the "opposition" knows what they're getting into. At least the Soviets had the same weapons we did, and knew full well what they could do.
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#451367 - 11/02/05 09:57 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Well, there's no question that he HAD them at some point. What became of them, and why he would not verify what became of them, no one has ever satisfactorily answered.
Was he bluffing? Did his underlings bluff him? I don't know.
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#451369 - 11/02/05 10:07 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Power Poster
Joined: Jun 2005
Posts: 4,594
Easy Street
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Quote:
Well, there's no question that he HAD them at some point. What became of them, and why he would not verify what became of them, no one has ever satisfactorily answered.
Was he bluffing? Did his underlings bluff him? I don't know.
That is interesting. What if he was just bluffing. Look where that got him....prison
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#451370 - 11/02/05 10:25 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Anonymous
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I think whatever he had he used. All else was a bluff to keep the power (sound familar).
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#451372 - 11/02/05 10:43 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Look where that got him....prison
And, it's going to get him to the gallows.
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#451373 - 11/03/05 03:03 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Power Poster
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 9,121
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Quote:
Quote:
we can't credibly threaten anything other than security council referral
The heck we can't - we've got troops on both sides.
Then I guess the problem I have is that we have allowed this game to continue. This looks much like the nonsense we allowed Iraq to do during the sanctions era.
Kick the inspectors out, obfuscate, accomplish objective, i.e. hide, destroy, develop, then allow inspectors back, try to wedge the security council permanent members and begin the cycle all over again.
In the meantime, Iran inches closer and closer to atomic weapons and this regime does not have the same moral compass that most others do. They will have no problem using the weapons or handing them to terrorist groups to use.
As strongly as we moved against Iraq, which seemed correct at the time, is as weakly we are moving against Iran.
Something must be done soon with both Iran and North Korea.
We harped against Clinton's inaction regarding proliferation, but frankly, I don't see the Bush administration having made any headway here sans Iraq.
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#451374 - 11/03/05 03:24 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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As strongly as we moved against Iraq...
That took twelve years.
I do agree that I would like to see a little stronger line taken by the Bush administration, but I think there may be more going on that they want to publicly acknowledge. Revolt is in the air in Iran - I think that's the reason the regime is making all this crazy talk, "elected" this hardliner as President, etc. On the NK issue, we appear to have actually gotten China on board. I bet that gets worked out without our military involvement.
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#451376 - 11/03/05 03:40 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 9,121
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Quote:
Quote:
As strongly as we moved against Iraq...
That took twelve years.
I do agree that I would like to see a little stronger line taken by the Bush administration, but I think there may be more going on that they want to publicly acknowledge. Revolt is in the air in Iran - I think that's the reason the regime is making all this crazy talk, "elected" this hardliner as President, etc. On the NK issue, we appear to have actually gotten China on board. I bet that gets worked out without our military involvement.
I'll buy there may be more going on than we know. Definitely one advantage to having troops on border.
I don't buy revolt is near. We have heard that about N. Korea and Cuba since the fall of the Berlin Wall and about Iran since the Iran-Iraq war.
What worries me is the leaders clearly feel threatened. Again positive from troops in Iraq. However, this may cause a cornered animal reaction and if that happens after they acquire an atomic weapon, who knows how bad that reaction may be.
We must move faster and stop relying on the Europeans, who will need an atomic bomb exploded in Paris or London to actually think force may be necessary.
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#451377 - 11/03/05 03:52 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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Quote:
Quote:
As strongly as we moved against Iraq...
That took twelve years.
I do agree that I would like to see a little stronger line taken by the Bush administration, but I think there may be more going on that they want to publicly acknowledge. Revolt is in the air in Iran - I think that's the reason the regime is making all this crazy talk, "elected" this hardliner as President, etc. On the NK issue, we appear to have actually gotten China on board. I bet that gets worked out without our military involvement.
I agree with you Jokerman - I don't think the Iranian people are fully behind this new regime. I'd be in favor of financially and materially supporting a rebellion by the Iranian people.
NK - I agree too, China will straighten them out.
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#451378 - 11/03/05 06:08 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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Quote:
Does anyone believe that Saddam Hussein actually did have WMD's? To be honest, I think he may have had them but got rid of them before the war started.
The US government's Kay Report answered some of the questions. It said:
"Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW [Chemical Weapons] program after 1991.
Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced -- if not entirely destroyed -- during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections."
Since the last of these was the Desert Fox bombing campaign, which occurred in 1998, that may have been the end of their production capability. They had these weapons at one time and actually used chemical weapons in the war with Iran in the mid-80's and on the Kurds in 1988.
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#451380 - 11/03/05 07:32 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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The man is in a completely different league than Mr. Wilson.
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#451381 - 11/03/05 07:55 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1160666,00.html "Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here," [Kay] told the open-mouthed senators. ... Before the war, Kay was one of the most fervent supporters of military action. And more than two months after the invasion, with no signs of an arsenal, Kay came to believe it was because the Pentagon was botching the search. In early June, the administration decided to take him at his word. It took control of the weapons search away from the military and gave it to the CIA, which set up the ISG. The CIA director, George Tenet, asked Kay to lead the hunt. . Kay, a veteran diplomat and nuclear weapons expert, set off convinced he would find the weapons but within a few weeks of interrogating Iraqi scientists and officials, and sending out search parties in vain, he began to feel a "great unease" that perhaps his assumptions, and those of many of the world's intelligence agencies, were built on sand. ... Since his departure, Kay says he has experienced no hostility from the White House. He met Bush, national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice and chief-of-staff, Andrew Card, to explain his findings. The president, he recalls, just wanted him to explain his reasoning. "He was asking the hard questions. He took the lead in the conversation," Kay says. ... For all his disillusion in the WMD intelligence, the former inspector still believes Bush led his country into war in good faith, determined to avoid a repeat of September 11, this time with WMD....As for the war itself, Kay still believes it was justified - not by the Iraqi military threat, which was largely illusory - but by the suffering of the Iraqi people...."We have a history of usually ending up on the right side of wars for the wrong reason."
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#451382 - 11/23/05 03:23 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Quote:
I agree with you Jokerman - I don't think the Iranian people are fully behind this new regime. I'd be in favor of financially and materially supporting a rebellion by the Iranian people.
There is a great article out today on this subject by Michael Ledeen.
Excerpt:
Quote:
The proper debate has still not been engaged, and the administration's failure to lead it bespeaks a grave failure of strategic vision. The war was narrowly aimed against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. But, as President Bush himself said after 9/11, it was logically and properly a war against both the terrorists themselves and against the regimes that foster, support, arm, train, indoctrinate, and guide the terrorist legions who are clamoring for our destruction.
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Like it or not, we are in a regional war, and it cannot be effectively prosecuted within a narrow national boundary. There will never be decent security in Iraq so long as the tyrants in Tehran and Damascus remain in power. They know that the spread of freedom is a terrible threat to them, and that if there were a successful democratic Iraq, their power and authority would be at risk. That is why they are waging an existential war against us in Iraq.
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Our most potent weapon against the terror masters is revolution, yet we are oddly feckless about supporting pro-democracy forces in either country...The opposition groups need good communications tools, from cell and satellite phones to laptops and servers. It wouldn't be very difficult to organize this sort of support; it wasn't that hard in the eighties, when we did the same for Solidarity and other democratic forces in the Soviet Empire.
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#451383 - 11/23/05 03:55 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Power Poster
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 5,349
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Not many people have thought about the long term effects of Bush's wars. But I did notice, Iran is now surrounded. It is only a matter of time before we invade or their people revolt.
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#451384 - 11/23/05 03:59 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 13,603
Somewhere vanilla
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Quote:
Not many people have thought about the long term effects of Bush's wars. But I did notice, Iran is now surrounded. It is only a matter of time before we invade or their people revolt.
Great point. I don't know if he did either. Unless we catch Iran putting bomb belts on people and sending them to kill Americans I don't see us invading anybody else anytime soon. Bushie used up his "political capital". Likely to our nation's detriment.
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#451386 - 11/23/05 04:00 PM
Re: Trouble brewing....
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Unless we catch Iran putting bomb belts on people and sending them to kill Americans...
What exactly do you think is happening in Iraq?
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