J
Jim Adney
Guest
On Mon, 31 Oct 2005 05:53:14 -0700, Mark Hickey <[email protected]>
wrote:
>Jim Adney <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>The difference is that the UN weapons inspectors were there in the
>>interim. Some WMDs WERE there, and they WERE dealt with. The news
>>reported in the media concentrated on the runarounds the inspectors
>>got, but there were still weapons found and destroyed during this
>>time. By 9/11, the inspectors felt that the WMDs were all gone.
>
>Seriously, you have to stop getting your "news" from blogs. What you
>write is entirely, categorically incorrect.
I don't read blogs of any kind, so I have no idea what information or
misinformation they may contain.
>Read the actauly UNMOVIC report from March 2003 and it's clear that
>not only did every major intelligence organization think that Iraq had
>WMD, so did the UN weapons inspectors.
>
>http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/cluster6mar.pdf
Thank you for the reference. I'm always interested in adding more and
better information to the debate. That document is 173 pages long and
covers the time period from about 1970 to some time before its
publication in 2003. Most of the discussion is in regard to the 1990s
and discusses Iraqi missles, missle development, and the destruction
thereof. It is clear that there is uncertainty about the veracity of
Iraqi claims that everything was destroyed at that time, but I could
find no claim of certainty that WMDs existed into the 2000s.
It's also important to note here that this report emphasizes those
things which were proscribed under the UN agreements following the
Gulf war, ie missles with range greater than 150 km. There is some
discussion of missle payload, but these are all chemical (conventional
explosive) or biological, but it's not clear to me from reading the
report that Iraq was close to having effective biological payloads for
those missles.
In this entire report, there is only one mention of an Iraqi nuclear
warhead, and that was in 1988. when Iraq decided to try to design such
a weapon. There's no evidence that any work in this direction was ever
actually done, and this event is marked by mention in only one
paragraph out of the whole 173 pages.
What is clear in the report is that most of the production facilities
for missles and warheads, as well as most of the missles and warheads
themselves, were destroyed in the period leading up to 2003.
>That's not debatable - it's just history. Yet there are those who
>figure if you repeat the opposite enough times it becomes true.
I agree completely. At 173 pages, I can't claim to have read every
word carefully, but I think I did a reasonable job. I get the
impression that you think there are things in this report that aren't
really there. There are certainly lots of unanswered questions, but
there's no smoking gun.
It's important to remain aware of the fact that lack of proof that
there are no WMDs in Iraq does NOT constitute proof that they have
them. After all, can you prove that I don't have WMDs? Can you PROVE
that YOU don't?
It's also important to stay aware of the fact that nothing that I've
found in this report gives any credence to the idea that Iraq was a
threat to the US. Whatever capabilities they had were extremely short
range at most. If we believe that Iraqi possession of missles of range
less than 200 km is a threat to the US, then that should have been the
reason given.
>Changing history to be "as you prefer it" and then making political
>judgment is disingenuous at best.
I agree. You might want to refer to
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1219/dailyUpdate.html?s=entt
where Hans Blix, the head of the UN inspection team, is reported as
saying that he believed that all of Iraq's WMDs had beed destroyed in
1991. Given the whole article, I would say that this is not strictly
true, but Blix would probably agree that Iraq had no significant WMD
capability after that time.
Also from same article:
"The WMD issue reemerged during a recent interview President George
Bush had with ABC News correspondent Diane Sawyer. The New York Times
reports that Mr. Bush said it no longer really mattered if Hussein had
WMD or was just planning to have them. When reminded by Ms. Sawyer of
his claim before the war of the "hard fact that there were weapons of
mass destruction, as opposed to the possibility that he could move to
acquire those weapons" Bush replied "What's the difference?" "
I can see the difference, and I'm sure you can, too. But the
administration's claim when going to war was not the future
possiblitiy, but rather the present certainty, of WMDs in Iraq. The
fallback to future possiblity only came later, after WMDs failed to
surface.
Since you seem to value accuracy in your fact checking, I wonder how
you deal with all this. Would you not would hold those on your side of
the aisle to the same standards as those who disagree with you?
wrote:
>Jim Adney <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>The difference is that the UN weapons inspectors were there in the
>>interim. Some WMDs WERE there, and they WERE dealt with. The news
>>reported in the media concentrated on the runarounds the inspectors
>>got, but there were still weapons found and destroyed during this
>>time. By 9/11, the inspectors felt that the WMDs were all gone.
>
>Seriously, you have to stop getting your "news" from blogs. What you
>write is entirely, categorically incorrect.
I don't read blogs of any kind, so I have no idea what information or
misinformation they may contain.
>Read the actauly UNMOVIC report from March 2003 and it's clear that
>not only did every major intelligence organization think that Iraq had
>WMD, so did the UN weapons inspectors.
>
>http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/cluster6mar.pdf
Thank you for the reference. I'm always interested in adding more and
better information to the debate. That document is 173 pages long and
covers the time period from about 1970 to some time before its
publication in 2003. Most of the discussion is in regard to the 1990s
and discusses Iraqi missles, missle development, and the destruction
thereof. It is clear that there is uncertainty about the veracity of
Iraqi claims that everything was destroyed at that time, but I could
find no claim of certainty that WMDs existed into the 2000s.
It's also important to note here that this report emphasizes those
things which were proscribed under the UN agreements following the
Gulf war, ie missles with range greater than 150 km. There is some
discussion of missle payload, but these are all chemical (conventional
explosive) or biological, but it's not clear to me from reading the
report that Iraq was close to having effective biological payloads for
those missles.
In this entire report, there is only one mention of an Iraqi nuclear
warhead, and that was in 1988. when Iraq decided to try to design such
a weapon. There's no evidence that any work in this direction was ever
actually done, and this event is marked by mention in only one
paragraph out of the whole 173 pages.
What is clear in the report is that most of the production facilities
for missles and warheads, as well as most of the missles and warheads
themselves, were destroyed in the period leading up to 2003.
>That's not debatable - it's just history. Yet there are those who
>figure if you repeat the opposite enough times it becomes true.
I agree completely. At 173 pages, I can't claim to have read every
word carefully, but I think I did a reasonable job. I get the
impression that you think there are things in this report that aren't
really there. There are certainly lots of unanswered questions, but
there's no smoking gun.
It's important to remain aware of the fact that lack of proof that
there are no WMDs in Iraq does NOT constitute proof that they have
them. After all, can you prove that I don't have WMDs? Can you PROVE
that YOU don't?
It's also important to stay aware of the fact that nothing that I've
found in this report gives any credence to the idea that Iraq was a
threat to the US. Whatever capabilities they had were extremely short
range at most. If we believe that Iraqi possession of missles of range
less than 200 km is a threat to the US, then that should have been the
reason given.
>Changing history to be "as you prefer it" and then making political
>judgment is disingenuous at best.
I agree. You might want to refer to
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1219/dailyUpdate.html?s=entt
where Hans Blix, the head of the UN inspection team, is reported as
saying that he believed that all of Iraq's WMDs had beed destroyed in
1991. Given the whole article, I would say that this is not strictly
true, but Blix would probably agree that Iraq had no significant WMD
capability after that time.
Also from same article:
"The WMD issue reemerged during a recent interview President George
Bush had with ABC News correspondent Diane Sawyer. The New York Times
reports that Mr. Bush said it no longer really mattered if Hussein had
WMD or was just planning to have them. When reminded by Ms. Sawyer of
his claim before the war of the "hard fact that there were weapons of
mass destruction, as opposed to the possibility that he could move to
acquire those weapons" Bush replied "What's the difference?" "
I can see the difference, and I'm sure you can, too. But the
administration's claim when going to war was not the future
possiblitiy, but rather the present certainty, of WMDs in Iraq. The
fallback to future possiblity only came later, after WMDs failed to
surface.
Since you seem to value accuracy in your fact checking, I wonder how
you deal with all this. Would you not would hold those on your side of
the aisle to the same standards as those who disagree with you?
