Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "I guess you believe that Powell faked all those intercepts where Iraqi officers asked each other if they "evacuated" all the weapons that the inspectors weren't supposed to find. Didn't they mention something about "nerve gas"? ..."
A quick search finds: "Powell also played a tape of two military officers speaking to each other with one instructing the other not to use the word nerve agents on wireless phone calls, assuming the United States would be listening."
washingtontimes.com
But all this shows is that Iraqi officers talk about nerve gas. This is hardly a surprise, the country used them during the Iran war. The subject coming up in conversation does not prove that Iraq has them now. I write regularly about WMDs on SI, but I don't have any, and never have, LOL. People on this very thread have been warned about talking too much about weapons, so it should not be a surprise that the Iraqis would do the same.
The basic problem is that if you record everything anyone in Iraq says 24 hours a day for years you're sure to come up with evidence at least as strong as this stuff. What's surprising is that the evidence that Powell showed is so weak. What he needed to do was to show photographs of giant missiles (like the Cuban Missile crisis). Or at least a copy of the official order from Saddam's military instructing people to hide WMDs in no uncertain terms.
With an intelligence organization as large as the United States possesses, it would be a bloody miracle if there wasn't somebody in there that was convinced that the Iraqis have WMDs. But people make mistakes.
If Powell had shown evidence that conclusively proved the Iraqis to be working on WMDs, the UNSC would have backed us and we'd be at war now. Instead, the UNSC was so unimpressed with Powell's evidence that France and Russia were applauded when they spoke for peace.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a great example of people making errors in seeing what they wanted to see, and a war (or at least an increase in a war) resulting. The US was looking for an excuse to directly attack North Vietnam. So when some sailors got confused about who was shooting at whom, they jumped to the conclusion that it was the North Vietnamese. They sent the report back to Johnson, who got Congress to allow him to expand the war. But when the military looked more carefully at the evidence, they concluded that there had been no firing by the North Vietnamese at US ships, and in fact all the shooting had been by the Americans. People make mistakes.
campus.northpark.edu
The above is why nations shouldn't go to war on thinly proved pretexts. War is a bell that cannot be unrung, so it should not be sounded except when under certainty.
If Iraq has so much WMDs that they are giving out orders to use them against the Americans, then how come the Americans can't send in a few Special Forces guys and come back with the proof? The answer is that the proof is still very weak.
A note on why Powell's evidence was truly weak: Iraq has millions of people. It would be impossible to be sure that every one of those people was disarmed in the same way that it is utterly impossible to prove that, for example, no Japanese citizens have WMDs. In fact, despite the Japanese government's rules against the manufacture and possession of WMDs, Japanese citizens nevertheless made some and used them (on their own citizens, where have we heard that phrase before).
The nature of Powell's evidence is on this same limited plane. The best interpretation of that evidence is that there are "some people in Iraq's military" that are attempting to thwart disarmament. But that is not the same as "Iraq" attempting to thwart disarmament. And don't give me the happy BS that Saddam is in complete control over everybody in Iraq. No leader has ever had that.
The evidence in favor of Iraq is in the orders that have clearly come down from Saddam. Iraq has allowed inspectors into the Palaces, provided lists of scientists, etc. All these things are verifiable evidence that Iraq (not every Iraqi citizen or soldier, but the country as a whole) is submitting to inspections. This is what Iraq has been asked to do. In comparison to this solid evidence of a decision to disarm from the very top, the evidence that Powell provided is simply too weak to counter.
What Powell needs to do is to arrange the capture of one of those mobile weapons labs, if they exist.
The whole concept makes me laugh, since I know how big weapons factories typically are. It takes 10 tons of chemical weapons to kill a single soldier in combat (as of the Iran / Iraq war), so the concept that you're going to manufacture significant amounts of weapons in the back of a truck is ludicrous. Weapons factories are huge enterprises. Only assassins (or terrorists) can make weapons in the back of a truck, and there are plenty of weapons that are not WMDs that are just great at assassination.
-- Carl
P.S. The reason terrorists can make weapons in the back of a truck is because they don't have to use them in a military environment. Instead, they release their sarin gas in the confined atmosphere of a subway, or blow up their bombs on board a bus. The use of weapons in war, by contrast, is incredibly inefficient. A few pounds of mustard gas can kill 100s in the hands of a terrorist, but the military requires 20,000 pounds of mustard gas to kill one enemy soldier. |
