Nice try!
>>> The UN Security Council never voted, due to the promise of a French veto. It was widely reported that we had the votes, until France hardened its position.<<<
We did not have the votes! Of the Big Five we had only the support of Britian. And France didn't harden its position. It's positions was firm from the beginning. And Russia and China were in agreement with the French position, as was Germany which was charing the Security Council during much of the debate.
Chile was sort of on the US side, but even its support wanned when it was discovered that the US had been spying on UN Security Council member homes and offices. The female Chilean representative didn't like this a bit!
>>>In any event, the UN is incapable of enforcing its resolutions without the United States, and was clearly depending upon the United States to maintain containment. Thus, it made sense for us to decide when and how to fight.<<<
Sounds like a bully call to me. Not only did you leave out the fact that Hans Blix wanted more time and the UN Security Council wanted to give him more time, but you're also leaving out the fact that Blix was investigating the very site that Saddam's son-in-law claimed that the WMD was destroyed and buried. The UN inspectors were trying to determine the best methodology for testing that site, at the time Bush decided to invade. Had Bush waited, he would have lost his justification for invading due to what Blix might have discovered.
So, fundamentally, to Bush, it didn't matter what the UN thought. Bush wanted this war and he manufactured the reasons for this war. Evidence of wanting to invade Iraq has been part of the Bush braintrust for a long time, pre-9/11 even.
>>>But the main thing is, did Iraq constitute a threat in the context of the war on terrorism, that is, did it have the capacity to supply terrorists with biological or chemical agents to use against Western targets, particularly America? The answer is clearly yes, based on what Kay found, in terms of the maintenance of R&D and the conservation of strains of bacteria that could be weaponized.<<<
Hey, Chile and Argentina have the capacity to supply terrorists with biological and chemical agents. Just about any university science lab anywhere can do this. You also leave out the degradation factor of the WMD the US helped provide Iraq back in the 80s. Relative to "conservation of strains of bacteria" Kay is on record as saying not even small stockpiles were known to exist throughout the 90s. Kay point bland said that the UN weapons inspectors were very good and did their job ridding Iraq of what you're claiming were a threat to the US.
Kay also described that it was the step-by-step investigation into how such weapons could possibly be created, i.e., the scientists themselves, that led him to conclude no such weapons or programs existed or came into existence after it was reported they were destroyed. In fact, former chief UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus, in a speech at Harvard, championed the success of the weapons inspectors for destroying what Iraq had.
>>>In addition, it is now established that there were links between Iraq and Al- Qaida, we just don't know how tight they were.<<<
Please show such links, and ones that have been accepted as credible by governments, not by politicians or slanted analysts. On the other hand, you probably believed the links showing Iraq tried to buy yellow cake from Niger were true also.
>>>Finally, we intervened in Serbia without UN mandate to forestall suspected genocide against the Kosovans, and in Iraq, there was clearly a brutal regime that was capable of genocide. We had every reason to resolve a situation that was dangerous to let fester and where his own country would clearly be better off with the fall of Saddam.<<<
NATO was involved in all of that. Neither NATO nor the UN was involved in the US unilateral action, its illegal preemptive invasion of Iraq based on reasons we today learn--which I knew then--were false.
How do I know what I write about above? Read through some of this:
[NOTE: The below links included in the below references are old dating back to pre-war, so some of them don't work--but many of them do--enough to show Bush's war was wrong.]
Message 18725918
Message 18725992
Message 18725935
Message 18725953
Message 18725986 |
