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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (24967)	6/25/2003 10:58:12 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25898

It is sort of puzzling I think that you can have 100% certainty about the weapons of mass destruction's existence, Then why didn't Blix declare Iraq clear of WMD's back in December?? Obviously he had all the documentation and evidence he required to "prove" it, right? This is a circular argument TP.. And it's a cowardly and legalistic exercise of dysfunctional logic. We have UN inspectors collecting and/or observing, Iraqi documents that state that not all of their WMDs have been declared. So they say, "since we can't find them, we have to take the Baathists at their word"... This is what the Baathists said about their biological WMD program.. That it never existed; that they had no documents related to it; and that UNSCOM and US accusations were false and consisted of a conspiracy to maintain indefinite sanctions on Saddam. Yet, in 1995, only due to a defection in Saddam's family/government, we find evidence of their biological weapons program in 1995, Again, a program which the Iraqis denied even existed. Thus, the same dysfunctional logic could have been (and I believe was) applied about these weapons. "Oh.. we can't find them, the Iraqis deny having they, so they must not exist". YET, we found them.. but only 5 years later and after a high-level defection of the inner circle, we find them... But then no one does anything about it. We got angry.. shouted a lot, wrote resolutions in the UN, acted like we might take military action.. but all of it was a bluff.. And Saddam knew that. So when in 1998 UNSCOM inspectors discover that Iraq has been keeping two sets of books on the WMDs allegedly expended against Iran, to the tune of 6,000 missing warheads, Saddam halts all cooperation, secure in the knowledge that the UN members don't have the balls to take military action. We pull our inspectors out, Clinton launches "Desert Fox", survives his impeachment trial, and the world goes on for Saddam.. But for Blix to come out and claim that we not 100% certain IS IRRELEVANT. There are two different standards of evidence here. And both, "Prepoderance of the Evidence", and "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" remain utterly uncovincing when applied to Blix's responsibility to ensure Iraq was in complience. HE CAN'T PROVE THEY DON'T EXIST, and the Baathists could be taken at their word. The only thing we're 100% certain of is that, 13 years after the cease fire accord leading to the cessation of hostilities during Desert Storm, is that Saddam's could not (can not?) be trusted to have told the truth. The UNSCOM/UNMOVIC inspections were similar to a probationary hearing for Saddam. He was already convicted and ordered to "cease and desist". But he provided no evidence as to his "rehabilitation". And no probation judge can exonerate a convicted criminal, or declare him "rehabilitated" based solely upon the treacherous word of a convicted and brutal international felon. So I say to Blix, it was HIS failure to prove Iraq was free of WMDs that is a contributing factor towards why this war was fought. Hawk