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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (118984)	11/8/2003 7:49:16 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "Yes, Carl, Barnes did misquote him. But before you go off into another, "see 2+2=22!" dance, let us remember that ..." Thanks for standing up and admitting that the French never said that the Iraqis had WMDs. This is important, because the claim that the French said so was a key piece of evidence that the Neocons were using to justify Bush's war. (The same applies to a lot of similar false claims, such as that Clinton or Schroeder claimed that Iraq had WMDs in early 2003.) Before the war, the neocons expected the Americans to find vast stores of WMDs, and huge underground facilities filled with scientists and engineers, designing newer and better nukes, LOL. This was all based on lies similar to the one that you've just admitted to believing. As far as WMD programs go, the simple fact is that the French NEVER stated that they knew, for a fact, that Iraq had any WMD programs. You followed a logical chain of implication, but *you yourself admit that the French statements were in the context of France trying to stop a war. You then conclude that there therefore were WMDs, but a simpler conclusion, one that is consistent with what you yourself admit was the French position, is that the French use the word "block" or "freeze", in the usual sense, where the use of the word is NOT contingent on the existence of the thing being blocked or frozen, as my several examples demonstrated. Re: "It was dead against French interests to admit the existence of WMD programs or "probable" WMDs. When someone makes a statement against his interests and out of character (for instance, if you ever admitted that you had been wrong about anything), it should by logic carry more weight than statments that support his interests, as being far more likely to be true." In other words, you are using the words of the French against them, as far as justifying the war against Iraq. This is just another way of saying that the French are idiots*. If so, we should ignore the data provided by the French, LOL. On the contrary, your reading of the implications of the statements are wrong. None of the French quotes imply the factual existence of WMD programs, only the possible or probable existence. The simple fact is that if a company declares bankruptcy, a judge will give out an order freezing its assets whether the judge knows that there are any assets or not. Freezing and blocking are protective maneuvers, their imply the possible occurrence of a contrary activity, not the actual existence. And in engineering, we often block stuff from happening that, realistically, can't possibly happen because we are legally required to. -- Carl