Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (123636)	1/24/2004 10:36:42 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "q, I know that Saddam sent them because it was reported by the Iranians and picked up by the Western Press." More than that, it was observed by the US. Let's go over your logic just one more time. In 1991, when Saddam sent military forces into Iran, it was known to all. From this you conclude that Saddam sent WMDs into Iran. I think that your conclusion is one chosen not from logic, but instead from a premise of believing what it is that you want to believe. The obvious conclusion from the 1991 movement of aircraft into Iran is that if Saddam had moved WMDs into Iran in 2003, it would have been widely reported as a fact. Since it was not, and was instead only reported as supposition, the natural conclusion is that no such movement of WMDs happened. Compare to what you were saying six months ago: Nadine Carroll, August 3, 2003 You really believe that the Bush administration is so masochistic that they would deliberately make the case on grounds they knew to be false, so they could have an acute political embarrasment on their hands at what should be their moment of triumph? I mean, just think about it. Meanwhile, Danny Kaye is figuring out what state the Iraqi weapons and manufacturing programs really were in. I suspect the cries of "it's all lies" are going to look somewhat more lame in a month or two. #reply-19173624 So what's the truth? I say that if "Danny Kaye" had come up with evidence of WMDs, you'd be trumpeting that fact all over this thread. But with him now saying that there were no WMDs, you, being perfectly partisan, ignore the very statements that only a few months ago you were eager to read. Kay had plenty of opportunity to review statements by captured Iraqi scientists and soldiers about WMDs. Here's what he has to say now: David Kay, who stepped down as leader of the U.S. hunt for weapons of mass destruction, said on Friday he does not believe there were any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. "I don't think they existed," Kay told Reuters in a telephone interview. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War (news - web sites) and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he said. #reply-19726803 David Kay is honest, why not you? -- Carl

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (123636)	1/24/2004 2:40:59 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Nadine, I don't doubt that there really were a great number of Jews and others used as slaves in German concentration and work camps until they died of disease or starvation, physiology experiment or other cause, and that a lot were murdered on arrival in gas chambers. Germans were very good at recording things. I'd have thought they would have a Schindler's List of those who were killed or died. They might not have or they might have destroyed the records, or the invading armies or others destroyed them. My point was that it's absurd to gaol people because they dare to doubt the official line on what is true. The bosses of the USA have been shown to be either unable or unwilling to be correct about what is a fact and what is not. For example, it would be silly for WMD Denial to be illegal. I don't doubt that Iraqi aircraft flew to Iran. Why they did is something I don't know, though it was obviously to avoid being destroyed by USA attack. Maybe it was Saddam who wanted to send them, or maybe it was somebody else. Maybe the pilots were fleeing potential death [they wouldn't want to be ordered into combat against USA aircraft]. Given the conflict between Saddam and Iran, there was obviously no love lost between them. He didn't have a friend receiving his aircraft. Of course I'd take anything reported by the Washington Post or any other media with some doubt. My experience of media and governments is that their association with facts and truth is tenuous at best, let alone when they get into the opinion and interpretation business, or have a hidden agenda. Given logic, experience of human nature and enough information sources, one can usually get a fairly good idea of what's gone on. I don't recall Saddam asserting he had WMDs. I recall him denying it. There wasn't a bluff. What he did do was try to assert sovereignty as best he could and retain as much control and confront the usurpation of his authority as best he could. He quite rightly thought the Americans would infest the UN inspectorate with spies whose job was to gather information about his regime and how to attack it. Western [or other] Intelligence has never impressed me, so if they thought Saddam had WMDs, it doesn't surprise me that they didn't have a clue. Look at Mr My God is Better than Your Idol who was in charge of some American intelligence service for example. What a nut case! The USA even established an Office of Disinformation for goodness sakes. How could anything the USA says be trusted? It can't. They have a self-centred agenda of kleptocracy, Bushist crony capitalism, the military-industrial beast to be fed and watered and a PNAC. People notoriously act and believe in their own interests, even if they try not to, and even if they think they aren't. That's why bias in the legal system has rules to reduce it. A judge doesn't sit on a case where his mother is being tried. The Scott Ritter I was talking about was the one who said that the WMDs were reduced to such a low level that they didn't justify any USA attack. Or something along those lines. I forget the actual quote. I don't know what he said in 1999. Neither would I simply take his word for something, any more than I would the New York Times where reporters interview their typewriters for a good story or The Wall Street Journal where the Rabid Republican Right makes up its version of reality to support the PNAC and cronies. I have a special contempt for The Wall Street Journal in general and Carrie Lee in particular [a writer there, trying to sell her book, who defamed me, temporarily, before she realized her statement of my intentions was factually incorrect and edited the online version of her article]. Neither would I take the word of the President of the USA [in the form of King George II] whose idea of truth is hilarious. The verbal transition of WMDs to programmes and now to intention to have programmes is quite a joke. The latest description in his State of the Nation speech was unintelligible. What the heck did it mean exactly? Mqurice