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

To: michael97123 who wrote (123873)	1/28/2004 1:01:21 PM
From: Elsewhere	Respond to of 281500

Carl just guessed but had no explanation at that time. He didn't give it in that message but in earlier ones. But he can better speak for himself.

To: michael97123 who wrote (123873)	1/28/2004 1:14:14 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Anyone who suggested that Saddam didn't have WMDs a year ago was hooted down as a loony or as in Saddam's pay. There were plenty of questions, though, and partly in order to deflect the hooting, people adopted a public strategy of saying, even if he has WMDs, he has no means of delivering them. Then the anti-Saddam pro-war people said, well, he won't deliver them himself, he'll give them to anti-US terrorists, who will deliver them, though they never specified exactly how the terrorists would deliver them, but nevermind that, if they can blow up the WTC they can find a diabolically clever method of delivery. That was in part why the admin had to make the Al Qaeda-Saddam connection, which was never made. The entire argument was so convoluted that even after one part of it was refuted, other parts remained, and at the end of the day, the "Saddam was a bad man and Iraqis must be liberated to get a democratic govt there and then in all of Islam, praise the United States and the Bush admin" was the one that "stuck." But even that one isn't sticking, because the Bush admin doesn't want just any Iraqi govt, they want one that will be properly grateful to and friendly toward the US, and that just isn't in the cards if real elections are allowed, either in 6 months or, IMO, in 6 years. The real secret agenda was to get Chalabi and friends in power in Iraq, IMHO. If that would have been possible, all would have been OK. But that was always just a fantasy, grounded in.... Chalabi-Cheney-Rumsfeld fantasies about the nature of govt and Iraq. They ridiculed the "Arab Street" back in April and May, said, look it never erupted as people said it would. Well, it is just simmering now. The anti-US Iraqis were thrown for a look after Saddam's arrest, for sure. But they are regrouping, and if they continue for a few months more and get any kind of command structure, they will be even stronger than before. The US soldiers have been told to stop giving giving candy to the Iraqi children, that "these people" only understand fear and force, soldiers have to be tougher to get obedience. That too will boomarang. But neither candy nor force (at least not the amount of force that we are willing to use--we aren't willing to treat them like we treated the Germans and the Japanese in WWII, our entire "reason" for going there will be refuted if we do that) will work. We've gotten ourselves into the mess that many of us predicted prior to the war. That was always the really serious criticism that was ignored. There is no endgame that works in favor of the US, and at the end of the day, that was why we needed real partnerships with the UN and more countries than just GB and Aus and a few others that we mostly bribed. That too had zero to do with giving other countries a "veto" over US national security.

To: michael97123 who wrote (123873)	1/28/2004 4:59:21 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi michael97123; Re: "Carl just guessed but had no explanation at that time." It was simple. The UN was going to authorize an invasion of Iraq if Saddam did not get rid of his WMDs. It's only logical to conclude that he would get rid of them. This is fairly simple logic, and I was not the only person who propounded it. The reason it was ignored is that Bush used swore to us that he had secret proof that Saddam had WMDs. Bush was a fool, but 99.9% of the human population are fools, so they were reduced to using the only logic a fool can use, "who would you believe, Bush or Saddam". Did Bush believe that Saddam had WMDs? Anyone who has extensively traded the stock market knows that a fool believes what he wants to believe, so I suspect that Bush did believe. And now, I suspect that Bush believes that he has a plan to win the war in Iraq. But Bush is a fool, so why should you trust his plan to win in Iraq now, when your trust in his judgement on WMDs turned to dust? Re: "Did scientists lie to saddam to save their ass?" I doubt that many scientists told Saddam any such thing. What they would have told him is something like "look, we can get a WMD program started if you will just give me the spending authority." What Saddam said to them was something like "Sorry but with sanctions, we barely have enough money to keep our conventional forces ready, we just don't have the money to pursue expensive programs to develop weapons that may not work." Better that you consider the motivation David Kay would have for saying that significant numbers of scientists were lying to Saddam. That's right, David Kay is lying to save Bush's ass. Re: "Was saddam embarrassed to admit to arab world that he succumbed to western pressure and destroyed them?" Saddam repeatedly told the world that Iraq had no WMDs. He asked for inspectors to return, (without the CIA spies). When inspectors did return, they were given free run of the country. Logically, the only reasonable conclusion is that Saddam knew that there were no WMDs to find. -- Carl

To: michael97123 who wrote (123873)	1/28/2004 7:54:45 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Or was he/is he just plain crazy? If you take a look at how iraq was degraded during saddams rule you may come to the last conclusion. I rmember hearing an Iraqi talking about Saddam's novels. He said of the last one, that was only published in the last year or two of Saddam's reign, that when people hear it was by Saddam (it was published under another name), eveybody rushed out to buy it, just to get an idea how Saddam was thinking. They concluded that he was crazy.