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| quote: | Originally posted by Neo nEro
JohnSmith: Maybe you would like to take a stab at some of those questions? |
Well, maybe i will.
first off, in regards to the problem of what can we do to disarm saddamn. One guy said: why not send somebody and do it another way?
this is what i think, that if saddamn is truly the problem, then it should be a police action to take him out, or a small special ops team.
Next he went on to say that Generally protesters agree that the UN should do it, which i also agree with. the very purpose of the UN is to deal with situations like this. Since a consensus could not be reached in the UN on military action, then the inspections should have continued. they were working after all.
The questioner goes on to ask:
He said, "why do you think it was that between 1991 and 1998 the UN was unable to disarm iraq"
this is flat out false.
Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector declared iraq 90 to 95%
disarmed in 1992. shortly after it was determined that the US was spying on iraq under the auspices of the UN. The inspectors were then withdrawn, and bombing began.
subsequently, 10 years of almost daily bombings, intense surveilance, and brutal economic sanctions banning everything from medicine to refrigeration trucks has been imposed on iraq.
inspectors went back in this year, and were recently withdrawn after finding not one shred of evidence of weapons of mass distruction, besides 16 empty warheads, and a bunch of heresay evidence.
it was also discovered that iraq had more than 100 al-samoud II missiles, which while not weapons of mass distruction, were prohibited because they travelled approximately 161km, which is over the 150km limit set by the UN. it is important to note a few things about these missiles:
- they travel only 11km farther than the limit (depending on your source, sometimes as much as 50km).
- the distance they travel is still less than half the distance to israel, and would not allow saddamn to attack any country that he could not already
- They were only able to acheive these extended ranges WITHOUT a guidance system, or a payload, without which they are little better than a large slingshot.
nonetheless, despite all this, iraq still agreed to destroy these missiles. This real verifiable act of disarmament was called "deception", "games" and "tricks" by the bush administration.
I believe 40 to 50 had been destroyed when the inspectors were withdrawn, with a 2 week estimate on the remaining to be destroyed.
so in short in regards to iraqi disarmament they have, and the questioner is wrong.
he then goes on to ask the question: to the question of "how long should the inspectors be given?"
he makes a point of ridiculing a man who calls this a silly question. I think it IS a silly question. it will take as long as it takes, you cannot put a time limit on this. I am reminded of when they asked bush how much the war would cost, and he said there were too many variables to tell. Now, an estimate has came out of 75b for the first month. I think it will end up to be much more in the end. So, is it a ridiculous question to ask, how much will it cost? I would say it's equally ridiculous to ask how long it will take to disarm saddamn (especially as i've noted above, he already has for all intents and purposes)
finally, there is one tough question that he asks, why did the US not take the oil wells after the first gulf war.
On this one i am not sure either. I suspect they were unable to do so in a way that would not make it obvious. I also suspect that america has many deals with kuwait oil companies, and was there for that reason primarily in the early 90's, that is to protect their economic interests. I suspect they tried to make deals with saddamn through 3rd parties and were unable to.
that brings the question what will be different now? if nothing has changed in regards to iraq and bushs ability to seize it's oil without exposing himself then and how can this war be for oil?
I'm not sure on that either. But i am confident that bush believes he can get his hands on the oil, otherwise he'd have no motive for attacking iraq. it's certainly not to help the people of iraq.
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