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WMDs?
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| Shakka |
Go to this link and look at the second picture and tell me what you see...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphi..._fury/flash.htm
Then some commentary from my friend, Mr. Boortz...
| quote: | If you use this link [ http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphi..._fury/flash.htm ] to visit the USA Today website you will be treated to a flash presentation of several pictures taken during the siege of Fallujah. Picture number two in this presentation shows 40 vials in boxes labeled "Sarin." That's sarin gas, my friends. One drop of this stuff on your skin can kill you. The boxes have Cyrillic and German characters on them, indicating they may have come from our good friends the Russians or the Germans. The caption under the photo reads "Marines discovered 40 vials of suspected Sarin gas while searching a house in Fallujah, Iraq. It was secreted in a briefcase hidden in a truck in the courtyard of the house."
So ... there you go. Weapons of mass destruction. Chemical weapons. This Sarin gas could, with an effective application, kill thousands. And where do they find it? In a briefcase! A briefcase in a car trunk. And you wonder why our troops have had some difficulty finding Saddam's weapons? You still think inspections could have worked? Yeah, sure they would. The inspectors were going to look in every car trunk and every briefcase in Iraq.
What you see in that picture is proof that the only way to even come close to neutralizing the threat that Saddam posed was to remove him from power. Nothing else was going to work.
Meanwhile ... just watch the critics whistle past this one. If you don't mention the vials of Sarin gas, they just don't exist ... do they? |
:disbelief |
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| Zild |
| Its well known that Iraq is a huge weapons bazaar. There are weapons of mass destruction in many countries but you don't see the US invading and occupying those countries. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
Say, this wouldn't happen to be the same stuff reported by NPR on Nov. 11th that had to correct themselves into saying it was merely Sarin gas test-kits, would it?:
http://instapundit.com/archives/019171.php
Would you or Boortz happen to have the lowdown on that? What day was this Boortz article posted? |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
Say, this wouldn't happen to be the same stuff reported by NPR on Nov. 11th that had to correct themselves into saying it was merely Sarin gas test-kits, would it?:
http://instapundit.com/archives/019171.php
Would you or Boortz happen to have the lowdown on that? What day was this Boortz article posted? |
Good question. It was posted today. Since Fallujah fell after the 11th, I'd say it's a more recent development. And the USA Today flash intro if for today as well. Good question though.
Another good question would be, why are there Sarin Gas test kits if there is supposedly no sarin gas to begin with since Iraq "never" had any WMDs? |
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| wolverine16 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zild
Its well known that Iraq is a huge weapons bazaar. There are weapons of mass destruction in many countries but you don't see the US invading and occupying those countries. |
I think we have to invade our ourselves. We have nuclear weapons! By saying we felt threatened by Iraq beause they had WMDs and we had to attack them to protect ourselves, even though there was no attack being mounted by them, we essentially used a logic that, if used as a precedent, would justify any other country attacking us. All they'd have to say is they felt thretened. The worst part is we definitely have WMDs, unlike Iraq....hmmm, but now it turns out I made up that reason in my mind and Colin Powell never made a presenttion at the U.N., because we were only trying to liberate the Iraqi people. :haha: Let's try to use rational thought during this term please. |
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| Renegade |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
Another good question would be, why are there Sarin Gas test kits if there is supposedly no sarin gas to begin with since Iraq "never" had any WMDs? |
What? Of course they had WMDs. Tons and tons of biological and chemical weapons were used against the Kurds and Iranians in the late 80s and the stockpiles that were not used by Saddam against his fellow man were either declared and destroyed in 1991 (in the case of chemical weapons) or between 1991 and 1996 (in the case of biological weapons). The ISG report from a month or two ago confirms this.
The issue was never whether he had ever had weapons (afterall, Bush must have known that Iraq had had WMDs at some point because his dad continued to sell WMD materials to Iraq even after they were used on Kurdish and Iranian civilians) just whether he had WMDs (or, more significantly, a WMD stockpile large enough to pose a threat to the most heavily armed nation in the history of the planet) at the time of the invasion. The simple fact of the matter - which is now beyond doubt - is that he didn't.
Also, from the article:
| quote: | | This Sarin gas could, with an effective application, kill thousands. |
Sarin gas released in a crowded, poorly ventilated subway in Japan killed just 11 people. Even if it could be proven that Iraq had large quantities of this weapons at the time of the invasion (which it didn't) the threat shouldn't be overplayed. As with many other biological and chemical weapons, releasing the gas into a crowded city, say, is not going to be terribly effective as it will disperse too quickly. While it's an undeniably nasty chemical, even if Iraq did possess it in large quantities it still wouldn't have posed much of a risk to the United States (especially since Iraq never had any missiles / warheads capable of reaching the continent) and certainly not enough of a threat to justify an invasion - such as the one we've seen - under international law. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
In addition to Renegade's sentiments, I'll continue to refer to David Kay's predictions that WMD will likely never be found.
Or, if that makes you too uncomfortable, I suppose you could refer to Charles Duelfer, the most recent chief WMD inspector who stated the likelihood of finding any WMD was less than 5%.
Whichever prediction makes you more comfortable by the guys who actually searched ad nauseum throughout the country, and who have a good understanding of Saddam's WMD capability, that's peachy by me.:D |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
In addition to Renegade's sentiments, I'll continue to refer to David Kay's predictions that WMD will likely never be found.
Or, if that makes you too uncomfortable, I suppose you could refer to Charles Duelfer, the most recent chief WMD inspector who stated the likelihood of finding any WMD was less than 5%.
Whichever prediction makes you more comfortable by the guys who actually searched ad nauseum throughout the country, and who have a good understanding of Saddam's WMD capability, that's peachy by me.:D |
Well, considering that this batch of supposed Sarin gas was found inside of a briefcase in the trunk of a car, it's not surprising that they're the least bit hard to find. However, it doesn't mean they were never there. I also doubt that Kay and the likes of Duelfer had the backup of a group of marines to give them unfettered access to certain inspection sites. |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
Well, considering that this batch of supposed Sarin gas was found inside of a briefcase in the trunk of a car, it's not surprising that they're the least bit hard to find. However, it doesn't mean they were never there. I also doubt that Kay and the likes of Duelfer had the backup of a group of marines to give them unfettered access to certain inspection sites. |
This sounds extremely similar to the NPR report that I linked above. You'll have to forgive me if I'm just a wee bit skeptical of Neil Boortz and his propensity to be
1. quick with the facts
2. outright lying
3. bombastic ass
http://mediamatters.org/archives/se...opic=&go=Search
As far as I knew, Kay and Duelfer had unlimited access to any and all suspected sites, as well as any sites they deemed suspicious. Of course that doesn't include Fallujah, so I won't be foolish and rule that out just yet. But again their reports were not merely on what they found, but were verifiable judgements on the WMD production capability of Saddam, from which their rulings on the unlikelihood of finding WMD are fairly sound. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
This sounds extremely similar to the NPR report that I linked above. You'll have to forgive me if I'm just a wee bit skeptical of Neil Boortz and his propensity to be
1. quick with the facts
2. outright lying
3. bombastic ass
http://mediamatters.org/archives/se...opic=&go=Search
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You forgot to mention his annoying voice.;) |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
You forgot to mention his annoying voice.;) |
Nah, Hannity's nasal voice is way worse.:D
Ah hell, Boortz ain't that bad, just another conservative mouthpiece. Some are better, some are worse. |
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| occrider |
Now I know nobody forgot that the rationale for the invasion were the massive stockpiles of chemical weapons in addition to the facilities that were constantly pumping out new stockpiles, not to mention the that they were ready to fire in 45 minutes, but let us presume for an instant that this briefcase is indeed sarin gas and therefore lo and behold we found the wmds we were looking for all along ... mission accomplished. Let�s take a step back and use some common sense to rationally look at a cost benefit analysis of the situation:
Cost
$200 billion (Going by CBO estimates of what the war will cost)
1,197 American lives
Benefit
A suitcase of Sarin Gas
Assurances that no new weapons program will be developed in Iraq
I only included benefits pertaining to WMD since every other justification was after the fact, and was not used as a primary justification for invasion prior to the actual invasion. Now as for the cost, I�ll ignore the cost of lives since one cannot so easily assign a value to such a thing, so I�ll only use the actual $ costs. Since $200 billion is a meaningless number to this new breed of spend and spend conservatives in the Bush administration, let�s look at it in a different way that might possibly put things in perspective �
If we look at social welfare expenditures in a year, the total amount spent is approximately $1,505 billion. However, that figure is all social welfare expenditure. If we subtract social insurance (which is not exactly an entitlement since you pay premiums out of every paycheck) and education (since that�s not entirely what we would traditionally consider as an entitlement), the total spending on entitlements such as welfare, hospital medical care, Medicaid, food programs, etc., comes to $434 billion. That figure is actually inflated by several other factors that aren�t necessarily �entitlements� such as medical research, however, let�s stick with that figure. Therefore doing the simple math, the Iraq war is equivalent to a 54% increase in entitlement programs. Can you imagine some democrat trying to pass that in congress? A 54% increase, all for an unlikely suitcase of �sarin� and assurances that Iraq won�t develop WMDs when, coincidentally, it wasn�t making much progress in doing just that under the status quo pre-invasion.
My social welfare expenditure data comes from here by the way:
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/stat...upplement/2000/ |
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