Iraq.... What do you think?Follow

Skeet, see, if your going to rip me a new one, do it in style like RPzip. Atleast he makes me laugh!

I'm sorry, did I hit a nerve? You are awfully defensive all of a sudden. I'm glad you think you could careless, but seeing as how you like to bring me into threads I havn't even participated in, and make jokes that get rounding silence... I know you truley just "dont care". I would almost think you have a thing for me, if I didnt already know you and Mr.Thundra have a thing going. Seeing as how its been declared SHE is a He and all, that would make me, and for that matter any female, off limits. Next time you wanna get your ***** all in a wad, maybe you should take a step back, read the god awful **** you have spammed the board with, and then spin that babey up even further with the realization that you are the true "Queen of the board pussies, morons, and hemmoroids"! All hail Queen Skeet, shall he never quit liking to be ***********

No, my dear Katie. You didn't hit a nerve. Those are the feelings I've always had about you. Something about you that makes it so fun to hate you. My S.O. reads these boards and with out me ever mentioning you asked "What is up with that Katie? Why is she such a moron?"

If anybody is defensive all of a sudden, it is you. I don't remember you ever letting what people say about you get to you. People would call you a moron and you'd post right after them like nothing had happened.

Maybe you have a new found confidence in yourself, perhaps fueled by your Brusband. Let me give you some hints of what is in store for you in the future. Sadly, you will have kids, probably around 5. Two girls: Katie-ann, and Susie-lee, and three boys: Kleedus, Billy, and Edgar. You will get fat(if you haven't already, go ahead, take a look at your gut, you see it comeing, I know you do) and your Brusband will cheat on you. Most likely with your cousin, Sue-ann or Betty-Sue.

Your Brusband will most likely start being abusive (assuming he isn't already) and really, who could blame him? Will you leave him though? No. He beats you because he loves you, really. Just keep telling yourself that as you wait in line for your food stamps while your dirty, snotty, slack-jaw, redneck, bucktoothed, inbred, white-trash kids play fun games like "guess what's up my nose" and "who's tooth is more yellow?"

Skeet

Fizzle material? You mean fizzle materizzle up in Irizzaq, dawg?

Fision or fusion, you pick, which, depending on the subject is the proper tizzerm. Just sayin'.

Totem

The part that I find difficult, Jophiel, is that the Iraqi government was almost obsessive-compulsive about the documentation of everything. There are warehouses even of documents on what prisoners were tortured, how they were tortured, etc. This was a police state which wrote down anything and everything so as to keeps tabs on everyone. So when something as important as chemical munitions were buried, it wouldn't be without the express orders of the leadership and the paperwork which accompanied it.

Now granted, in such a mountain of paperwork the documentation could conceivably be lost, but I can't imagine that Pvt. Abdullah just went out and dug a hole on his own and placed those shells there.

What is significant about those mortar shells is that if there are those, then it becomes all too possible other WMDs are buried as well, just like the nuclear components buried in the roses of that scientist and Saddam Hussein ultimately orderd them to be put there.

Totem

Put it this way: to myself, and I imagine many others, it is possible to conceive a situation where in the chaos of war, a dozen and a half shells might be misplaced or lost. As I pointed out, the United States can't keep track of all its potential bioweapons and radioactive waste materials and whatnot in peacetime so I'm not about to stress out over imagining that a handful of shells might be misplaced during a war.

If this is a totally impossible scenario, then it's up to the United States to prove that this is concrete evidence of something deeper. As I pointed out in my previous posts, I'm not only willing to withhold judgement one way or the other, but also noted a potential lead that there may be more to it. Certainly if the guy who claims to have been involved can point out a cache of four hundred additional shells, I'm not going to insist that Pvt. Abdullah was hiding and losing chemical mortar rounds all over Iraq like some deranged squirrel. But, currently, that remains to be seen.

No doubt there are people who would remain unimpressed if we uncovered a 120' tall mech robot with nuclear missles and a giant anthrax cannon coming out of its chest. I'm trying not to be one of those people, but right now I can't see this as being more than it appears at face value (abandoned and damaged munitions from a war twenty years ago) until I'm shown further evidence.

TaurusWD, if Bush used WMD's to kill people here in USA, wouldn't you think of that as pretty clear and present danger?

Everybody knows that Saddam *had* WMD's, I think everybody agrees with that. I'm not surprised that troops didn't find any though, because he used them up on his own people.

As for the points you are making with tactics of War, it wouldn't be smart for Bush to send massive amounts of ground troops in at first. If you are President, and you are trying to make everybody believe that Iraq has WMD's, it would take a lot of balls to send massive amounts of troops into a place with WMD's. That's why I think he had that fireworks show, I sure wouldn't send troops in first if I thought there was a chance of WMD's being used.

Now whether he really believes there are/were WMD's, or if he did the fireworks to make people think that there must be WMD's is unknown to me. Maybe it's just me, but I can't think a man that uses words like "agreeance" could be the type to be a mastermind behind false accusations of WMD's.

Getting Saddam out of there is good to me, how it was done I don't like so much. I don't think we should have attacked, but he had to after making that ultimatum(another thing I would have done differently). I believe he should have focused on, oh, Bin Laden maybe?

Attacks were made on Bin Laden, and if Bush hadn't started this whole Saddam thing, I think terrorists would have seen that we mean business and we will go after terrorists groups. Bush has spread us too thin, and inspired hatred in people who don't mind dying for their cause.

As for people saying "the world hates us".. Bull ****. I love America, and thousands of aliens coming into America must at least like America better than where they are coming from. It's all business with countries. As long as we have rich folk that like to travel and spend tons of money in other countries, we will be liked by countries with "tourist attractions" and disliked by poor, jealous countries, whom if we weren't the most powerful nation, wouldn't pay us any attention.

Skeet

That's a standard around here, we post in threads as a pretense to flame.

As for Iraq and their documentation, didn't they give us about 50,000 reams of paper, half in Arabic, as documentation of their weapons programs and munitions? Iraq has been playing cat-and-mouse, bait-and-switch for so long there was no clear way to tell what's what over there.

Point proven. Your so full of yourself. I swear, if your head could get any bigger your *** would burst! New found confidence? Pfft! I think its just the stench of this **** that brings out the best in all of us. Go get *******

Now THAT is funny

Doubtful since her personal flames consist of variations on "I hope you die" and "get *************

I could be wrong, since I hardly read "Nuclear Weapons Weekly" or anything, but I could have sworn the term was "fissionable", as in "material that can undergo fission".

Fission is when heavy elements break appart into smaller elements. An example of fission is when a pound of Uranium or Plutonium that fits into a breadbox sized warhead converts into a cloud of hydrogen that quickly expands (with much heat and light) to fill a very large volume. That's also called a nuclear explosion.

Fusion is when lighter elements are "fused" into a heavier one. It's usually a byproduct of nuclear reactions. Yes folks. Modern "alchemy" really can turn lead into gold. It's just vastly more expensive then just digging gold out of the ground and will likely leave the most of the gold in a radioactive state.



Eh? Hard to say. You're playing a delicate diplomatic balancing act here. Too few troops and you are vulnerable to the inevitable agitators and rebels. Too many, and you look too much like an occupation force rather then a liberating force. There's a time element to that as well, but I'll get to that later.



I'm extremely confused by this paragraph. When did Bush using WMD on his own people come into the discussion? Wasn't that Saddam who did that? I had to read the bit about Israel about 3 times to realize you meant "ally of the US". It sounded like you were implying that Israel was an ally of the Iraqis.

In any case though. The difference is that certain types of weapons are "illegal" to use (geneva conventions, UN resolutions, and such). Using bio/chem weapons on civilian populations is a biggie. Using them in war is also a biggie. He did both.

The Kurds are "resistance fighters" in about the same way that seasonal Mexican crop laborers here in the US are. A marginalized, "foreign" group that the regime doesn't like and wouldn't mind just disappearing. The difference again is that while the US may attempt to make things unpleasant for illegals in the US, to my knowledge, there has never been an incident of the US government using poison gas to kill off shantytowns full of those darn, border-crossing, sneaky folks who just want to earn a living.



I've asked this before. I'll ask again. What exactly would you consider "proof" of this? A "Clear and Present Danger" scenario isn't always easy to prove. At least not until after the fact. Actually, it's kinda funny that we use that term, but in the modern world, there's nothing "clear" about it at all. The only "Clear" danger would be a military force, with stated intention to attack, posted just across our border. Given the geographical, political, and military position of the US, that's just not likely to happen anytime soon.

Everything else that presents a "Danger" to the US is by neccessity going to be vague and unclear. You can't have a "Clear" proof of someone attacking with a suitcase bomb until the bomb goes off. The point was that we knew these things:

1. Iraq had an active WMD program prior to the first gulf war. This is an absolute fact.

2. Iraq did not destroy nearly as many weapons under UN inspections as they *should* have had. Note, that we can never know for sure how many they produced, only estimate them based on the amount of infrastructure they've got, resources, etc.

3. Iraq made great pains to conceal/destroy all evidence of the WMD programs that they had. We've got virtuall no actual documentation of where they build their WMD, how many they built, where they were stored, or what became of them.


Fast forward. This state is going on for 10 years. At what point does this go from oddity to "clear and present danger"? At what point do you conclude that if they can hide the weapons they did have, and are going to obvious and great efforts to retain as much ability to continue building more WMD once the santions are lifted and the inspectors leave as possible, that they obviously intend to build more weapons? If we can make that conclusion, then how much of a stretch is it to conclude that the weapons they do make will largely be aimed at us?


Iraq does not need to have missile capable of reaching the continental US. They just need to give the material to any of a number of terrorist groups (not even Al-queda), and let them be the delivery platform. It's just that when you add up the increase in terrorist activity towards us and the great potential for Iraq to supply really deadly warheads to those terrorists, and the imminent removal of UN sanctions and inspections which were arguably the only thing preventing Iraq from building those weapons and Saddams stated hatred for us and intention to hurt us if he could, I think you can arguably state that allowing Saddam's regime to continue in power in Iraq did represent a "Clear and present danger" to the US.


I don't need "proof" to know that handing a gun to a man with a record of armed robbery means that he'll likely use it to rob someone. That's exactly what was about to happen. The UN was about to lift the sanctions and inspections in Iraq. Every bit of intel screamed that if that happened, Iraq would go right back (very quickly) to building bio/chem weapons, and resuming attempts to build a nuclear program. Heck. Common sense tells you that would have happened. Whether the "terrorist as delivery system" method would have been utilized is the only unknown in the equation. Can you honestly state, with no doubt in your mind that Saddam wouldn't have done that? Would you, if you were the president, have made the choice to do nothing? We had the ability to remove Saddam's regime (clearly). Thus, we had the ability to prevent those future weapons from being built in the first place. We did not and do not have any ability to prevent bio/chem weapons from moving from a country that builds them into the hands of a terrorist organization. We did not and do not have any really effective way of finding and preventing said terrorists from using those weapons against US citizens. Given all the options available, toppling Saddam's regime was the choice that granted the highest probability of preventing the loss of US citizens lives in the long run.


Now. Having said that, there are a number of things that must be done to follow up on it (or it's possibly a wasted effort). Toppling Saddam bought us some time. We need to use it to get more reliable intel in the area. We need to finally start taking terrorist groups seriously. I think we're doing that now, but there's no way for us as average citizens to know how effectively. We can hope though...


Also, the occupation needs to be ended as quickly as possible. We've been dragging our feet a bit on this. I would assume it's because we hadn't gotten Saddam yet. The transition from provisional government to permanent one is a vulnerable time. Leaving Saddam as a potential player would have been disasterous. I think the best choice at this point is to help the Iraqi's build a new government for themselve. I also think we need to let them make all the choices about it. Insist on initial representation from the whole country, put them in a room to hammer out the rules of their new government, and then let them do it from there on their own.

I also think we should let them try Saddam. However, I'd make a condition that they must try him with whatever legal system they come up with (ie: It's done after their permanent government is in place). They will need to live with whatever system they use. I think that most people, when given the power and responsibility will tend to act responsibly. We can't sit in their country forever. The sooner we hand control back to the Iraqi's, the better. Even if whatever government they come up with isn't one we particularly like, we'll have better relations with them and the entire region if we let them choose it, instead of forcing our desires on them.

I hardly think that anyone needs inspiration to take a shot at you. You are the biggest, fishiest **** on this board. No wonder you get so much attention.

Good to know that Skeet is getting to you though.