richyoung
RE: "We didn't bust Saddam merely for being the Butcher of Baghdad."
LAK wrote: "Right, and this underscores my main point."
...so, because it wasn't the SOLE reason, we get no credit for it???
There were a number of purported reasons; among them that he was some kind of "butcher". I have already stated why we are in Iraq, and none of the reasons warrant any "credit" for the murder of an untold number of Iraqi people, the murder of a great many civilized and educated people, to
rile up a huge number who are not - who in turn have had years of free reign in the vast areas of Iraq that we do not have control -
to murder a great many more.. And to sacrifice our soldiers in the process, and drain our resources.
LAK: "This is a bone of contention as far as I am concerned. There were no proven WMD"
Nizar Nayuf (Nayyouf-Nayyuf), a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “De Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are kept.
Really? And who exactly is Nizar Nayuf - another British intel recruit? Another crook like Mr. Chalabi? Who vetted this guy? If he has been "bravely challenging the Syrian regime" - why has he waited so long to suddenly tell a Royal Dutch Shell news rag "he knows"?
As in the case of G H W Bush's starring actress, I am sure that they will not have much trouble cobbling together some "evidence" with gullible
eye appeal and bury it in the desert somewhere and send in a team of more gullibles to "discover" it.
Doctor Gary Samore of the International Institute for Strategic Studies noted that during the 2003 invasion, there was "chatter" among Iraqi forces that was interpreted to mean that a chemical weapons attack was ordered.
"Chatter"? This buzzword has been bandied around since 9/11, and so long it is pitiful; as if calculated educated people engaged in a war, or have a plan to hit one or more targets for a particular reason, must get all worked up about it - and "chatter" beforehand using means that even a high school punk would know could be intercepted and traced.
On 3 February 2004, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced an independent inquiry, to be chaired by Lord Butler of Brockwell, to examine the reliability of British intelligence relating to alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.[72]
Jack Straw? A familiar name in british politics to me, as I lived there for a decade and a half. Jack is global socialist, like his boss comrade Blair.
"We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."
An "independent" report issued by Baron Von Butler? Butler has been a permanent fixture in high level british gov regardless of party since Harold Wilson. His springboard was largely his position at the Bank of England; one of the wonderful leaders in fleecing serf's of their wealth. Post invasion Iraqis, now "liberated" from their awful civilized, educated and cultured "oppression" can look forward to a similar economic enslavement. Those that have survived that is.
There is as good a chance that the Niger deal was a british intel concoction.
On May 2, 2004 a shell containing mustard gas, was found in the middle of street west of Baghdad.
Wouldn't surprize me. I'd bet that there is not a country in the middle east that if enough people looked hard and long enough, more of the same or similar items could be found. Reminds me of the bazooka shells, grenades and other fascinating artifacts that turn up in urban dumpsters here from time to time, make the news, and get people all excited.
On May 16, 2004 a 152mm artillery shell was used as an improvised bomb.(Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program Annex F. Retrieved on 2005-06-29.) The shell exploded and two U.S. soldiers were treated for minor exposure to a nerve agent (nausea and dilated pupils). On May 18 it was reported by U.S. Department of Defense intelligence officials that tests showed the two-chambered shell contained the chemical agent sarin, the shell being "likely" to have contained three to four liters of the substance.
"Sarin" made or imported by who? Improvised bomb by who? Fired by who?
Saddam Hussein?What "intelligence officials"? Does not our department of defense have a head? A named party who would make a public statement positively affirming such if it were in fact true? If not - why not? But look up sarin anyway; see what "three or four liters" of sarin
would have been certain to do - if it had in fact been sarin, and burst in the vacinity of two people.
After he was captured by U.S. forces in Baghdad in 2003, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who ran Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program until 1997, handed over blueprints for a nuclear centrifuge along with some actual centrifuge components, stored at his home — buried in the front yard — awaiting orders from Baghdad to proceed.
Really? And what public official publicly stated this as fact for the record?
Why, after an invasion would such "blueprints" not be cast onto a hasty fire? Unless the conscience stricken Obeidi had kept them to sink his leaders after the invasion. Are we to believe that he was some kind of "captive" dissident Iraqi scientist all these years?
October 3, 2003 - David Kay's Iraq Survey Group report that finds no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, although it states the government intended to develop more weapons with additional capabilities. Weapons inspectors in Iraq do find some "biological laboratories" and a collection of "reference strains", including a strain of botulinum bacteria, "ought to have been declared to the UN." Kay testifies that Iraq had not fully complied with UN inspections. In some cases, equipment and materials subject to UN monitoring had been kept hidden from UN inspectors. "So there was a WMD program. It was going ahead. It was rudimentary in many areas," Kay would say in a later interview. In other cases, Iraq had simply lied to the UN in its weapons programs. ... [ETC]
How did Mr Kay establish this evidence of "intent". He a mind reader or do they have documents that were presented to our gov, analysed and proven geniune and archived for inspection?
"We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone. We are actively engaged in searching for such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis."
Not only is this inconclusive, merely speculative - it is post invasion. This is like burning down a house, murdering part of a family who resist - and then hunting for "evidence" to support what you have done after the fact.
"With regard to delivery systems, the ISG team has discovered sufficient evidence to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system improvements that would have, if OIF had not occurred, dramatically breached UN restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War."
Well, you know what I think of the great gulf fraud, and why. The "U.N." is an international criminal cartel with a global socialist agenda. Their crimes in aggregate since WW2 make any transgressions by Saddam Hussein appear rather
small.
"We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002."
And finally, let's consider that Iraq was a sovereign nation, and would have been expected as such to pursue the means to defend itself from anyone else in the region.
LAK: and had I been Hussein - I would have told the "U.N." to get stuffed as well.
Actions have consequences.
They sure do; you can't dance with the devil and walk away. But then the oligarchs who front people like George Bush have no intention of walking away from their international criminal cartel cronies.
Quote: We didn't invade merely because he had supported Islamic and Palestinian terrorism and was eager to do more along those lines.
LAK: I don't buy this for a second.
In a January 26, 2004 interview with Tom Brokaw of NBC news, Mr. Kay described Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs as being in a "rudimentary" stage. He also stated that "What we did find, and as others are investigating it, we found a lot of terrorist groups and individuals that passed through Iraq."[98]
"Passing through"? If I had the time, I would post a list of the countless publicized incidents of people in and around our gov, elected and appointed officials that have more then passing connections to some very interesting people and organizations over the last several decades.
Let's revisit the reluctant FBI's stonewalling over the release of the identities of one hundred or so foreigners - Saudis - who flew or were flown out of this country immediately after 9/11
while every one else was grounded.
Who were they? While we are at it, who were the lucky investors who placed large and significant put options on American Airlines and United Airlines stock right before -
within days - of 9/11? Where are the indictments?
Who is protecting
them?In responding to a question by Mr. Brokaw as to whether Iraq was a "gathering threat" as President Bush had asserted before the invasion, Mr. Kay answered:
Tom, an imminent threat is a political judgment. It’s not a technical judgment. I think Baghdad was actually becoming more dangerous in the last two years than even we realized. Saddam was not controlling the society any longer. In the marketplace of terrorism and of WMD, Iraq well could have been that supplier if the war had not intervened.
This is avoiding the fact that pre-invasion disruptions were largely a result of UN sanctions; food and other shortages. I have a BBC(UK)/NHK(Japan) film documentary series made in 1979 that includes Iraq; there is a sharp contrast between what has been thrown around about life in general in that country and what was apparent then.
LAK: Hussein was fairly educated, starting in the late 70s began to start a major industrial program.
...which included the Osirik nuclear reactor. Why does a country with that much oil need a nuclear reactor? For bonus points, describe the god Osiris for whom the reactor complex was named, and list key events in the race for the Islamic Bomb.
We have plenty of oil - why do we need them?
Osiris? Was that on a plaque at the gate? Or from elsewhere?
If Saddam Hussein was such an islam-o-looney; why was he protecting one million Chaldean catholics all these years from them? Why is it that a million catholics lived and practiced with complete freedom in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, whereas almost everywhere else in the middle east they can not?
LAK:Even if Hussein had been involved in some questionable activities, getting involved with Islamic loonies (the very ones that were a threat to civilized Iraq and his government to begin with) and "terrorists" would be literal suicide - national and personal. He and all around him would have known this without a shadow of a doubt.
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provided bases, training camps, and other support to terrorist groups fighting the governments of neighboring Turkey and Iran
Really? I thought it was Iran that was now a bigger islamo-bogieman than Iraq. Which is it going to be? But this is a ridiculous inclusion; we supplied all kinds of stuff to the Hussein gov to fight Iran for a long time. Turkey has had it's own agenda with the border region of Iraq for a long time. Who cares? Turkey has a wonderful reputation of it's own.
as well as to Palestinian terror groups. Iraq has helped the Iranian dissident group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a separatist organization fighting the Turkish government, and several far-left Palestinian splinter groups that oppose peace with Israel.
Which palestinian terror groups? Helped in what way? The state of Israel was funding Hamas at one time - so what?
Funny, the Hussein gov was fighting Kurds as well. Perhaps the Turks have committed more alleged atrocities against Kurds than Iraq. But the red kurds are getting alot of attention in "liberated" Iraq. What if they "democratically" obtain a significant part in postwar Iraq? Who are they murdering in Iraq now in all the vast areas we do not control?
Iraq also hosted the mercenary Abu Nidal Organization, whose leader was found dead in Baghdad in August 2002.
"Hosted" meaning precisely who, what, where and how?
Saddam was a secular dictator, and his regime generally tended to support secular terrorist groups rather than Islamists such as al-Qaeda, experts say.
This reads like part of a CNN transcript.
But Iraq also supported some Islamist Palestinian groups opposed to Israel.
There are plenty of christians in Palestine who could not give a rat's tail about the state of Israel either.
and In violation of international law, Iraq has also sheltered specific terrorists wanted by other countries, reportedly including:
Abu Nidal, who, until he was found dead in Baghdad in August 2002, led an organization responsible for attacks that killed some 300 people.
- Palestine Liberation Front leader Abu Abbas, who was responsible for the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Laurocruise ship in the Mediterranean. Abbas was captured by U.S. forces April 15.
You mean like Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov's spokesman's Akhmed Zakayev given asylum by Comrade Blair's gov wanted by Russian authorities? And Ilyas Akhmadov given asylum under George Bush?
"It is strange that a country that has suffered from terror and is waging an armed struggle against in jointly with Russia has granted political asylum to Ilyas Akhmadov, who is on the international wanted list .... " - Mikhail Margelov, Federation Council (international relations committee) 08/06/04
Very strange indeed. - Two Saudis who hijacked a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Baghdad in 2000.
Abdul Rahman Yasin, who is on the FBI's "most wanted terrorists" list for his alleged role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Maybe Hussein is protecting the identities of the appointed or elected officials who stonewalled our FBI agents who were hot on the trail of the 9/11 suspects.
Iraq has also provided financial support for Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Front, and the Arab Liberation Front, and it channeled money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
So has the state of Israel. In addition to getting caught funding Hamas, the state of Israel has also staged terror attacks of it's own - going back to Operation Suzannah.
In April 2002, Iraq increased the amount of such payments from $10,000 to $25,000. Experts say that by promoting Israeli-Palestinian violence, Saddam may have hoped to make it harder for the United States to win Arab support for a campaign against Iraq.
Funny, the "experts" writing the 9/11 report couldn't tell us anything about the funding of that operation, or who and how someone(s) knew exactly when to dump a pile of United Airlines and American Airlines stock in the last week of august 2001 and the first week of september 2001 - but they can tell us all about what Saddam Hussein has been doing.
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