UMD Libertarians

how can people think that saddam didn’t have at least chemical and biological weapons? He used them on many occasions… against Iran, shiites, and kurds.
He was directly responsible for the deaths of close to 200,000 and indirectly responsible for 1.2 to 2 million over the course of his career.

There’s a reason the UN:SC unanimously voted to force Saddam to comply with weapons inspectors or face military action.

There’s a reason Saddam did not cooperate and refused to show where any of his weapons were dismantled.

There’s a reason that within a week of his capture, 500 tons of WMD from neighboring Syria (or Libya, I don’t feel like looking it up again) were surrendered to coalition forces.

The fact is that every intellegence agency in the world thought Saddam had WMD. The only difference in viewpoint was that some nations wanted to give him more time to toy with weapons inspectors while others wanted the UN:SC to have some authority. When asked, straight up, whether Saddam was cooperating with UN:SC authorities his answer was “No”.

Of course he had them, we sold them to him.

No shit…Ronald Reagan gave them every WMD they ever had

How ironic
If anyone thinks Iraq was invaded for WMD’s they truely have their head in the toilet.

that toilet is called DIAC

Then why have none been found? Seriously? That was one of the foundations of going to war there. Saddam Hussein had WMD’s and because of that, was an “imminent threat” to the United States. Yet none were ever found. Not by the UN inspectors and not by US forces.

they are in Syria

and tekdragon is the turd
That’s the beauty of using the nice broad, nonspecific acronym “WMD”. It can apply to practically any weapon at all. So you make this big case to invade based on evidence that the country had nuclear weapons, but call them “WMDs” instead. That way when you actually get in there and find that your intel was wrong and there were no nukes, you can point to the aforementioned chemical weapons and say “See?? We were right!!” And the gullible masses will fall for it.

Same way Bush ALWAYS mentioned Iraq directly after talking about 9/11, with no segue, in all his speeches. That way people thought the two were directly related when even he himself has said that they weren’t.

You need to define “WMD” before this question can be answered.

They had chemical weapons before the war, and stockpiles of out-of-date, worthless chems were found afterwards. They have a shelf life though, and much like taking a 15 year old tetracycline, they wouldn’t have killed anything.
the us sold saddam chemical weapons in the 80s hoping he would use them against iran

Plenty of rumors and speculation about whether stuff was carted off to Syria or buried in the desert where it will probably never be found.

However, the generally accepted theory now is that Saddam got rid of his WMDs to cover his ass but at the same time wanted the world to keep on believing he had them, in order to appear strong to Iran, etc. The simple truth is that the UN and the US during the 90s had been so toothless that Saddam never imagined anyone would call his bluff in the way George W. Bush did. When he did start protesting, it became a case of the boy who cried wolf.

There’s also the small matter of this:

In for Joe Wilson apology.
Didn’t Hans Blix’s team not find any weapons in Iraq?

the current official position - the whitehouse, Bush, the media, everybody - there were no WMD’s in iraq.

but off topic knows better.

after all, off topic was pro-war. so we’re all just “staying the course” and if that means sticking our heads firmly up our butts, so be it.

You won’t believe how much shit I got back then for being anti-war, lol

forum of peace

The fact that the say there were no WMDs leads me to believe there was a shit ton that they just sold to another future Iraq.
i still think bush should have just planted WMD just to shut everyone up

because there definitely was some, just a matter of where they were moved to

Iraq produced it’s own chemical weapons. It had 15 facilities producing chemical weapons in 1983. The US provided intelligence assistance to Iraq during the war but as far as I am aware did not provide the equipment or any materials necessary to produce mustard gas, VX, or sarin which were all used by the Iraqi military. If you have evidence proving otherwise it would be great if you posted it.

for freedom!
After the gulf war the UN did numerous inspections and called for the dismantling of facilities and disposal of stockpiles. Iraq complied with some but not all of the requests and began threatening inspectors. On a few occasions Saddam threatened to shoot down UN helicopters carrying inspectors. Considering the resistance and lack of cooperation by Saddam it is not hard to understand why pretty much everyone believed Iraq had some form of illegal weapons program.

Yes chief, we gave them to him. Only thing is, that wasn’t the reason to invade Iraq in the first place. I highly doubt one of the most decorated generals alive today, Colin Powell, would have left the cabinet after saying he was given falsified data if they were really a grave threat.
In the wake of 9/11, it was far easier to just believe in Bush than read what was presented. Once you got away from the patriotic roar, the stand behind the President even if things don’t add up, there was no reason to go after Hussein or Iraq.

And boy did I get loads of crap for saying so post 9/11. Unpatriotic was the nicest thing I got called.

We invaded Iraq because it had oil, the neocons wanted it back, and Hussein gave us a tenuous excuse.

first of all, we have to define “oil”

Define, “define”.

(not directed at you per say)
If that was directed at me, it would be more apt to say “fuel material” in lieu of oil. Oil is actually specific. WMD is a worthless acronym that could mean absolutely anything that kills.

Did Powell say the data was falsified or merely wrong? There’s a big difference.

It seems to me pretty handy that the CIA has been given a pass for fucking up the intelligence in favor of “Bush lied, people died” mantra.

no, you can thank some European nations for that. They were more than happy to sell weapons and technology to Iraq.

The government should never do something like this

as defined in My First Dictionary, Harper Collins pubishers, ISBN 0-06-275001-1: ‘a liquid that comes from the earth; gasoline is made from oil.’

This would be a dictionary of the first 4,000 words a child should know.

Reality is not a Disney production.

So the Government should plant false WMD’s to quell political dissent back home?

Yet we don’t have their oil.

Oh right, I know, Big Oil™ is going for production contracts whenever the government has oil profit sharing worked out. And Bush used to be an oil guy and Cheney used to run Halliburton. Neither of these guys has a personal stake in it anymore, and it’s doubtful that if any outright or quasi-bribery or other really shady behavior was really going on that the media or somebody inside the government wouldn’t have something concrete by now.

So you’re figuring, they falsified intelligence and started a trillion dollar war and everything… as a friendly favor to some ex-coworkers?

sometimes… people are just fucking nuts.

in which case, looking for a Reason to the madness is an approach based on a false assumption.

That’s true, but it can be a special form of madness when one chooses to ignore all the obvious, rational explanations for something because one would prefer to believe something totally illogical and inexplicable that better fits one’s own bias.

No, the Bush administration manipulated the information and the American people to start a war. Adding planted WMD’s would have just added to the deceit practiced by this administration.

You want to blindly believe anything that administration says? Go for it.

so essentially we failed at our mission? the wmd’s were there, and we neglected to stop them from being transported to Syria.

Big Oil moved back into Iraq in 2003, in an advisory capacity. Right back into the oil fields that Hussein took from them and nationalized. We’re in a war, things like roads and bridges and buildings–and people, get bombed all to hell. Ever hear about a refinery getting bombed?

Now the oil fields needed improvement. Despite overruns, shabby construction, incomplete projects and the like that you read about with bridges, roads, and buildings, have you ever heard about issues with the oil fields?

Now these self-same Big Oil companies get no-bid contracts to manage the oil fields. With a leg in to further, more lucrative contracts. Over other nations’ oil companies. Bring production to 100% capacity. In the next few months.

And if you seriously think that Bush and Cheney have no interest/stake left in oil, you are naive.

So, we invaded Iraq because the terrorists were holed up in Afghanistan. Because the WMD’s used to be there. Because there were worse dictators in other nations around the world.

OK.
The whole “WMD moved into Syria” thing is such garbage. None of the CIA or other intelligence agency reports support it at all.

It was fabricated by right-wing radio hosts so they didn’t have to admit being wrong about the war.

Even if that were the case, it just illustrates the lack of planning and foresight going into this occupation. I mean, if you’re going in for WMD’s, it seems like you’d want to make sure you get them.

Well I won’t contend it’s not garbage, and it might have been fabricated, but not by right-wing radio hosts.

No, those are just some random facts and/or opinions which are not necessarily relevant to anything.

Refineries don’t house and move terrorists. Next?

Maybe they were shitty to begin with. This is Saddam’s legacy we are talking about here. I can’t say I ever hear about issues with the oil fields, but why would I? If anything that’s good news because it means the psychos haven’t been effective at disrupting Iraq’s oil infrastructure.

What no-bid contracts are you referring to? I know about the KBR deal that everyone screams about, even that one is a bit distorted. Even so, what is so nefarious about companies moving in to do business with Iraq? Are they stealing the oil or the profits? Are they screwing the Iraqis with unfair deals?

Proof or GTFO.

LAHL, because we gave them to him….

All these years and we haven’t found anything? Your point, I can not find it.

Sweet thread from 2005.

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