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Originally posted by lynchaj:
In my opinion, if OFF had never happened, most likely Saddam's regime would had collapsed and we would have had an opportunity to get to the ground truth on all the missing WMD. Then we would have/could have avoided this messy war in the first place.

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Originally posted by lynchaj:
I sure would miss your witty comments.

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Originally posted by lynchaj:
Next time, would you mind posting a link to support your assertions?

Is this what you were referring to? I searched for a bit and had a hard time finding it from a reputable source.

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Originally posted by lynchaj:

If the corporations broke the law, then they should be prosecuted. Where are the lawsuits against the alleged perpetrators?

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Originally posted by lynchaj:

I am not sure what point you are trying to make. When a third party commits offenses does not make the US Government responsible for Iraqi oil smuggling. Maybe there was some slack cut to Jordan prior to war to ease the impact but I don't see massive US corruption here. Nothing at all like the OFF scandal involving the French and Russians.

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Saddam's rearming and WMD programs

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Originally posted by lynchaj:
....So answer me this: If President Bush lied about WMD in the Iraq war in 2003, did President Clinton also lie about WMD prior to Desert Fox in 1998?

The scenarios and intelligence are nearly the same except for the US administration and 5 years.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Well?

The article refers to an opinion piece that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had a long-standing working relationship. That idea has since been disproven- even Bush admits to that. Your other references also point to disproven or contradictory evidence. It can't all be true and meaningful all at the same time.

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The scenarios and intelligence are nearly the same except for the US administration and 5 years

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...nexus of rogue regimes like Saddam Hussein, WMD, and terrorists

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Did he ever? If Saddam never did have unreported WMD, then why did the UN inspectors keep coming back over asking to see the WMD or proof of its destruction?

Did the UN lie as well?

At what point in time did Saddam obviously go from someone who possessed WMD to someone who obviously did not possess WMD?

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CIA Questions Saddam's Ties to Al Qaeda, Bush Administration Claims That Zarqawi Sought Safe Haven in Iraq Put in Doubt

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8. ...UNMOVIC did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items... Hans Blix, final report to the UN Security Council

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the chemical weapons which Iraq has been known to possess – nerve agents like sarin and tabun – have a shelf life of five years, VX just a bit longer. Saddam's major bio weapons are hardly any better; botulinum toxin is potent for about three years, and liquid anthrax about the same (under the right conditions)....The U.S. Defense Department’s “Militarily Critical Technologies List” (MCTL) is “a detailed compendium of technologies" that the department advocates as “critical to maintaining superior US military capabilities. It applies to all mission areas, especially counter-proliferation.” Written in 1998, it was recently re-published with updates for 2002. So what is the MCTL’s opinion of Iraq's chemical weapons program? In making its chemical nerve agents, “The Iraqis . . . produce(d) a . . . mixture which was inherently unstable,” says the report. “When the Iraqis produced chemical munitions they appeared to adhere to a ‘make and use’ regimen. Judging by the information Iraq gave the United Nations, later verified by on-site inspections, Iraq had poor product quality for their nerve agents. This low quality was likely due to a lack of purification. They had to get the agent to the front promptly or have it degrade in the munition.” Furthermore, says this Defense Department report, “The chemical munitions found in Iraq after the [first] Gulf War contained badly deteriorated agents and a significant proportion were visibly leaking.” The shelf life of these poorly made agents were said to be a few weeks at best – hardly the stuff of vast chemical weapons stores. There was some talk shortly before the first Gulf War that the Iraqis had been creating binary chemical weapons, in which the relatively non-toxic ingredients of the agent remain unmixed until just before the weapon is used; this allows the user to bypass any worry about shelf life or toxicity. But according to the MCTL, “The Iraqis had a small number of bastardized binary munitions in which some unfortunate individual was to pour one ingredient into the other from a Jerry can prior to use” – an action few soldiers were willing to perform.

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Originally posted by lynchaj:
...Why has not President Bush been impeached? Why was he re-elected if he committed arguable one of the biggest crimes in history?

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There has been a surge of activity in the missile technology field in the past four years. — UNMOVIC Report, March 6, 2003

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No proscribed activities (chemical and biological), or the result of such activities from the period of 1998-2002 have, so far, been detected through inspections.

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“If I can speak of what we have found in addition to intent, we have found a large body of activities

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“The long list of proscribed items unaccounted for and as such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues was neither shortened by the inspections, nor by Iraqi declarations and documents.”

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UN INSPECTORS FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF PROHIBITED WEAPONS PROGRAMMES AS OF 18 MARCH WITHDRAWAL, HANS BLIX TELLS SECURITY COUNCIL ... "it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for."

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"The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) has uncovered no evidence Iraq retained Scud-variant missiles, and debriefings of Iraqi officials in addition to some documentation suggest that Iraq did not retain such missiles
after 1991.

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Iraq Survey Group (ISG) discovered further evidence of the maturity and significance of the pre-1991 Iraqi Nuclear Program but found that Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively
decayed after that date.
• Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.
• Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years.

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While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.
... Iraq implemented a rigorous and formalized system of nationwide research and production of chemicals, but ISG will not be able to resolve whether Iraq intended the system to underpin any CW-related efforts.

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In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes. Indeed, from the mid-1990s there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the Presidential level.

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Originally posted by lynchaj:


What do I think Saddam was doing? .... He was gathering his WMD capabilities, hiding them, protecting them, and waiting for the UN sanctions to collapse so he could move WMD production back into high gear.

Why? ...I believe his most likely scenario was to restart the Iran/Iraq war or at a minimum counteract the growing Iranian nuclear threat.

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Originally posted by lynchaj:
I do want to say to the folks here that it is quite a bit of fun and even a bit healthy I think to hash this out. You have your opinion and I respect that.

I'd like to thank FFF.net for having RWED forum, especially out of the main FFF.net forums, as it does a lot of good to have peaceful discussions among people who disagree on their world views.

Andrew Lynch

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