What we know about Saddam, WMD's and jihadist terror

[danwismar]

This is for the "Bush lied"..."Saddam had no WMD's"..."Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda" crowd...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/ ... -jim-lacey

[gotribe31]

This is for the "Bush lied"..."Saddam had no WMD's"..."Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda" crowd...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/ ... -jim-lacey

Get out of here with your facts and your evidence. Bush lied, kids died! It was an unjust war! I was against the war before I was for it! No blood for oil!

"There are no WMD in Iraq" will be this generation's "The Tet Offensive was a military disaster." Neither of which are true, but both of which are accepted by those who don't bother to get the details on what actually happened.

[Orenthal]

esse est percipi

From the story:
"There is little doubt that the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was faulty, mostly because of Saddam’s continuing attempts to convince Iran that he still maintained a potent WMD capacity despite years of sanctions."

At that point the rest to me, even if there was a smoking gun in the following text, doesn't need read. In a post 9-11 world you are going to take the chance on a dictator who already used WMD's, is misleading about his current WMD's, and whose rhetoric pretty much guarantees he will use/proliferate them if given the chance????

[Cerebral_DownTime]

Utterly laughable.

Not a shred of evidence. The thread title alone shows how sadly desperate people are for legacy spinning.

If I posted a article like that to back my argument.... the response would be hil-fucking-arious.

The absolute best part is when I bring up what a fucking cunt Brainless II was, I get the "quit living in the past" lines from the Republican mob that prances around this joint.

[danwismar]

CDT...I love you, man...but the evidence is in the (at least) four separate investigations by US and UK...(Kay/IRC, Butler, Robb/Silverman, Duelfer) that are available for anyone with an Internet connection to read...plus the rather obvious facts of Saddam's use of them on his own people to the tune of tens of thousands of dead Kurds and other Iraqis...and the documented stockpiles of various types he admitted to having over decades.

As far as Iraq connections to jihadist terror groups...I'd suggest you read people like Stephen Hayes, Thomas Joscelyn, Andy McCarthy and others who have done excellent work documenting those connections

What you or I think of GWB has precious little to do with any of that. And as for me, I'm always willing to rehash the past with you, my good man.

[Cerebral_DownTime]

My beef is this: if you're going to write an article making certain claims, it's on you to provide photographs and evidence of the "Anthrax Labs", arty or mortar shells that contain Sarin or Mustard Gas..... and not the empty rusted out shells they found in Al-Anbar. Provide links to the reports cited. I don' think i'm asking too much here.

The question is not if Saddam had connection to terrorist groups, he did, going back to the Marxist PFLP and Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. We also know he paid the families of martyrs in Palestine. The question is if Saddam had connections to the attacks on 9/11..... which was used as a primary reason for the invasion and the expansion of the never ending "war on terror".


OT:

Are you following the recent mess between Turkey and Israel?

[danwismar]

The question is if Saddam had connections to the attacks on 9/11..... which was used as a primary reason for the invasion and the expansion of the never ending "war on terror".

Except it wasn't. Bush's political opponents have always intentionally blurred the distinction between what the administration DID say....that Saddam's Iraq had ties to al Qaeda...(which it did)...and what they always took pains NOT to say...that Saddam's Iraq had connections to the 9/11 attacks.

To this day there is no convincing evidence of the latter...and it is a claim that Bush never made. FWIW, there were far more Iraqi fingerprints on the first WTC bombing in 1993 than on the 9/11 attacks.

Way back when, I assembled links to dozens of articles...many by Hayes, but several by other journalists as well...that discuss Iraqi ties to al Qaeda.

http://bit.ly/r25ooG

Hayes focus is Iraq-al Qaeda ties, but among the best of these articles is Andy McCarthy's article here on the more general ties to "militant Islam". McCarthy was the AUSA who prosecuted Ramzi Yousef and the rest of the the 1993 WTC bombers, and is author of "Willful Blindness"

http://old.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/ ... 010821.asp

Then there were the ties reported in the report of the 9/11 Commission:

http://danwismar.com/archives/wizblog/2 ... art_xxviii

I also put together a longish post about the various WMD investigations and their findings. I think you'll find links to those reports I mentioned above in that post. It's several years old, so some links may be broken, but I think you'll find what you suggested I provide.(if this seems like a deja vu moment for some here...it is. I have linked this stuff before in the course of previous discussions on this topic in here)

http://bit.ly/8Z63bP

Also included in that post is a link to what I think is one of the best things written on the topic of justification of the Iraq invasion...it includes a lengthy excerpt from a 1998 speech by Bill Clinton which should be must-reading for anyone who forgets how really uncontroversial it was in the late stages of the Clinton administration that Saddam had to be removed from power. Here's that article, called "Why We Went to War".

http://bit.ly/bUV5Pd

Also memory-jogging are the excerpts from New York Times and Washington Post editorials between 1998 and 2000 about failing UN inspections and the necessity of military action...and the editorialists' fears that Clinton would stop short of what was required....here:

http://wapo.st/bzBHwo

BTW, this is no legacy-polishing exercise, let alone a "desperate" one. I saw the original article today, thought it was interesting, and posted it. The thread title represents the gist of the article...thought that's what we did here. No dog in the fight for me other than the pursuit of historical truth and accuracy. The removal of Saddam was a thoroughly bi-partisan (and multilateral) affair until the dead soldiers started coming home. A big part of my purpose in posting all this is to remind people of the historical truth of that statement. (See Iraq Liberation Act and UNSCR 1441)

Sorry about length....I wanted to respond in good faith to CDT's request for links and arguments

And yes, I'm following Turkey's gradual shift from a secular to an Islamist state and the ways that has degraded their previously decent relationship with Israel.

[Cerebral_DownTime]

I respect you, Dan. And since you went to the trouble of finding and posting all of those links, I will read them.

I do want to address this this though, because I want to pick your brain on the subject.

And yes, I'm following Turkey's gradual shift from a secular to an Islamist state and the ways that has degraded their previously decent relationship with Israel.

So Any problem with Avigdor Lieberman's threats to arm and support the terrorist PKK? (no snark intended btw)

[danwismar]

From what I can see, this thing went from Lieberman's foreign ministry holding a meeting in which a possible future meeting with PKK officials was discussed....to an accusation that he has threatened to arm and support them...something he has denied two months ago.

It's a diplomatic catfight, with Erdogan posturing for an Israeli apology for the fact that some Turks were killed in the flotilla debacle. A.L.'s party has/had some pretty radical proposals for dealing with the Palestinian issue. To say he's a hawk would be an understatement. If I were an Israeli, and was surrounded by countries whose life goal and divine mission was to exterminate me, I think I'd be a hawk too.

[Orenthal]

Good piece on the situation.
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-25 ... or-us.html

Uh...
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/09/ ... ?hpt=wo_c2