Axis Kast wrote:
You hide behind rules and sayings, Vympel, safe in your ivory tower of circular bullshit.
Oh? I'm sorry, we're not accepting generalized snide criticisms as debate material today.
UNSCOM was on the ground for a period of months. During that time they were charged with inspection of what must be considered mostly “high-profile” targets.
I think you've confused UNSCOM and UNMOVIC.
Add to this fact that we repeatedly saw convoys leaving several sites just prior to the arrival of weapons inspectors
Denied by the inspectors.
the fact that Hans Blix buried in his reports evidence he knew Washington would jump upon
What's he gonna do? Put it on the front page? "Look, a drone that doesn't even fit the criteria of prohibited item!" What a pathetic criticism.
and the ease with which Israel fooled inspectors in the past
Keep up the false analogies.
and there’s clearly a strong argument to be made that UNSCOM wasn’t sufficiently thorough. Not that it could have been without régime-change, either.
Clearly a strong argument my fucking ass. They reported fucking everything they found. You have zero reason to make the claim. And it's quite amazing that you do considering the US lack of success.
An “Iraq-style inspection régime?” Israel was forced to endure the same sort of inspections Iraq recently underwent. Not to mention a heavy dose of reconnaissance over-flights and satellite scrutiny.
Source please.
You also ignore the fact that Hans Blix was only responsible for one leg of the whole mess: actual WMD. He did absolutely nothing to combat Iraq’s intelligence maneuvers.
Sorry, Bush never made a case for threatening intelligence maneuvers. He made the case for WMD.
The fact that they existed at all after 1998 is evidence that Iraq could indeed build and test weapons prohibited to it, Vympel. If indeed the UN was so thorough until now, why were the facilities there at all?
Perhaps you should go find the relevant UN provisions, tell me if Iraq was required to destroy such facilities, and furthermore, I repeat the question that if they hadn't been used in years, and the inspectors were there, what danger was there of Iraq clandestinely building such things? You can't covertly test launch a fucking MISSILE, Kast.
Oh, it is good. You simply disagree with it.
Yup, right now the evidence sure is undeniable
So, essentially, almost nothing Washington or anybody else could possibly do would ever sway you.
I just told you what would sway me. Evidence of WMD. It's not that hard.
Hence the ridiculousness of this argument. I’m preaching to an empty church.
Well, in your case, the wheel sure is spinning, but the hamster is dead.
[quote
His background? Are you now going to make a similar leap of logic and claim that every military man is an expert on every level? Bullshit. The man was a theoretician – no matter how many times he was shuffled around to departments with
similar titles and
the same objectives.[/quote]
Hello strawman. I didnt' say he was fucking expert on everything. Since when is expertise required in a field to know whether any work is actually being done in it?!
The aluminum tubes claim was never debunked.
My fucking ass it wasn't. You're the only moron I've ever seen who tries to hold it up as proof.
EDIT: I'm sure by now you've read the next post which once and for all lays to rest your desperate flailing.
You continually harp on the fact that they it would have been difficult and expensive but never impossible to fashion them into crude centrifuges.
Ignoring the incovenient fact that expense of fashioning them into crude centrifuges, and the uncertainty of actually getting something useful out of the process, would make the entire scheme not worth the trouble.
You never addressed the fact that the tubes themselves were prohibited under import restrictions in the first place.
This has what to do with the claim that they were for nuclear weapons? Oh that's right, nothing.
You never answered why Iraq would go to the trouble of importing such equipment while under sanction if it was meant only for a conventional arsenal – and a program that was ongoing without results for over twelve years at that.
Bullfuck I didn't. We've been over this already. How do you know there were no results? How do you know what they've been used for?
Your entire argument rests on Baradei’s assertion that they weren’t the best tools for the job.
Yes, heaven forbid I listen the fucking IAEA when I could listen to some paranoid fucking moron on the internet desperate to prove his case.
You mean like drones that clearly violated the spirit of the sanctions?
My fucking ass. They were not illegal. What does 'spirit' have to do with whether they had a range greater than 150km, you moron?
Or the al-Samoud missiles? Or the test facilities for the same?
Would those be the disputed missiles that were scrapped? Idiot.
Scale is unnecessary. If they find any stockpiles at all, Iraq will have been confirmed to have been a threat. Not to mention that it’s very likely he hid that material in remote or civilian locations previously unchecked by UNSCOM.
Keep telling yourself that.
Sanctions didn’t prevent North Korea or Pakistan from developing arsenals of their own, much less Iran. The same can be said of South Africa.
Considering that Pakistan wasn't under sanctions when it got the bomb, only after, good one
North Korea had it's own nuclear material, idiot. Iraq does not. South Africa was not under an inspection regime, idiot.
Israeli facilities were the subjects of intense observation.
Prove it. I'm tired of this shit- give me details of this intense observation.
But in the end that changes nothing.
Keep telling yourself that, Baghdad Bob.
When Blix admits that peace – rather than the objective assessment of Iraqi capabilities – was his first goal? When he buries reports he knows Washington will find suspicious? Bullshit.
Bush was correct from the start. The only way to ensure compliance is temporary occupation providing 100% access.
Take your burying claim and shove it up your ass. It's Blixes fault that he didn't tell Washington what they wanted to hear? Fuck off. As for 'objective assessment', this coming from the side who spoke of WMD as if they were 100% definitely there and made voluminous erroneous claims on the subject before sanctions started
Hm, let’s see, because they were discovered perhaps?
The SCUDs were rumored hidden as early as 1998.
Rumored hidden by who?
Bullshit. We trace Hitler’s logical failures through Barbarossa. Merely because Saddam stepped into war thinking he had the upper hand doesn’t mean his actions thereafter are defensible from any point of view.
You fucking dumbass. Hitler engaged in a two-front war. Where did Saddam make that error?
Because nothing was yet found.
Exactly. As I said, it is clearly not an acceptable way to do business in their eyes.
You’re going to sit here and tell me that those drones didn’t violate the intent of a series of sanctions?
Fucking der, idiot. If you read the actual sanctions, I'm sure you'll find the terms where they say what Iraq can, and cannot have? Who the fuck decides what the intent of the sanctions was? You? When I can fucking read them for myself?
You’re going to sit here and tell me that there was no way to put chemical drop-tanks or warheads in those vehicles – at all?
Burden of proof fallacy. It is not up to me to disprove your bullshit Tom Clancy thriller claims. Fucking paranoid psycho- who the fuck is gonna fly UAVs with "made in Iraq" on the side over anyone, you deluded dumbfuck?
So now the word of a respectable newspaper is merely “a claim?”
In the same way that respectable newspapers faithfully repeated the forged Nigerian documents as evidence, yes.
America was welcomed at first. There was no expectation of an endless celebration or an easy occupation.
Welcomed by some, not all. Do you deny what I just gave as the situation in Iraq, obvious for all to see? That speaks volumes of what the expectations were.
Real life is illogical, Vympel. My conclusions follow my premise. They simply don’t jive with your own opinions.
Yes, Baghdad Bob
You use the rules and peculiarities of debate as technical weapons. And again, Star Wars is nothing like Iraq. The “simplest answer is correct” routine doesn’t always function in the real world.
Sorry, but logic wasn't dreamt up for sci-fi debates. And it's not "the simplest answer is correct". The principle of parsimony says that it's most likely correct. In the absence of other evidence, it's a very reasonable position to take.
An attack on Israel would have forced us to become directly involved. Not to mention that Hussein was always a minor threat anyway, given the reach of his intelligence apparatus.
*sigh*
let's repeat this
again:
the liklihood of any sort of Iraqi attack on the United States, and specifically, the liklihood that Iraq would use WMD on the United States, specifically, by giving them to terrorists.
Now, if you wish, replace United States with Israel. The question stands.
So now we’re giving criminals the benefit of the doubt? I’m sure that serves your purposes. It’s hardly good security policy.
No, it merely shows the quality of the evidence up to be crap.
We make the determination by looking at to whom the President was speaking, what the topic was, and why he might say what he did. Then we look at all of his other statements about “a long road to peace.”
The President was speaking to those he was responsible for. The topic was the war on terror. It doesn't get much more simple than that.
Which is in fact the middle-of-the-road interpretation.
Yes, repeating his is unreasonable compared to simply distorting what he said from face-value into what you wanted him to mean, which was nothing.
Backpedaling. Your words: “Oh, I don't know, since the emphasis went away from bin Laden?”
My original contention was that the US failed in Afghanistan to capture Osama Bin Laden, and that this was the primary objective of that attack- the focus was shifted from this failure to the toppling of the Taliban- Afthanistan's 'liberation' offered up as substitute. The emphasis did retract from Bin Laden. Bush has even stated publicly that he wasn't important. I never said "the emphasis shifted unacceptably", which was your distortion- I said the emphasis shifted.
What’s wrong with a concession prize? Bush is correct. The collapse of the Taliban did indeed impede bin Laden’s efforts considerably. Al-Qaeda is under a great deal of pressure at this point in time. If, as you’ve admitted, we’re still seeking bin Laden, what’s the problem?
The problem was the mission in Afghanistan was an utter failure. The money isn't there to rebuild the country. The Taliban was toppled, but Bin Laden remains on the loose (and declared unimportant by Bush, publicly, though I'm sure that they still hunt him privately), Karzai is the mayor of Kabul. The warlords hold sway. US troops are achieving nothing.
The fact that operations such as Valiant Strike are ongoing speaks a great deal to our commitment there.
Yes, a few thousand troops with no results, and no money expended to rebuild Afghanistan.
Exactly. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
And that is the burden of proof fallacy, also known as asking for proof of a negative. You must prove that they ARE there, I am under no responsibilty to prove that they're not. It's not sound.
Blatant opinion.
And you haven't offered up your own consistently?
I asked whether it would be “as powerful.” There’s a difference.
No relevance. I said it wasn't a question of power at all. They had no power.
“No power as such?” You mean it didn’t force Bush to review his agenda?
I'm sorry, I'm not aware of Bush reviewing his agenda.
It didn’t drive wedges between old allies and invigorate a new surge of European trans-nationalism?
The anti-war movement drove wedges between allies? Yeah, sure it did. Did the French government START the anti-war movement? Umm, no, sorry, don't know where you get that idea?
Again, answer the question: if France, Belgium, and Germany had agreed with the US and offered their support, would the anti-war movement have been nearly as powerful?
You act as if France etc started the anti-war movement. They didn't. The anti-war movement didn't draw any strength off the actions of those nations; why would they?
It doesn’t mean Iraq won’t move to support terrorism still. Their intelligence forces were quite adept.
The skill of Iraqi intelligence is irrelevant to the issue of whether Iraq would be held responsible, which it undoubtedly would be, assuming they could pull off such a feat as to preventing knowledge of who pulled off the attack.
Afghanistan knew that by continuing to harbor the Taliban they’d invite invasion. Look where that took us.
To war? You have a problem with war now? It's practically fucking gift-wrapped, aren't you happy?
What does Iraq have to gain? Economic dislocation of a key adversary.
Forgetting of course that America would destroy Iraq, nice little caveat you left out there.
Again, Israel wouldn’t immediately treat any attack as having been the work of Iraq. Subtle influences – information, money, and training – wouldn’t show up. Especially if HAMAS or Hizbollah claimed responsibility.
Doesn't fly- if it was a WMD attack, then they'd have to come from somewhere. Which power in the region would be the first place the US/Israel would want to look?
The dictatorship argument is flawed. See, Taliban.
How is it flawed?
Red herring. Iraq’s being called out has nothing to do with Iraq’s not having been responsible for genocide.
Wow, you sure know how to completely miss the point. I just debunked your outrage claim, I didn't talk about Iraq's responsibility for the "genocide".
