[CLUE-Talk] The prism of our experience

[Randy Arabie]

On Thursday, 10 July 2003 at 12:12:13 -0600, Timothy C. Klein <teece at silverklein.net> wrote:
> * Randy Arabie (randy at arabie.org) wrote:
> > 
> > Here's my view of the WMD issue.  I still believe the
> > Hussein regime had an active WMD program well into last
> > year.  Perhaps if the coalition had been able to act sooner,
> > rather than give Hussein a 6-month period to hide the evidence,
> > we would have found them by now.
> > 
> 
> Ther are a lot of problems with this, at least to me.  GWB and his
> administration spoke about disarming Saddam.  If simply threatening
> invasion make him disarm, then their threats were effective.  There was
> no need to invade -- the threat of WMD went away, let's move.  But we
> did not move on, we invaded anyway.

Except, hiding the evidence of an active WMD program isn't the same
as disarming.  At least in my opinion it isn't.

If the police told me to relinquish my hand gun, and I
responded by tucking it into my pants; I don't think they
would consider that compliance.

> > I don't accept your assertion that it was a lie.  I think
> > WMD was the main reason.
> 
> The White House admitted that the Niger uranium link was wrong.  They
> tried to put a nice spin on it, but I don't see any way around it on
> that issue.  They lied, or someone was grossly incompetent.  Either way
> we have a problem.   GWB mentioned that Iraq had attempted to buy
> uranium from Niger.  But the documents the claim were based on were
> easlily spotted forgeries.  More, the man dispatched to Niger to check
> it came back and reported that the story was certainly bunk.  He asserts
> that, at the very least, Cheney heard this.  This was *months* before
> GWB gave his state of the union address.  And yet, in that speach, he
> asserts that Iraq is trying to buy uranium from African countries.
> 
> Unless the adiminstration provides evidence of some other attempt from
> another African country, I don't see how that is not a lie.

Yes. I agree that there were/are some less than honest
(entirely dishonest?) assessments made regarding the status
of the Iraqi regime's nuclear weapons program.

However, that was not the extent of their efforts to develop
WMD.

What of the evidence of other WMD efforts?  Was that all
falsified, too?
-- 

Allons Rouler!

Randy
http://www.arabie.org/