Chad Cooper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Its easy to criticize, but what would you have done differently, other
than not gone to war in the first place?
That is not the question.
After the war, after more troops had arrived, why did not the US
dispatch some of them for several days, to look at sites the locations
of which US intelligence already knew?
Gautam says that the reason is that other actions were more
urgent/important.
Do you think so?
Note that my questions are not based on reports from Iraq, but on
reports from the Pentagon; they are not based on opposition to the
war, but on President Bush's statements and on UN inspector Blix's
reports, which said that the Iraqi government was not cooperating
with the weapon inspectors.
It is possible, as some of the anti-war people claimed, that the Iraqi
government no longer had any weapons banned by the UN and that their
lack of cooperation with the UN inspectors was designed as a bluff.
On the other hand, it is also possible that the Iraqi government had
kept some of the banned weapons it had already developed.
We don't know.
The question is, `was the US government competent in its actions in
the latter part of April 2003 in not investigating, albeit in a
superficial manner, all 900 of the sites that it claimed are suspect?'
Gautam says the US goverment was competent; that it allocated
resources correctly, in not investigating those 900 sites (most of
which, everyone agrees, were empty).
My question: is the Bush administration emulating Lyndon Johnson,
who lost credibility over the Vietname war?
What conveys to you and to others that the US was being competent, in
not investigating sites that might contain weaponized anthrax or
radio-active waste or radio-active medical materials that could be
used in a `dirty bomb'? How are you going to say, over the next
several years, that no one should fear a `dirty bomb' detonation in
Marrakesh, Madrid, or elsewhere, that, we know, would not hurt many
people directly, but would, we fear, have considerable psychological
consequences?
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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