> 1.) I agree that many countries had a vested interest in the status
> quo, but that doesn't mean you couldn't get full support. For
> example, were the US to say privately "We have to level Iraq within
> the next year or two. What do we need to do to get full support?"
> Then they would've participated as something is always better than
> nothing (-30% is better than -100%)
What makes you think that on a *national* level (not an anticdotal
one, re the handfull of europeans that you work with) that *any* of
those nations that were opposed to our action are going to start
helping in Iraq?
I severely doubt that any country that opposed the war is going to
jump right in simply because we ask nicely for their help.
> ... It's no different than if
> your neighbor wants to store some gravel on your lawn. If he asks
> you'll probably say no problem - If he just dumps it there, you'll
> have a problem.
(*blinks*) wow, now there's an analogy I hadn't thought of. I also
have to say that it's fundametally flawed. You can't compare a
half-a-cup of butter to a military unit and support for regime change.
> Iraq, however, has never been proven to have any connection to 9/11
> and there was no proof that they had WMD.
Point one on this - no one, even the polls on this site, have tied
Iraq/Hussein to the events of 9/11, however he has been tied to
terrorism and openly supported it. Our invation of Iraq was *not*
because of 9/11, it was because Hussein supported terrorism and
Hussein was working to develop (and had developed) WMD. The logical
conclusion is that as Hussein developed more and more WMD he would be
willing to hand it over to the terrorists.
And as to the point of "Iraq not having any WMD"... I will point out
the following:
- In a letter to President Clinton in 1998, the Senate Armed Forces
Committee urged the President to take action to "respond effectively
to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end it's weapons of mass
destruction program". This was because, "... we are deeply concerned
that without the intrusive inspections and monitoring by UNSCOM and
the IAEA, Iraq will be able, over time, to reconstitute it's weapons
of mass destruction program." This letter was sent just shortly after
Iraq ejected the UN inspectors for the n-th time.
- In 2002 an Iraqi general was quoted as saying that Iraq could stike
regional targets with chemical or biological capability within 45
minutes of receiving the order.
- In 1998, Clinton had several speeches where he pointed out Iraq's
weapons programs - including "nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
programs."
- In June of 2004, Polish troops beat local terrorists to the purchase
of 17 rockets and 2 mortar shells containing the nerve agent
cyclosarin. This leads me to believe that someone other than us feels
that Iraq has or had WMD.
(article found at
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-07-02-poland-iraq_x.htm)
- In June of 2003, the National Review Online included the following paragraph:
In the months leading up to the war, there was a bipartisan consensus
that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; the real debate was between
those who believed that Saddam would have to be disarmed by force and
those who wanted to rely on U.N. inspectors to contain him. The world
knew from those inspectors that, when last checked, Iraq had large
stores of anthrax and nerve gas. The world also knew that before the
first Gulf War, Iraq had an aggressive nuclear-weapons program. Last
December, there was general agreement that Iraq's 12,000-page
declaration of its weapons programs was grossly incomplete. And in
January of this year, former Clinton administration officials Kenneth
Pollack and Martin Indyk wrote in the New York Times that Iraq "must
be made to account for the thousands of tons of chemical precursors,
the thousands of liters of biological warfare agents, the thousands of
missing chemical munitions, the unaccounted-for Scud missiles, and the
weaponized VX poison that the United Nations has itself declared
missing." (article found at
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york060303.asp)
That comprises a lot of different people from a lot of different
political backgrounds saying the same thing - Iraq had WMD programs.
> Iraq was either a very misguided judgement call based on assumptions
> and conjecture rather than hard facts, or there's something we don't
> know. Everything I've seen seems to point to the former.
Regardless of Freedom of Information and press releases, there will
always be things that we do not know about when it comes to the
decisions our leaders make. Our President's decisons have been made
and I stand behind them 110%.
Hatton
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