US Weapons Inspectors: "No WMD in Iraq"

[lvwhitebir]

How does one prove the non-existence of something that doesn't exist? Please show me how it is possible to prove a negative. You're claiming that Saddam should have proven the weapons didn't exist. We now know, post-invasion, that they don't exist and never did. How is he supposed to have proven this?

1) I don't know about the "never did." I believe ample evidence showed that it existed. They just now believe that Saddam did indeed destroy it.

2) I didn't make the rules to the game, the UN did. It said that Iraq was to disclose what they had and to show evidence of destruction. In many cases, those conditions weren't met. In the inspector's own words, the disclosure was wrought with problems and they had documents of materials that was on hand and required destruction, but Iraq didn't provide evidence to the destruction. There was also evidence of weapons found that weren't declared at all, weapons that they were hiding.

3) The inspectors had evidence of weapon materials purchased and delivered, but no documentation on their destruction. No negative to prove, if it was there it had to go somewhere, and it was the responsibility of Iraq to show the documentation, not the inspector's.

I spent a great deal of time debating you in another thread wherein I documented the administration's efforts to engineer a perception of threat regarding nuclear weapons.

My original intention of my involvement in this thread was not to argue whether the war was justified. The claim was made that the UN believed they had destroyed all of Iraq's weapons and I disputed that claim. Nothing about engineering data, these were the quotes from the inspectors themselves. Are you arguing those claims?

I honestly have to question if any amount of evidence would satisfy any of the apologists for the administration, or whether anybody would concede points on this issue.

Which was my point about not being able to PROVE either way whether the war was justified. There is contention on the evidence and contention on the legality. Until the "real" facts and intentions of those in power are known and not just guessed, we'll never know. And the argument of legality hasn't been heard in any court of law.

You can say things were engineered and people lied, but without a forum where all the evidence is presented and disputed by both sides, people will believe what they believe. I'm not one to rush that someone is guilty without adequate representation of the facts.

WMD was the administration's casus belli. Inspectors prior to the war, such as Scott Ritter, said they didn't exist.

That's what I dispute. The briefings to the security council by the Inspectors didn't say that, and in fact believed there was big chance they did.

As I indicated in the thread (above), the administration prior to 9-11 was on record stating that Saddam wasn't a threat--you can hear it in Powell and Rice's own words--and the National Intelligence Estimate of 2000 gave little indication that Iraq loomed as a dangerous entity.

All pre-9/11. That devastating strike made the government believe that its current policy of containment simply wasn't going to do the job. They believed that the only way to solve the problem was to resolve it quickly. Are you saying that they can't change their minds as conditions change or new information comes to light?

WhiteBirch

 

[lvwhitebir]

Funny, too, that we haven't tangled with North Korea...you know, what with our humanitarian interest and our clear and present dangerness. Huh. Wonder why that is?

What do you mean by "tangled." There are sanctions imposed against them and we're looking at doing more sanctions from what I understand. We're also trying to be involved in talks to resolve the situation. It's the same thing we did in Iraq after they were knocked back from Kuwait in '91.

WhiteBirch

 

[PeachMonkey]

I'll have to read that report. Do you know where I can get a copy?

http://democrats.reform.house.gov/IraqOnTheRecord/
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/pdfs_108_2/pdfs_inves/pdf_admin_iraq_on_the_record_rep.pdf

Highly recommended reading, with detailed references. The accompanying database includes 237 specifically misleading statements.

Off-topic. We give weapons to lots of countries and have multiple times had to reign in the government that didn't use them correctly.

Of course, when Hussein was using the weapons incorrectly, we only didn't reign the government in, we renewed their licenses to import WMD.

 

[rmcrobertson]

So, now we're all for UN sanctions--and this from the same folks who were arguing that UN sanctions failed miserably with Iran.

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Ritter Right About Iraq
by Randy Scholfield

President Bush has been handing out Presidential Medals of Freedom lately like they were Little League good sportsmanship ribbons.

The medal apparently is an award for good effort, even if the results aren't so winning.

He awarded one to former Iraq viceroy Paul Bremer, who most notably disbanded the Iraqi army, leading to our present security implosion.

And he gave one to George Tenet, the former CIA chief, who most notably presided over two of the most devastating intelligence failures in the nation's history: first Sept. 11, then Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

It was Tenet who told the president that finding weapons stockpiles in Iraq was a "slam dunk."

Right. Give that man a medal.

I'd like to nominate someone who really deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Scott Ritter.

Remember Ritter? In a column in 2002, I wrote about the square-jawed former U.S. Marine and United Nations weapons inspector, who was in Wichita several months before the invasion of Iraq, giving a talk -- no, a plea -- about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

He was adamant: Saddam Hussein had no WMDs -- at least none of any consequence or that posed an imminent danger to the United States. Certainly nothing that would warrant a rushed invasion. "We can't go to war based on rhetoric and speculation," he told the crowd. "We'd better make sure there is a threat out there worth fighting."

He argued that 90 percent to 95 percent of Saddam's WMDs had been dismantled by the U.N. inspection team in which he served from 1991 to 1998. And that Saddam was otherwise well-contained by U.S. forces.

Now we know: He was right.

You've probably heard that the Bush administration this week quietly called off the weapons search.

There aren't any WMD stockpiles. As in none. Zip. And, no, they weren't moved to Syria.

The weapons didn't exist.

True to form, Bush insisted this week that it didn't matter -- that's right, his main justification for taking this country into a bloody, costly war didn't matter. He would still have invaded Iraq!

Huh? That makes sense only if he had planned to invade Iraq all along, as critics charged.

I remember Ritter telling the largely anti-war audience at the Wichita church that he wasn't a pacifist. A proud U.S. Marine, he believed that it was sometimes necessary to go to war and fight. But he also believed that it was wrong to put American fighting men and women in harm's way without very good reason.

Ritter saw that his country was headed down a disastrous path and had the guts to speak out.

At the time, he took a lot of abuse from Bush loyalists. They questioned his motives, and his integrity. They compared him to Jane Fonda. They asked in mocking tones what exercise video he was making next.

He could be saying, "I told you so." Instead, he's speaking out on another security boondoggle -- the anti-missile defense shield program, which is costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars without the Pentagon even being able to prove that it works.

We're spending the national treasure on it, with nothing in the way of enhanced security to show for it. On the contrary, argues Ritter, it's unleashing a dangerous and pointless new arms race.

Will we listen to him now? Probably not.

But make no mistake: Scott Ritter is an American patriot who cares enough about his country to tell it the unvarnished truth.

Give that man a medal. He actually deserves it.

Randy Scholfield is an editorial writer for The Eagle.

 

[ghostdog2]

Pres. Bush may not have done so very well with his nominees, but anyone can be fooled. Let's take Scott Ritter for example. Briefly the poster boy for "Bush is Wrong on WMD" he lost his appeal when it was learned that he was:

1. Arrested for soliciting sex from an underage minor on the internet

2. Investigated by the F.B.I. for unauthorized contact with foreign intelligence agencies while with UNSCOM and

3. Testified to Senate and House of Representatives on Sept. 3rd and 16th, 1998, respectively that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program and presented a real threat:
A CNN report on Sept. 30th,1998 cited a Washington Post story...."which says....from Scott Ritter...that Iraq had key devices which could be used to make nuclear bombs, provided Baghdad got the enriched uranium first.
****
In his opinion, in Ritter's opinion, Iraq had a much more developed nuclear program than the International Atomic Agency is reporting to the U.N."
Video clip followed

The CNN report goes on to quote Ritter as saying "..it would be just a matter of days, in his opinion" for Iraq to assemble nuclear weapons.

In his Senate testimony, Ritter was asked about "the gravity of the situation and whether Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons (3) assembled, lacking only the fissile material:He answered "Yes, sir" after repeating back to the Senator the question he had been asked.

In an article in the New Republic,Ritter wrote:
"Meanwhile, Iraq has kept its entire nuclear weapons infrastructure intact through dual-use companies....Iraq still has components {lists components} for up to four nuclear devices minus the fissile core...as well as the means to produce these." Dec. 21, 1998

A year or two later, Ritter went Dovish in the war effort and claimed Iraq had no nukes or components, etc. The only problem with his new position is that he had been out of the Intelligence loop since 1998 and couldn't possibly have new info to contradict his old statements.

Showing his ability to guage relative strengths, Ritter also said that the US lacked the military capability to defeat the Iraqi army and that our troops would "never" reach Baghdad.

Please, hold off on the Medal.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Mr. Ritter is also a retired Marine Corps officer. Here is how he speaks:

http://www.informedpublic.com/2004/10/exclusive-scott-ritter-speaks-should.html


Here is a "Slate," article relevant to the attacks upon his credibility:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2105434/

Here is a CNN article--good to see that we're trusting those liberals for something! since they constantly lie and slant to protect the extreme leftist viewpoint:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/22/ritter.arrest/


By the way, will we also be discounting anything that J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, and the rest of the right-wing types caught with their, "hand," in the, "cookie jar?"

 

[The Prof]

Nah, it's not about HC at all. To be very truthful, I was just blowing smoke. This last election really bummed me out. I was not thrilled with either candidate to be quite honest. But after forty-five years of being a Republican, I'm ready to switch.

Hey, I like that thing about not finding Bill, how can she find WMD.

Have a great day.

The Prof

Prof: Vote for who you like but it's a little hard to accept your claim to have supported GB if your first fallback position is Hillary and you're proud of the fact that you didn't vote for him in either election.
I don't think HC is the answer. If she doesn't know where Bill is how will she ever find those pesky WMD?
p.s. last remark designed to keep post on topic. This ain't about Hillary. Is it?

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Let's take Scott Ritter for example. Briefly the poster boy for "Bush is Wrong on WMD" he lost his appeal when it was learned that he was:

1. Arrested for soliciting sex from an underage minor on the internet

So we can say, as the Slate article put it, "Scott Ritter: Right on Iraq, wrong on age of consent?" Surely you know an ad hominem when you see one, Ghostdog. Don't you?

2. Investigated by the F.B.I. for unauthorized contact with foreign intelligence agencies while with UNSCOM and

From an article on the Accuracy In Media website:

"Scott Ritter, during his recent visit to Baghdad, called on Iraq to allow them back. The problem is that the U.N. has no intelligence capability of its own and must rely on other nations and their intelligence services. Ritter did that, admitting that he relied heavily on the Israelis for intelligence information about Iraq. He also asked Israel for help in reviewing U.S. intelligence material about Iraq. For that, Ritter came under investigation by the FBI for espionage."

Sounds like he was trying to do his job. Perhaps they wanted to burn a government gadfly who was loudly and vociferously questioning the administration? Or are such politics beneath a President who would ruthlessly--and dishonestly--handicap the political careers of Max Cleland and John McCain?


In his opinion, in Ritter's opinion, Iraq had a much more developed nuclear program than the International Atomic Agency is reporting to the U.N."

Did he flip his stance? Certainly. In many (not all) conservative circles this is a big no-no. The assumption is that you have to be right the first time, and never correct yourself if it turns out you're wrong.

Others have no problem with the concept. It's called changing one's mind.

Now as far as changing one's mind...has anybody here addressed the video footage of Rice and Powell claiming that Iraq wasn't a threat? They changed their respective tunes following 9-11 and suddenly Iraq was a threat again. Both were tasked with spinning the situation into one favorable for the administration.

Once again, I provide an article outlining this spin...I provided it before.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/899/

Reluctance to accept the justifications for this war crossed party lines. Long before the invasion people had debunked the notion of Iraq's ability to produce WMD's. Two years into the war and countless man-hours of inspection before and after the invasion--no weapons.

Where are they?

Some speculate Syria, based on the hearsay evidence provided by a journalist who has grievances with the Syrian government. They propose that Saddam moved thousands of tons of chemicals and production equipment hundred of miles by truck, without U.S. intelligence picking up on it in spite of their heightened pre-war alert status. No U.S. or Brit flyover caught them in the act, and spy satellites somehow missed this.

It isn't a plausible hypothesis, however, and the government isn't touching it.

People here speculate Saddam destroyed the weapons before we invaded. The assumption, apparently, is that Saddam wanted to convince Iran he had them so that he could maintain parity. When war loomed with the U.S., he then destroyed his stockpile (and kept this action totally secret somehow from both the Iranians, the U.S., Great Britiain, and his fellow Iraqi's) in order to make the U.S. look bad and to make himself look better.

Others suggest that they're hidden still in Iraq. Once again, the combined intelligence forces of the "Coalition of the Willing" are unable to find these tons of supplies. I confess I've lost faith in the U.S. and Great Britain's intelligence arms, but I never thought Poland's SIS would drop the ball so badly. <sigh>

Regards,


Steve