Weapons of Missingness

[WaldoMcFroog]

Any comments about the yesterday's news ('scuse pun) re Iraq:
'US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said Iraq may have destroyed its weapons of mass destruction before the US went to war against Saddam Hussein in March.'
Wot? Invalidating your excuse for the war in the first place? Shurely not? Trouble is, they'll claim,' Ah, but we thought it *was* genuine when we went to war, so we're in the clear!' Bunch o'liaring king cnuts (ang)!

[woodpam]

It's nonsense don't you think? 2 reasons: Saddam was a great survivor - he'd played the game with weapons inspectors many times before and knew just how far to go before reluctantly giving in "for the sake of his people". If he had weapons to decommission he would have done it in order to protect his power in Iraq and save his own life. I'd take this further and assert that the US/UK alliance knew there weren't great stores of anthrax and smallpox lying around or they wouldn't have chanced dropping bombs on them and unleashing a world health nightmare. I wish the TV reports would focus on the aid situation - it isn't getting through to people in desperate need despite the fact that the oil is committed to flow westwards under the aid for food programme. Millions of people in the UK and US didn't believe the propaganda pre war and don't believe it now. Is it any wonder that the electorate here don't trust their representatives and fear the backlash from the areas of the world we have bullied into submission? I'd love to hear Ned Flanders view on all this....

[Quizmonster]

"Recognizing the threat Iraq�s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security..."

The above quote forms the opening words to Security Council Resolution 1441, which the USA and Britain used as grounds for attacking Iraq. That resolution was signed-up-to by all fifteen members of the Council, including France and Russia. It is perfectly clear, therefore, that it was not just the coalition countries that believed or had evidence that these weapons existed. Everybody there did!

How Putin then had the effrontery to try making fun of Blair by asking "What weapons?" is an abiding mystery. Obviously, the very weapons mentioned in 1441 that he instructed his Ambassador to the United Nations to add his signature to! That's what weapons.

Now we've got the ranting press clamouring about what justification there was for invading Iraq. To my mind a mass grave - never mind many such graves - is a weapon of mass destruction. Who cares if there are no Scuds or anthrax? We've saved multitudes from Saddam's terrorism...end of story.

If you want to read Resolution 1441, you'll find the text by clicking http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/15016.htm

[WaldoMcFroog]

Let's not be disingenuous here, Quizzy... The wording of the paragraph is undeniable, but can you hand on heart say that every country would agree with every clause and that there would be no compromise involved in accepting wording that might not be exactly what everyone meant?

Your point about mass graves is absolutely evidence that Saddam was a monster, but 1) there's plenty worse who haven't been invaded and 2) that wasn't the reason given for going to war (certainly not initially and until the Weapons of Mass Distruction argument was loudly decried by such a large portion of the electorate).

I feel you're missing my point somewhat. The war was presented to the great unwashed as a duty to rid a madman of weapons and with a provable link to Al Queada. The US claimed to have proof of this. The UK said they believed it, and would proove it. Many of us thought it was a load of horsecack then and are demanding the proof.

I don't want my country to have committed a crime - surely that is a good and patriotic opinion to hold. I realise they'll never be held accountable in law, but I think it's absolutely right to ask for the proof.

[Quizmonster]

(Why is it that, so often when I say what I think here, I'm told I'm being disingenuous?) As you say, Waldo, the wording is "undeniable" and consequently neither France nor Russia - nor you, for that matter - can deny they signed up to the belief that the weapons existed. If they didn't believe it, that's their little sin. And, if one also believes that it was a madman, as you put it, controlling these, one would surely be mad oneself to do nothing about it. We know he had such weapons because others - Russia, China and France mainly, by an incomprehensible coincidence! - had been selling them to him for decades.

Why is it so hard to believe that all 15 members of the Security Council genuinely believed what they said they believed? And, if they believed it, surely they had to act decisively. So the belief may have been wrong...so what?

'Large portions of the electorate' tend to decry things solely at the urging of the tabloids. Most recently, for example, more than eight out of ten people surveyed had no idea what the European Constitution fuss was all about, yet they are the very "people whose voice must be heard", according to the ranting press and a certain political party! Every prognostication of the anti-war lobby proved to be false, so now all they have to cling to is the 'missing weapons' concept. Even if Bush and Blair deliberately lied pre-war, at least they can rest content that they achieved marvels for freedom and the absence of terror. Their opponents are perfectly free to say that these were not got "in their names". There was no crime, Waldo, so just 'Rejoice!'

[cucumbers]

I heard someone found weapons grade gerraniums in one of saddams palace gardens !?

[WaldoMcFroog]

"Even if Bush and Blair deliberately lied pre-war, at least they can rest content that they achieved marvels for freedom and the absence of terror. "

In they lied - and I'm sorry, but nothing you've said undermines my contention that the war was illegal - then the anti-war movement was entirely justified. You say that the anti-war lobby is clinging to the missing weapons, I say er... they were the reason given for going to war. I also say the pro-war lobby keep saying, 'Ah, be we stopped Saddam, and he was a bad naughty man', but everyone knew he was a genocidal maniac right back in the 80's. There was NO urgent need to stop hm in 2003 - scrotum though he definitely is, he'd been low profile since the first Gulf War. Governments invading the sovrienty of other nations without credible reasons (and if they were so credible, how come so many people across the world stood up and said, 'Come off it, that's palpable nonsense'? It certainly is a crime and if all we can do is stand in a street with a banner, then that is what should be done. I shall also be doing my part to vote Blair out of office come the next general election.

[uproar13]

I think Tony Blair is in big trouble over this. His claim that Saddam could launch WMD in 45 minutes is clearly false. He has, at least, misled Parliament. He has also misled the British people. He asked the us to trust him over Iraq, and the majority did. They will not do so as readily in the future.

[woodpam]

"Large portions of the electorate' tend to decry things solely at the urging of the tabloids. " True enough Quizzy, but in this case up to 2 million of us stood up to be counted on a single day, and the tabloids were not responsible. I'm an Amnesty International member and believe me Saddam was always top of the most wanted list. That said, I believe more could have been achieved by taking a fraction of the financial cost of the war ($100 billion and counting) and putting it into weapons inspection coupled with humanitarian work. That way enormous influence for change could have been effected and the UK/US would have been perceived in a totally different light by the Iraqis and indeed the world. Factor in the benefit of not destroying the infrastructure of the country and the waste of human life and misery caused by the war and I truly believe you have a convincing argument for this preferable course of action. What is wrong with treating people with respect and kindness and protecting ourselves from terrorism in the process? The UN resolution is obviously important, but when there is a better option which engenders trust and friendship there is absolutely nothing stopping us from taking it. It has been ably demonstrated that some of the Arab States which pay lip service to being our allies really hate us now and this bodes ill for the long term future.

[Quizmonster]

The current press-inspired hue and cry - as if Bush and Blair concocted the notion of Iraqi WMD for their own nefarious purposes - is such obviously arrant nonsense I'm amazed anyone even gives it house room.

Resolution 1441 - agreed-to by all 15 members of the Security Council - stated categorically last November that the weapons existed. But it wasn't just 1441 that set things off, it was a trail of earlier resolutions, spanning more than a decade, that persistently claimed Saddam had such weapons. Clearly, then, John Major and Bill Clinton must have had their UN ambassadors sign up to the effect that they, too, believed they existed. Another pair of lying criminals, perhaps? Even the 'honourable' Robin Cook's speeches throughout the late nineties indicate that he firmly believed it also.

Consider Saddam's constant shenanigans with the UN arms inspectors and his eventual effective 'deportation' of them. Nor could he offer any evidence that the WMD had - as he claimed - already been destroyed. If none are ever found, couldn't that be the explanation? What you have to ask yourself, however, is: 'Would you have believed him?

In other words, just about everybody in the known world believed in these WMD! I certainly believed in them...didn't you? Now, though, we're being asked to believe that Blair and Bush, in a two-man conspiracy, just cooked the idea up a few months ago. It's rubbish, pure and simple, and politically-inspired rubbish at that.

[Tefler]

After World War II it became obvious that what had been happning to the Jews and others in Germany had been known outside that country, but for a long while nothing was done. In Riwanda, to our shame, we outsiders stood by and let masses of people perish in horrendous circumstances. Yes - to our shame. Now, something has been done to stop Saddam repeating his crime of genocide - there will be no more mass graves brought into being because of him - and we are supposed to be ashamed of that now? Where's the logic in all of this? Those of my friends who marched against the war were the very ones who were most vociferous in their condemnation of the lack of action over Riwanda. Some are even Jews whose ancestors died in the Holocaust. I agree that WMD may not exist - they may never have existed, although, as Quizmonster states, we know that the Iraqis had the wherewithal to create them as certain countries had sold them the materials. However, I also think it disingenuous to believe that Bush and Blair would have made all of this up simply to get us to go to war. They both took tremendous political risks in doing so - and I'm with Quizmonster in thinking it was the right thing to do. War is never pretty, nor is it ever black and white, but sometimes it is less bad than standing by, simply watching.

[WaldoMcFroog]

Tefler, I'm afraid that you are missing the point when you talk about Saddam being a monster and the need to stop him.

Saddam Hussein has been a monster virtually since the moment the CIA created him as a hitman to kill Yasser Arafat and then covered their eyes as he staged a bloody coup in Iraq. Yes, he is genocidal and yes there are mass graves, and the man is right up with the biggest f*ckwits in history.

BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT THE WAR WAS ABOUT!

If 'the powers that be' were concerned with Saddam's human rights breaches, they would have been in Iraq 20 years earlier. If they generally cared about human rights abuses, they'd be in *loads* of countries but a basic look at US foriegn policy over the past 50 years perfectly demonstrates that the US overlooks massive human rights abuses (Chile, anyone? Indeed, Chile of course is a country where the democratically elected president was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup and replaced with one of the biggest mass murderers of the last century - Pinochet) as long as the state behaves in accordance with US wishes. Sorry, but they don't give a damn.

[WaldoMcFroog]

In the case of Iraq, the US was looking stupid and inneffectual having failed to find Bin Laden, and needed a victory over someone in order to keep face.

I don't object to a tyrant being deposed at all, I object to the imperialism of it, and I object to being treated like a idiot and being lied to. They told us the war was about WMD people went and protested, because the arguements and evidence they presented did not add up. They're now saying, 'Oh, there may not have been any WMD in there anyway, or they may have destroyed them.'

Quizzy would have you believe that it's naive to believe Bush and Blair could concoct such a lie, but frankly if you can convince people you won a presidency campaign despite cheating and not getting the most votes, I don't think you can be trusted at all.

Of course, the interesting thing now is Rumsf*ck's statement last week "Iran should be on notice; efforts to try to remake Iraq in Iran's image will be aggressively put down." Whereas efforts to make Iraq in the USA's image is apparently fine... Interesting notions of nation sovreignty there Mr R.

[Quizmonster]

(This'll be my final response here...I promise, Waldo!) There is a question Oxford admissions tutors sometimes put to an applicant to study philosophy there. On entering the room, after the applicant is seated in front of a specially-positioned rectangular table, the question is asked: "How many legs has this table got?" Only three are visible from the applicant's position, but he/she invariably replies: "Four." "How do you know?" the tutor asks, to which the worried applicant replies that - given the shape etc - it is quite possible to reach what appear to be perfectly valid judgements based on experience but in the absence of observable facts. (We all do precisely this every day, after all.)

Before leaving the room, the student is shown that the table, despite its shape and his reasonable explanation for his answer, does in fact have only three legs.

This, it seems to me, beautifully sums up the 'Are there/aren't there/were there/weren't there WMD in Iraq' question. Tony Blair made a perfectly reasonable pre-war case, on all the grounds I listed in my earlier responses here, that - given what any rational being could deduce - there were WMD and everybody believed that, not just him.

If the WMD do prove non-existent, that doesn't make him a "liar" any more than the absent table-leg makes the student a "liar"...just wrong, which is not at all the same thing. The whole duping/lying hoo-hah is still utter rubbish. (For me...end of story.)

[WaldoMcFroog]

Quizzy, I think we're going to have to disagree on who's seeing the wrong number of legs here! :-)

[WaldoMcFroog]

Just a follow up:


"Oil target=_blank>http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,970331
,00.html

"Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war. The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil."

"The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt."

[woodpam]

Tj, do you really believe that the UK and US thought that there were chemical and biological weapons in Iraq? Thats not a rhetorical question - I want to know because if the alliance was dropping bombs on suspected stores of anthrax and smallpox that would be a crime against humanity to equal those of Sadam. If they had more integrity than that and wouldn't have uunleashed the full horror of those weapons on the area then they lied to us. The weapons inspectors actually found and decommissioned 90% more WOMD than the allied forces themselves claim were destroyed in both the Gulf wars. My point is siimply, there was another way to approach teh problem and anyone who believes that the Iraq war mark 2 was a dose of nasty medicine which has now cured the patient, is likely to be wrong. The Iraqi people now face an uncertain future as power struggles develop but in worse conditions in terms of infrastructure than previously. In addition, the terrorist cause has probably had a recruitment field day. The fat lady hasn't sung in this one yet and we've spent a massive amount in terms of money and human sacrifice with no perceptable gain.