As usual the UN vacillates over the lifting of the UN sanctions against Iraq proving once again that it can do anything about a problem except agree how to solve it. As usual politics and face saving are the priority within the security council.
Sauron
:confused:
By: Arabella-Cox - 23rd May 2003 at 11:29
“Well you suggested I was gloating when I mentioned that I was correct in the assumption that the US and UK could do a better job of Baghdad than the Russians could do in Grozny!.Your exact words were “So the Iraqis lack a bit of spine, of course it is a little soon to gloat now isn’t it?” from a post made on the “Should France and Germany Have a Say” thread dated 11th April 2003 .
Do you not like the term you used now?”
Umm… you missed the point. As I explained… the invasion and defeat of Saddams forces in Iraq was always going to be the easiest part of what the US was trying to do… not that it was guaranteed to be easy per say, just that compared to creating a country and government in Iraq that will remain stable with the religious factions and the relations it has had with its neighbours it was the sort of thing the most powerful armed forces in the world is supposed to be able to do.
I hear there are still attacks on US troops and have been many demonstrations against US occupation.
I hear that the first military leadership the US imposed was not working fast enough to supply power and water and proper sewerage to the people of Bagdad let alone the little places… it also takes time to divy up all the juicy commercial contracts for the right companies (ie ones with General xyz ret. as CEOs).
“The situation is obviously different but the net result of using an unconventional arms capability to cover a weakness in the conventional area certainly has parallels.”
Interesting idea, but how long would he need to develop such weapons systems. The Iraqis are in as bad a shape as the SU was just after WWII and we all know they only developed weapons through stealing ideas from the americans or captured Germans… where was Iraq to aquire a capability you seem to think the Russians have problems maintaining?
“Point is Garry that 10,000 litres of bio agent is a legitimate weapon of mass destruction, a truly horrendous weapon, and it was accepted by all of the signatories to UN1441 to be held by Hussein in Iraq.”
And how many hundreds of thousands of litres does the US have… for research purposes of course. After more than 50 years of defensive research you’d think it wouldn’t be a problem anymore… just an injection and you’re fine.
“Right now its a threat to no-one, thankfully, if Hussein where still in power its a threat to anyone he can reach within a matter of days of his order being given.”
How do you know Saddam hasn’t got it with him?
How do you know one of Osamas supporters hasn’t found it in the desert?
It might have crossed the border into Jordan or Syria for all you know.
“It doesnt take too long to dig something up and transfer material to a transport vessel to go into freefall bombs or rocket warheads!.”
Of course and before when he had a country the only thing stopping him doing that was the threat of retaliation… now what are you going to do?
“So if he dropped that over a few Saudi oil facilities the 1500 or so infected oil workers would be off work for a couple of days, take a few aspirin, then be as right as rain would they? The Saudi medical infrastructure (or anyone elses for that matter) could suddenly cope with several hundred to a thousand cases of severe disease infection simultaneously could they?”
A few thousand might die in the worst case scenario of large numbers of aircraft with crop spraying gear being allowed to fly low and slow over the Saudi oilfields long enough to deliver it in lethal concentrations.
As I mentioned the problems with such weapons is the law of diminished returns. If you injected the perfect lethal dose and lined up your victims then a relatively small volume could kill the world population several times. In the real world wind direction temperature, even sunlight can seriously effect the use of chem and bio weapons and degrade their effectivenesss… in the Tokyo subway incident they would have killed more if they’d simply set the place on fire.
“A search that many thought that the UN could perform with 60 or so scientists in a country the size of Iraq WITH Saddam still in power manipulating it all! Don’t you see how ludicrous that situation would have been now?”
I could care less if saddam had anthrax or botulism or any WMD.
I think Iraq has paid enough… you’d think he had bombed america the way they carried on. All he did was invade a neighbour. His forces were kicked out of the country he invaded and his country has been punnished with sanctions for 12 years.
WTF for?
That is why I find it so hard to see the US as the all powerful wonderful country its citizens seem to perceive it to be.
“Yeah right he wouldnt immediately rearm with the best kit he could lay his hands on when the sanctions were lifted!. “
Who is to say the military sanctions need ever be lifted?
So what he buys some anti tank missiles… how many has the US got?
Why is he not allowed an army?
“Who cares? What possible relevance does that have to this discussion?. I’m talking about Iraq and WMD’s here not going off on some kind of tenuous little tangent!.”
Interesting that you think being consistant is a tenuous tangent…
“IF we’d have waited perpetually as the French and Russians wanted us to do (well at least until Hussein had cleared off his debts to THEM of course!) and he had rearmed (prob buying French and Russian arms of course – which might have made you happy eh?) “
Of course the world is saved again because it is British and American companies getting the contracts… and probably rearming as well in the not too distant future.
“it wouldnt have been twenty odd days and a mere two heavy divisions needed to do the job would it?. It would have been a damnsight more and would have had to try and assemble under a constant, developed, WMD threat. That would have been better in some way would it? Easy to play armchair general when its not your troops doing the fighting eh? “
Yes, of course, Iraq of 1991 was such a Stalingrad… millions dead on both sides.
In that case if it should become normal business to invade countries before they have done anything wrong… you just think they might do something wrong in the hazy future which other country is to be invaded… come on WMDs are dangerous things… Syria has them…. how many US and UK soldiers are you prepared to risk by not invading Syria right now… and then there is Iran… evil they are… of course we can never trust those Saudis… perhaps we should just list the countries we aren’t going to invade… it’ll be shorter.
All purely in the interests of preemptive self defence of course…
“In effect we went in BECAUSE the UN WASN’T doing its job and backing up its own decrees.”
Well I guess they must want to thank you… seeing how you didn’t even bother to put it to a democratic vote in the UNSC… of course democracy only works when there is a foregone conclusion in your favour right?
Saddam style demoracy if ever I saw it… vote the way I want you to vote… oh don’t bother… I’ll just hear the votes I want to hear and do what I want.
“We see now that their interest was no more humanitarian than just that by their desire to attack the US “
Their desire to ATTACK the US…. you shouldn’t post after you have been drinking Jonesy… or has an American poster pinched your username?
What attack?
Worst case scenario was that France and Russia were only interested in business with Iraq.. ie money …but the actions of the US/UK forces… secure the oilfields and surround but do not enter the cities… like Stalin did to Warsaw show they were only interested in oil. WMDs would hardly be hidden in oil fields… the US never stops looking at them. Burning wells just means more revenue for US oil fire fighting companies so they could care less about them.
But at the end of the day the worst case scenario is France and Russia looking after THEIR OWN INTERESTS!!!!!!!!! Something the US is VERY GOOD AT.
How does that become an attack on the US?
(BTW if it was why isn’t it the end of NATO?)
“Like I said above, all those who were wringing their hands about the plight of the poor Iraqi citizenry in the face of American and British evil are now showing their true natures.”
By legitimising what the US and UK have done in Iraq giving them a rubber stamp would risk the lives of Syrians, Iranians, and many other small and largely defenceless countries.
It is standard practice for an invading army to be responsible for the wellbeing of those they have conquered… if the UK and US can’t look after the Iraqi people what can the rest of the world do?
“Can’t have it both ways pal!.”
Of course you can… blow stuff up, have fun (I have heard the tapes on aircraft recorders after a weapon hits… and they aren’t crying… unless they get told it was a blue on blue) get all of the best contracts and then whine because the UN won’t lift sanctions that were imposed on the country of Iraq… not Saddam Personally. If you are right and there are WMDs unaccounted for then they must be found, recorded and disposed of before the sanctions can be lifted. If one of Saddams rivals taken power would you have dropped the sanctions?
“As to the stupid petri dish analogy, “
Ummm Vortex… that “stupid” petri dish analogy was regarding the difference between theoretical and practical.
A WMD could theoretically kill tens of millions… in practise they certainly wouldn’t.
Much the same that the rate bacteria reproduce should mean that there is far more bacteria around than there is… the reality is that once the bacteria reach the limits of their environment they stop reproducing… or more accurately splitting.
Kinda assumed you’d understand that of all the people here…
By: Arabella-Cox - 22nd May 2003 at 05:54
you really have no idea on BioWarfare…
do you…it’s not about droping bacteria on people. That’s rediculous. A small amount (relative) of even the most dangerous anthrax strand is not going to kill you. In biological warfare, what the terms “weaponized” mean is that the bacteria cultivated is not only in spore form, but artificially grinded to ~1-5um diameters, and concentrated. You don’t culture them in a petri dish and then say you have enought to make a biological WMD. You need to somehow get the ~1-5um spores, do you know how? I’m not going to tell you how and it is not easy to do so to collect enough doses to kill as a WMD. Furthermore, when in spore form, you can store it in a container for a years if not hundreds of years without any degradation of weapons effectiveness. As to the stupid petri dish analogy, why are you growing free form anthrax? That’s not even a viable weapon.
By: Jonesy - 21st May 2003 at 20:38
Garry
Gloat? I believe the whole idea behind the attack was to get him while he was weak. Gloating now about how weak he really was would be perhaps a sign that the urgency you claimed was never there in the first place, but if you feel the need, go right ahead.
Well you suggested I was gloating when I mentioned that I was correct in the assumption that the US and UK could do a better job of Baghdad than the Russians could do in Grozny!.Your exact words were “So the Iraqis lack a bit of spine, of course it is a little soon to gloat now isn’t it?” from a post made on the “Should France and Germany Have a Say” thread dated 11th April 2003 .
Do you not like the term you used now? As to the Iraqi’s not fighting hard enough for Saddam, or some perceived weakness in the Iraqi armed forces, wouldnt that be a greater incentive for Hussein to have accelerated his WMD projects?. The precedent here is, surely one you would be most familiar with, that of the Russian Federation concentrating its resources on its strategic weapons to cover the capability gaps that had developed in its conventional arms through underfunding. The situation is obviously different but the net result of using an unconventional arms capability to cover a weakness in the conventional area certainly has parallels.
Quite true and if you stack people in a tall pile you could kill every man, woman and child in the world with 1 litre of Petrol… as long as they were allowed to burn… what is your point?
Point is Garry that 10,000 litres of bio agent is a legitimate weapon of mass destruction, a truly horrendous weapon, and it was accepted by all of the signatories to UN1441 to be held by Hussein in Iraq.
Threat to whom?
Right now its a threat to no-one, thankfully, if Hussein where still in power its a threat to anyone he can reach within a matter of days of his order being given. It doesnt take too long to dig something up and transfer material to a transport vessel to go into freefall bombs or rocket warheads!.
Anthrax is treatable. While dangerous to animals and humans and able to live in soil for quite some time it does very little to oil.
So if he dropped that over a few Saudi oil facilities the 1500 or so infected oil workers would be off work for a couple of days, take a few aspirin, then be as right as rain would they? The Saudi medical infrastructure (or anyone elses for that matter) could suddenly cope with several hundred to a thousand cases of severe disease infection simultaneously could they?
We have your word that there are unweaponised WMD products in small tankers in the ground…
I’m trying to illustrate Garry that making sweeping generalisations,like bemoaning the fact that no WMD’s have been paraded for the world media in Iraq yet, is not necessarily a sensible thing to do BECAUSE of the difficulties involved in such a search. A search that many thought that the UN could perform with 60 or so scientists in a country the size of Iraq WITH Saddam still in power manipulating it all! Don’t you see how ludicrous that situation would have been now?
And in 10-15 years time assuming the sanctions are lifted how will things have changed? …ohh that’s right in 10-15 years time the Yanks will have given up all their WMDs and have no armed forces left.
How relevent is the US’s strength here?. The problem is that there was no chance of sanctions still being in place in 10 years…too many people were decrying the suffering of the Iraqi populace ignorant of the fact that Saddam was manipulating things to make damn sure that they reacted in that fashion. We all saw the evidence of the regime trying its best to re-equip using the food-for-oil programme money – 2000 pickup trucks bought for “food distribution” that are immediately painted green and fitted with pintle mount ATGMs and machine guns on arrival! Yeah right he wouldnt immediately rearm with the best kit he could lay his hands on when the sanctions were lifted!.
What about all the other little dictatorships with WMDs… are they to be invaded too? Why is Saddams anthrax sooo much more deadly than anyone elses?
Who cares? What possible relevance does that have to this discussion?. I’m talking about Iraq and WMD’s here not going off on some kind of tenuous little tangent!.
You stated that Saddam with WMDs was too dangerous a thing to allow so close to your oil fields… if anything would make someone use WMDs surely it would be an invasion that was undertaken with the stated purpose of removing the government.
The ease with which Iraq was defeated and lack of any real evidence of WMDs suggests the pretext that Iraq was just too dangerous to be left in saddams hands was bollocks.
Were being very selective in what we’re choosing to remember here aren’t we Garry!. I said, clearly and repeatedly, that when he had chance to fully rearm (i.e to pre 91 levels) THEN he’d be a threat to the world economy. I used 10 to 15 years as an arbitrary value for the aquisition of new tech aircraft, missiles, tanks and ships. If it turns out we’ve gone in and knocked him out before he was ready so much the better.In fact that was precisely what I told PLAWolf all those months ago that I wanted to see as less of our people would come home dead that way.
IF we’d have waited perpetually as the French and Russians wanted us to do (well at least until Hussein had cleared off his debts to THEM of course!) and he had rearmed (prob buying French and Russian arms of course – which might have made you happy eh?) it wouldnt have been twenty odd days and a mere two heavy divisions needed to do the job would it?. It would have been a damnsight more and would have had to try and assemble under a constant, developed, WMD threat. That would have been better in some way would it? Easy to play armchair general when its not your troops doing the fighting eh?
Be a bit stupid to invade a country on the pretext of saving the people from a dictatorship and then keep the country under a foreign military government and guard only oil facilities while it is decided which oil contracts the invading country’s companies would like.
The pretext, diluted or twisted by individual politicians or the media, was to find WMD’s and material that the entire UN agreed existed when they signed on to UN1441. WMD’s that were not being turned up by UNMOVIC because Saddam Hussein was not giving them up as he was obliged to do under UN687. In effect we went in BECAUSE the UN WASN’T doing its job and backing up its own decrees. Why wasnt it doing so? Largely because France and Russia had outstanding debts and oil interests with the Hussein regime and the last thing they wanted to see was that regime slipping out of their grasp – enter that veto you love so much. We see now that their interest was no more humanitarian than just that by their desire to attack the US being more important to them than helping the Iraqi populace by getting the sanctions lifted. Those are the simple facts Garry distilled down to their most basic form!.
The objectives of the attacks and those items put under US/UK protection first showed the world what the US and UK were interested in all along. Why legitimise what they have done?
Like I said above, all those who were wringing their hands about the plight of the poor Iraqi citizenry in the face of American and British evil are now showing their true natures. If they were really concerned about those people the sanctions would be gone, theyre not, so we are left with the only logical conclusion being that they just wanted to rein in the US all the way through and now consider that more important than helping people dig themselves out of a hole. Nice morals some people have, shame others can’t afford the price of them!.
You invaded without the UN, yet you claimed to be invading in its name… now that you’ve had your fun, and blown up some things and tested some weapons you want the world to come in and fix things up…. fix it yourself… I’m sure the most juicy contracts will be “won” by American companies already anyway.
FUN, fun???!. Christ Garry we lost people in this mess and you call it FUN for fcuks sake?!. It was done under UN authority even if today’s UN didnt agree with the things that they’d already agreed some twelve years earlier. The simple fact was that the invasion was legitimate under UN Resolution 687 as Saddam Hussein failed to abide by the terms of his surrender agreement. Failing in those terms, in any war that concludes in a termed surrender, allows for the continuation of hostilities to resolve the situation.
As for us fixing things up ourselves, well, didnt the UN just all start bleating and flapping about when that was proposed by the Yanks? Didnt they argue and whinge about not being given a great enough role in the postwar reconstruction?. Can’t have it both ways pal!.
By: Arthur - 21st May 2003 at 12:04
Point taken Steve.
I was not aware of the phrase ‘Unweaponised WMD’ and responded to that. I do maintain my view that some better linguisticists could be hired to come up with a less scaremongering term, as in my eyes an unweaponised weapon is not a weapon.
By: Jonesy - 21st May 2003 at 11:59
Har Har very clever Mr Hubers sir! 🙂
I used the phrase “unweaponised WMD product” to relate to material produced for use in a WMD role that had yet to be weaponised ie loaded into rocket warheads or dispensing systems. That definition is correct and accurate.
I put it to you that raw uranium ore still in the earth in deepest Niger or Donald Ducks bottom wipings are just a little bit more distant from being able to be called “WMD product”. So far in fact that applying the term “product” to them is a gross misrepresentation and the closest you could associate them with WMD’s is to call them “raw materials”. A raw material being a lot less significant than a refined product!.
You started with the pedantry first remember! 🙂
By: Arthur - 21st May 2003 at 11:36
Originally posted by Jonesy
So, in summary, we have an unweaponised WMD product in a small tanker, buried somewhere….
Steve, i thought you would be better informed than to use cheap rhetorics like “unweaponised WMD”. You’ll have to agree with me that a such contradictionary combination of words is utterly laughable, and can apply to everything you want. Niger’s uranium is of course an unweaponised WMD. So are the cute little duckies at your local pond (take a duck, scrape a bit around it’s butt and i’m sure you will find a few bacteria of the botulism strain which will give you a far better killer than anthrax). And while we’re at it, Surinam’s bauxite supplies are only a fleet of intercontinental bombers in disguise :rolleyes:
Like any other bacterial strain, Iraq’s anthrax as delivered by Donnie R. needs maintenance to be kept usefully alive. Specific temperature, food, light, the lot. Traces of anthrax will indeed survive when buried in the hypothetical propaganda bowser, but certainly not enough to maintain a useable weapon. Even more so, maintenance of Iraq’s germ collections was done with help from US companies – do you really think that a lot of those still were present after 1991?
By: Arabella-Cox - 21st May 2003 at 10:47
“Let me ask you Garry, just how much did NewZealand gave out to N.K.’s demands in the last ten years?”
Compared to the money the US spends to make war it spends very little to prevent war.
I don’t remember stating here that I would like to see more NKs in the world… I can’t see that that is possible.
If you mean I would like to see small countries in a position where they can’t be bullied into doing things they don’t want to do by the US or other big powerful country then yes… the only other protection small countries had was the UN… and that doesn’t seem to work now.
I realise, and many others have made the same connection, that the US only respects force and power. And that to be treated as anything other than cattle a country these days needs either nuclear or biological or chemical capability to be left relatively alone.
“Of course you don’t mind more countries like that.”
Coming from a small and largely powerless country I think I can relate better to the victims of America than Americans whining that others might get weapons of mass destruction… even though they have more stocks than they know what to do with themselves.
“Am I OK to gloat about the fact I was right on the “no need for Baghdad to turn into Grozny” thing yet Garry?.”
Gloat? I believe the whole idea behind the attack was to get him while he was weak. Gloating now about how weak he really was would be perhaps a sign that the urgency you claimed was never there in the first place, but if you feel the need, go right ahead.
“OK let me paint a picture for you. UNSCOM say there is 10,000 litres of unnaccounted-for Anthrax culture in Iraq (note thats UNSCOM and was repeated by Hans Blix’s UNMOVIC post 1441 ok?!) now a couple of hundred millilitres in an aerosol dispenser is enough (according to the Porton Down mob) to infect about a thousand people under correct conditions of dispersal and proximity.”
Quite true and if you stack people in a tall pile you could kill every man, woman and child in the world with 1 litre of Petrol… as long as they were allowed to burn… what is your point?
At the rate bacteria reproduce if you put one in a petri dish after a few weeks the number of bacteria you should have is theoretically equivelent to the mass of the Earth… but in practice when the bacteria reach the edge of the dish they stop multiplying as they run out of food and space.
“The “significant potential threat” I spoke of would just about half fill this one, fairly modest, truck.”
Threat to whom?
Anthrax is treatable. While dangerous to animals and humans and able to live in soil for quite some time it does very little to oil.
If he is not going to use it in his own defence when is he going to use it?
What has he to fear? That Bagdad will be nuked? That US attempts to kill him will suddenly start to be more effective?
Exactly what is he waiting for, if he has these weapons?
“So, in summary, we have an unweaponised WMD product in a small tanker, buried somewhere in a country with hundreds of sq miles of desert with only a “
We have your word that there are unweaponised WMD products in small tankers in the ground… which is about as much use as the bacteria in your back garden (which creates one of the deadliest toxins in the world… in such minute amounts that it won’t even make you sick).
“In 10-15 years – with the sanctions lifted – “
And in 10-15 years time assuming the sanctions are lifted how will things have changed? …ohh that’s right in 10-15 years time the Yanks will have given up all their WMDs and have no armed forces left.
What about all the other little dictatorships with WMDs… are they to be invaded too? Why is Saddams anthrax sooo much more deadly than anyone elses?
“what reason do you have to say we were wrong to go in?”
You stated that Saddam with WMDs was too dangerous a thing to allow so close to your oil fields… if anything would make someone use WMDs surely it would be an invasion that was undertaken with the stated purpose of removing the government.
The ease with which Iraq was defeated and lack of any real evidence of WMDs suggests the pretext that Iraq was just too dangerous to be left in saddams hands was bollocks.
“Be a bit stupid if they didn’t seeings the Iraqi’s are depending on it to rebuild their country.”
Be a bit stupid to invade a country on the pretext of saving the people from a dictatorship and then keep the country under a foreign military government and guard only oil facilities while it is decided which oil contracts the invading country’s companies would like.
“Well seeings it was the privations and suffering that would be “inflicted up the poor helpless Iraqi citizens” during the evil American attacks on their country that led most of the naysayers to condemn the US and UK with such vitriol it seems frankly unfathomable that its the morally correct masses that are now happy to see a prolonging of just that suffering.”
The objectives of the attacks and those items put under US/UK protection first showed the world what the US and UK were interested in all along. Why legitimise what they have done?
“Weren ‘t people calling the US and UK hypocritical before the war?”
You invaded without the UN, yet you claimed to be invading in its name… now that you’ve had your fun, and blown up some things and tested some weapons you want the world to come in and fix things up…. fix it yourself… I’m sure the most juicy contracts will be “won” by American companies already anyway.
“….remember the “failure” of one means the whole tribe will be massacred.”
Ummm, yes a whole tribe of Saddams supporters… didn’t your country just have a war to kill as many of them as it could Vort?
I believe Jonesy was talking of hipocrisy.
Unless they have an outside source or a running nuclear reactor the amount of Plutonium they might have is rather likely to be none.
Many countries of the world have unranium… even here in NZ we have a supply from the west coast of the South Island. If that was a danger then the US had better increase its defence spending by about 10 times for the next few years.
Besides why try to smuggle WMDs into the US when it has so many of its own… the security at many facilities in the US are a joke to a professional… any nuclear power station would be a good source for spent fuel rods or radioactive waste.
As the attacks with anthrax a few years ago show, easy to make, easy to hide, easy to deliver to individual targets. (but tough to kill large numbers… even in an enclosed place like the Tokyo underground a deadly poison like nerve agent killed less than 10 out of thousands).
By: Arabella-Cox - 20th May 2003 at 21:22
in addition….
also, the density of uranium and plutonium is about 19-20g/cm^3…want to know how big a volume a ton of this will occupy? Petty much the US is convinced that only human intellegence is going to find such things but with Saddam’s brutality and closed inner circle of very very few people….remember the “failure” of one means the whole tribe will be massacred. Garry must like that a lot to satisfy his needs.
By: Jonesy - 20th May 2003 at 19:54
Interesting that Saddam was such a huge threat to the world that he wouldn’t use these huge stocks of WMDs in his own defence… why?
Am I OK to gloat about the fact I was right on the “no need for Baghdad to turn into Grozny” thing yet Garry?.
OK let me paint a picture for you. UNSCOM say there is 10,000 litres of unnaccounted-for Anthrax culture in Iraq (note thats UNSCOM and was repeated by Hans Blix’s UNMOVIC post 1441 ok?!) now a couple of hundred millilitres in an aerosol dispenser is enough (according to the Porton Down mob) to infect about a thousand people under correct conditions of dispersal and proximity. So you have a theoretical maximum of about 5000 casualties per litre of weaponised material – now times that by 10000 litres and you arrive at a big number. 10000 litres of Anthrax is therefore a “significant potential threat” you would agree?
Look at the below picture:
This is a 20,000 litre tank on the back of a two axle medium truck. The “significant potential threat” I spoke of would just about half fill this one, fairly modest, truck. I’m now going to take my half-filled truck and bury it somewhere inside a country the same size as France, furthermore I’m going to restrict knowledge of what happens to it to a dozen people or so in my regime and shoot anyone else with indirect knowledge.
So, in summary, we have an unweaponised WMD product in a small tanker, buried somewhere in a country with hundreds of sq miles of desert with only a handful of people knowing exactly where and what it is – people who are going to be difficult to catch or dead already….and you think it is going to be an easy job finding it Garry?
People where very swift to discredit the discovery of the mobile biochem weapons labs as the “smoking gun”, but, to me this is utterly fantastic!. What possible reason is there to have a mobile biological production facility (let alone three!) other than to clandestinely make biological weapons? Weapons that by UN687 he wasnt allowed to posses and was meant to have declared to UNMOVIC under UN1441.
…yet in ten or fifteen years he was going to be so dangerous and ruin the world economy and hold the world to ransom…
In 10-15 years – with the sanctions lifted – Iraq would have been the prosperous, well armed, little dictatorship and who knows what its clandestine little production facilities would be churning out. They paid little heed to the UN unless there were 100,000 troops on the border, so, after “beating the UN” again who would have stopped them? The French asking nicely? Please………!
I guess the justification now is that what is done is done and the right thing to do now is ignore the fact that the US and the UK were wrong and lets just do what is best for the Iraqi people…
Proof we were wrong??? Beyond the fact that WMD’s havent been found in a timeframe GarryB feels is sufficient (based on what experience I’m unsure?!) what reason do you have to say we were wrong to go in?
It is alright… the oil is safe. I am sure the Americans will take good care of it.
Be a bit stupid if they didn’t seeings the Iraqi’s are depending on it to rebuild their country.
…but it is the bad old UN that is not playing ball and lifting sanctions when the US asks… after all it is the role of the UN to listen to and obey the US…
Well seeings it was the privations and suffering that would be “inflicted up the poor helpless Iraqi citizens” during the evil American attacks on their country that led most of the naysayers to condemn the US and UK with such vitriol it seems frankly unfathomable that its the morally correct masses that are now happy to see a prolonging of just that suffering. Weren ‘t people calling the US and UK hypocritical before the war? Enough of that to go around quite a way it seems!.
By: Arabella-Cox - 20th May 2003 at 14:33
…what a joke
and you agree with Garry? he’s the kind of person that wishes for more N.Koreas….holding the world at ransom seems to be some kind of surreal concept to him…hey wake up the world has been blackmailed by N.K. numerous times and i said enough with it and we don’t need more countries like that. Of course Garry doesn’t care because it’s not his tax dollars that goes into paying for those kinds of blackmailing. Let me ask you Garry, just how much did NewZealand gave out to N.K.’s demands in the last ten years? Of course you don’t mind more countries like that.
By: Hand87_5 - 20th May 2003 at 13:43
Originally posted by GarryB
Interesting that Saddam was such a huge threat to the world that he wouldn’t use these huge stocks of WMDs in his own defence… why?
…for fear the retaliation might be fatal?
…yet in ten or fifteen years he was going to be so dangerous and ruin the world economy and hold the world to ransom…I guess the justification now is that what is done is done and the right thing to do now is ignore the fact that the US and the UK were wrong and lets just do what is best for the Iraqi people…
It is alright… the oil is safe. I am sure the Americans will take good care of it.
Or perhaps we could say that the US and the UK and Australia and Poland and a few other countries supported the illegal invasion of a sovreign nation to remove a governing body they didn’t approve of… even though it is not doing anything now that it wasn’t doing in the 80s that is hasn’t done since and it had approval then.
…but it is the bad old UN that is not playing ball and lifting sanctions when the US asks… after all it is the role of the UN to listen to and obey the US…
I agree Gary .
Now that the “Saddam removal” is completed I guess that western countries should move on and as Gary said , do what’s the best for Iraki people.
The big question is : who’s next?
Since some countries can decide that some goverment is to be removed , illegaly , despite what the majority of the other countries say , and despite the international law ,I’m just scared of what the future will be.
Maybe my country will be one of the next targets since we are the bad guys in the silly story since day one.
Wait and see !!
By: Arabella-Cox - 20th May 2003 at 13:30
Interesting that Saddam was such a huge threat to the world that he wouldn’t use these huge stocks of WMDs in his own defence… why?
…for fear the retaliation might be fatal?
…yet in ten or fifteen years he was going to be so dangerous and ruin the world economy and hold the world to ransom…
I guess the justification now is that what is done is done and the right thing to do now is ignore the fact that the US and the UK were wrong and lets just do what is best for the Iraqi people…
It is alright… the oil is safe. I am sure the Americans will take good care of it.
Or perhaps we could say that the US and the UK and Australia and Poland and a few other countries supported the illegal invasion of a sovreign nation to remove a governing body they didn’t approve of… even though it is not doing anything now that it wasn’t doing in the 80s that is hasn’t done since and it had approval then.
…but it is the bad old UN that is not playing ball and lifting sanctions when the US asks… after all it is the role of the UN to listen to and obey the US…
By: Jonesy - 17th May 2003 at 15:06
Essentially no Hand its not a matter of legal interpretation of 1441. The sanctions placed on Iraq where so ordered under UNCR 661 back on 6 Aug 1990 and then modified in the context of UNCR687, 707, 986 and several others.
1441 doesnt refer to terms for the lifting of sanctions in any specific fashion that I’ve been able to determine in the quick scan I’ve given it. In fact I’ve yet to find any specific parameter (outside of the vacating of Kuwait by Iraqi forces set under 661 back in ’90) that would legally trigger the lifting of the sanctions in any of the UNSC resolutions!.
Certainly, if the only legal framework for the sanctions was that set by UN661 qualified by the prohibited actions levied against Iraq under UN678 and UN687, then by the letter of the law those sanctions are technically void anyway now.
By: Hand87_5 - 17th May 2003 at 11:39
fair point , however what were the exact terms of the UN 1441 resolution ? Aren’t we speaking about legal issue here?
By: Jonesy - 17th May 2003 at 11:32
You guys are missing the whole point I’m afraid.
Weapons of Mass Destruction are a threat when they are fielded and wielded by someone who just might use them. Plainly now it is obvious that the weapons are squirrelled away somewhere very dark and deep and that the political authority, in Iraq, to use them has gone, departed, is no longer existant etc!.
No Saddam Hussein to order the use of WMD’s means that no WMD’s are going to be fired by the Iraqi’s which, in turn, means the threat has gone if you take it down to its most simplistic level. No threat from the Iraqi’s, and a population now trying to figure out what benefits “freedom” has just brought them, means that the sanctions are no longer relevent and are actually handicapping the potential of a populace at a pivotal moment in their social development.
Then again though for certain countries, countries owed money by Iraq, the ability to demonstrate that they can exert influence over the course of events in Iraq might be quite handy I suppose.
By: Hand87_5 - 17th May 2003 at 08:18
Right . So far we didn’t hear about any WMD in Irak .
Either this war based on a big liar or the thread is still there. That’s why I believe that the UN is right.
By: Arabella-Cox - 17th May 2003 at 07:00
The sanctions were imposed because Iraq was in violation of its obligations… ie believed to have WMDs. This hasn’t changed.
Unlike the US and the UK, the UN has not made this a personal vendeta, therefore the question of WMDs must be resolved before the sanctions can be lifted.
Perhaps if the US and UK had gone through the UN in the first place things would have been better and legally clearer.
The US can spend 70 odd billion bombing Iraq.. surely it can afford to fix it up too… and take payment in loans… I’m sure Iraq would be good for it. The US is going to make money out of it anyway… why does it need UN support now… it didn’t need it’s approval to invade.
Sign In
May 16, 2003 at 8:34 pm