You are correct (i guess i should have been more clear, sorry), but it doesn’t alter the point i was trying to make. The only time when a deadline was put on Iraqi WMD disarmament was in March 1991.Ever since, no deadline on Iraqi disarmament has been made. As i have stated above, you can explain this both as a reason to invade or as a reason to let the inspectors do their work.

As I’ve always maintained the SOLE reason for the patchy Iraqi compliance with UNMOVIC was the tangible presence of US/UK combat power in the immediate vicinty. So I couldnt subscribe to the view that the simple setting of deadlines, in isolation, would have had any success whatsoever and as we all know here you cant keep a military force, in significant state-level quantity, deployed forever. So, as soon as the US/UK troops started deploying the Hussein regime was under the stopwatch and it had to be that way. Basically without the troops Saddam prevaricates and does nothing substantive until troops arrive. With the troops, but with a 6 month extending deadline, the troops become increasingly combat ineffective and weather hampered as time passes, the credible threat of force diminishes and Saddam goes back to prevaricating and doing nothing. Either way he “wins”.

Steve, you will probably understand that i think you are one of the more convincing branches of the pro-war (well, in this particulair case at least ) tree. However, your IMHO most plausible reason for this war is indeed the oil (not the actual posession of it, but in providing a consistant and unthreatened supply), which is then again denied by others of the pro-war branch.

Its a truism that compliments are only really something to feel happy about when they come from people you respect. Thank you for the compliment.

My belief is still that the oil IS an issue we are right to be fighting for and I’m pleased that I’ve been clear in the distinction between direct ownership and protected supply. I have little doubt that the oil is foremost in the minds of the political authorities of various contries, however, from what I’ve seen and heard the reasons why the troops are actually motivated to fight is the more humanitarian concern of getting a real tw@t out of power which I think is a significant distinction and one that needs to be highlighted.

I was actually highly amused earlier this morning watching Sky News reporters interview Iraqi lads in the “liberated” zone south of Basra. This one Iraqi lad, must have been about Benjamins age, turned around and (paraphrasing) said that he hated Saddam and was happy to be beyond his reach but that he still thought Bush was a tosser!. I remember thinking that these guys will take to western democracy like ducks to water!!!

As to others on “my side” chopping and changing reasons and views I can’t speak for them and wouldnt be so presumptious as to try. I’ve said, months back, that I thought we were going about this the wrong way and, eventually, the point was officially made that we were technically authorised under 687 like I said all that time ago. Unfortunately by that stage it was seen as a clutching of straws, to those prejudiced against anyway, instead of the direct legal justification that it is. I’d say thats the failure of the Blair/Bush tag team and is exactly what Kev was talking about in his piece above.

In that sence, you will agree with me that the reasons why people choose a position in this matter are not the same for everybody.

I agree absolutely mate. I do think though that the overly emotive responses displayed by many people that I’d describe as wringing-hands social-justice types is inconsequential to the political decisions that must be taken.

Not that I’d deny them anything for the moral correctness of their opinions, in fact I’m very cheered by the fact that so many people around the world do still sincerely care about the suffering of absolute strangers hundreds or thousands of miles away. I was concerned that that side of human nature was dying of abject neglect in todays cynical world (and thats me speaking as a cynic!).

The problem I have is that a political decision of the magnitude such as this, should not and cannot be negatively influenced by base emotive concerns. We need to be conscious that what we are doing has emotional and moral dimensions, of course, but that pure morality needs to tempered with practicality. In this case the enlightened self-interest that has been created by the oil does fit hand-in-glove with the task of removing a dictator that, apparently, his people really don’t “love” but have been unable to deal with themselves. The one does not negate the value of the other in my view. The morality of freeing the Iraqi people on the back of securing those oil supplies is questionable but the net result is that some people, who don’t care about the oil, have the leverage to go in and do some real good for a people who’ve had a very bad time of it.

The same goes for the other side of the coin – so i don’t think your anti-war = pro-chirac and pro-saddam remarks are fair, except maybe as a (rather simple, i might add) way for you to put an anti-war stance into perspective.

No Arthur mostly its just frustration and annoyance with the situation getting the better of the more reasonable bits of me I’m afraid – see I am still human despite the callousness. Those remarks arent fair and I appreciate, naturally, that just as I dont swallow everything Blair and Bush say you, and others, don’t accept all the motivations of Chirac and, obviously, don’t directly support Hussein.

Just as Bush and Blair have failed in presenting consistent and clear directions and justifications in support of their actions I think that the anti-war movement is just as guilty for allowing themselves to be manipulated by powers with more interest in chipping bits off US hegemony than any real humanitarian concern for what might happen in Iraq in the short term. Also the repeated depatures from the issue at hand towards bringing in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Afghanistan, Kosovo and even frigging Vietnam have shown equal fragmentation of purpose but, more insidiously to me, a support for the general theory that whatever the US does is wrong and is to be opposed even to the point of absolutely ignoring the potential benefits that would come to the Iraqi people postwar.

I know you are smarter than that, and since i know you have balanced the pros and cons of this conflict against each other to come to your personal opinion, i think you should well be able to understand that someone comes to another conclusion. To put it shortly: you do understand why some of the reasons why people are against this war are legitimate, right?

I CAN understand, like Garry says, people who utterly abhor violence and conflict for whatever reason being automatically opposed. I can also understand people viewing our strikes causing civillian casualties would be disgusted by what they see and if they hadnt done sufficient background reading, or had simply become sick of all the spin and bombast like Kev mentions, just oppose the issue on those most basic emotional reasons. Please accept that seeing little 5 year old girls in hospitals in Baghdad is something that effects me as deeply as it does you….I have a 7 year old daughter myself ’nuff said?:(

My view is that simply at some point we have to act in the belief that, given an existing situation that is intolerable, what follows will be better in the long term, for all involved, and that I expect our political leaderships to be the best placed to see that long term view.

Kev,

Good remarks well phrased.

But they must understand that the rest of us show our naivete because we are fed only what Governments want us to hear.

There are many people on this forum who could say that and I’d believe that that was about the best they could do just listen to propoganda and spit it or swallow it. You are not one of them though Kev. I’ve always been interested in reading your posts because you present yourself as a lad with no shortage of grey matter keeping his ears apart. I dont believe you are unable to assemble the litany of “spun” information provided by whichever authority into something getting closer to the truth.

I appreciate that your job, you’ve spoken about being a nurse/carer a few times?, makes you more sensitive to human suffering on a personal level than me. I base much of my world view on precisely the same information sources you do though and, while admittedly I do have friends who still wear the uniforms of all three services theyre not gung-ho slaughter merchants who want to kill, kill, kill. In fact they are just normal-ish people who, at times, have their fingers further away from the pulse than we do on these boards and I dont consider myself a slavering monster who wants to see the Euphrates running red with Iraqi blood either.

I honestly have a hard time understanding, therefore, how people who are as, if not more, intelligent, considered and pragmatic than me can come to such a diametrically opposed viewpoint given largely the same information. I dont mean any disrespect to you by that its just that I know my own opinion is one I’ve arrived at following a careful and honest analysis of all the information I’ve had to hand. No disrespect to Benjamin here but teenage kids have the luxury of believing in pure ideology and, in many cases, see the world as they’d like it to be and want it to be – in a way thats their perogative. Us more…..erm….seasoned individuals dont have that luxury as abrasive experience has taught us the way the world really works.

Rightly or wrongly, many members of this forum consider the current American administration to be fundamentally flawed and therefore are unwilling to blindly believe their propaganda and rhetoric.

The problem there though is that once you apply a total and automatic prejudice to any entity you, equally automatically, deny yourself any possibilty of real objectivity. Without objectivity, IMO, you cannot arrive at a valid conclusion. In this instance that objectivity is essential to balance out the various and rapidly shifting stream of justifications for war coming from the Bush Whitehouse against the shallow, unconstructive pseudo-emotive rantings coming from Chirac and his mob.

Many of us would have given our support to this war if the situation was clearer, if evidence of WMD had been found.

Which backs up your assertion that there was never real clarity in the messages coming from UNMOVIC and Hans Blix’s lot. The UNMOVIC mission wasnt one of search-and-eliminate – simply put they never had the manpower or authority to do that. Their mission was one of inspection and verification of the destruction of weapons that Saddam was to present them and to be on-site to investigate tipoffs from within the regime or from various intel sources. So without full compliance from Hussein the evidence that you would have wished to see was NEVER going to be forthcoming. Hussein gave nowhere near full compliance and, cynically, the compliance he seemed willing to offer was closely timed to UNSC presentations by Hans Blix. It’s fairly good supposition that without the forces being arrayed on his border by the US and UK UNMOVIC wouldnt have even got that far.

Simply put Kev it was absolutely in Saddams’ interest to have UNMOVIC in his country running busily round like headless chickens chasing ghost reports as, while they were doing that, no-one would have been in a “justified” position to attack him. Disarming Saddam diplomatically suffered a huge flaw from the start – he was never willing to deal with the UN with sincerity and you can’t reach binding agreements with someone who doesn’t care whether he honours his obligations or not.

However, we have a war and I sincerely hope it is concluded with the minimum loss of life on all sides.

Which is the one thing we surely all agree on.

Arthur,

Also, you are wrong about the 1991 ceasefire agreements. There was never a clausule for Saddam to fully disarm, there was a clause for Saddam to get rid of all his special weapons programs within 30 days.

Sorry pal thats just not the case. Below is article 8 from UN Resolution 687:

8. Decides that Iraq shall unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of: (a) All chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities; (b) All ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related major parts, and repair and production facilities;

Thats fairly specific and was the initator for the original UNSCOM teams to verify that compliance. Those teams, and UNMOVIC, demanded documentry evidence for compliance with the above article. Hussein refused to provide that evidence and thusly was specifically in material breach of 687.

Agreed. Domin you make an excellent point.

My only hope to add to that is, now people are starting to feel more “engaged” with the events going on all around them, that they also develop the patience and objectivity crucial to making an informed decision on an issue. Increased awareness of a situation is going to be counter-productive if people react to it with mindless, knee-jerk, outbursts or unconstructive critcisms.

Its asking a lot of the general public to avoid the simplistic or unemotional response, especially with a mass-media that will be looking to stoke that up to sell its publications, but considered response and informed decision are the places we need to be getting people to so that “Western Democracy”, and the current political morass many nations have so demonstrably been submerged in of late, can evolve into something we can all be a lot happier with.

Damn right Glenn!

Vympel,

Good one!. Perhaps this is something we could start a contest running on. Sort of:

Which Defence Journalist makes the biggest gaff of the conflict?

So far the Stormshadow/Raptor miss-ID pointed out by TJ must give Francis Tusa a fairly good shout.

Maybe we could even get it printed in some future edition of AFM as a warning to all industry journalists that such goofs are noted and held up to public ridicule!

Steve

Yes… if only we lived in a democracy where our leaders actually listened to what we said instead of treating us like little kids…

If anyone else had said that Garry I’d have accepted the point. You, however, know full well how much of a sham “western democracy” is in normal circumstances. You yourself described it, fantastically accurately, as 3 and half years of dictatorship followed by half a year of prostitution.

Given that you know this is the way the system works anyway how can you be so “shocked” by the outcome of the current situation. Surely this is just normal politics.

Ladies and Gents, I’ll reiterate this for those who have trouble accepting it but we all vote, in good conscience, for the political leadership we “want”, or at least dislike the less. Once that leadership is elected though they have a mandate to lead. If you don’t like where they lead – tough. Write to your MP but that is all you will ever be able to do. In the UK case Tony Blair took the risk to have a vote on the pursuance of military action despite having no legal requirement to under British Law. That vote was won with a majority exceeding 2 to 1.

There’s your democracy in action and you’ve no right to decry it just because it doesnt give you the outcome that sits with your world view.

Good luck and good hunting to those on patrol.

LOL 😀 !!!!

Quick question for you TJ. News has been showing image intensifier footage from what would appear to be a GR.7 cockpit showing Paveway’d up Harriers flying. This part of the OSW package that went out tonight? If so I thought we were just tasked to ONW???

Regs

TJ,

Thanks for putting the pieces together on that one – thought the described configuration i.e single missile (not to mention the timing) was a little…..well….odd! Would have expected Tusa to do a little better though. Like you said though – numpty!

The fact that a significant tasking has been made to OSW started to muddy the waters when I heard about tonights strikes too. Wouldve expected the range of assets utilised for them to be tasked for the main event, not still p1ssing about with OSW missions, if everything was going off tonight.

Noises being made now about a mission on the Al Faw peninsula following up on the air strikes down there. Busy times ahead for 3Cdo Bgde possibly!

Whichever seems like he’d better get a move on about doing it if he’s going to. Just seen a report on Sky News that troops have moved into the Kuwaiti demilitarised zone inside 5 miles from the Iraqi border and that RAF GR4’s have just been seen with live Stormshadows hanging on them.

Bushs’ 48hr deadline expires at 0100 GMT so whatever else it looks like were going tonight