Could this possibly be true?

rebornFixer

don't gimme no wrote:

The average U.S. citizen is a fucking idiot. Take a look at who we re-elected, for fuck's sake. Doesn't surprise me that many of us still refuse to believe the truth. Plus, we're brainwashed from birth to believe this is an hornorable and moral country, so we probably have a hard time accepting the fact that we're lied to on a daily basis by our phony government.

Ed's version of Beast of Burden, "I just wanna live life and be dumb and happy like an American."

Well, if that's the general belief, I can see why so many people on here are so cynical and negative. Might want to take a look around, though. Are in people other nations any better?

rebornFixer

Human Tide wrote:

Well, I think the fundamental disagreement here is that I don't find it at all acceptable that one would be "confused' on the issue. When it comes to matters of such importance, when hundredes of thousands of lives are at stake, not to mention economic and diplomatic prosperity, one has an obligation to care and pay attention. I can assure you that we all have a lot on our plates, and it doesn't take much time or effort simply to care about the state of the country and its place in the world. As I initially said, I think it's apathy more than anything. People being dim would be another explanation, but I doubt that it's the basic problem.

Maybe so ... Its a bit of a niggling point at this stage, but you're still not addressing the ambiguity of the whole WMD report issue. You are choosing to take that one report as 100% complete factual evidence, yet someone else could point to another source and say "Clearly Iraq has something up its sleeve ... Why won't they let the UN do its job?".

RockinInCanada

Excuse me...I thought the war began b/c Iraq had a role in 9/11??

This WMD's issue seems to me to be an excuse, regardless of its validty, to continue an agenda that was false to begin with...then to me this makes the WMD a mute point....there was bull shit reasoning from the get-go....

Human Tide

reborncareerist wrote:

Maybe so ... Its a bit of a niggling point at this stage, but you're still not addressing the ambiguity of the whole WMD report issue. You are choosing to take that one report as 100% complete factual evidence, yet someone else could point to another source and say "Clearly Iraq has something up its sleeve ... Why won't they let the UN do its job?".

I absolutely disagree. The Iraq Survey Group is rather definitive, particularly in light of the fact that it was not a particularly objective operation to begin with. It was essentially the governments best effort to find anything that would justify their pre-war assertions. It was only after an exhaustive effort with nothing found that they made the big conclusions. The report is actually quite biased towards assertions of Saddam's intent to develop weapons after sanctions were lifted etc. etc. If you really think there is ambiguity then I'd encourage you to look at the big players and see what they said. Obviously the weapons inspectors themselves found nothing and the majority must believe there was nothing, in light of the report's contents. David Kay, for example, was an inspector way back in 1991 and headed the ISG before resigning. He is and was very pro-Bush and supported the invasion.

From his wikipedia entry:

"On January 23, 2004, David Kay resigned stating that Iraq did not have WMD and that "I think there were stockpiles at the end of the first Gulf War and a combination of U.N. inspectors and unilateral Iraqi action got rid of them." [2] Kay was replaced in his role by Charles Duelfer and spent the following days discussing his discoveries and opinions with the news media and the United States political establishment. He testified on January 28, 2004 that “t turns out that we were all wrong” and “I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed, militarized chemical weapons there.” "

From the ISG report:

"While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."


There is nothing out there with credibility even remotely close to the ISG to suggest that this was not the case. You refer to "that one report", but is there another one that I should be looking at? This is the US government saying this stuff!

rebornFixer

Human Tide wrote:

I absolutely disagree. The Iraq Survey Group is rather definitive, particularly in light of the fact that it was not a particularly objective operation to begin with. It was essentially the governments best effort to find anything that would justify their pre-war assertions. It was only after an exhaustive effort with nothing found that they made the big conclusions. The report is actually quite biased towards assertions of Saddam's intent to develop weapons after sanctions were lifted etc. etc. If you really think there is ambiguity then I'd encourage you to look at the big players and see what they said. Obviously the weapons inspectors themselves found nothing and the majority must believe there was nothing, in light of the report's contents. David Kay, for example, was an inspector way back in 1991 and headed the ISG before resigning. He is and was very pro-Bush and supported the invasion.

From his wikipedia entry:

"On January 23, 2004, David Kay resigned stating that Iraq did not have WMD and that "I think there were stockpiles at the end of the first Gulf War and a combination of U.N. inspectors and unilateral Iraqi action got rid of them." [2] Kay was replaced in his role by Charles Duelfer and spent the following days discussing his discoveries and opinions with the news media and the United States political establishment. He testified on January 28, 2004 that “t turns out that we were all wrong” and “I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed, militarized chemical weapons there.” "

From the ISG report:

"While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."


There is nothing out there with credibility even remotely close to the ISG to suggest that this was not the case. You refer to "that one report", but is there another one that I should be looking at? This is the US government saying this stuff!

I am just not clear on why this report, if indeed it is so airtight, got so little media exposure ... And why the ambiguity persisted around the UN's role as weapons inspector. According to this report, no WMD in Iraq, done deal. Then why did the UN keep demanding more time, and more access to Iraqi sites? Maybe the latter was just a stall tactic to slow down Bush. I don't know.

Human Tide

reborncareerist wrote:

I am just not clear on why this report, if indeed it is so airtight, got so little media exposure ... And why the ambiguity persisted around the UN's role as weapons inspector. According to this report, no WMD in Iraq, done deal. Then why did the UN keep demanding more time, and more access to Iraqi sites? Maybe the latter was just a stall tactic to slow down Bush. I don't know.

It actually got quite a bit of media exposure at the time, but it is true that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. have not been willing to admit outright that there were no WMD. As the article pointed out, Bush made blatantly false statements about Saddam not letting the inspectors in and not granting them access. The inspectors were saying they wanted more time to continue inspecting the sites of interest. Nothing had been found, but they were saying they needed a period of months to finish the work. I don't recall them raising a huge fuss about being obstructed, though I think they may have said at times that the Iraqi cooperation wasn't ideal. There was certainly criticism of Hans Blix by the US, particularly because he wasn't willing to say outright that the Iraqis were not cooperating. If I recall, he was the one that put forward a bit of ambiguity. I interpreted his position as being that Iraq was not making the inspections as easy as possible, but that they were not impeding things to the point where the inspectors couldn't get their work done. He was careful not to give Bush a justification for going to war, especially since the inspectors had found nothing. The ISG, however, had access to whatever they wanted after the fall of the regime, but obviously could piece their work together with the pre-war information.

Like I said, this was the best US effort to find a justification for their war. It didn't find what they were hoping for and the results were made very public. People should have been aware of them, though the media also should have made a bigger issue out of it.

El_Kabong

reborncareerist wrote:

I am just not clear on why this report, if indeed it is so airtight, got so little media exposure ... And why the ambiguity persisted around the UN's role as weapons inspector. According to this report, no WMD in Iraq, done deal. Then why did the UN keep demanding more time, and more access to Iraqi sites? Maybe the latter was just a stall tactic to slow down Bush. I don't know.

i guess the same reason while there was so much coverage of pol pot there was all but none of the us armed genocide in east timor...

or the same reason the media was so controlled in panama and reported from richer areas that weren't even bombed...and yet the pentagon admitting over 75% of the deaths were colateral damage and that they placed 'some number of bodies' in the same grave (ie mass grave)...the destruction of whole cities being utterly destroyed (btw, this was one of the first uses of the new military theory of shock and awe) those weren't newsworthy, just the interviews w/ the upper class (you'd think in spreading democracy you would care about the ppl who were oppressed?)

the same reason us doing the same thing to nicarauga wasn't entirely newsworthy...

b/c the media is corporate controlled, just like our government is. ge builds wepaons and even sold them to hitler WHILE we were fighting and they own/co-own the nbc's

it may get a bit of coverage but not what is justified for such offenses...shit, government agencies give reports saying bush broke the law, made propaganda w/ tax payer money...that friends who got some niiiice contracts were overcharging and committing fraud...the american bar assosication saying bush broke the law, violated the constitution...and yet more emphasis is placed on celebrity gossip and other useless stories.

btw, what's 'niggling'?

enharmonic

It's absolutely possible. Nearly half of America has the intellectual capacity of your average toilet plunger...and that's me being optimistic...so yeah.

kenny olav

I believe most Americans are ignorant and/or stupid, so of course I believe this.

After all, we have a President who in response to whether our troops were welcomed in Iraq, said "I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome." And that's only one out of a thousand incredibly and insanely stupid Bush quotes.

rebornFixer

El_Kabong wrote:

btw, what's 'niggling'?

It means small, minor ... Hmmm ... Maybe that's one of those words people aren't supposed to use anymore.