http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=807014&tw=wn_wire_story
Despite the capture of the ousted Iraqi leader, 60 percent of Americans believe his status will make no difference in the terror threat against the United States, the poll found.
Yeah, I’ve gott admit that I was puzzled by the big deal made by everyone (including his Dem rivals) when Dean said that he didn’t think the capture of Sadaam made America safer. I disagree - I think a Sadaam on the loose could eventually be a problem, but I can see how someone could make the statement Dean made (particularly when taken as a simple political comment by someone in a race with Bush.) I just didn’t think it was any big deal.
I just wonder how much the attacks on Dean by his Dem rivals will hurt him in the long run - while attacks are common, some of these are of the kind that people tend to remember, such as their constant attacks on his changing positions and “need for daily clarification statements to clear up the previous day’s mis-statements.” I still don’t think Dean has a chance in the general election. It will be interesting to look back after all is said and done and analyze precisely what happened to the front-runners on the Dem side, how Clark fizzled out so spectacularly, and how, in hindsight, Dean was so successful in blowing everyone else away. It’s also interesting watching the party struggling with what to do with Dean.
He’s either the reincarnation of McGovern or the Democratic version of Reagan. Take your pick. :D
Well, the one thing that I’ve learned over the years is to not make predictions too early in the races. ;) OK - I haven’t learned it well. Maybe more accurately, I’ve learned that predictions early in a race are usually pretty worthless. At the end of the Democratic convention that nominated Dukakis, he was 14-17 points ahead of Bush. Heck, even in this one, back before Clark jumped in everyone from people here to most magazine and pundits were certain that if Clark joined the race he would wipe out all of his competitors and give Clark a major run for his money.
Why would the capture of someone who previously had nothing to do with domestic terrorism help keep america safer? I really wish we could get everyone together on this:
We went to war in Iraq for what reason - the ones said pre-war, not the ones made up later?
Have any of the reasons proved to have merit?
I am not sure how the capture of Saddam changes who Saddam was previously to being captured.
Chet
I’m pretty sure Saddam Hussein isn’t running any terrorist training camps in Iraq any more.
Oh… and the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction thing… seems to me that with Saddam in custody, it should just be a matter of time before we learn where they were hidden or, more importantly, who they were sold to.
Of course, if you happen to despise the U.S. President, it’s certainly better to leave an evil tyrant in power and allow the people of that nation to suffer than it would be to depose him and risk the Hated U.S. President gaining some popularity points with the voting public, right?
I can’t tell if you’re joking or not, Ryan.
Yep, just a matter of time. How about, NEVER?
Jeez :0. Normally I don’t take the cheap snippy shot. But god, man, do you really think what you wrote there has even a marginal chance of being true? If you do, what in the hell do you base that on?
We’ve had military control of the country for seven full months. We’ve captured nearly all of the senior Baath party people and are vigorously questioning them. We’ve had military and civilian specialty WMD teams searching many facilities. We’ve been offering major bribes to anyone who would “show us the goods” on WMDs. And we’ve come up totally empty. Sure we have evidence of some nearly derelict weapons programs (centrifuges buried in the garden for Christ’s sake), and some other items that might potentially (if you belive in really stupid and in-efficient weapons programs) be able to be used in WMD development (like the alleged mobile weapons trailers).
But there is no evidence AT ALL that Iraq had functioning supplies of actually usable WMDs at the time the war started or at any time since the mide/late 90s. In fact, the overall evidence tends towards the conclusion that Iraq hasn’t had functional, usable WMDs (mostly chemical) since the Gulf War.
If Saddam had stockpiles that were large enough, well maintained enough, and in good enough shape to actually be used to threaten the US, then we would have found them. I am absolutely sure of this. Functional WMDs are not little vials like in the movies. A functional WMD program is a complex weapon system, with dozens of specialists, specialized production, storage and delivery stystems, high maintenance costs, and all sorts of other space requirements, equipment needs, budgetary requirements, facilities requirements that would have left a trail. Hell just the funding for programs of that substance should be traceable now that we’ve thrown up the Iraqi government budget books. Plus the dozens of employees – ALL of them have refused the rewards and are keeping faith with the deposed and embarrassingly captured Saddam? Not bloody likely.
It’s clear to me that Iraq did not in fact have functional WMDs that posed a threat to us. The big question to me is why Saddam nonetheless acted as if he did, and why the US government acted as if he did. Did we know? Was our leadership deceitful, was our intelligence bad, or was it some combination of the above? There are lots of unanswered questions.
But if you want to hold your breath and wait for Saddam to reveal the secret location of the supposed “hidden WMDs” be my guest :).
Dan
I’m thinking joking. He has to be.
We should just cut the crap. The WMD angle was always just a pretense for this war. I’m not sure why Bush wanted to invade, but it wasn’t because he thought Saddam had any realistic chance of using WMDs against us. The big surprise was that there was little evidence of WMD programs to be found. That seems to have caught Bush with his pants down, so to speak. I don’t think the lack of WMD evidence will hurt Bush very much, though.
Perhaps. I will say, however, that Saddam went out of his way to make the world think that he did have something to hide, however. That doesn’t let Bush off the hook if his administration had information to the contrary, but it does beg the question: why did Saddam do that? I guess it’s possible that it was just crazy bravado–that’s sort of his schtick, anyway.
I’m willing to give a partial pass on the WMDs; hell, I thought we’d find something, based on the noises the foriegn policy establishment gave off (liberal and conservative).
That the FP establishment blew it Vietnam-style (a nuke in 5-10 years when Saddam was lucky to have toilet plungers) has been covered up by Bush’s ridiculous intelligence flimflam.
From everything I read, the WMD angle was never a pretense. Cheney seems to still be convinced that Saddam had WMD’s.
Yeah, I don’t think it was a pretense either. My best guess is:
The Bush administration, like other governments, concluded that the sanctions scheme had fallen apart and Saddam was a few years from getting nukes.
The Bush administration decided, probably correctly, that Americans were too short-sighted to approve of a war if all there was was conjecture that Saddam was five years or so from nukes.
The Bush administration decided, absolutely immorally and wrongly, that they should juice up the WMD evidence and terrorism evidence to sway the American public in favor of war. (It’s also possible that they’re just completely self-deluded…that they, ironically, suffer from the same problem as Saddam–only hearing what they want to hear.)
I’m not sure why Bush wanted to invade, but it wasn’t because he thought Saddam had any realistic chance of using WMDs against us.
At the risk of repeating points raised on countless previous threads, the invasion was always primarily intended to be a show of force to deter rogue regimes from pursuing anti-Western foreign policies (in general) and WMD development (in specific).
The very recent agreements by Iran to cease uranium enrichment and allow snap IAEA inspections, as well as the very recent agreement by Libya to completely dismantle its WMD programs, are testament to the efficacy of this demonstration.
The big surprise was that there was little evidence of WMD programs to be found.
When you read all of the documents (such as the one that Dan linked) and all of the statements by everyone from Clinton to other world leaders over the years, Iraq either had an active WMD program or they perpetrated an incredibly complex hoax on the world to convince them that they were in violation of all of the resolutions and agreements on WMDs. When you read the detailed reports by inspectors and other experts (again, the link Dan provided is a good example) it’s obvious that if it was a fraud, it was an enormously complex and complicated and incredibly coordinated one.
Also, someone discussed what’s required to make biological and chemical weapons. I know for a fact that making a significant amount of something like VX or it’s successors, as well as many biological toxins, takes very little space and equipment and the resulting materials could be hidden in a way that would be impossible to find. There’s some scary stuff out there; there’s a Russian scientist who used to be one of the leads in their programs (he was looking for a western job when the Soviet Union fell apart) was doing some incredible work in creating strains that were smallpox crossed with biologics that would result in a smallpox strain that would be as easily transmitted as the flu. And with remarkable success. And a 55 gallon drum of the stuff would go a LONG way.
Frankly, it’s very scary what can be made these days and how much damage can be done with a very small amount of material. A LOT of people for a lot of countries have done a lot of work on the delivery techniques (typically the bottleneck.)
(I suppose I just made the FBI surveillance list with this post… LOL!)
This is actually the problem with civil discourse in America today… everybody chooses to believe what they want to believe while ridiculing “the enemy” or, in more civil terms, the opposing view.
This thread is a good example of that. I make a statement that differs from somebody else’s prevailing opinion, and I am automatically assumed to be joking or an utter moron.
The environmentalism thread was another good example (even if it was marred by midnight son’s imbecilic rantings) of otherwise reasonable (I assume) people refusing to consider an alternative viewpoint.
This is not a liberal problem or a conservative problem. It seems our society’s entire political discourse has become quite shrill.
That’s not the problem. The problem is that the citizens of this country are amazingly stupid. They don’t know what logic is, nor how to implement it. They can’t seperate opinion from fact, nor editorial from objective news article.
Now, the American people haven’t been getting dumber over the past 50 years… from the statistics that I’ve seen, we’ve actually been getting smarter. What has happened, though, is that people are suddently convinced that they already know everything. They already know what logic is… how to reason… what logical fallacies are… etc. (Logical fallacy: when the opposing viewpoing is stoopid.) Rush Limbaugh’s dittoheads are classic examples… they aren’t actually dumber or more ignorant than country yokels fifty years ago… but they do have a much higher opinion of their intellectual capabilities than those country yokels did.
Thanks to these factors, you get a shrill and uninformed debate going, rather than the somewhat educated debate that used to occur. Ah yes… the sweet smell of progress.
This is actually the problem with civil discourse in America today… everybody chooses to believe what they want to believe while ridiculing “the enemy” or, in more civil terms, the opposing view.
This thread is a good example of that. I make a statement that differs from somebody else’s prevailing opinion, and I am automatically assumed to be joking or an utter moron.[/quote]
I’m not sure why you’re quoting me, here, since I didn’t say anything about you one way or the other. The quote above referred to the Bush administration, not Ryan Akiyama. I guess the implication from your post is that you think the WMD and terrorism evidence that the Bush administration presented was not exaggerated. Since you don’t state any factual underpinnings for that opinion, I guess I’ll just say that I disagree with you. For example, the administration has already admitted that their most important piece of evidence–the Niger “yellowcake” document–was a forgery, and a poor one at that. There’s been little to no evidence that Saddam had any connections with al Qaeda or that he sponsored any terrorism other than that in Israel. There’s been no evidence found of a clandestine nuclear program, although there’s clear evidence that Saddam planned to insitgate such a program as soon as it was safe.
Don’t get me wrong. He’s a bad guy and I’m glad he’s gone. I thought going to war was the right decision based on the data we had, and I still think it was the right decision even knowing what we know now (although it’s a closer call). But I’m firmly convinced that the Bush administration deliberately exaggerated the evidence they had, because they were afraid the American public wouldn’t be convinced by the evidence as it really was. Like I said in the quote above, though, another possibility is that the Bush administration really just believed everything bad that anybody said about Iraq and discounted any intelligence that went the other way. Which isn’t any better.
This isn’t entirely true. I’m not aware of any worries about Saddam’s imminent WMD capabilities after Clinton’s 1998 strikes - every single Clintonista quote I’ve seen on Saddam was either right near those strikes or previous to them. I think the only people pushing “Saddam will kill us in 5 minutes” after that were Feith, Cheney, et al.
Jeff, I think we’re doing the “are chem/bio WMD” dance again, too - there’s no way in hell the public or FP establishment would have been willing to invade solely for chem & bio. It was all predicated on the nukes.
t the risk of repeating points raised on countless previous threads, the invasion was always primarily intended to be a show of force to deter rogue regimes from pursuing anti-Western foreign policies (in general) and WMD development (in specific).
So we completely pissed all over international law for no good reason, then. God knows that explanation makes me feel btter.
If I declare that contrary to all evidence the sun is made of concrete, what do you think your reaction would be?