How come the US haven't found any nukes in Iraq? (some more scrutiny)

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This sums up my feelings pretty well.

 

Some nice bit is the recent US presidential order 13303 on Iraq:

Sounds nice, on first sight it seems as if all Iraqi oil revenues are going into the Development Fund for Iraq.
Well, that's not quite correct: The points (a) and (b) are independent above. If any oil company goes in to pump Iraqi oil, no organization can sue to have the revenues go to a just cause. The executive order says that oil companies may pump Iraqi oil without fear of lawsuits.
Bush, new king of Iraq just decreed that no one, not even the iraqis who happen to be the new host of US oil interest*, can file a suit against what US oil companies do in Iraq - total immunity.

Iraq is looking into a bright, altruistically induced future ... ebentually the US gvt went there to help ...

* Which is one of the reasons for the US action in Iraq ...
** a nice polemic on Bush's ... achievements here.

 

i still think that if U.S. cant the WMDs, theyll bring them in. If they control Iraq's airfields, they can walk in some chemicals, nukes, etc. and claim they "found" it. Noone would ever REALLy know.......unless they have a "Made in U.S." stamped somewhere on it.
If its not there, theyll put it there. (i.e. Democracy)

 

Because there ARE NO nuces in Iraque. It was all a ruse. It was a setup to give us a reason to go over there. It's really quite simple, we want their oil, and they don't wont to let us have any, so we make up the whole thing about chemical weapons and off we go launching a full scale war on Iraque. More oil for the US...

 

That is a very old and bias statement, if so then why didn't the UN support the attack?
We need oil too you know

 

@theassassin

Then why hasn't it happened already? If Bush wanted to pull a bag job, he would have done it already, instead of taking all of the political heat that he is taking.

EDIT: Removed off topic material per Tals comments below. I apologize to all here for misrepresenting their comments and going off topic.

[ July 31, 2003, 22:14: Message edited by: Jack Funk ]

 

Further to Jack Funk’s post, I could be wrong, but I think there would need to be too many people involved in planting WMD’s for it to be kept secret for long, particularly now that everything the U.S. does in Iraq these days is put under a microscope.

With respect to the “anti-American venom”, I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, I strongly believe that the criticism being directed towards the U.S. these days is justified. On the other hand, as far as the AoDA goes, I agree with Jack Funk (and Laches in the other thread he mentioned) that the whole debate here is getting pretty laboured. This thread alone is pushing 300 posts, and a lot of them seem to be re-hashing the same comments. However, rather than complaining about any perceived focus of the Alley on US-bashing, a more effective way to deal with it would be to: a) stop posting on the offending threads, and b) create new topics of your own (as Laches has done), and hope that other members find them more interesting.

 

I'm sure that this has been said before, but, it's a lose-lose situation for the U.S. If weapons are found, then most folks here will say that it was a bag job.

EDIT: Removed off topic material per Tals comments below. I apologize to all here for misrepresenting their comments and going off topic.

[ July 31, 2003, 22:14: Message edited by: Jack Funk ]

 

Oh I dunno Tal, and I'll probably get criticized for this, but so far there has been:

comparisons to Nazis, child murderers, the Deutschland (more Nazis), and fascists. So far there have been statements that those who agree with the Iraq campaign are slow and part of a herd that is unable to think. There have also, imo, been accusations of racism.

This has been admitted by at least one poster who said he wanted to call those who disagreed with him in America slow members of a herd as a "calculated provocation."

Perhaps "calculated provocation" doesn't arise to the level of flaming, that isn't my call to make, but if people are posting threads about America with the stated intent of 'calculated provocation' I'm not entirely sure it presents a complete picture to then criticize those being provoked as imagining things. I mean, if you intend to provoke...

That's my last 2 cents, and I may've overstepped my bounds.

Edit - all this comes with the admission that I have likely overreacted here and elsewhere. However, I do believe it is unfair to lay the entirety of the blame for these unpleasant situations down to Americans simply being crazy or nuts or ultra sensitive or whatever.

[ August 01, 2003, 06:23: Message edited by: Laches ]

 

@ Jack Funk:
Well, U.S. could stall, say that Saddam hid the weapons REALLy well, and then say that it was all worth it....

 

@the assassin

Nonsense. Why would Bush take all of the political heat that he is taking? Some members of congress have suggested impeachment might be appropriate.
If there was going to be a bag job, it would have been done by now.

I agree that it is likely that Bush overstated the threat (and this pisses me off). However, I do believe that he really thought that SOME wmds existed (as did the U.N.). If he was lying about everything, then he should be impeached and tried for any crime that could be made to stick.

 

I agree that the Bush crew is unlikely to plant WMDs in iraq - their actions are under microscope atm and would they be caught presenting bogus WMD, perhaps brought in from Johnston Island, that would be their end.

Bush may not be the smartest, but he has what someone else called a bullsh*t detector. I partly agree on that. Bush isn't suicidal - he may be dependent on advisors like a baby on the mother but he certainly has understood that there is a limit of deception the US audience, the relevant one as they are the voters, is willing to accept.
The big show Bush made about the two sons of Saddam is IMO an indicator that he is not yet desperate enough to play this card - instead he has preferred to move on (in Ari Fleischer's words) and now floats above the petty dispute about the justification of the iraq war, resting on his victor's laurels.

Down on the earth the critics still harvest the fertile field of flaws, spins and lies by the Bush crew. The neocons have an obsession with "noble lies", justified by a higher "moral clarity".

Neocon pundit Michael Ledeen happily praised strategic deception in his book "Macciavelli on Modern Leadership", pointing out that according to neocon philosophy "lying is central to the survival of the nations and to the success of great enterprises, because if your enemies can count on the reliability of everything you say, your vulnerability is enormously increased."
The US step to consult the UN even though they wanted to go to war anway (it seems they even surprised their british allies there), as well as the "Why we need to attack Iraq"-PR were such strategic deceptions.
And it indeed took people a while to look through that little jungle of spin and lie the US gvt piled up in the preface of the war, and it now causes concern and confusion.

Well, strategic deception may probably be justified when national survival is at stake - but considering Saddam's phantom WMDs that was hardly the case here.

It is widely unknown that iraqi oil was central to US energy planning (for the next 50 years or so) by Cheney's secret energy comission (and Cheney is very relucant to give info about what they've been speaking about and planning for); the hegemony ideas of the neocons were widely scoffed as too far off and as conspiracy theorist stuff - but IMO they are little to pointed to be taken that lightly. It also remained widely unnoticed that the Bush crew invaded Iraq without exit-strategy because it was intended to stay (with view on pressuring Iran and Syria) and because Iraqi sovereignty wasn't on the neocon agenda. The global view of the neocons was not taken serious in public. They are very serious people.

Krystol and Kagan point out in their (PNAC sponsored) Book "The War over Iraq" that "the mission is more than Iraq" and elaborate further how Iraq is just the beginning of the execution of the new role for the US in the 21st century. However, the US public hasn't been connected with this vision (which is a blessing).

Kristol and Kagan wrote 1996 in a Foreign Affairs piece that one of the major conditions for the neocon plan for 'Benevolent Global Hegemony' was that the public needs to have a clear understanding of it to gain popular support. The FOX assisted bullying was good enough to supress dissent and deafen the audience for the time of the war - but it didn't win them for an american empire.

The neocons didn't try to win america for their hegmony plans - I don't know why. Be it that they didn't trust them to agree or that they were just caught in leadership hubris of the Straussian school - that is now only interesting for historians, or, now that would be nice (admittedly unlikely) to see, perhaps judges.

It is reassuring and comforting to see that the US public seemingly has no interest in an empire, despite the seasonal gung-ho flag weaving. Seems as if the neocons have wasted their chance after 9/11, and this disaster was seen as a gift by them allowing to put into reality their vision, and are slowly loosing ground - they are digging in already.

The price for that? Well, afganistan is less stable than when the Taliban still ruled, the US hiring the warlords who rubbled afghanistan after the russians withdrew re-empowered the real butchers there, the taliban who opposed Al Quaida's radicalism are much more likely to have turned to them now, the puppet-president would probably die the very day the west pulls out, US soldiers die regularly there too.
And as for Iraq: The plug & play invasion the neocons hoped for didn't happen and the US will have to maintain a longer presence in a country where they are not welcome to avoid to leave another vaccuum where, as in afganistan and before in bosnia, international cross-border terrorists can flourish - did anyone of them ever read a history book?
A few thousand people dead, allies alienated because of agressive bulldozer-type foreign policy by the pentagon hawks ("Who's not with us is against us"), a few billions in ammo blown up, new burdens for longtime presence, defense budged sky-high, just as the gvt debths. Swell.

Pretty high a price for a megalomaniac experiment.

EDIT: I edited out some details, added a few and, first of all, dealt with my typos.

[ August 02, 2003, 09:52: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Ragusa - You are right, Americans would never agree with such a plan. You have said it before that 9/11 was what they needed to get the public to go along with a "preemptive attack" policy. Without 9/11 the conservatives would be in bad shape here. Americans by nature are opposed to such a doctrine. I understand what impact 9/11 has had on how they view the rest of the world now, but it is emotional and out of fear that the next attack will be worse. That is why they go along with these guys, IMO. I know that sounds simplistic but if you talk to most people here they like the "tough talk" of Bush and the gang.

But they have not got Bin Laden, have not solved the anthrax case and we will be losing Americans lives and dollars in Iraq for years. That is the record that this bunch has to go on. It would have been cheaper to just buy all the oil in the world and put it in the ground somewhere. But as you have said, in so many words, these guys want to create an "American Century." That is the real reason for all this nonsense.

 

It is kinda ironic to see how much oil the US administration ordered their war mashine to burn in the war on Iraq - to gain free oilflow. I gain gain the impression that the maassive dependency of the US on airpower reflects in a higher dependency on oil.

And of course people like the tough talk- it suggests the gvt is strong enough to be abe to say so and that again is reasssuring, saying: "The US is a force to recon with!" Well, there are worse things to say about the US and this one is broadly agreeable.

As for Bin Laden getting out of sight with gvt suddenly focusing on iraq and saddam - that isn't that remarkable. Wolfowitz is said to (read Bob Woodward's "Bush at War") have opposed the action in afganistan as it wasn't in what he perceives as US national interest, and that was when the WTC was still smoking (sic).
As the neocons now dominate US foreign policy it isn't really a surprise to see Bin Laden's importance fading away.

Yes, the Taliban were retards and nasty to weman and christian missionaries, but they offered stability and were against drug trade. The warlords, from the glorious "northern alliance", ruling outside the capitol of Kabul today are probably much worse. I very much doubt that crushing the Taliban and invading afghanistan has in any respect helped in fighting terror. It was an emotional reaction of retribution after a terrible crime - and as usual it didn't hit the real baddies.
The Al Quaida members killed in afganistan had fought in chechnya, and with US backing also against the serbs in bosnia, and even though they probably disliked the US the overwhelming majority wasn't involved in terrorist activities ahgainst the US.
Today the hunt for Bin Laden's is what it IMO should have been right from the start: A search by police authorities and intelligence agencies.

 

They offered stability ? I'd like to hear your defenition of stability then. If your face wasn't to their likings you got beat up in public, kids weren't allowed to play outside, women who accidentally showed some skin were beaten to death.... you call that stability ?

I know the people are probably not much better off today, but at least they can go outside again, and shave those friggin beards off for starters. Afghanistan will always be a warzone though, that's just how the people are. Farmers don't have plows, they have AK 47's, and they seem to not know any better.

 

Well, it's about how you look at it. Sure, the Taliban weren't a free society and compared to former lifestyle there were limitations and restrictions.
But compared to former ligfestyle there were also improvements: Like no longer beeing under siege in Kabul, no more daily shelling, no fighting on the streets, no more marauding gangs in the countryside.
Don't get me wrong, I do not like the Taliban, but don't have any illusions about the warlords. It was them and not the russians who eventually tore apart afganistan - without any respect for human lives except from their own ethnic group. Sure, the northern alliance wouldn't have cared about ancient buddhas - except if they would have been able to sell them.

It is a pity that only a group of zealot "Hinterwäldler" was needed to restore order. Compared to the terror of war even taliban style stability is a progress. And if the price is growing abeard, weman no longer beeing allowed to work in hospitals or leave the house that's sad but probably the repression of people is better than the death of tens of thousands in a continued civil war.
But were getting

 

But the Taliban were doing the killing now, and they did it on a daily basis. The national footballstadium was turned into an executionground.

and i'm not sure where i'd rather be... in a city under siege, or in a city where i can be tortured for speaking a little too loud.

 

I think that a decade of civil war lowers your standards. The Taliban were *welcome* first as a relief from the previous warlords.

A city under siege is characterised by indiscriminate killing. Go along a street and get hit by a shell? Sh*t happens, what a silly day for your family. Marauding fighters took away everything you had? A shell destroyed your house and now you're both without food *and* homeless?

The major difference between the Taliban executing people is that they enforced a creepy interpretation of Islam and the sharia. Keep to that codex and you have a not very free time but you come along.
One example: Remember these christian aid workers? They thought they should, even though it was well known that it was strictly permitted, missionise the afghans. The Taliba trialed them.

As for the footbal stadium. So what? The Taliban don't have the money to create sterile supermax death rows, a stadium is good enough, and public punishment deters. And besides, executions in public, like on market places, were common in europe 200 years ago, and are still in china (also in stadiums) and Saudi Arabia (market places).
In the end the Taliban still had something like a rule of law, a rudimentary and for us alien form but still.