West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: _That_Cracka_J on February 05, 2003, 10:18:00 AM
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Well, who watched his speech? Does everybody STILL think it's a bad idea to war with Iraq? Is Iraq not a threat to anybody? Did you actually see the evidence then??? Fuck the inspections, we just need to go in there and take them out.
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Powell showed that Iraq has or is trying to acquire the means to make all WMD. He's shown they haven't lived up to what the world community has said they must do. He's shown a connection to Terrorism.
Are there any questions that Iraq is a threat to the World?
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Powell showed that Iraq has or is trying to acquire the means to make all WMD. He's shown they haven't lived up to what the world community has said they must do. He's shown a connection to Terrorism.
Are there any questions that Iraq is a threat to the World?
Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious Iraq is a threat, but the majority of the people on this board will disagree. They will still say there is no evidence and that America or the UN should leave them alone. BTW, did you hear him talk about that shit called "ricen"....a pinch of it will kill you SLOWLY is 72 hours. That's some shit.
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Yep... Ricin is some pretty nasty shit. It's gotta be injected or consumed, but still horrible.
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i still dont understand how Iraq is a threat to world security.
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i still dont understand how Iraq is a threat to world security.
Did you watch the speech?
He layed out a well thought out case backed up with FACTS.
He showed that al-queda was operating out of Iraq and linked an Iraqi al-queda member to an assination that occured recently.
There was a video of a test flight of a mirage jet testing a delivery system for chemical weapons.
They showed a test flight of a Iraqi drone that went unfueled for 500km.
They showed a test site for long range weapons.
They also showed a map with a radius of where these weapons could reach.
Iraq is a threat to the world.
They continue to lie the world.
They continue to aspire to create WMD's.
They continue to harbor al-queda.
Whats the issue you don't understand?
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I didn't see it yet, I'll watch it later and make my opinion then. I'm guessing the US has fake evidence to impress people but regardless of if it's real or not, there is going to be a war. Bush and his cronies will get it one way or another.
What I think is interesting is that nobody is talking about Afghanistan any more, I haven't heard bin Laden's name mentioned for a while. Remember that joke of a war? They didn't catch who they were aiming for, killed thousands of Afghan people, and lost a bunch of Allied soldiers too. I guess they want to sweep the memory of that under the table and go on to the next one. I wonder who's after Iraq?
oh and a side note on ricin. they found some people in London with some ricin and arrested them on terrorist charges a few weeks ago. It is pretty deadly, but you'd also need a few tons of it just to take out a small town. Nobody is going to be able to hide that much. So basically the ricin talk is probably scaremongering.
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Oh I also want to point out that the only way they know Iraq has unaccounted for weapons is because the UK sold them to Iraq years ago (pre-gulf war). There is documented proof of this, it's not just another conspiracy theory.
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I didn't see it yet, I'll watch it later and make my opinion then. I'm guessing the US has fake evidence to impress people but regardless of if it's real or not, there is going to be a war. Bush and his cronies will get it one way or another.
What I think is interesting is that nobody is talking about Afghanistan any more, I haven't heard bin Laden's name mentioned for a while. Remember that joke of a war? They didn't catch who they were aiming for, killed thousands of Afghan people, and lost a bunch of Allied soldiers too. I guess they want to sweep the memory of that under the table and go on to the next one. I wonder who's after Iraq?
oh and a side not on ricin. they found some people in London with some ricin and arrested them on terrorist charges a few weeks ago. It is pretty deadly, but you'd also need a few tons of it just to take out a small town. Nobody is going to be able to hide that much. So basically the ricin talk is probably scaremongering.
Just a question,
What would the US gain by presenting fake evidence to the world? If we wanted Iraq's oil, why haven't we already gone in and taken it?
Powell presented 3 types of evidence.
1.) Radio intercepts
2.) Collobrated sources
3.) Satelite Photos
All three put together were a pretty damning case aginst Iraq.
About ricin: with news that Al Queda may be moving twards assinations, I think the threat needs to be taken serioulsy
In 1978 it was used to assassinate Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov.
In 1991 four members of Patriots Council, an extremist group plotted to kill a US Marshal by smearing ricin mixed with the solvent (dimethylsulphate) on the handle of his vehicle in Minnesota.
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In the course of the first biological weapons inspection in August 1991, Iraq claimed that it had merely conducted a military biological research programme. At the site visited, Al-Salman, Iraq had removed equipment, documents and even entire buildings. Later in the year, during a visit to the Al-Hakam site, Iraq declared to UNSCOM inspectors that the facility was used as a factory to produce proteins derived from yeast to feed animals. Inspectors subsequently discovered that the plant was a central site for the production of anthrax spores and botulinum toxin for weapons. The factory had also been sanitised by Iraqi officials to deceive inspectors. Iraq continued to develop the Al-Hakam site into the 1990s, misleading UNSCOM about its true purpose.
Another key site, the Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Institute at Dawrah which produced botulinum toxin and probably anthrax, was not divulged as part of the programme. Five years later, after intense pressure, Iraq acknowledged that tens of tonnes of bacteriological warfare agent had been produced there and at Al-Hakam.
As documents recovered in August 1995 were assessed, it became apparent that the full disclosure required by the UN was far from complete. Successive inspection teams went to Iraq to try to gain greater understanding of the programme and to obtain credible supporting evidence. In July 1996 Iraq refused to discuss it's past programme and doctrine forcing the team to withdraw in protest. Monitoring teams were at the same time finding undisclosed equipment and materials associated with the past programme. In response, Iraq grudgingly provided successive disclosures of their programme which were judged by UNSCOM, and specially convened international panels, to be technically inadequate.
In late 1995, Iraq acknowledged weapons testing the biological agent ricin, but did not provide production information. Two years later - in early 1997 - UNSCOM discovered evidence that Iraq had produced ricin.
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page6122.asp
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yea ricin is deadly, I'm just saying it would be very difficult to use it on a large scale. It's more of a poison to kill individuals like the examples you gave. Isn't Markov the guy they killed by putting ricin in the tip of an umbrella and stabbing him?
And as for the evidence, like I said, hopefully I'll see it tonight and get to make my own opinion. However to answer your Q forged evidence could be used to try and justify the war effort and avoid the severe backlash from the peace loving people of the world. Sure they could go in and take his oil, but then they'd look no better than Saddam. So that would be a reason to fake evidence (im not saying it IS fake, just a possibility).
Oh yea, don't know if they showed this in the US, but a UK politician Tony Benn, went to Iraq to interview Saddam. Anyway I saw an interview with Benn, now back in the UK, and he said he saw evidence of US officials offering Iraqi scientists to come to Cyprus to recieve money and a US passport if they would make fraudulent statements regarding the Iraq weapons program. Benn is a highly respected guy, not an ignoramic windbag like Blair, so i take his comments quite seriously.
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I think it's very clear now Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Why would the US make up something serious like this? I'm not sure if they have to attack Iraq or not cause it would probably mean World War III, especially if they attack too fast...
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i was watching it on and off when was getting ready for school today, cuz my mom had it on, all ican say from what i say/heard is
whatever Powell was talking about it was WELL presented, and planned out, cuz he was on one speaking that damn LONG,lol
he musta been dry throated
he pronounced Spain, SCHPAIN,lol
there was a guy in the background picking his nose
sorry i was TIRED when i was hearing/seeing this
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This speech, whether true or false was to try and sway public opinion. America is going to war, but they need to go through a few hoops first. They need the majority of the west to support them, they need to remain popular in america while doing so, and they need to try and not spit in the face of the UN whose resolutions they say they are trying to enforce. The first step is to calm down the global anti american sentiment and this was a well presented first step. However, we need to let the inspectors do their job.
Take this analogy: there has been a suspected murder. Who do you trust to investigate it? An independent team of investigators, or the victims family, who believe they know who the culprit is. While the family may be right, for any credibility to be given to the case, it must be done by an independant team. In this case, the inspectors. Whats the worst case scenario? It might somehow be discovered there is no wmd and then you wont have to sacrifice thousands of your own good men.
I am all in favour of disarming Iraq. But I think if we are to look at Bush as a true diplomat, we must expect him to lay down his own wmd, if only for the sake of not being a hypocrit.
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However, we need to let the inspectors do their job.
I really don't understand this view. We have let them do their job. They have uncovered empty shells, sensitive documents, and Iraq non-cooporatin... The thing is, why should we let them do their job when Powell clearly showed yesterday that Iraq is doing everything in it's power to stop them from doing their job? He showed huge Trucks taking away items from a chemical plant. He showed a series of bunkers that were destroyed and sanatized days before the inspectors arrived. He told about an Iraqi Nuclear scientist who wasn't listed on Iraq's "Complete" weapons decleration, but had hundreds of pages of sensitive documents.
Here are some quotes. They make perfect sense to me:
"This Council placed the burden on Iraq to comply and disarm, and not on the inspectors to find that which Iraq has gone out of its way to conceal for so long. Inspectors are inspectors; they are not detectives."
"This effort to hide things from the inspectors is not one or two isolated events. Quite the contrary, this is part and parcel of a policy of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years, a policy set at the highest levels of the Iraqi regime."
"We know that Saddam Hussein has what is called "a Higher Committee for Monitoring the Inspection Teams." Think about that. Iraq has a high-level committee to monitor the inspectors who were sent in to monitor Iraq's disarmament -- not to cooperate with them, not to assist them, but to spy on them and keep them from doing their jobs"
"Everything we have seen and heard indicates that instead of cooperating actively with the inspectors to ensure the success of their mission, Saddam Hussein and his regime are busy doing all they possibly can to ensure that inspectors succeed in finding absolutely nothing"
"Are the inspectors to search the house of every government official, every Baath Party member and every scientist in the country to find the truth, to get the information they need, to satisfy the demands of our Council?"
"Our sources tell us that in some cases the hard drives of computers at Iraqi weapons facilities were replaced. Who took the hard drives? Where did they go? What is being hidden? Why? There is only one answer to the why: to deceive, to hide, to keep from the inspectors."
"From our sources, we know that inspectors are under constant surveillance by an army of Iraqi intelligence operatives. Iraq is relentlessly attempting to tap all of their communications, both voice and electronics."
"At this biological weapons-related facility on November 25, just 2 days before inspections resumed, this truck caravan appeared -- something we almost never see at this facility and we monitor it carefully and regularly. At this ballistic missile facility, again, 2 days before inspections began, five large cargo trucks appeared, along with a truck-mounted crane, to move missiles. We saw this kind of housecleaning at close to 30 sites. Days after this activity, the vehicles and the equipment that I've just highlighted disappear and the site returns to patterns of normalcy. We don't know precisely what Iraq was moving, but the inspectors already knew about these sites so Iraq knew that they would be coming. We must ask ourselves: Why would Iraq suddenly move equipment of this nature before inspections if they were anxious to demonstrate what they had or did not have?"
"We know that Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry. To all outward appearances, even to experts, the infrastructure looks like an ordinary civilian operation. Illicit and legitimate production can go on simultaneously or on a dime. This dual-use infrastructure can turn from clandestine to commercial and then back again. These inspections would be unlikely, any inspections at such facilities, would be unlikely to turn up anything prohibited, especially if there is any warning that the inspections are coming. Call it ingenious or evil genius, but the Iraqis deliberately designed their chemical weapons programs to be inspected. It is infrastructure with a built in alibi. Under the guise of dual-use infrastructure, Iraq has undertaken an effort to reconstitute facilities that were closely associated with its past program to develop and produce chemical weapons. For example, Iraq has rebuilt key portions of the Tariq State Establishment. Tariq includes facilities designed specifically for Iraq's chemical weapons program and employs key figures from past programs."
I urge you to read the whole report here:
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm
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One thing that came up that I don't understand is they claim they had these satellite photos and documental evidence in November. Why has it taken them nearly 3 months to present it to the UN? They were as eager to go to war back in November, why didn't this information come forward sooner?
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From what I've gathered, There was a huge debate between the intelligence community and Bush/cabinent on what to release. Im really suprised they released this much. It's purely an intelligence thing. When they released the radio intercepts, It shows the Iraqi's when they were listening, to what type of equimpment they were listening to, and who they were listening to. Do you really think the Iraqi's are going to use that form of communictaion any more? It cut off that source from here on out. The Iraqi's would be VERY stupid to use that type of equipment and talk about what they talked about dso feely again in the future. Pretty much, we just cut ourselves off from an intelligence source.
Same thing with satelites. They now can trace back when they were moving things, and realize that there is was a satelite watching them. Also the US didn't want it known what type of precision they had with the satelites. I'm sure they didn't use their best pictures, but it still shows our enemies across the world the technological card we hold.
As far as human sources go. It's probably a little harder, but the Iraqi's could trace back what they said to whom, and figure out where the leaks are coming from.
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I have read this report and I have known most of it for some time. My dad knows a former inspector and he told me that in the past they have been moving the weapons on trucks. So I think America did well to identify it. I believe personnally that Iraq has weapons not on the list, and those weapons should be destroyed.
However, I dont think the Iraqi people need to suffer anymore. They are as brainwashed in Iraq about how great Saddam is as you in America are about Bush. This will lead them to the same kind of blind faith which will lead them to death. If the UN, which is the world police (not america) is to be respected and seen as legitimate, the inspection team needs to be seen to complete there work and come to their own conclusions, away from political pressure.Of course they are being spyed on, I don't see how that can be a problem when the whole US report was based on spying on Iraqis. If the inspectors report tells us that weapons have been found, push for a new resolution. If not, push for increased negotiations whereby saddam is forced to scale down his weapons plan, perhaps in exchange for a similar measure by Israel. This could be coordinated using the scientific and technological means the US has. All of this is based on the fact that america is commited to peace, which is questionable.
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Iraq has chemical weapons available for use on the battlefield - so do many other nations, they have hidden weapons - but they don't have anything that can reach the US ffs, why not increase the inspectors GIVE THEM THE INTELLIGENCE THAT THE US DELIBERATELY HELD BACK, and disarm them. Democracies cannot fight pre-emptive wars on other countries. What will stop Israel saying to Iran, we know you have WMDs, we are going to invade if you don't disarm? lol, it's a ridiculous situation.
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Yo Cracka J, you don't by any chance drive a maroon baretta do you?