1. Iraq war didnt have UN mandate, so accusing UN for your act of stupidity would be wrong in my opinion.
A mandate from the UN about this mess? You must be joking or delusional. If your priest preaches chastity and fidelity on Sunday but 'play doctor' with teenage girls on Monday are you really going to take his marriage counseling seriously? When France, China and Russia lobbied Saddam Hussein himself, and it is known that Saddam through the Ministry of Oil
PERSONALLY approve oil purchase vouchers, for under the table oil deals, there no longer is any moral legitimacy in any UN 'mandate' regarding Iraq. The Oil-For-Food program to date remains the UN's largest relief effort and as such remains the UN's largest financial cash cow for anyone with sufficient connections to milk. Saddam and his cronies received about $2 bils in kickbacks while the Iraqi regime profited nearly $9 bils in black market oil to neighboring countries. All with full knowledge by the Office of the UN SecGen.
The program made so much money, obstensibly for the Iraqi people, that even the UN SecGen himself cannot deny...
A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions (Page 2)
The Security Council has steadily expanded the oil-for-food program. In 1998 it raised the limits on permitted oil sales, and in 1999 it removed the ceiling altogether. Production has risen to approximately 2.6 million barrels per day, levels approaching those before the Gulf War. Oil revenues during the last six months of 2000 reached nearly $10 billion. This is hardly what one would call an oil embargo. Oil exports are regulated, not prohibited. Funds are still controlled through the UN escrow account, with a nearly 30 percent deduction for war reparations and UN costs, but Baghdad has more than sufficient money to address continuing humanitarian needs. Said Secretary General Kofi Annan in his latest report, "With the improved funding level for the programme, the Government of Iraq is indeed in a position to address the nutritional and health concerns of the Iraqi people."
David Cortright write for
The Nation, a hard left news magazine that no one sane would call friendly to Bush or Republicans. But even
The Nation found it hard to swallow the lie that Iraq was in dire poverty and that the Iraqi people were dying from the supposedly 'cruel' sanctions imposed. Money was being made hand-over-fist between Saddam Hussein, Russia, China, France and Germany, all powerful and influential members of the UN and the Security Council. Did I made up the fact that the US had nothing to do with this money? No...It said so right there as highlighted --
UN escrow account. So why should we not blame the UN for the suffering of the Iraqi people during the sanction years and of course point out the lack moral legitimacy in any UN 'mandate' regarding Iraq?
2. Secondly you say none didnt say that used fooled the world, yes but the us chose to ignore the facts, and present a picture of iraqs
WMD which didnt ever exist, you may check the below link for one of the UN's inspectors comments.
CNN.com - Iraq war wasn't justified, U.N. weapons experts say - Mar 21, 2004
And i am sure this amounts to fooling the world, your own people in your senate thinks so. Please see the below link too
Senate committee: Bush knew Iraq claims weren't true | McClatchy
Here is where I differ from you -- research.
These are Hans Blix own briefings to the UN Security Council.
UNMOVIC - [ Selected Security Council Briefings ]
Were the weapons programme parts of the declaration expected to be an updating of the former "full final and complete" declarations? Would programmes claimed to be for non-weapons purposes in the chemistry sector have to comprise items of remote relevance, e.g. the production of plastic slippers?
Clearly, the most important thing was that whatever there existed by way of weapons programmes and proscribed items should be fully declared.
If the Iraqi side were to state - as it still did at our meeting - that there were no such programmes, it would need to provide convincing documentary or other evidence. What was found in FFCDs submitted to UNSCOM in many cases left it an open question whether some weapons remained.
So how many of 'programmes' so far? The initials 'WMD' have been politicized to the point of uselessness and the US Senate is not immune to its effects.
To date, the only way to know if an indigenous nuclear
WEAPONS program is successful is to actually detonate a fully functional nuclear warhead. India and Pakistan did with their clandestine nuclear weapons programs. Did Iraq? No. So if the initials 'WMD' is mean to be a fully functional nuclear warhead, then the entire UN/IAEA nuclear inspection regime imposed on Iraq is patently illegal because Iraq never had a test detonation. But then what is Blix doing talking about 'programmes'?
Here is the item that completely shred your argument...
http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/documents/quarterly_reports/s-2003-232.pdf
21. During the period from 1 December 2002 to 28 February 2003, inspectors have been provided with high technology, state-of-the-art equipment. This includes some 35,000 tamper-proof tags and seals for tagging equipment, 10 enhanced chemical agent monitors (ECAMS), 10 toxic industrial materials detectors (TIMs), 10 chemical monitors (APCC), nuclear, biological and chemical protection (NBC) suits, respirators, dosimeters with reader, a complete chemical laboratory with requisite laboratory supplies and equipment, ground-penetrating radars, 3 portable gas chromatograph-mass spectrometers, 12 ultrasonic pulse echo detectors to screen the inside of warheads, equipment for sampling warheads (MONIKA), 3 alloy analysers, and biological detection and screening equipment to include PCR, ELISA, immunoassay and rapid screening technologies. Additionally, UNMOVIC has used its network of accredited laboratories to analyse a sample of missile propellant. Cameras and other surveillance systems are currently in Cyprus awaiting shipment to Baghdad.
Note the highlighted --
MONIKA -- for inspecting
WARHEADS.
In my personal experience in weapons testing, a 'warhead' is not a mess of components spread out on a table. A warhead is an
ASSEMBLY of components where each item is proven to function as tested individually and all components are ready to test as a whole. In weapons testing, even if the explosive charge is removed the assembly is still considered to be a 'warhead'. You do not bring such equipments -- MONIKA -- unless you either are going to inspect nuclear warheads or you fully anticipate on finding a nuclear warhead to test. So if you are going to accuse US of lying to the world about 'WMD' you had better explain to the world right now what was UNMOVIC and Blix doing with equipments that are specifically for nuclear warheads. But if the initials 'WMD' really mean to be only functional warheads and if Iraq actually test detonated one, like India and Pakistan did, then it is useless for any IAEA inspection regime anyway.
The fact that Blix brought equipments that are specifically to be for assembled nuclear warheads means that 'WMD' cannot be so narrowly construed. Blix's own briefings with the many 'programmes' bears this out. The initials 'WMD' includes anything that contribute to the development of nuclear weapons. That is why nuclear states like Japan and Germany are subject to the IAEA's authority. Neither country is a nuclear weapons state. What people like you failed to understand is that while the inspection teams for Iraq may have come from the IAEA and uses the parent organization's methodologies, these child organizations have radically different missions as needed. The IAEA inspection regimes are for nuclear states that are voluntary in their obedience to the NPT, child organizations like UNMOVIC and UNSCOM are inherently coercive and hostile towards their targets. Equipments like MONIKA are evidence of that hostility as these items are included upon the
ASSUMPTIONS they will be employed.
Once Iraq violated the NPT, every benevolent allowances are discarded and coercive disarmament policies are installed. The fact that functional warheads did not exist is irrelevant. When policies are coercive, the worst of scenarios are brought to the front. The first event that cemented inspectors' beliefs that Saddam Hussein was hiding either an active nuclear weapons program or perhaps even an assembled warhead was in June 1991 when Iraqi trucks ran away from an inspection site while carrying a load of calutrons, which are uranium enrichment devices. Why?
Iraq's calutrons: 1991 - 2001
In July 1991, shortly after the Gulf War, news from Iraq confirmed what I had concluded twelve years earlier: That Iraq had decided to use the calutron electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) process to produce highly enriched uranium, i.e., the very same process that was actually used to produce the uranium-235 that was fissioned in the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima in August 1945.
At that time I was still recovering from a cancer treatment, and I had to wait until 1995 to find the energy to write a report on my discovery in 1979 of Iraq's intention to use the calutron technology, and my discomfort with the official thesis, namely that nobody knew before the Gulf War that Iraq had built a gigantic calutron enrichment plant and was very close to assemble its first atomic bomb.
At the least, this report should help professional historians and political analysts to review what happened in Iraq before and during the Gulf War, e.g., in order to better understand the origin and the spectacular growth of the Iraqi nuclear weapon program, independently of the official statements made by the U.N. and the Allies, or by the U.S. and Iraqi governments.
André A. Gsponer is a member of CADU, Campaign Against Depleted Uranium, hardly a pro-US source, and he was convinced that Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing nuclear weapons.
Campaign Against Depleted Uranium - Welcome
CADU - Depleted-uranium munitions and fourth-generation nuclear weapons
Even if Gsponer is finally wrong about Iraq's progress towards having a functional nuclear warhead, that does not diminish the impact of his conviction at that time that Iraq was so very close to success. Hans Blix in your CNN link was talking about one of the two items the IAEA inspection teams looked for in Iraq: fully assembled warheads, if any. From his testimonies to the UN Security Council, it is clear that 'WMD' encompassed more than just fully assembled warheads but the entire nuclear weapons program which include the human agencies such as scientists, engineers and even the non-technical ones such as military and political who support a clandestine weapons program.
Again...Referring back to Blix's testimony to the UN Security Council...
27. In accordance with paragraph 5 of Security Council resolution 1441 (2002), UNMOVIC has the right to conduct, at its sole discretion, interviews with Iraqi officials and other persons with or without the presence of observers from the Iraqi Government, both inside and outside of Iraq. In the review period, UNMOVIC requested 28 individuals to present themselves for interviews in Baghdad (without the presence of observers). At first, none of them agreed. At the meeting on 19-20 January, the Iraqi side committed itself to encourage persons to accept interviews in private. Immediately prior to the next round of discussions, Iraq informed UNMOVIC that three candidates, who had previously declined to be interviewed under UNMOVICs terms, had changed their minds. UNMOVIC is currently examining the practical modalities for conducting interviews outside the territory of Iraq.
Gsponer is one of the thousands, inside and outside Iraq, inside and outside of the IAEA, whose experiences, testimonies and opinions contributed to the belief that Saddam Hussein either had fully assembled nuclear warheads or his nuclear weapons programs were close to achieving them. One of these thousands are Saddam's chief nuclear scientist, Mahdi Obeidi, who gave Iraq a successful centrifuge. That belief was strong enough that Blix carried into Iraq equipments specifically designed to confirm that belief in the event it was true. So how many more people are you going to accuse of fooling the world about 'WMD' in Iraq and why should we take your accusation seriously when you are proven to be grossly wrong about what 'WMD' really mean, which is
BOTH an assembled device and all the support programs that created that device and that this proper context is supported by IAEA's own personels?
3. Iraq an unstable society:- yes you are effectively using your insensitiveness, iraqi people never can live peacefully unless they are under dictatorshipo, whatever is happening in iraq is their own problem. But what have you got to do with their problem, you dont mix things up, only thing that i am pointing it out was, you just throwed a stone into a bee's hive, And if the bees react by stinging people, yes the bee's got a problem and not of the kid who did throw the stone.
And one more thing, what works for you necessarily doesnt mean that it will work else where. The same goes for democracy.
What an awful analogy. Clearly a sign of myopic and blindered vision. We do not see suicide bombings in Kurdish market places, do we? Why is it that under US protection and guidance the Kurds in northern Iraq prospered but the southern Iraqis continued to kill themselves daily? Why does democratic principles and practices works for US but not the peoples of the ME? It is conveniently simple for people like you to make this kind of statement --
what works for you necessarily doesnt mean that it will work else where -- without bothering to explain, or even attempt to explain, why does it not work 'else where'. It give the readers nothing more than an impression that you actually put some thoughts into that empty statement.
And i am all for democracy and stuff,
Suuuurrre you are...
but i am all out against the way this operation was initiated, and the way this has been handeled. And it is a sad fact that you have given the world one more dangerous place, due to your stupid polices and i criticise you for that.
So no amount of presenting facts about saddams evilness or the iraqi societies inability to grasp democracy, can absolve you from your mistakes in iraq.
And i am not criticising your sanctions against iraqis but yes am critcising you for invading iraq and the resultant chaos that has erupted in that country that has claimed millions.
Really...??? And how do you proposed it should have been done? When I was in Kuwait, my mouth and nose covered with a literally dripping wet towel to filter out the microscopic oil particles in the air, we came across a dried up body of a partially nude and pregnant woman and everyone can see the outline of the fetus inside her belly. She was shot several times in the chest and no one had any confusion as to what happened to her before she was killed. A military is inevitably a reflection of the society that contributed to its being. There will be virtuous men as well as depraved men and usually most will fall to varying degrees somewhere between those two points. What make the military institution unique is the enforced close proximity among its members. Such closeness inevitably lead to sharing of ideas -- virtuous and depraved.
The Iraqi Army was a depraved institution. Its depravity originated from its top echelons, leaked downward and permeated into the moral fibers of its men. Depraved ideas crowded out the virtuous ones. The Sunni officer corps abused its subordinates, convincing the 'lower class' of this institution that only force and contempt for anyone not the same as oneself are the accepted norms. When these men abandoned the Iraqi Army in the face of the rapidly advancing US Army, they took back to their civilian lives whatever depravity they learned and practiced, inside and outside Iraq, and the results are the chaos that we see today in southern Iraq, but oddly enough not in northern Iraq.
Iraq is dangerous only to ordinary Iraqis, not to the rest of the world. IEDs with 155mm artillery shells are not low-yield battlefield nuclear devices. Focusing on our mistakes in Iraq give you and people like you an intellectual lollipop to suck on. No parents are perfect but to people with common sense it is absurd and irresponsible that adult children should continue to blame their imperfect parents for their own missteps. It is telling of your intellectual dishonesty that you accuse me of 'projecting' Saddam's evilness to justify the invasion but you have no problems at all 'projecting' the Iraqis killing Iraqis as caused by US. We will pay for our mistakes by accepting moral condemnations and make financial restitutions to Iraq. But as long as people like you continue to offer the Iraqi people intellectually shallow quasi-solutions that contains nothing but child-like whinings the Iraqis will continue to suffer as they are today.
USA
