Debunking the Liberals from WMD to Terrorism

[TheDude]

Please explain why you are still hung-up about "finding" WMD.

Because that was one of the selling points why we went to war and took out Saddam.

Please explain why you're unconcerned with not finding them?

 

[TheDude]

Yeah I know, it was a rhetorical question.

Anyway, we'll know what happened to the WMDs when Al Qaeda uses them on somebody.

Well, they'd had four years and counting to use them on our troops... Guess we'll have to wait and see if Sada's intel was valid before the liberal debunking can begin.

 

[fossten]

Well, they'd had four years and counting to use them on our troops... Guess we'll have to wait and see if Sada's intel was valid before the liberal debunking can begin.

In that assumption you would be INcorrect. We don't need Sada's intel to know that there were WMDs, only to know where they went. The FACT is that Saddam had them. We just don't know where they are.

Once again you're trying to cover all your bases with not enough tarp.

 

[TheDude]

In that assumption you would be INcorrect. We don't need Sada's intel to know that there were WMDs, only to know where they went. The FACT is that Saddam had them. We just don't know where they are.

Once again you're trying to cover all your bases with not enough tarp.

Yes, we know Saddam had and has used WMD's in the past, the Kurds and the Iranians were both on the receiving end at one time or another. But did he have them when we went in is the question and was he or was he not abiding by the UN resolutions, both of which have yet to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Am I wrong in thinking if there was absolute proof positive that Saddam had WMD's as the Bush admin stated before the war; Bush himself would be waving it in the Democrats faces? You know he would, you certainly would and If I had received the flak he has for this over the last four years, I would too.

 

[fossten]

Yes, we know Saddam had and has used WMD's in the past, the Kurds and the Iranians were both on the receiving end at one time or another. But did he have them when we went in is the question and was he or was he not abiding by the UN resolutions, both of which have yet to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Once again, you are INcorrect. New documents found and translated have shown that Saddam lied to the inspectors and the UN about his compliance concerning WMDs. That in and of itself proves that there were WMDs to be found. Just because we haven't found them only means it's a matter of time. You're acting like you are from the 'show me' state, yet you accept the liberal mantras concerning Bush lying without batting an eye. The fact is that there is more evidence supporting WMDs existing at the time of invasion or shortly before than there is otherwise.

Frankly I can't believe you are still holding on to this tired old saw, especially in the bald face of incontrovertible evidence that shows you misinformed. When will you take the blinders off and realize that your side was and is wrong?

Here's an excerpt from one of the links I posted (which I can tell you still haven't yet bothered to check):

Facts known are growing more numerous, and from reputable sources, but they now include:


That the United States has uncovered some 12 hours of Saddam Hussein palace audiotapes – since authenticated by FBI methodology – with discussions by familiar voices like Tariq Aziz and others including Saddam himself about what to do with their WMD stockpiles and resources.

That Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) units evidently helped Saddam's military in secreting away – mostly into Syria – WMD that had first been purchased from Russia. Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John Shaw recently declared after lots of inquiry that the Russians' goal had been to erase any signs of their involvement in Saddam's WMD programs. On this point, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney has been quoted as believing the Bush administration needs Russia's involvement now in halting Iran's rush toward nuclear armament and so must resist information damning to Russia.

That two different former high-ranking Iraqi military officers – Gen. Georges Sada, the No. 2 ranking officer with the Iraqi Air Force, and Ali Ibrahim, another Iraqi commander – both assert that that Saddam possessed stockpiles of WMD and transported them out of Iraq by converted 747 passenger jet and by land to be hidden inside Syria.

Am I wrong in thinking if there was absolute proof positive that Saddam had WMD's as the Bush admin stated before the war; Bush himself would be waving it in the Democrats faces? You know he would, you certainly would and If I had received the flak he has for this over the last four years, I would too.

You would be INcorrect about Bush. He doesn't really care about waving the proof in front of our faces, especially since the MSM wouldn't show it anyway. Look how little coverage there's been over the information found at the links I've posted. You won't see it on any of the networks. Sada wasn't interviewed by any of them except Fox News. They simply don't want the truth to come out because that makes them wrong and Bush right. Moreover, Bush isn't the type to brag. Look at how little he's trumpeted our roaring economy. I'm even irritated at him for not bragging enough and defending himself. He's simply sticking to his course, focused on winning the war, which is more than I can say for any Dem in Congress except Lieberman.

 

[biglou71]

Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq
Wednesday, June 21, 2006


PHOTOS



WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

• Click here to read the declassified portion of the NGIC report.

He added that the report warns about the hazards that the chemical weapons could still pose to coalition troops in Iraq.

"The purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal," Santorum read from the document.

(Story continues below)

"This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

Hoekstra said the report, completed in April but only declassified now, shows that "there is still a lot about Iraq that we don't fully understand."

Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

The official said the findings did raise questions about the years of weapons inspections that had not resulted in locating the fairly sizeable stash of chemical weapons. And he noted that it may say something about Hussein's intent and desire. The report does suggest that some of the weapons were likely put on the black market and may have been used outside Iraq.

He also said that the Defense Department statement shortly after the March 2003 invasion saying that "we had all known weapons facilities secured," has proven itself to be untrue.

"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them.

Hoekstra and Santorum lamented that Americans were given the impression after a 16-month search conducted by the Iraq Survey Group that the evidence of continuing research and development of weapons of mass destruction was insignificant. But the National Ground Intelligence Center took up where the ISG left off when it completed its report in November 2004, and in the process of collecting intelligence for the purpose of force protection for soldiers and sailors still on the ground in Iraq, has shown that the weapons inspections were incomplete, they and others have said.

"We know it was there, in place, it just wasn't operative when inspectors got there after the war, but we know what the inspectors found from talking with the scientists in Iraq that it could have been cranked up immediately, and that's what Saddam had planned to do if the sanctions against Iraq had halted and they were certainly headed in that direction," said Fred Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard and a FOX News contributor.

"It is significant. Perhaps, the administration just, they think they weathered the debate over WMD being found there immediately and don't want to return to it again because things are otherwise going better for them, and then, I think, there's mindless resistance to releasing any classified documents from Iraq," Barnes said.

The release of the declassified materials comes as the Senate debates Democratic proposals to create a timetable for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. The debate has had the effect of creating disunity among Democrats, a majority of whom shrunk Wednesday from an amendment proposed by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to have troops to be completely withdrawn from Iraq by the middle of next year.

At the same time, congressional Republicans have stayed highly united, rallying around a White House that has seen successes in the last couple weeks, first with the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then the completion of the formation of Iraq's Cabinet and then the announcement Tuesday that another key Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, "religious emir" Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, was also killed in a U.S. airstrike.

Santorum pointed out that during Wednesday's debate, several Senate Democrats said that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, a claim, he said, that the declassified document proves is untrue.

"This is an incredibly — in my mind — significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," he said.

As a result of this new information, under the aegis of his chairmanship, Hoekstra said he is going to ask for more reporting by the various intelligence agencies about weapons of mass destruction.

"We are working on the declassification of the report. We are going to do a thorough search of what additional reports exist in the intelligence community. And we are going to put additional pressure on the Department of Defense and the folks in Iraq to more fully pursue a complete investigation of what existed in Iraq before the war," Hoekstra said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html

Next reason for the left? Since the WMD issue is now shot to hell.

 

[fossten]

Where are the WMD's though?:shifty: Just saying they slipped across the border into Syria doesn't really mean jack #$%@.

Time for you to do some learning. See the above post.

500 weapons is no small stockpile. It proves we need to keep looking.

You can apologize to Bush for calling him a liar anytime now.

 

[fossten]

Here's a link to the actual report, Deville:

http://hotair.iad.cachefly.net/images/2006-05/iraq-doc.pdf

 

[stang99x]

uh oh, Bush planted those though didn't he?

 

[fossten]

uh oh, Bush planted those though didn't he?

Why do you suppose his flight to Baghdad was under such secrecy? What do you think he was doing? Duh.

 

[MonsterMark]

Why do you suppose his flight to Baghdad was under such secrecy? What do you think he was doing? Duh.

Has anybody checked under Saddam's bed yet?

 

[fossten]

Has anybody checked under Saddam's bed yet?

Isn't he on a hunger strike? Yuck. I don't even want to know.

 

[TheDude]

Time for you to do some learning. See the above post.

500 weapons is no small stockpile. It proves we need to keep looking.

You can apologize to Bush for calling him a liar anytime now.

They find 500 defunct weapons almost two decades old and that's supposed to be the smoking gun? I'll agree that we do need to keep looking, but we have been looking since day one, so nothing new there. Your article even states that these don't really prove anything with the exception that Saddam was/is a shady character and the entire world already knew that. So as I stated before, we'll have to wait and see if this bares any fruit.

I thought you were over that 'liar liar' bit? As you recall, I said I would stop calling Bush a liar almost a year ago.

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are NOT the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and NOT the WMDs for which this country went to war."

 

[fossten]

They find 500 defunct weapons almost two decades old and that's supposed to be the smoking gun? I'll agree that we do need to keep looking, but we have been looking since day one, so nothing new there. Your article even states that these don't really prove anything with the exception that Saddam was/is a shady character and the entire world already knew that. So as I stated before, we'll have to wait and see if this bares any fruit.
[/I][/B]

Yes. It is the SMOKING GUN. FIVE HUNDRED WEAPONS, not all of them defunct by the way since sarin gas doesn't degrade (or did you miss that part?), is NOT a small deal. Not when 15 canisters of sarin have been proven to have killed 5,000 people. Don't be an apologist for Bush-haters, Deville. None of your comrades want to touch this with a ten-foot pole, and there's a reason for it. If you think these weapons are so not a big deal why not offer to store them in your pantry?

By the way, it also vindicates Bush when you consider that Hans Blix and his loser sleuths searched for 18 months and found nothing, while our soldiers virtually stumbled on this stuff without even trying.

 

[TheDude]

Yes. It is the SMOKING GUN. FIVE HUNDRED WEAPONS, not all of them defunct by the way since sarin gas doesn't degrade (or did you miss that part?), is NOT a small deal. Not when 15 canisters of sarin have been proven to have killed 5,000 people. Don't be an apologist for Bush-haters, Deville. None of your comrades want to touch this with a ten-foot pole, and there's a reason for it. If you think these weapons are so not a big deal why not offer to store them in your pantry?

By the way, it also vindicates Bush when you consider that Hans Blix and his loser sleuths searched for 18 months and found nothing, while our soldiers virtually stumbled on this stuff without even trying.

I disagree; this isn't the SMOKING GUN, though it may lead to one.

Another snippet from your article:

'Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.'

The way the story reads, anyone trying to use these would have probably killed himself in the process. Kind of like finding a crate of twenty year old dynamite in your cellar; you can't leave it there, but moving it may kill you.

 

[MAC1]

I thought the issue is whether or not Hussein did or did not possess weapons of mass destruction, not whether such weapons were recently manufactured.

 

[TheDude]

I thought the issue is whether or not Hussein did or did not possess weapons of mass destruction, not whether such weapons were recently manufactured.

Passage from the article itself should answer that for you.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

 

[Calabrio]

Regardless what you feel, this puts to rest the "Bush Lied" myth. If hard-headed liberals want to hold a grudge, they can say the intelligence was ultimately wrong, but they can not say HE LIED.

This conclusively supports the belief that Hussein was lying about having weapons. That he was lying to the UN inspectors. That he was lyi about having destroyed all his weapons.

So, even though a liberal might still trust Hussein, they need to retire the "He Lied" part of their argument. He didn't. It was a very reasonable conclussion.

 

[TheDude]

Regardless what you feel, this puts to rest the "Bush Lied" myth. If hard-headed liberals want to hold a grudge, they can say the intelligence was ultimately wrong, but they can not say HE LIED.

This conclusively supports the belief that Hussein was lying about having weapons. That he was lying to the UN inspectors. That he was lyi about having destroyed all his weapons.

So, even though a liberal might still trust Hussein, they need to retire the "He Lied" part of their argument. He didn't. It was a very reasonable conclussion.

I do not think anyone will argue that Saddam was a saint, but that is besides the point here. The article itself stipulates that these weapons were non-operational and made before the rearmament sanctions were in place. So waving the 'we're right, you're wrong' flag over this is foolish, nothing has yet to be proven. When it comes down to it, we’re still looking and thats all the article really says.

Also, I haven't said Bush lied for almost a year now; it was a circular argument if you remember the thread(s) from way back and I have no desire to rehash that. If you want to say the intel he went by was wrong and at fault, I’ll bite.

 

[fossten]

I do not think anyone will argue that Saddam was a saint, but that is besides the point here. The article itself stipulates that these weapons were non-operational and made before the rearmament sanctions were in place. So waving the 'we're right, you're wrong' flag over this is foolish, nothing has yet to be proven. [???] When it comes down to it, we’re still looking and thats all the article really says.

Also, I haven't said Bush lied for almost a year now; it was a circular argument if you remember the thread(s) from way back and I have no desire to rehash that. If you want to say the intel he went by was wrong and at fault, I’ll bite.

You're fighting a losing battle. Your best argument is your only argument: That the weapons are degraded and that they are old. So what? They're still weapons and the report clearly states that they are still lethal. End of story.

If you don't believe Bush lied and don't want to take that position, then why are you arguing the liberal talking point response? You have nothing to gain here, and deep down (young Skywalker) you know the truth. Search your feelings. You know that Saddam had WMDs. You know he must have either hidden or smuggled them away. You know Bush didn't lie. You know that Congressmen/women who say that are phonies. Just admit it and we can move on.

 

[stang99x]

I disagree; this isn't the SMOKING GUN, though it may lead to one.

Another snippet from your article:

'Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.'

The way the story reads, anyone trying to use these would have probably killed himself in the process. Kind of like finding a crate of twenty year old dynamite in your cellar; you can't leave it there, but moving it may kill you.

THis is what I just don't get. Whether or not they were made today or 100 years ago, they are still WMD's. I don't give a rats ass if they say made in China on the casings, they are still WMD's. F'ing liberals look for any excuse on the planet

 

[TheDude]

You're fighting a losing battle. Your best argument is your only argument: That the weapons are degraded and that they are old. So what? They're still weapons and the report clearly states that they are still lethal. End of story.

Your best argument contradicts what the article states; 1) The weapons are non-operational 2) They were not the weapons we went to war over. Don't blame me, it's your article. End of story.

If you don't believe Bush lied and don't want to take that position, then why are you arguing the liberal talking point response? You have nothing to gain here, and deep down (young Skywalker) you know the truth. Search your feelings. You know that Saddam had WMDs. You know he must have either hidden or smuggled them away. You know Bush didn't lie. You know that Congressmen/women who say that are phonies. Just admit it and we can move on.

Given that facts that he is a lunatic, sadist and self imposed demi-god of Iraq I would gamble that he had/has WMD's or had been planning on producing them; but that is besides the point. Proof is what matters and it has yet to be found.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
-George W. Bush

So exactly how are these chemical weapons, even if they WERE manufactured between 9/11/2001 and 3/03, going to generate that "MUSHROOM CLOUD"???

Your RWW strawman is twisting in the wind.

Sure, sure, technically BuSh didn't LIE, but he sure did use DECEPTION and FEAR MONGERING to justify the invasion of Iraq. SSDD.

*owned*

 

[TheDude]

THis is what I just don't get. Whether or not they were made today or 100 years ago, they are still WMD's. I don't give a rats ass if they say made in China on the casings, they are still WMD's. F'ing liberals look for any excuse on the planet

"are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

That's an f'ing conservative saying that in reference to the weapons found.

 

[biglou71]

blah blah blah