I find it hillarious that the only argument against what I've posted comes down to:
"No really, Bush is a Bad Man because I say so."
Very convincing argument, I must say.
I find it hillarious that the only argument against what I've posted comes down to:
"No really, Bush is a Bad Man because I say so."
Very convincing argument, I must say.
bi: You claim that my arguments are unfalsifiable and somehow conclude that this means that Iraq did not have possession of WMDs? Huh? I simply cannot follow your logic. I agree that the claim that Iraq had WMDs is unfalsifiable, which is exactly my point - all of the people claiming that Iraq never had WMDs are simply mindlessly regurgitating what the news media is feeding them in order to manipulate the masses to be against the Bush Administration; a brainwashing if you will.
bi: you still fail to offer any evidence to the contrary. Is it safe to conclude, then, that you have none and that there is the possibility that what I have stated is truth?
Also, there were other compelling reasons to go to war with Iraq than simply the question of whether they had WMDs, as I pointed out in my last post which you failed to bother to even acknowledge (you focused only on one small portion of what I wrote to critique).
As to the issue of the Iraqi people being worse now than they were because of the mortality rate?
I present to you the following statistics in rebuttal (from markhumphrys.com ):
Opinion Polls in Iraq
Johann Hari on opinion polls after the war: "So what we now know is that on the day of the anti-war rally, with all the caveats ... a majority of Iraqis were saying: "Better this invasion than what we faced otherwise." They would not have been marching with you. They would have been marching for the invasion."
July 2003
Post-liberation, the majority of Iraqis in Iraq support the war! (also here and here and here and here)
Sept 2003
What Iraqis Really Think, September 10, 2003 (also here)
- The majority oppose an Islamic state.
- When asked what country they would want Iraq to be like - Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt or the US - the US was the no.1 answer.
- The majority want to punish the Baath Party rather than forgive their crimes.
- The majority want America to stay longer.
Mar 2004
Survey
- The majority who expressed an opinion supported the US invasion.
- The majority think things are better now than before the war.
- The majority oppose an Islamic state.
- 80 percent oppose the fascist "resistance".
- The majority want America to stay longer.
Who knows better: the Iraqi people or Spain's new PM? - discussion of the above survey by Janet Daley. Why does the ignorant socialist government of Spain listen to Al Qaeda on Iraq, instead of to the Iraqi people? Why do they do Al Qaeda's bidding on Iraq, instead of the bidding of the people of Iraq?
May 2004
Survey
- 84 percent of Iraqis say Saddam is guilty of murdering their countrymen.
- 83 percent say he was a torturer.
- 61 percent say he deserves the death penalty.
June 2004
Survey
- 76 per cent of Iraqis feel freer to express their political views in public today than under Saddam.
- More than 80 per cent feel freer to exercise their religious beliefs.
- 76 per cent do not believe their lives were made worse by the Coalition.
- 85 per cent feel safer with CPA in place.
Dec 2004 - Jan 2005
Survey
Do you support military action against the so-called resistance? 88 percent said "Yes".
Dec 2005
Survey (see here)
- 57 percent want democracy, 26 percent want a dictator, 14 percent want an Islamic state. Zarqawi is fighting for something that nobody wants. His stupid men are dying for something that nobody wants.
- When should the allies leave Iraq? 26 percent say leave now. 66 percent say stay longer.
- 80 percent of Kurds say the US was right to invade Iraq.
- 58 percent of Shiites say the US was right to invade Iraq.
Jan 2006
Survey
"Thinking about any hardships you might have suffered since the US-Britain invasion, do you personally think that ousting Saddam Hussein was worth it or not?"
- 77 percent of Iraqis think it was worth it.
- The Sunnis regret the end of apartheid, but if we exclude them, 91 percent of Kurds say it was worth it, and 98 percent of Shias say it was worth it.
So, despite a higher mortality rate, the Iraqi people seem to prefer life post-Saddam as compared to under Saddam.
zanee: and therein lies the misunderstanding of so many people that are anti-Bush... they focus on WMDs meaning nuclear weapon capability, when in fact WMDs can mean any weapon capable of mass destruction (chemical, biological, nuclear, or ballistic missiles).
You also say that there is evidence from the intelligence community that points to the "fact" that WMDs did not exist in Iraq. I will refute you with the following:
Even if we remove all evidence of Iraq having (or having access to) any type of WMD, the fact that they were going to launch an offensive on Isreal is justification enough to attack Iraq, nevermind that they harbored and collaborated with terrorist organisations. Saddam was unstable - a threat to the people of Iraq and his neighbors and had been for decades, it was time this threat was eliminated for the safety of millions.
Zanee says that anyone studying the region at the time knew it was impossible for Iraq to have them. I ask, why? They had WMDs as early as the 1920's, how is it impossible for them to have had them as late as 2002? Did they suddenly become incapable of weilding anything more destructive than a caveman's club? You offer no evidence to the contrary, and in fact I can find numerous books by recognised experts on the region that make claims to the opposite.
Where's your proof?
As a followup to the accusations that the Bush Administration was the source of the claim that Iraq had WMDs, the following article on CanadaFreePress.com has more evidence to the contrary.
bi: I was more rebutting the common misconception that the Bush Administration was the original source of the claim that Iraq had WMDs more than I was responding directly to the particular Slashdot poster's false claims.
It's interesting that you bring up Hans Blix. As has been noted by every director of the UNSCOM (including Blix himself), Iraq has had a history of being uncooperative with the weapons inspectors. Suddenly this changed in 2003.
It could be argued that it was because Iraq had finally finished getting rid of / dismantling their WMDs/programs and no longer had anything to hide, and I think this argument is plausable.
haruspex says "Gosh, just maybe they cooperated because they didn't want their country destroyed?"
I think that's another very good theory - I'm sure Iraq was confidant that the United States would likely invade by that point.
Anyways, back to bi's assessment that Bush had other motives for invading Iraq other than the WMDs, I am inclined to agree.
but check out the following words which he quotes Clinton as saying (emphasis added):"And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them. Because we are acting today, it is less likely that we will face these dangers in the future."From these words, he goes on to draw this conclusion (emphasis added, again):[...] it is interesting to note that even the Clinton Administration claimed that Iraq had WMDs [...]Now, when someone can't properly distinguish between the past tense, the present tense and the future tense, are we supposed to trust his self-righteous pronouncements on US presidents past and present?
Allow me to quote again from the same source that I was
quoting there (emphasis added):
[...]
Iraq repeatedly restricted UNSCOM's ability to obtain
necessary evidence. For example, Iraq obstructed UNSCOM's
effort to photograph bombs related to its chemical
weapons program. It tried to stop an UNSCOM biological
weapons team from videotaping a site and photocopying
documents, and prevented Iraqi personnel from answering
UNSCOM's questions.
Prior to the inspection of another site, Iraq
actually emptied out the building, removing not just
documents, but even the furniture and the equipment. Iraq
has failed to turn over virtually all the documents
requested by the inspectors; indeed, we know that Iraq
ordered the destruction of weapons related documents in
anticipation of an UNSCOM inspection.
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Earlier today, I ordered
America's Armed Forces to strike military and security
targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their
mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and
biological programs, and its military capacity to
threaten its neighbors.
This suggests (although, admittedly, does not confirm with 100% certainty) that Iraq had WMD programs. Those statements are where I had concluded that the Clinton Administration was convinced that Iraq had WMDs.
I maintain that then President Clinton chose his words more carefully than I that Iraq was suspected of having (or soon having) Weapons of Mass Destruction. We already know that they had them further in the past (afterall, they used them prior to even the first Gulf War).
Now, before bi argues that
Iraq has never used nuclear weapons, it is important to
note that the definition of WMDs is not limited to nuclear
weapons. From Wikipedia:
Weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a term used to
describe a munition with the capacity to indiscriminately
kill large numbers of living beings. The phrase broadly
encompasses several areas of weapon synthesis, including
nuclear, biological, chemical (NBC) and, increasingly,
radiological weapons.
We know for a fact that Iraq has had (and knows how to make) chemical weapons capable of killing large numbers of people. This is undisputable fact.
Clinton says this in his address:
With Saddam, there's one big difference: he has used them,
not once but repeatedly -- unleashing chemical weapons
against Iranian troops during a decade-long war, not only
against soldiers, but against civilians; firing Scud
missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
and Iran -- not only against a foreign enemy, but even
against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in
Northern Iraq.
I concede to bi that my wording was wrong there, and I apologise, however one must also note that it was clear that Clinton felt there were indeed WMDs as, in the summer of 1998, he launched missiles at a target thought to have been a chemical weapons plant (later reported to have been a pharmaceutical plant instead) which, as you might note, happened prior to the report that I quoted from 1999.
My point is that even the Clinton Administration was convinced that Iraq had WMDs or, at the very least, the means to construct them... thus debunking the assertion that the Bush Administration was the originating source of this (possibly mis)information (I say possible misinformation because it has never been proven that Iraq didn't have the suspected WMDs at the time of the allegations; similarly it has never been proven that they did).
In reading the anti-Bush Administration propoganda that
spammed the Slashdot forum under the article about the
USGS censor, I was shocked to find such woefully inaccurate libel.
Allow me to respond to this piecemeal (for the purpose of
clarity, I will quote the slashdot poster with bold
italics and any other article with only italics).
You are woefully uninformed (despite your absolutely
ridiculous "informative" moderation), not to mention
completely wrong. I say this because:
> Iraq was not attcked illegally
Bush and crew lied about the reasons for
attacking Iraq.
[cnn.com] Iraq had no WMD.
Whoa there cowboy... lets take a step back and take a look at this in perspective. Was this truly a Bush Administration fabricated lie? To answer this question, it is interesting to note that even the Clinton Administration claimed that Iraq had WMDs (a fact that the Left would like you to forget as it would ruin their anti- Bush propoganda and their supposed moral highground).
A Google search provides us with the following link: TRANSCRIPT: CLINTON ON PREEMPTIVE AIRSTRIKES
AGAINST IRAQ dated December 16th, 1999.
Quoted from the article:
Washington -- President Clinton ordered America's Armed
Forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq
December 16 to "attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and
biological programs, and its military capacity to threaten
its neighbors."
[...]
"If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we
will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will
strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own
people," Clinton said. "And mark my words, he will develop
weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he
will use them. Because we are acting today, it is less
likely that we will face these dangers in the future."
Clinton states:
"This situation presents a clear and present danger to the
stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people
everywhere. The international community gave Saddam one
last chance to resume cooperation with the weapons
inspectors. Saddam has failed to seize the chance."
If you read the full transcript, you see the following
statements:
[...]
For example, Iraq obstructed UNSCOM's effort to
photograph bombs related to its chemical weapons program.
Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and
biological programs
If that's not enough to convince you that the Clinton
Administration felt certain that Iraq had possession of
WMDs, let us examine a speech he gave in February of 1998:
In the next century, the community of nations may see more
and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue
state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them
or provide them to terrorists
This seems to counter the uninformed Leftist views that WMDs were an imagination of the Bush Administration. Not only did the Clinton Administration believe that Iraq had (or would soon have, depending on your interpretation of Clinton's statements) possession of WMDs, but it had even launched an attack based on their belief at the time (President Clinton launched missiles at a target in Sudan suspected of being a chemical weapons plant back in the summer of 1998).
If we take a look at the article that the Slashdot
poster referenced, we find an amusing admission by that
article's author:
Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said
about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't.
Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing
them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and
declarative as I had recalled.
We find here that this journalist did research on the subject of Iraq and the claims by the United States that they (Iraq) had Weapons of Mass Destruction, yet he conveniently omits quotes by past presidents claiming the same assertions. A little further investigation brings to light that John W. Dean has a political agenda to push, which is evident by the number of books he has written with anti-conservative sentiments along with the content of his interview with Democracy Now where he pushes that Bush should be impeached.
Folks, I can't stress enough the importance of
evaluating the objectivity of the articles you read in
newspapers and what you see in the news on television. For
starters, you need to realise that a vast majority of the
news media are staunch supporters of the Democratic Party
and thus have a tendency to provide a slanted view of the
facts tipped against the Right (usually, I believe, this
is done on a subconscious level but it is there
none-the-less; no one can be 100% objective, especially on
matters of politics).
in order to generate popular support for his attack on
Iraq, Bush and his crew lied to the public.
I think "lied" is a bit extreme here, especially
considering that it was the common belief among all
officials in the United States that Iraq did in fact have
WMDs (note that I say "belief" which is the key word here
because in order to lie, one must know for a fact that
what he is saying is fictitious in nature - and it has yet
to be proven that Iraq never had WMDs, it is only a
suspicion that we (the USA) was wrong in our original
assumption that they had them).
In fact, subsequent to the first gulf war, Iraq was not
threatening anyone or their interests.
While they may not have directly threatened anyone,
they were closely collaborating with terrorists which, I
believe, many would define as threatening to the safety of
our and other nations. Even Clinton, the hero if the Left,
has stated that Iraq was a threat to both this nation and
the neighbors of Iraq (see above).
The administration repeatedly and specifically claimed
that Iraq's administration had direct and unequivocal ties
to Al-Quida. And has that been found to be so? No.
As before, it is again interesting to note that the
Bush Administration was not the first to make the
connection between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda as pointed out by
an article in The Washington Times, which
states:
The Clinton administration talked about firm evidence
linking Saddam Hussein's regime to Osama bin Laden's al
Qaeda network years before President Bush made the same
statements.
and
In fact, during President Clinton's eight years in office,
there were at least two official pronouncements of an
alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came
from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton's defense secretary. He
cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a
pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.
There are even more interesting tidbits in the article, so I urge anyone interested to read further.
As far as whether the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection has been proven to be true or not seems to be a side-issue to the Slashdot poster who only seems interested in trying to argue that the connection was a Bush-concocted lie to the American public. That said, however, let us investigate further.
As Andrew C. McCarthy observes in this article discussing the 9/11 Committee
staff's
Statement No. 15,
Is the commission staff saying that the CIA director has
provided faulty information to Congress? That doesn't
appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear
— if
anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" —
from
the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation
sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being
gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that
Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the
United States." (emphasis mine.) That is, the staff is
not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did not cooperate — far
from
it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have
cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to
conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific
terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing,
or the embassy bombings."
As mentioned in the above article, George Tenet,
Director of the CIA, wrote to Congress:
It seems to be the CIA's consistant assertion that there is, in fact, a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.
I suppose the original Slashdot poster would make the
accusation that the CIA is wrong, but can the original
Slashdot poster post evidence to the contrary? I somehow
doubt it.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld specifically claimed
they knew where the WMD were. And were they there? No.
For the sake of argument, pretend that you are a drug dealer and the police have given you a written notice stating that they will be searching your home for the possession of drugs on a particular date and that they know where in your household these drugs are "hidden" (and provide, in detail, where those drugs they know of are located). Do you:
I think any intelligent person would get rid of the
drugs or at the very least, hide them in a new location.
I'll hold the ludacracy of the Slashdot poster's
assertions to be self-evident (especially considering the
extensive amount of time between the disclosure of the
location of said WMDs and the actual invasion of Iraq
to "find" said WMDs).
It does not, unfortunately, address the hundreds of
billions of dollars spent in pursuit of this illegitimate
war; nor the loss of Iraqi lives; nor the loss of US
soldier's lives, and the lives of those soldiers from
other countries who ill-advisedly entered into combat with
the US in this criminal action.
I find it amusing that the Slashdot poster purports to be so interested in the lives of Iraqis. Does he know how Iraqis are treated under the Saddam Hussein dictatorship? Does he not realise that anyone who displeased Saddam in any way would be executed without a trial? Does he not know of the Human Rights under Saddam Hussein's Iraq? I think, if he did, he would change his mind on this issue.
This website documents further the attrocities committed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. How can anyone who claims to be concerned about the well being of Iraqis be so against the United States getting involved in Iraq to liberate the people? A good question indeed.
It is unfortunate that US soldiers had to die, but it is a sad reality of war. People die. Was it worth the lives of the men and women who faught so bravely in this conflict? Only time will tell, but it is at this time far too early to tell and will likely never be clear (it's impossible to compare and contrast the outcome of different choices). The only measure we can truly evaluate is the feeling from the soldiers as to what their beliefs are - do they believe that their efforts were in vein? Or do they feel their lives were worth the effort?
I leave it as an exercise to the reader to read the numerous articles where US soldiers involved in the Iraq conflict commented on their feelings of whether it was worth risking their lives. I think you'll find that most feel their efforts were worth it.
The last assertion made by the Slashdot poster claims that other countries blindly followed the US into Iraq. This is naive. No government blindly follows another into war - they all had their own Intelligence and risk analysis, anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.
Since my December 1st blog entry expressing my distaste for political crusades in the Free Software community and therefor deciding I wanted nothing to do with the community, I have come to the conclusion that my decision was in haste.
I'd like to retract my desire to avoid the community. Yes, I still harbor feelings of distate for those who would try to tear the Free Software community apart for their own political gain, but my refusal to participate in the Free Software community only hurts the Free Software community for which I care so deeply about.
I urge the community as a whole to stay away from political crusades as it will only cause harm. Try and see the good things that groups/companies do for the community and not focus on the few negatives. No one is perfect, and therefor it is wise to not throw stones. As a community, we would much prefer software companies involved in F/OSS to be our friends rather than our enemies.
The other day there was an article about how the White House is censoring the USGS (as posted on Slashdot).
As a matter of course, Slashdot posters used this as
another reason to fling mud at the Bush Administration,
using arguments such as:
They aren't even trying to justify their
actions
anymore.
They're just filtering science from public view, and
insisting that it is improvement.
Ryan Fenton
From the article: "This is not about stifling or
suppressing our science, or politicizing our science in
any way,'' Barbara Wainman, the agency's director of
communications, said Wednesday. "I don't have approval
authority. What it was designed to do is to improve our
product flow.''
This is pretty typical Left Wing anti-Republican propoganda. Remember: anyone who wants to see a conspiracy will see a conspiracy. Lets read the article carefully, here.
From the article:
The Bush administration, as well as the
Clinton administration before it, has been criticized over
scientific integrity issues. In 2002, the USGS was forced
to reverse course after warning that oil and gas drilling
in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would harm the
Porcupine caribou herd. One week later a new report
followed, this time saying the caribou would not be
affected.
This points out that in the past, there were data integrity issues coming from the USGS's reports (in this case from the Fish and Wildlife Department of the USGS). Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that this is a good reason for reform?
I'd like to ask: what was the Fish and Wildlife Department doing claiming that oil and gas drilling would harm wildlife in the area at all? That's not what the USGS's reports are for. The USGS is for reporting the facts, not sensationalist propoganda. What was reported was not objective, it was opinion.
A little searching provides us with the following link
to the USGS's
Guidelines for Ensuring Quality of Information.
Section III states:
The USGS provides unbiased, objective scientific
information upon which other entities may base judgments.
So again, I ask, backed by the above criteria, why was the Fish and Wildlife Department making judgements about what could potentially happen? This is not the job of the USGS, as stated clearly above, it is the job of third parties who acquire data provided by the USGS.
The purpose of this policy change is to prevent the pushing of political agendas within USGS reports which has no business in scientific reports in the first place.
Update: The USGS responds to the sensationalism surrounding their new policy changes.
whiprush is totally right. It's time for the Free/Open Software community to tell Perens he's not wanted. He's ruining it for all of us. I, too, am pushed away by his hypocritical crusade.
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