Viper Zero: "BBC slants to the left."
The BBC's slant, whatever it is, does not invalidate a story.
keeno_uk: "You know thats the British Broadcasting Channel news. So I am pretty sure they are not waffling about something serious like this."
I can see no reason for them to lie, and the story is true, as far as I know. I do not know if how they represented it was accurate at the time you viewed their report.
vat_man: "Hasn't the leader of the US congress written directly to the Director of the CIA asking about the intelligence relating to WMD in Iraq?
There's a very big outcry in the UK at the moment, as well. So far, the lines of 'We think they had them, but we think they destroyed them' and 'We'll tell you next week' aren't holding up terribly well."
I do not know.
The British seem impatient, but it is understandable. There is some talk, which has been around for a few weeks, that the stocks (if they exist) were moved into Syria or Lebanon. If they were destroyed before the war, with inadequate accounting of said destruction, the war can be faulted on the basis of there being an imminent threat. But this presumes a knowledge which may not have been available to intelligence communities and heads of state. If they were destroyed after the start of the war, which I think is unlikely, the basis for the war is not wholly invalidated. Part of the argument was for complete and immediate accounting, and that was not provided. How the alleged possession of WMD by Saddam should have been handled is another issue. But if the compelling reason for the "preferred" course of action had strong evidence behind it, by some interpretations, the war would be seen by those preferring it as proper to have initiated. Unless the alledgedly stupid interpretation, doctoring of intelligence reports and pressuring of intelligence officers to lie is shown to be an actuality, the WMD reasoning for military action cannot be invalidated because of their non existence or destruction. It is a very difficult call for governments to decide whether even small intelligence about WMD is enough to warrant military action.
DGB454: "I haven't heard anything about an investigation but it wouldn't suprise me. Elections aren't too far off.
WMDs or no WMDs doesn't really matter does it? I know that was one of the excuses to do it but in the end with all those mass graves uncovered I really don't think too many people will be upset that we did it. At least not in the US."
The damage to credibility is highly important.
risingson77 Playing Devil's Advocate, here -
What if they were just wrong? Let's assume that president Bush & Co. have been 100% honest the whole time. (Work with me). Let's say they were genuinely convinced that Iraq had WMDs by the barnful. Now that we've toppled the government, we find that there aren't any. So Bush & Co. stall for time in an effort to save face. They may not necessarily have planned this enormous lie.
Let's not forget that Iraq is a big country. Saddam had plenty of time to destroy evidence when he knew the invasion was coming. Maybe that's why we steamrolled over Baghdad so quickly: the Iraqi army was preoccupied with other things. Why Saddam would bother hiding WMDs in the face of losing his whole country, I don't know. DGB454 does bring up a valid point about the mass graves - perhaps we don't need WMDs to justify our actions.
Then again, maybe Saddam never used any WMDs because we hadn't sold him any recently. It's not like this stuff is easy to develop - especially not when Saddam was diverting funds to his palaces. It was US developed chemical weapons that Saddam deployed during the Iran-Iraq war.
Well, there you have it. I keep going back and forth all the time..... "
That would be an unplanned mistake, not a lie. I hope you did not intend to play a sarcastic devil's advocate.
keeno_uk: "you can't forget that the fact that the main occupation of this war was to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction I don't know about the U.S. but the from what I have heard and seen we (the u.k.) are upset that our government (at what it looks like now) lied to us and as far as it goes their creadibility is down the drain."
The credibility of intelligence reports may be shown to be poor, but the interpretation of the reports by the heads of state are not proven disengenuous by default unless the reports dishonesty is obvious and the heads knew they were untrue. It is also important to stress that some methods of transferring weapons and the location of where they were hidden may not have been seen by coalition satellite intelligence; human intelligence may have been wrong, or lied; and that the coalition cannot be faulted for weapons being removed or destroyed by Saddam's forces without proof that they had knowledge of either at the start of the war.
If I am accused of having a bomb and told to give it up, and I deny that I have it and do not provide evidence of its destruction or non existence at the time, and independant investigators are disallowed to validate my claim or those of my accussors, the bomb would be impossible to prove real or fake, thus there would be justification for action against me because of international security. And it would be largely my fault for stonewalling. And my consequence is not made unjustified by the later result of finding no bomb or evidence of destruction, I did, after all, force hands to work against me.
TurboSmoke quoting Viper Zero: "BBC slants to the left.'
TurboSmoke: the BBC the British Broadcasting Corporation (not Channel) famously slants to the right, and after all this is Labour we are talking about who are a supposedly leftist party...
the inquiry is justified in terms that we as a public were told by Blair (not Blaire) that the reasons for going to war was not oil but to rid Iraq of its illegal weapons of Mass destruction...to date there have been no weapons found or indeed any evidence that they were there immedialey before the war..
Blair and Bush wanted to end weapons inspections and a dealine was given, even though the UN team said there wasnt enough time and any report handed in would be incomplete and therefore invalid....that same deadline should be given to Bush and Blair now to show us evidence that weapons existed and were an immediate threat to the civilised west....thats all the British public want...to know that Iraqi women and children and British soldiers were not killed needlessly..."
The deadline was based on the assumption that Saddam had the weapons and was aware of their existence and location, or their destruction or non existence at the time. The same deadline does not apply to those whose knowledge is insufficiently comparable to Saddam's. We cannot prove a falsehood by applying to a person knowledge that may not have had.
milefile quoting DGB454:
I haven't heard anything about an investigation but it wouldn't suprise me. Elections aren't too far off.
WMDs or no WMDs doesn't really matter does it? I know that was one of the excuses to do it but in the end with all those mass graves uncovered I really don't think too many people will be upset that we did it. At least not in the US."
milefile: "But Republicans are pushing for the investigations. Then again John McCain might have an axe to grind with Bush.
It seems to me the premise of the investigations is that Bush and his administration claimed Saddam had a huge stockpile of biological and chemical weapons that could be utilized within 45 minutes of being ordered. The also said that Iraq was a short time away from having nuclear weapons. The intelligence documents that were supposed to prove this were forged. By whom I don't know. Combine all of this with the fact that so far, they haven't been able to find anything, not to mention that Saddam is still at large (along with Omar, and Bin Laden), and you have something worth investigating.
I've heard intellgence officers who say they were pressured the Bush administration for being told, in not so many words, "We know it's there, if you can't find it you are incompetent." They also feel as if their intelligence work was distorted to justify a political decision that was already made.
The problem must be that Bush and his administration lied. If we think it's acceptable for our leaders to lie and justify it after the fact, there's no problem.
It'll be interesting to see how it pans out. I can't tell if Bush is trustworthy or not. And I guess it might not matter, as long he gets the job done.
Now what job was that again?"
The claims of intelligence officers does not constitute proof of a lie.
