I saw a kinder gentler GW Bush tonight..

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Antrium,

Don't tell me you think that Saddam has complied with UN resolutions.

Joyfulgirl,

Its not even known that 1,000,000 or even 500,000 Iraqi civilians have died since 1991. Iraq is a police state and it is impossible to verify such claims. In any event, the sanctions regime allows Iraq to sell what ever amount of oil it needs to buy humanitarian supplies. There are dozens of countries around the world that would love to have a fraction of the Billions of dollars worth of oil Iraq is allowed to sell for humanitarian supplies. When loss of life has occured in Iraq, it has been the fault of Saddam Hussein, who controls whether Iraq decides to sell any of its oil for humanitarian supplies, and controls the distrubution of that humanitarian supplies.

In addition in the far north of Iraq where the Kurds have some control because the USA maintains a No Fly Zone over that area, the Kurds have recieved tons of humanitarian supplies. directly from the USA.

I agree with Bushes policy on Iraq and am shocked to see that people don't see the obvious threat from Saddam's regime.

Danospano,

The USA did not create Saddam. If anyone did besides his parents, it was the Soviet Union that supplied over 80% of the military equipment to Iraq, trained their military in Soviet military tactics, and kept 2,000 Soviet troops in Iraq up to two months before the 1991 Gulf War!
 
STING, I am not an idiot. Saddam has probably not complied with anything in the last decade. However, I also believe he's not the only one, yet nobody's invading other countries.
 
As I stated earlier-
60 per cent of the ppl on Interference.Com will oppose a strike on Iraq..thats ok.
Im not bothered my beliefs are in the minority here..
I stand by my convictions.
I hope a war doesnt occur however if Saddam were removed the world would be better off.
If he complied w the UN Sanctions his ppl would b better off.:)

Anitram-
Im glad u love your pooch:)

deep-
I dont count how many times you post nor where you post..
I do see a pattern of you only posting negatively in my threads however..
carry on, keep up the good work..


Peace-
-diamond-
:dance:
 
Antrium,

The difference is that other countries are not breaking agreements like the UN ceacefire agreement of 1991 that simply put that war on pause. The 1991 UN ceacefire agreement legally calls for the resumption of offensive military operations against Iraq to bring it into compliance. Resolutions against many of the other countries I think your thinking about, are 1st, not ceacefire agreements putting a war on hold, and 2nd don't legally call for offensive military operations to bring the violator into compliance.
 
No matter what Iraq does or doesn't do, no matter what the UN does or doesn't do, the US govt wants a war in Iraq.

Bush's speech (which I have read, but not seen) was the same old whatever. I don't know how it could 'sell' anything to anyone. He says alot without actually saying anything at all, but throws in a few lines like "and the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud" or something like that, just to make a few of the dumber % of the population wet their pants and jump up and down.

I read an article in an Aussie mag called 'The Bulletin', it's the sister mag of US Newsweek. Anyway, they had an article in it called "Why the World Hates GW". It wasn't an anti-bush article at all, the author was defending him alot, the stereotype of him being as smart as a plank of wood etc.
The author was also pro-Bush with his plans for Iraq. He said the best thing the US could do to 'sell' their Iraq plans to the world would be to keep Bush off tv, as his way of speaking, the language he uses, the clearly 'dumbed down' speeches might work on the average American, but look terrible as a 'world leader' on the international stage. Here in Australia, similar to the UK, the govt is right behind Bush, we'll have troops there UN or no UN, but the public are around 70% against, and both the Aussie and UK govts are getting their heads together to trade ideas for selling this war to their respective populations and they both agree that their biggest stumbling block is Bush himself, or Bush's image.
 
a couple of articles on the speech

Published on Tuesday, October 8, 2002 by the Los Angeles Times
Truth on Iraq Seeps Through
by Robert Scheer

In a speech intended to frighten the American people into supporting a war, the president Monday again trotted out his grim depiction of Saddam Hussein as a terrifying boogeyman haunting the world. However, a CIA report released late last week and designed to bolster Bush's case for preemptive invasion instead provided clear evidence that Iraq poses less of a threat to the world than at any other time in the past decade.

In its report, the CIA concludes that years of U.N. inspections combined with U.S. and British bombing of selected targets have left Iraq far weaker militarily than in the 1980s, when it was supported in its war against Iran by the United States.

The CIA report also concedes that the agency has no evidence that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons, although it lamely attempts to put the worst spin on that embarrassing fact: "Although Saddam probably does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them."

Of course, that is a statement about intent, not capability, and one that can be made about dozens of the world's nations, many of them run by dictators as brutal as Hussein.

None of the unstable nations already possessing deliverable nuclear weapons are targets of Bush's wrath. And in the case of the military dictatorship of Pakistan, which at some point is likely to use such weapons in a war with India, we have even eliminated the sanctions imposed as punishment for developing those nuclear arms.

More important than its psychoanalyzing of Iraq's megalomaniacal leader is the CIA's concession that the much-maligned inspections done by teams of experts organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency actually worked quite well: "More than 10 years of sanctions and the loss of much of Iraq's physical nuclear infrastructure under IAEA oversight have not diminished Saddam's interest in acquiring or developing nuclear weapons."

Similarly, the report concludes that Iraq's chemical weapons "capability was reduced during the UNSCOM [United Nations Special Commission] inspections and is probably more limited now than it was at the time of the Gulf War."

The report also notes that all cases of documented use of chemical weapons by Iraq occurred on or before March 1988, primarily against Iranian troops in a war covertly supported by the U.S., and that neither chemical nor biological weapons were used against the United States during or after the Gulf War.

So what we have here is our top intelligence agency endorsing the past success of a peaceful, enforceable disarmament technique that our allies and the United Nations support, while our president and his Cabinet repeatedly belittle it as a sham.

In fact, if the CIA is to be believed, the inspections that were broken off four years ago amid bombing of Iraq by the U.S. and its allies should be reinstated immediately, even ahead of a tougher U.N. resolution.

If Iraq thwarts the resumption of effective inspections, the CIA report also makes obvious that continued airstrikes targeting suspected armaments facilities would make far more sense than a costly, risky full-fledged invasion.

"UNSCOM inspection activities and coalition military strikes destroyed most of [Iraq's] prohibited ballistic missiles and some Gulf War-era chemical and biological munitions," the CIA report says, but "Iraq still has a small force of extended-range Scud-variant missiles, chemical precursors, biological seed stock, and thousands of munitions suitable for chemical and biological agents."

The report claims that Iraq may have converted some of its "legitimate vaccine and biopesticide plants to biological warfare." But since the CIA report provides maps pinpointing suspect Iraqi weapons sites, they could easily be taken out short of the antiseptic-sounding "regime change" the Bush administration is aching to achieve.

In truth, the invasion is required not to meet a pressing threat to our security but rather to meet the threat to GOP control of Congress posed by a sagging U.S. economy and a stock market that has wiped out the savings of many Americans. That and the pent-up desire of frustrated wannabe imperialists among top Bush advisors to find a way to use our high-tech weaponry to micromanage the world. The CIA report makes it clear there is no plausible national security reason for pushing for war with Iraq at this time, other than the ill-advised imperial goal of directly controlling the world's oil supplies.

That's why the president in his speech Monday was reduced to scaring Americans with more tales of Hussein the Boogeyman.
 
Published on Wednesday, October 8, 2002 in the Guardian/UK
White House 'Exaggerating Iraqi Threat'
Bush's Televised Address Attacked by US Intelligence

by Julian Borger in Washington

President Bush's case against Saddam Hussein, outlined in a televised address to the nation on Monday night, relied on a slanted and sometimes entirely false reading of the available US intelligence, government officials and analysts claimed yesterday.

Officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being put under intense pressure to produce reports which back the administration's line, the Guardian has learned. In response, some are complying, some are resisting and some are choosing to remain silent.

"Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence.

In his address, the president reassured Americans that military action was not "imminent or unavoidable", but he made the most detailed case to date for the use of force, should it become necessary.

But some of the key allegations against the Iraqi regime were not supported by intelligence currently available to the administration. Mr Bush repeated a claim already made by senior members of his administration that Iraq has attempted to import hardened aluminum tubes "for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons". The tubes were also mentioned by Tony Blair in his dossier of evidence presented to parliament last month.

However, US government experts on nuclear weapons and centrifuges have suggested that they were more likely to be used for making conventional weapons.

"I would just say there is not much support for that [nuclear] theory around here," said a department of energy specialist.

David Albright, a physicist and former UN weapons inspector who was consulted on the purpose of the aluminum tubes, said it was far from clear that the tubes were intended for a uranium centrifuge.

Mr Albright, who heads the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington thinktank, said: "There's a catfight going on about this right now. On one side you have most of the experts on gas centrifuges. On the other you have one guy sitting in the CIA."

Mr Albright said skeptics at the energy department's Lawrence Livermore national laboratory in California had been ordered to keep their doubts to themselves. He quoted a colleague at the laboratory as saying: "The administration can say what it wants and we are expected to remain silent."

There is already considerable skepticism among US intelligence officials about Mr Bush's claims of links between Iraq and al-Qaida. In his speech on Monday, Mr Bush referred to a "very senior al-Qaida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year".

An intelligence source said the man the president was referring to was Abu Musab Zarqawi, who was arrested in Jordan in 2001 for his part in the "millennium plot" to bomb tourist sites there. He was subsequently released and eventually made his way to Iraq in search of treatment. However, intercepted telephone calls did not mention any cooperation with the Iraqi government.

There is also profound skepticism among US intelligence experts about the president's claim that "Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases".

Bob Baer, a former CIA agent who tracked al-Qaida's rise, said that there were contacts between Osama bin Laden and the Iraqi government in Sudan in the early 1990s and in 1998: "But there is no evidence that a strategic partnership came out of it. I'm unaware of any evidence of Saddam pursuing terrorism against the United States."

A source familiar with the September 11 investigation said: "The FBI has been pounded on to make this link."

In making his case on Monday, Mr Bush made a startling claim that the Iraqi regime was developing drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which "could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas".

"We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States," he warned.

US military experts confirmed that Iraq had been converting eastern European trainer jets, known as L-29s, into drones, but said that with a maximum range of a few hundred miles they were no threat to targets in the US.

"It doesn't make any sense to me if he meant United States territory," said Stephen Baker, a retired US navy rear admiral who assesses Iraqi military capabilities at the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.

Mr Cannistraro said the flow of intelligence to the top levels of the administration had been deliberately skewed by hawks at the Pentagon.

"CIA assessments are being put aside by the Defense department in favor of intelligence they are getting from various Iraqi exiles," he said. "Machiavelli warned princes against listening to exiles. Well, that is what is happening now."
 
Sorry, D--I just did a search to try to find an article that praised it but didn't find anything. You got one? Bring it on!
 
I wanna thank all the contibutor's of this thread.
Sting
Joyful
SF
Khan
ect
ect
ect

The point of this thread was-

To show GW isnt the trigger happy person the media portays him as.
To show a genuine person who isnt anxious to launch into a war.
To show a man who is humane, the same man..as he was the days after 9-11.
To show that Iraq still has an oppurtunity to "get right" w the UN.

Time will tell.

Bono himself has saluted the American Troops in their fight on The War On Terror per The Tonight Show performance w Jay Leno, last Nov 2001. He played to the American Service Men and Women who were invited there exclusively.
He went on to say that Ireland was sending "The Guiness Boat" to fight the War On Terror.

A strike on Iraq would be only an extension of The War On Terror-if they fail to comply w the UN resolutions.
My prayer is that is doesnt come to that.

Out-
-diamond-
:dance:
 
Screaming Flower said:
i saw it. i'm still not sold.

agreed


I think iraq is a threat...but the Bush went about it the wrong way to begin with and now has to back pedle to hard to not look like war monger. ..I do think a regime change is the best thing for iraq though.


Also three commisions tried to link saddam to al qaeda and failed to do so


now on the eve of bush wanting a to fight a war..they find these mysterious connections????



sounds a little fishy to me...and if it's true the evidence must be presented to the american ppl
 
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American foreign policy

Pre-empting threats, threatening pre-emption

Sep 26th 2002
From The Economist print edition


Only Saddam Hussein, and any would-be emulators, need fear George Bush's foreign policy

AP




MUCH of the time, foreign policy is made by hints, bribery, threats and, in this televisual age, soundbites. This week it was made in a pair of substantial documents?America's new ?National Security Strategy?, outlining George Bush's foreign-policy thinking, and the British government's ?assessment? of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The first was intended to reassure, the other to scare. The truly scary thing is that much of the reaction to these documents?in soundbites, naturally?has got them the wrong way round.

Mr Bush's ?strategy?, which is the sort of thing every administration gets round to assembling, contained nothing seriously new (see article). What caught the attention, though, was one element that had been mentioned before but not fully fleshed out: the notion that, if America saw that a country or organisation was developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons for use against it, then it would be willing to take pre-emptive action to deal with that threat. In other words, it would not wait until thousands or millions of people had been killed. Such action need not only mean war, the report stressed, and would not necessarily be done by America alone. But if a unilateral military strike were absolutely necessary, then Mr Bush said he was willing to order one.

The question is: should you be scared by that, or reassured? First of all, some distracting arguments need to be cleared away. This does not, as some say, set a ?precedent? for future invasions by any Russia, China or, indeed, Iraq. Despite the fine words of the United Nations Charter deploring the use of force, dozens of its signatories have used ?pre-emptive? attacks during the past half-century: the Soviet Union on many occasions, Israel, Iraq, many African countries, India, Pakistan and the United States itself (in Grenada, for example), among others. And how good it would have been for the world, most people still think, if the democracies had pre-empted Hitler back in the mid-1930s. Second, it does not entail America giving itself new ?rights? or flouting existing sources of ?legitimacy?: all Mr Bush has said is that, in extremis, he will act. So would many other countries, in their own extremity.

First and foremost, this is reassuring to Americans: if someone is building a suitcase nuclear bomb to be exploded in Chicago, the president will not wait for years of debate and piles of reports from international study-groups before doing something to stop it. Yet it should also reassure other people. They should be reassured by the promise that such a move is very much a last resort. But they should also be reassured by America's willingness to threaten it. For the point of the threat is old-fashioned deterrence: that by declaring your willingness to act, you will make it less likely that you will ever need to act. Such deterrence, in so far as it works, will help protect others too?especially as America, both in its general values and explicitly in this document, stands for freedom and democracy, not imperial conquest or dictatorship.



Saddam Hussein: a worked example
In the end, the basic issue is whether you trust America to act more-or-less wisely, or whether you think it (or Mr Bush personally) is in fact a Wild West cowboy. Given the careful, determined response Mr Bush gave to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, and given the fact that for all the words about ?regime change? he has done nothing precipitate against Iraq, it is hard to find any evidence of cowboy tendencies, at least on his part. It ought also to be reassuring that his new security strategy is packed to the brim with idealistic language about peace and prosperity for all, and full of declarations of intent to work with allies, reinforce non-proliferation treaties, operate through multilateral organisations and so on.

But should you believe such words? Scepticism is always in order when a government speaks, especially when strategy documents thud into the world's awkward realities. Iraq does, though, offer a case-study in how things might work. For it is hard to imagine a better current example of when to consider pre-emptive action as an alternative to containment: a murderous dictator and declared enemy of America who has been building stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons for 20 years, and is trying to develop nuclear weapons too.

However, far from blundering unilaterally into an invasion on a presidential whim, Mr Bush has placed the United Nations at the heart of his strategy against Saddam Hussein. His closest ally, Britain, this week laid out in painstaking detail the evidence of Mr Hussein's weapons programmes, his deceit, his evasion of weapons inspections and his use of such weapons in the past. The dossier (see article) contained only a few new facts but much that should be scary to those unfamiliar with Mr Hussein's past record. Now, Britain and America will try to persuade the Security Council to pass a new resolution threatening force unless Mr Hussein fulfils his past promises to disarm, which over the past 11 years have been the subject of 16 UN resolutions. The threat of invasion is being used as a last-but-one resort; the threat of a unilateral invasion is only a last resort. Mr Hussein, it is to be hoped, is now scared. On this evidence, nobody else needs to be.
 
Diamond:

I watched it and I agree with most of what he says. I hope it doesn't have to come to any large military action, but I understand that it may. I have seen it said that this is a "racist war" and that Bush is trigger happy and such; well, just as many of you are not "sold" on Bush's position, I put no monetary value in the "racist" and "trigger happy" claims. Thanks.

~U2Alabama
 
Arun-
I dont think the connection needs to be made.
Saddam needs to go..period, before or after Osama..

Thanks for the contributions Sting/Bama:up:

DB9
 
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well


The bush administration is saying that this is part of the war on terror


Also....if Bush sr had done this right the first time....we wouldn't need a second war with iraq. ....so you can't tell me the bush lineage is somehow doing soemthing righteous...it's just trying to correct a previous 'f*ck' up

so naturally you have to connect it..that's sorta the point.


If bush just said...." hey saddam is a f*cker..needs to go, here's the evidence"/..I'd say go ahead.



I am very upset that countries like russia and france have their heads up their ass on the iraq issue...they need to understand that iraq broke the resolutions and their need to be consequences.
 
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Arun V said:
Also....if Bush sr had done this right the first time....we wouldn't need a second war with iraq. ....so you can't tell me the bush lineage is somehow doing soemthing righteous...it's just trying to correct a previous 'f*ck' up

GHW Bush went as far as the UN resolutions allowed at the time. He played by the UN's rules and now we've got to finish the job.
 
diamond said:
Ms. Joyful-
Thank you for your 2 unbiased articles;)

If an article is pro-attacking Iraq, it's biased.
If it's against, it's biased.
So a non-biased article would have to come from an alien who just says "Iraq? I dunno."
 
U2Bama said:
Diamond:

I watched it and I agree with most of what he says. I hope it doesn't have to come to any large military action, but I understand that it may. I have seen it said that this is a "racist war" and that Bush is trigger happy and such; well, just as many of you are not "sold" on Bush's position, I put no monetary value in the "racist" and "trigger happy" claims. Thanks.

~U2Alabama

just because i'm not sold, doesn't mean i think bush is racist or trigger-happy. i don't think that. i just fear that we are getting ourselves into something without thinking it fully through. at the moment i feel more threatened by al qaeda still than i do saddam. i feel like we should finish that job first. i'm not saying that saddam isn't a major threat, but i am afraid of the number of soldiers we will lose, as well as the number of innocent iraquis who will die. we can blame saddam all we want, and i agree that he is a truly evil man and is the root cause of this but our hands will not be clean when this is over. i just want to make sure we exhaust all other options before taking a military approach.


*edited because i can't spell worth a damn before 10 am.
 
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I agree with flower...we gotta take care of al qaeda and there isn't a solid al qaeda saddam link.


I thinK regime change is the best hing for iraq cos we could finnaly end the sanctions which kills millions of iraqis every year ( and there is no way i want to see them lifted before saddam is out of power). in truth any war we fight with iraq will kill far fewer iraqis' than the sanctions do year after year. so that's not a foremost concern in my mind.


I really dont' feel like giving the arab world one more reason to hate us. it's just going to mean having to gight two or three more wars later.
 
nbcrusader said:


GHW Bush went as far as the UN resolutions allowed at the time. He played by the UN's rules and now we've got to finish the job.

well we dont' impose on israel to comply with UN resolutions...why do we have to follow them???
 
Resolutions in regards to Israel do not call for the use of force to resolve them. Resolutions in regards to Iraq do!

In regards to sanctions, millions of Iraqi's are NOT killed every year by sanctions. Iraq under sanctions is allowed to sell all the oil they need to purchase as much humanitarian supplies they need to prevent problems among its population. Iraq has the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world and can use this wealth to purchase any humanitarian supplies they need. I'm sure there have been Iraqi's killed over the past few years, mostly by Saddam, but there is no way to accurately verify who, where, and how certain individuals have died or been murdered, given Saddam Husseins complete control of Iraqi society.

Another point is that launching a military strike against Iraq does not take away from resources being used to fight the war on terrorism. The USA has a large enough military and intelligence services to not only fight Iraq and Al-Quada at the same time, but to safeguard against a possible North Korean invasion of South Korea, continue to police the situation in Bosnia, Kosovo and other area's, and to watch the situation between China and Tawain and still have forces available to respond to all these contingencies combined!
 
STING2 said:
Resolutions in regards to Israel do not call for the use of force to resolve them. Resolutions in regards to Iraq do!

In regards to sanctions, millions of Iraqi's are NOT killed every year by sanctions. Iraq under sanctions is allowed to sell all the oil they need to purchase as much humanitarian supplies they need to prevent problems among its population. Iraq has the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world and can use this wealth to purchase any humanitarian supplies they need. I'm sure there have been Iraqi's killed over the past few years, mostly by Saddam, but there is no way to accurately verify who, where, and how certain individuals have died or been murdered, given Saddam Husseins complete control of Iraqi society.

Another point is that launching a military strike against Iraq does not take away from resources being used to fight the war on terrorism. The USA has a large enough military and intelligence services to not only fight Iraq and Al-Quada at the same time, but to safeguard against a possible North Korean invasion of South Korea, continue to police the situation in Bosnia, Kosovo and other area's, and to watch the situation between China and Tawain and still have forces available to respond to all these contingencies combined!


sting we actually agreed....the argument was that bush left saddam in power cos of UN resolutions....so back then...the US should have taken saddam out. Now I brought up israel only to point out...we should have finished the job in 1991...now..it may be harder.


also..even the US congreesman that went to iraq and came back were critical of the sanctions....I think the sanctions are legit..but they aren't doing the iraqi ppl any good.
 
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This has been a nice healthy discussion.:up:

The beginning of The Persian Gulf War the voting was ALOT closer.

I think after Saddam is removed it will be a "wake-up" call to other "up and coming" terrorists..that the civilized peaceful nations of the world are united and there is no future in reigning in fear in terror..causing them to re-examine their thinking..

Sure terror will never go away entirely, however if we do nothing they will flourish.
Sorta like pulling weeds in the garden..maintiance..stinky maintance;)
Not a fun job but nesecessary in our day and age..
Remove the terrorists in our world, remove the stinky weeds from our garden:)

Hope this analogy makes sense:)

-diamond-
:dance:
 
diamond said:
I think after Saddam is removed it will be a "wake-up" call to other "up and coming" terrorists..that the civilized peaceful nations of the world are united and there is no future in reigning in fear in terror..causing them to re-examine their thinking..

Oh it will be a wake-up call alright... :down:
 
Arun,

The US congressmen that went to Iraq only get to see what Saddam Hussein wants them to see, things that are a creation of Saddam himself.

At the End of The Gulf War in 1991 Iraq complied with UN resolutions by cooperating with the UN on all points. The process to comply with all resolutions was under way. It was during the Clinton administration which started in 1993, and more particular in 1998 that Iraq became in open violations of UN agreements and resolutions.
 
STING2 said:
At the End of The Gulf War in 1991 Iraq complied with UN resolutions by cooperating with the UN on all points. The process to comply with all resolutions was under way. It was during the Clinton administration which started in 1993, and more particular in 1998 that Iraq became in open violations of UN agreements and resolutions.

So are you saying the US should have put some sort of pressure on Iraq in 1993 or 1998 when they first began to violate their sanctions? I hardly think it would have made sense back then given the circumstances. Then again, I'm not sure what has really changed between then and now regarding our relationship with Iraq.
 
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