trevster2k said:
Complying with UN resolutions cannot be used as a reason for military action since many many many many countries allied with and against the US have failed to comply with the UN resolutions and not faced military action. Plus at the time, the US government was berating the UN to the point where it considered the UN to a non-player so it does not make sense to say one does not need UN approval to go to war while at the same time using the non-compliance of a country to a UN resolution as a reason for going to said war.
Anyway, where are WMDs then? In Syria and Lebanon? Iran? In a safety deposit box?
Frankly, unless they find some legitimate evidence this makes the US government look rather foolish and I really feel bad for all the people who sacrificed their children and the casualties who have to come home and try to rebuild their lives with injuries from the war.
If the rational for going to war from the beginning was to liberate a country from a dictatorship then I would have understood this reasoning. If is was to eliiminate a possible future threat to the US, well, Bush better get busy because there are dozens of countries out there that are a "future potential threat" to "freedom".
I have never understood how the most powerful, richest government in the history of the world with the largest military machine ever seen by man along with a ton of nukes was fearful of a pathetic despot in a tiny country with barely any navy, a weakened useless army, outdated equipment and cordened in with no fly zones after a decade of economic sanctions on the other side of the world.
I thought it was because it was time for the military guys to blow their wad and reload with new stuff for military contractors to sell to the government, but that's just me.
I responded to the UN resolutions part in an above posts.
As to where the WMD could be, it could easily be anywhere in Iraq. Iraq is the size of Texas and such stocks would be easy to hide underground in such a way that they would never be found by anyone. Just think about it, if I took something from your house and buried it 500 feet underground 400 miles from your house, do you think you would ever find it?
It was never incumbent upon the United States or any member government of the United Nations to prove that Saddam had WMD. In 1991, Saddam signed a UN ceacefire Agreement to end the first Gulf War in which he agreed to VERIFIABLY DISARM of all WMD! Failure to do so would mean renewed military action. If Saddam had dismantled stocks of WMD or still had intact ones, it was incumbent upon Saddam and Saddam alone to either hand over the stocks or show the dismantled remains. Anything short of that would be a violation of the Ceacefire Agreement that ended the first Gulf War.
Some things to remember about the threat from Saddam and the region.
The Planet is dependent upon the energy resources of the Persian Gulf Region to keep the global economy running smoothly. A sudden loss of the energy this region provideds the world would create a global economic depression that would make the great depression of the 1930s look like a vacation. The consequences of such a depression cannot be fully caculated.
Saddam had invaded and attacked four different countries in the region with the goal of siezing other countries oil reserves. He had used WMD more times in these military actions than any other leader in history. In the process, over 1.7 million people inside and outside the region had died as a result of his military actions.
Given these facts, the UN brought up a number of conditions that Saddam had to fully agree to if he wanted to end hostilities with the coalition in March of 1991. Among these conditions was the verifiable disarmament of all WMD. Saddam was found after the Gulf War to be only one year away from having a Nuclear Weapon and given his actions, the invasions and attacks on four different countries in less than ten years and his proximity to one of the most vital regions of the planet, there was absolutely no room for error. Saddam had to either comply with the conditions or be removed from power. Saddam initially did comply with many things, but this tappered off in the mid 1990s causing many problems.
By 2003, Saddam was making over 4 Billion dollars a year through the blackmarket sale of his oil and the sanctions essentially did not exist in many area's. Smuggling new weapons into Iraq was possible and did happen. Within a few years at the rate the embargo and sanctions were falling apart, it would be possible for Saddam to begin rearming his military in a substantial way.
Also, failing to enforce the UNs most serious resolutions, would essentially make any such resolutions in the future irrelevant.
The international community could not allow Saddam to use unaccounted for WMD to aid him in a new military adventure as he had done so many times in the past. The International Community could not allow Saddam to rebuild his military strength and gain access to new weapons that would dwarf past capabilities.
Saddam unlike, other dictators in the world today, had unprovoked, invaded and attacked 4 different countries, used WMD more times than any leader in history, threatened the planets energy supply and economy through his actions, capabilities and proximity to much of the regions energy supplies, and killed over 1.7 million people. Find a dictator or country in todays world that has even remotely come close to that behavior.
Most the planets energy supplies comes from an area that is within 100 miles of the Iraqi border in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait. As Saddam had already previously shown, it does not take the largest or best equipped military in the world, if positioned along these area's, to potentially sieze or sabotage this incredibly vital region of the world. Saddam had already come close to doing this once, to allow him another chance would be insane. The resolutions and Ceacefire Agreement were designed to prevent Saddam from being able to commit his prior actions. Failing to enforce the Ceacefire Agreement and the resolutions would jeopardize the security of the region and the global economy.
The threat from an undisarmed Saddam was something the UN decided was an unacceptable threat in 1991 which is why in stating the conditions for the Gulf War Ceacefire , it required that Saddam fully and Verifiably disarm of all WMD or face renewed military action to bring about compliance with that condition.
