Rumsfeld Finally Tells The Truth + Illogical War Plans

[gvox]

Well just having watched the most recent Pentagon briefing live minutes ago, I can finally say I've heard an honest statement from this -head's mouth..

On whether or not a US led invasion of Iraq was inevitable:

'well I think we all still hope that we can peacefully and diplomatically force Saddam to disarm'

*question: how do you see that happening?*

'well it could happen in a number of ways..Saddam could leave, his so-called friends could convince him to leave, or the people in his army could decide that it doesn't make sense to defend a regime that will soon be gone'

Ok, looking at these options logically, assuming of course that Iraq/Hussein possesses these horrific weapons of mass destruction that the UN claims they do:

Option 1 - Saddam leaves, and the US does not invade...hmmm...does this mean he takes his stockpile of WMD with him? If so, where? If not, who gets to keep them? And who will be in control of them? Doesnt that sortof defeat the whole purpose, ie eliminating the weapons? Or will the US have to invade anyways just to make sure they are all destroyed?

Option 2 - see Option 1.

Option 3 - like DUH you freaking idiot, if his army stands down you will still invade. That wasn't an option under the question posed.

Come to think of it, if the US invades and depose Saddam, will they then be forced to excavate, uncover, whatever, all these thousands of supposed WMDs and verifiably destroy them in front of the UN inspection teams? I mean, logically, that is what the US is saying they want to do, right? Acheive the destruction of Saddam's weapons?

In other words, the whole 'disarmament' thing is a sham, a ruse, a petty excuse for a war that should not happen. This whole thing is about Saddam Hussein and oil. And don't freakin tell me that the US only gets 9% of its oil from Iraq blah blah blah etc etc....it doesnt matter where it goes, what matters is that Iraq has the largest verifiable oil reserve in the world. Control of that would make the US infinitely powerful in an OPEC situation and that power is the real prize here, regardless of where the oil eventually gets exported to.

The way I see it, the Iraqi army could gather up every last rocket, gun, knife and kitchen utensil into the valley of Meggido and set fire to it and the US would still go in after Hussein.

Oh yeah, they did some more 'significant disarmament' today, and Blix in his press conference seemed to indicate that his position on Friday will be that the concrete objectives of the inspections are finally being realized. Like that really matters tho??

This puts the US in the unenviable position of violating major international laws (i.e. last time I checked we werent supposed to declare war on leaders just cause we dont like them), and thus they stand a great chance of being DEALT WITH internationally.

Hey, if we're going to have a war, lets go all the way...how bout a world war 3 situation where France Russia and Germany (with China probably signing on) decide that it is (and it is) there responsibility to enforce the UN mandate and enforce continued inspections and protect the UN teams. Let them send their armies down and kick the US army's ass all over the middle east. Then they can drop some almost-nuclear bombs on them too cause thats the most expeditious way to deal with aggressive invaders who would be too much trouble to fight conventionally.

GO WAR! YAY IM SO HAPPY WE'RE GOIN INTO WW3!!!

 

[Salome]

The way I see it, the Iraqi army could gather up every last rocket, gun, knife and kitchen utensil into the valley of Meggido and set fire to it and the US would still go in after Hussein.

then I guess that the way you see it is the wrong way

 

[U2luv]

Actually, I think Gabriel is right. Bush is going to send troops into Iraq no matter what anyone else says. He WANTS this too much. To a degree where he couldn't care less about what it does to the world, Americans, or anyone else. It's sad to think that a man with such hatred for someone is in control of one of the largest military forces in the world.

 

[Zooropa]

Somehow I don't see why Bush is the bad guy when he has given Saddam every opportunity to disarm in the first place. If Saddam had complied months ago, we wouldn't be where we are now.

 

[verte76]

Actually, I think Gabriel is right. Bush is going to send troops into Iraq no matter what anyone else says. He WANTS this too much. To a degree where he couldn't care less about what it does to the world, Americans, or anyone else. It's sad to think that a man with such hatred for someone is in control of one of the largest military forces in the world.

I agree.

 

[gvox]

then I guess that the way you see it is the wrong way

Really Salome? How many of his weapons will Saddam have to destroy before Bush calls off the brigade?

Rumsfeld's comments make the position explicitly clear that even if all they had were bows and arrows, as long as Saddam remains in power the US will attack.

Like I said, at least someone is finally telling the truth.

 

[deep]

excerpts from BBC interview

full transcript here

Transcript: Donald Rumsfeld interview
The BBC's David Dimbleby has interviewed US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Washington. Here is a transcript of the interview:

David Dimbleby: Mr Rumsfeld, does the stepping up of attacks on Iraqi positions in the no-fly zone mean, in your view, that war is now pretty much inevitable?

Donald Rumsfeld: No, I don't see the connection really. In fact, I'm not even positive that there has been a particular step-up in the number of attacks. What - we do, the United Kingdom and the United States, have what we call response options. And when there's some sort of an indication of aggressiveness in the northern or southern no fly zone, then we tend to respond and deal with some aspect, generally, of the air defence system.
?

..

DD: In what way is Iraq a threat to the United States that would allow it to act in self-defence of American interests?

DR: The issue that's before the world, it seems to me, is the pervasiveness of weapons of mass destruction and the spread of these, the proliferation of these technologies, chemical and biological weapons, increasingly nuclear weapons. We could in 10 years have double the number of nuclear powers in the world.
The situation with Iraq is that we're at the end of the string. We've tried diplomacy for 12 years. We've tried economic sanctions, and they have not worked. The effort on the part of the international community to prevent him from having those things that enable him to develop those capabilities failed. And he was not contained, and he was not in a box. And even limited military action in the north and the south has really not done it.
The critical issue is the relationship between weapons of terrorist states, which Iraq is, by everyone's agreement -

DD: America took it off the list of terror states 20 years ago.

DR: I don't know that. I accept -

DD: When you - when you - sorry. When you visited Iraq and negotiated with Saddam Hussein, when America wanted Saddam Hussein for its own purposes, America took Iraq off the list of terrorist states and, indeed, supplied it with the wherewithal to make the chemical weapons they're now trying to remove.

DR: I've read that type of thing, but I don't know where you get your information, and I don't believe it's correct. They may have been taken off. I was a private businessman. I was asked for a few months to assist after the 241 Marines were killed in Beirut, Lebanon. And I did meet with Saddam Hussein. I did not give him or sell him or bring him any chemical weapons or any biological weapons, as some of the European press likes to print. It's just factually not true.
Now, whether or not the United States at some point, when I was not part of the government, decided to take him off a terrorist list, you may be right. In fact, I -

DD: Are you saying you don't know, you didn't know when you went there whether he was on the list of terror states or not? You were trying to reopen -

DR: I believe he was.

DD: - a relationship between the United States and Iraq.

DR: That's right. And I believe he was on the list of terrorist states when I went there.

DD: We're being diverted a bit here, but let's just go into this, because it's another of the causes of a lack of credibility, or a credibility gap that you particularly have to fill, that you were there and met the man.

DR: I was there with the President and Secretary Shultz to meet with him and to see it was one of the few Middle Eastern countries that had not re-established relationships with the United States after the earlier Middle East war.

DD: But you aren't saying that you weren't aware that he was using chemical weapons, because the Secretary of State at the time had said they were using them.

DR: I was certainly aware of that. I didn't say I wasn't aware of that. I said I was not aware that the United States gave him, as you suggested, or I gave him, and that I had some burden to bear. That's just utter nonsense.

DD: I'm not suggesting you had a burden to bear. I was saying that there was one of the reasons you lacked -

DR: You said you particularly.

DD: No, you went and talked to the man.

DR: I did.

DD: But what I'm suggesting is that the United States in the world outside, over and over again people say, well, now they're trying to get rid of the weapons, as Jesse Jackson put it when he was at Hyde Park Corner a week ago, for which the United States has the receipts. I mean, that's the problem, that you created this monster, evil, as you know -

DR: You who?

DD: You, the United States, not you personally.
?
?

DD: Can I come to the question which seems to me to be at the heart of all this, of the credibility of the United States' position, which clearly exercises the British Prime Minister, the American President and the administration, and one hears a lot of doubt cast on America's motives for this. Do you think you'd win more backing in the outside world if you'd spent a fraction of the time on the Israeli-Palestinian problem as you've spent on Iraq?

DR: Well, probably. I think that the president and Secretary Powell have worked on the Palestinian, Arab-Israeli problem a good deal in the past two years. They have the president's made several speeches on the subject, Secretary Powell has been involved, there've been special envoys involved. That is a problem that's a tough one, and it's been a tough one my entire adult lifetime, and that it has not been solved in the last 20 months ought not to be a surprise to anybody. The president cares about it; he is concerned about it; he has addressed it. And I think that had there been success there, there would have been, possibly, greater support.
On the other hand, the implication of your question is that there is not great support, and there is great support. There are a very large number of nations that will be participating in a coalition of the willing in the event Saddam Hussein refuses to co-operate and force has to be used.

DD: And yet America is seen as applying double standards in this, isn't it? I mean, using the UN against Iraq, for instance, and then you yourself saying - repeating two or three times, in the context of Israel and the UN resolutions there, that the occupied territories on the West Bank are so-called occupied territories. That's the kind of thing that makes people think, well, actually America is not serious about this, they're so pro-Israel that they're not.

DR: Interesting -

DD: Well, you said that.

DR: Well, first of all, I did not repeat it two or three times. You're just factually wrong.

DD: You said it twice in the same series of remarks. You used the expression "so-called".

DR: Fair enough. I was in a meeting, and I was asked a question, and the phrase came out.

DD: But is it what you think that they're so-called occupied, or do you think they're occupied and should be given up?

DR: I think that that's what a negotiation is going to solve. I mean, that is what the negotiation is about. Obviously Israel has offered to give back a major portion of the occupied territories. We know that. The agreement was there. It could have been solved if Arafat had accepted it. He didn't.

DD: But your use of the word "so-called".

DR: If it bothered you, then don't use it.

DD: It's not me it bothers. It's the other Arab states it bothers.

 

[Beefeater]

How many of his weapons will Saddam have to destroy before Bush calls off the brigade?

All of them.

Beefeater

 

[gvox]

Clearly then your sentiments don't match Rumsfeld's.

 

[nbcrusader]

All of them.

Beefeater

No. Just the ones the UN told him he can't have, that he hasn't accounted for while a handful of inspectors kick around the sand while the UN sits on its thumb.

 

[gvox]

while a handful of inspectors kick around the sand

Wow, I didnt realize that 200+ inspectors could be called a 'handful'.

And, debates about their effectiveness aside, I would say that the kicking the sand comment does them a disservice. From all accounts they seem to be doing the job laid out for them.

 

[sue4u2]

It's the biggest bluff in the history of the world!!!
Please. please let it be... I can only hope ...
Saddam will fall for it /comply to it or laugh it off, ???
Know it sound simplistic, Wish it were so.. Pray it is so...