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Pentagon Reportedly Hushed Up Chemical Weapons Finds In Iraq
mr_mischief writes "Multiple sources report that the US found remnants of WMD programs, namely chemical weapons, in Iraq after all. Many US soldiers were injured by them, in fact. The Times reports: "From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein's rule. In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."
According to the Times, the reports were embarrassing for the Pentagon because, in five of the six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been "designed in the US, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies".
Where were they found? Next to the plants set up by Western companies that filled them in Iraq, of course. Who has control of those plants now? Why, ISIS of course. Don't worry, though, the people who thought it was better we didn't know about these things are assuring us that all those weapons were hurriedly destroyed.
My work here is dung.
yes there were chemical weapons, we found them but it was apparently a huge secret even though that is why we went to war
So Bush was right all along.
<NelsonMuntz>HA, HA!</NelsonMuntz>
That's the first thing out of my mouth when I heard this story on TV this morning. I can't imagine Bush and Darth Cheney not shouting it from the rooftops if it had been found as they say. Even if they had to cover up Western involvement, those CW shells would have been trotted out before a full court press so the Bush admin could have their "I told you so!" moment.
They were left over munitions from the Iraq v. Iran war of the 80's. It wasn't new munitions being made since Desert Storm '91. That too would have embarrassed the administration.
Why would the Mainstream Media say a retraction of the CIA report that said there were no WMD stockpiles?
I heard frequently during the war itself that we HAD found chemical weapons, mostly from pro-war proponents. I gather that it was talked about all the time on Fox News and right-wing talk radio.
And the reply, even at the time, was that these were weapons from the first Gulf War, mostly inoperable or unreliable due to age, and likely forgotten about. They weren't part of an ongoing production effort, which is what we'd been told. There was widespread support for the war, at the beginning, based on that, which faded as we realized that the danger had been badly overstated.
So I'm trying to figure out what's new here. I had the impression that this was well known. Is it that it wasn't more widely, discussed because the Pentagon wanted it not to be?
That's really just the beginning of the story. Why the cover-up of US troops being injured by them? Why weren't they disposed of according to international accords on chemical weapons? Are we sure they were all destroyed before ISIL started scrounging old bases and ammo dumps?
Here's the original submission. If you read the multiple articles linked from the original or edited summaries you'll see that just finding them was far from the end of the story.
There's a reason that even if they were serviceable that they were never used. Chemical weapons are terrible. Both strategically and from a human standpoint as well. Chemical weapons don't care whether the soldier being paralyzed is yours or the enemy's and the group being terrorized by the weaponry will change as the wind changes.
And the bush administration, though not bush himself, was pushing the (clearly bogus) nuclear line pretty hard. "Aluminum tubes! Why else would they ever need to buy aluminum tubes?"
The chemical weapons were widely dispersed around Iraq by Saddam Husein's Regime. The cover story about there not being any was created to to try and prevent terrorist scouring all of the hidden weapons caches in Iraq for chemical weapons before the US troops had time to find and destroy them. Sadly, after the administration changed it was politically advantageous to perpetuate the cover story and discontinue chem weapons search efforts.
I don't want to do a sig now
Its no secret Iraq had chemical weapons. They used them liberally against Iranian human wave attacks during the Iran Iraq war.
The reason they were hushed up is because they were provided by western countries. You do know the U.S. and Europe backed Saddam in the Iran Iraq war and most probably encouraged the use of chemical weapons against Iranian teenagers right? Iran had a huge population advantage, Iraqi Shias weren't that keen on fighting Iranian Shia, so Iraq needed technology to level the field and the West helped with that edge.
The West was really happy about a lengthy, bloody stalemate in that war bleeding both countries white.
@de_machina
What, did you think that Hussein was playing his shell game with the inspectors because there really was NOTHING there??
I remember all that - how the inspectors were continuously kept from going to a certain place, then later, kept from going to some other place, until they all went home in frustration.
Hussein was a twisted bastard, but that sort of thing goes beyond his limited intellect, as far as just doing it to bother people.
It was so he could say "but nobody ever found everything".
BUSH WAS RIGHT!!!
No. Bush said that Saddam was actively making WMDs. Bush never said we needed to go to war in Iraq because there are chemical weapons leftover from the 80s. If this legitimizes the war in Iraq then we better get busy making bombs and soldiers. http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/cbwprolif
These are not the WMDs were were told were in Iraq. While Saddam's history with chemical weapons was well known at the time, they were NOT what people were concerned about. This stuff was not what was used as the excuse to go to war and invade.
They were not part of the sales pitch.
Also, these finds were well reported when they happened. They aren't a surprise. They're hardly news.
This sounds like a bad attempt at rewriting history. Someone is hoping that we all have short memories.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So why would the Pentagon hush-up signs of chemical weapons? That just doesn't make any sense because that was used as one of the primary justifications for going to war with Iraq. The only thing that I can surmise is that it was a political move to try and make George W. Bush look bad but even that is tenuous at best because the Pentagon overwhelmingly supports the president. One would think this would not get buried but ran up the flagpole very quickly.
These are weapons from the 80s. Weapons we helped Iraq to obtain when they were one of the people we were supporting in opposition to Iran.
They do not in any way vindicate Bush, and that is the reason that Bush covered it up.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The reason for war was WMDs like nuclear and biological weapons. The world already knew Iraq had chemical ones.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You know, when he pulls a quarter from behind your ear... Yes, they had weapons. Yes, they were already secured before the war even started. It's all bullshit. We are in the midst of another lie to keep the war going. The object is to stay in the game.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Really? Huffington post is your bible? Seriously?
What about all the scrap metal missile parts that went through the port of Rotterdam? Did Huffington post knock that story down too?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
There were warehouses of chemical weapons in Iraq before Gulf War 2 - everyone knew about them, the UN inspectors went to those warehouses first, inventoried them, and sealed them. Saddam was supposed to have destroyed those weapons, by treaty, but that wasn't the point of contention as they were pretty old by then, some left over from the Iran-Iraq war (some even US-made), and likely not useful. We were looking for newly made chemical weapons.
The baffling thing is: why weren't these chemical weapons destroyed in the 10 years we were in Iraq? That makes no sense at all to me. WTF? So now ISIS has a warehouse or two of Iraqi chemical weapons. We went to war partially to prevent just that - terrorists getting WMDs not because Saddam was selling them directly, but because shit happens. Well, shit happened. What were we doing for 10 years following going into Iraq for the stated purpose of destroying these WMDs?
Fortunately, they may all be so old that they're only a danger to ISIS. It's really any WMDs made more recently that are a threat. If Saddam actually had a weapons program active soon before the war, the weapons likely ended up in Syria - certainly Iraqi military convoys carrying something crossed into Syria in the weeks before we attacked - but ISIS is strong in Syria too. Guess we'll find out soon enough.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yeah who can forget "significunt (pun intended)quantities of Uranium from Africa" He was a puppet lying to all of us. The reason why we THOUGHT he had chemical weapons is we SOLD them to him to fight Iran. That was made clear enough. Most of them were destroyed and were used a "reason" to remove Sadam and open the Anbar oil fields ISIS now controls. See how wrong "we" can be? How much else can we mess up, uh West Africa?
Saddam based his entire foreign policy on having his enemies believe he had them. He had used them on both internal and external enemies in the past, it really should come as no surprise to anyone that they were there.
The only people I can see taking this as a great revelation are those that went around shouting "Bush Lied People Died", while they went around having tourettes fits if you mentioned anything good about the man. I doubt even they believed it, but just found it a convenient way to shut down reasoned argument. You could point out that President Clinton bombed Iraq first to stop the WMD program there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... and it would sail over their heads.
The most mind boggling thing is apparently both sides are singularly polarized on the current president who has been implementing the exact same policies as his predecessor. Albeit, a Republican president might have permanently stationed troops in Iraq and prevented ISIS.
I've been on a SEAL/SpecialOps book kick for the last few years and some of the operators that went into Iraq in the early days and were tasked with finding these WMD's on the front end do think they found evidence of developmental weapons programs in addition to the caches of already developed weapons. They basically conclude that stuff was being developed, and hurriedly dismantled and relocated, in country as well as likely to Syria. One of them goes as far as suggesting the only effect of the "diplomatic process" before the war was giving Hussein the time to hide the evidence. The NYT piece only alludes to the old chem weapons they used against Iran, but the SEALS seem to think the stuff they found was part of development programs that were active before the war.
I guess what's really news is how many chem weapons were still available and the extent to which the Pentagon went to keep it hush. As to why, I can only guess.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
We did find chemical weapons. Small quantities well past its shelf life, though. It was pretty obvious that despite some old stockpiles here and there, the Iraqi government hadn't been pursuing a WMD program for many years. This revelation doesn't change the fact that our causus belli was basically a fiction.
The article is wrong about why we kept it quite, though. The Iraqi army had a history of burying weapons systems up to and including attack aircraft in the desert sand. We didn't want local militias going out to look for chemical weapons that we thought might actually be out there. If we had found actual evidence of a WMD program, the government might have publicized it, but that wasn't the case.
More interestingly, we were on the Iranian border for a time, and we were actively fighting with irregulars trying to cross the border and intercepting weapons shipments. Even having been there, I still don't know what to believe about what I saw.
As campaigners routinely pointed out, we knew Iraq had these because the west sold them to Saddam (and because he used the weapons we sold him on his own people).
The question is: of these 5,000 warheads, how many were serviceable? How many were actually close to deployable? Was there any evidence he had a significant defence capability with these weapons?
All of the chemical weapons being found now, and that have been found in the past 10 years, were manufactured in the 1980s during Iraq's war with Iran. Almost none are deployable now (too old, rusted, whatever) but theoretically the chemicals could be removed and used elsewhere.
There was never any question about whether Iraq had chemical weapons. After all, Saddam used them against Iran and his own people. The question has always been, "where are they now?"
The possible answers are that he still had them somewhere, that he gave them away, that he destroyed them, or that he had run out. Each of these answers presents problems. If he still had them, then where were they and who might still have access to them? If he gave them away, who did he give them to and why? If he destroyed them, why not let the West verify this and stop the sanctions (and also prevent an invasion)? If he used them all up, why didn't he make more? Saddam's actions suggest that he had something to hide, or that he wanted people to think that he had something to hide (I always liked the idea that he wanted Iran to believe he had them, but wanted to plant doubt in the US, and he couldn't pull off that balancing act).
I don't know if I believe the article, but it would be nice to have a conclusive answer one way or another.
Why would they retract?
It was known of and reported at least a decade ago that there were chemical weapons plants in Iraq. Also, it has been known of and reported, as stated in the summary, that the plants were from early in Hussein's rule and had been in disuse for years by the time the US invaded in 2003.
Back in 2004 or 2005, I recall some friends whose son was over in Iraq saying that their son had told them he had been with a team that discovered Iraqi chemical weapons and that he saw them with his own eyes. His parents insisted that it was just a matter of time before it hit the news in a big way.
And then nothing.
I don't know what to think at this point. I guess it's a sad state we're in, since I can honestly say that neither the notion that we used them as a pretext for war, nor the notion that we covered up their presence in order to save face for some other reason, strike me as being particularly fanciful.
This comes up about once a year. Iraq had chemical weapons and everyone knew about it BUT this was during the Iran/Iraq war. They were largely destroyed before the second gulf war. What we're cleaning up NOW is still remnants from way back then. What Bush said was that we had to go to war due to imminent threat of actual weapons being used. That was not the case at the time -- when Bush was justifying invasion -- nor is it the case now. We're finding debris and remnants that are hazardous, sure, but no longer weaponized. And they have not been weaponized since well before Bush referenced them as "weapons".
Here's a recent reference:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/conservatives-continue-get-iraqi-wmd-story-wrong
And here's one from a nearly identical situation in 2011:
http://www.wired.com/2011/11/iraq-wmd-seal-target-geronimo/
And here's a fantastic timeline that CNN put together back in 2010:
http://cns.miis.edu/stories/100304_iraq_cw_legacy.htm
kind of a jerk, aren't you? BUSH WAS RIGHT!!!
Why didn't they report this? They were accused of lying and this would have helped to save face.
Report what? That they've found chemical weapons that were sold to Iraq by the U.S. ????
When they searched the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, they uncovered roughly 2,000 pages of documents. You see them here being brought out of the home and placed in U.N. hands. Some of the material is classified and related to Iraq's nuclear program. . . This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji (ph). This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapon shells . . . The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers. . . . First, you will recall that it took UNSCOM four long and frustrating years to pry - to pry - an admission out of Iraq that it had biological weapons. . . One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.
The Bush administration claimed that Iraq had biological, chemical, and maybe nuclear weapons. As for biological weapons, especially the mobile weapons factories, were never found. The nuclear weapons were also never found as Iraq never had the capability. As for chemical weapons, the world has known that Iraq already had mustard gas and sarin since the end of the Iran-Iraq war. The claim by the Bush administration was that they were manufacturing more and newer chemical ones. This was never substantiated. Most likely US soldiers uncovered the old mustard gas and sarin stockpiles.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
...because Reagan sold them to them. This has been reported in left wing media for years, I am glad the right wing media if finally on to this story also. Perhaps because they hope by giving misleading headlines they can confuse people into thinking Iraq had an active WMD program, which they didn't, and to worry people about ISIS now having access to these weapons. On the bright side these weapons are decades old and poorly maintained, so other than the shock value of being able to say "ISIS has chemical weapons stolen from Iraq", don't be surprised if you see limited or no use of them. ISIS *MAY* find some use, but it won't greatly affect their combat effectiveness.
"Aluminum tubes! Why else would they ever need to buy aluminum tubes?"
Really. They come free with Cuban cigars.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
i've known people from the first gulf war and they swore that iraq used chemical weapons against the USA then or that the demolition of some of the ammunition exposed them. a lot of people after the war suffered from light symptoms known to be caused by exposure to nerve agents
There were many chemical weapons in Iraq that were never discovered or controlled by arms inspectors. That's what this story is saying no matter how hard the NYT is trying to obfuscate. These are not weapons that were sealed by the UN.
Umm. Yes he did. See 9/12/02 speech at the UN, and 2003 state of the union.
What were we doing for 10 years following going into Iraq for the stated purpose of destroying these WMDs?
Making LOTS of money of the war and rebuilding of Iraq
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
And the bush administration, though not bush himself, was pushing the (clearly bogus) nuclear line pretty hard. "Aluminum tubes! Why else would they ever need to buy aluminum tubes?"
Could these tubes be used for the internets traffic?
Once again, Onion & friends ahead of the news curve.
Table-ized A.I.
you're revising history. it was also for chemical weapons, and yes everybody knew they had them.
The summary also seems to have left off the critically important TIMELINE.
The "weapons" that were "found" were manufactured and abandoned in the FIRST Gulf War. Back when Bush SENIOR was the President of the USofA.
So the troops in the SECOND Gulf War (Bush Junior) were being exposed to hazardous chemicals that were 10+ years old. THAT is what is/was being covered up. Our troops were working in/around hazardous waste disposal sites WITHOUT proper equipment or training or supervision or follow-up.
There are not any "WMD" being "found" in Iraq now. It's hazardous WASTE.
ISIS (stupid name) does not have "chemical weapons" from that. They have chemical waste that is a health hazard. No GA, GB, GD, VX, or anything like that.
As to why, I can only guess.
You (or the SEAL books you refer to) make several contentions:
1) Iraq was actively engaged in new WMD production prior to the American invasion
2) The "diplomatic process" was intended (by whom?) to give Hussein time to hide this
3) The evidence as dismantled and relocated, likely to Syria
4) And the one we all agree on: the old stockpiles were found in Iraq
I've heard these claims before, particularly the one about Syria. The problem for anyone who takes this line of attack is explaining why the Bush Administration didn't put any of this together to make a case for the invasion and occupation after it was all discovered?
So what's your guess as to why the Bush Administration kept all this quiet?
Were they completely incompetent and let the military cover things up? If that's the case, why did the military cover things up?
Did Administration officials know all this--including the stockpiles etc being moved to Syria--and cover it up for their own reasons? If so, what were they? "A momentary lapse of reason" won't cover it. What is the plausible strategic, tactical, diplomatic or political reason for an Administration that made the invasion of Iraq a signature policy based on a pretext that was widely believed to be false to cover up evidence that would have proven that pretext substantially true?
This is the question that has to be answered.
Finally: if all the WMDs were moved to Syria, why are these WMDs still all over Iraq? (they were presumably in a lot better shape in 2002 than they are today, twelve years later.)
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The problem is that chemical weapons are treated as if they were nuclear weapons in terms of diplomatic maneuverings and consequences... or at least were considered as such. In other words, if a country decides to openly use chemical weapons on American soldiers, it is considered "justified" to go ahead and use nuclear weapons in retaliation.
Yes, this is screwed up and seems silly, but it was the chemical weapons that the Bush administration was talking about elsenwhen, not the nuclear or biological weapons.
Iraq also had a nuclear bomb program in the 1980's, but that one got bombed out of existence by Israel when Iraq tried to build a breeder reactor. There certainly wasn't anybody who was serious about finding nuclear weapons in Iraq in the early 2000's decade. The question at hand was with regards to how large and widespread their chemical weapons inventory might be.
So now ISIS has a warehouse or two of Iraqi chemical weapons. We went to war partially to prevent just that...
Just the opposite, pretty nice delivery system if you ask me. A little slow maybe, but then so is the post office some times. I mean, these are the same "moderate" freedom fighters that we hired to... what? Oh yeah, destroy Syria... cuz like... Russia... Yeah, well, mission accomplished, gang! Good work!
No no, wait, this was all like, totally an accident, right? Ooookaaay! walks away whistling *I saw nuthink!*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If USFOR found chemical weapons development facilities, it would have been shouted to the heavens as justification for the war.
Why in the world would USG keep this secret?
The answer is that it is a load of BS.
Does this really make sense to you?
Is it logical to you that USSOCOM, the Pentagon, and the Administration would keep evidence that the war was justified a secret?
Would Colin Powell not break this news to repair the catastrophic damage to his legacy?
It was for NEW chemical weapons which was never found.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
They are so used to lying that they now are incapable of telling the truth. Even when the truth is better than the lie.
Also the age of the weaponry. Iraq had old stockpiles of mustard and sarin gas which everyone knew about. The Bush administration claimed that Iraq was making new chemical weapons which I don't believe anyone ever found evidence. The old stockpiles seem to be found though.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The chemical as WMD goes far back to the origins of the Cold War. The rule was that launching chemical would be treated just like nuclear and responded to as such.
They aren't even weapons at this point. (You know, the "W" in "WMD")
They are toxic waste.
Saddam had ammo dumps everywhere. Saddam wasn't a big fan of maintenance and upkeep, so you are going to find a lot of old, dangerous junk in these places.
The NY Times article suggests that the Pentagon did not crow about these finds precisely because they were pre-1991 junk and not the WMDs that we were promised. The press would have laughed at them. As to keeping the number of injured servicemen secret, that is the default behavior of the Pentagon going back to Agent Orange in Viet Nam. I have heard rumors that the Pentagon is keeping the number of servicemen injured by depleted uranium secret, also.
I believe that the Pentagon actually thought that Saddam had an active chemical weapons program going on when we invaded Iraq. A modern army such as the U.S. army has little to fear from chemical weapons. What they didn't know was that Saddam had given up making chemical munitions when Clinton bombed all the chemical plants.
AC above is totally wrong. Saddam was cooperating fully with the inspectors when we attacked him. He was begging us to inspect whatever we wanted. There were UN inspectors on the ground when George W. Bush told them to get out because he wanted to start bombing.
Iraq's nuclear program was basically stopped by the Israeli attack on the Osirak reactor.
The nuclear weapons were also never found as Iraq never had the capability.
Correction, it wasn't found because the program was destroyed during and after the first gulf war and by a unilateral bombing run from Israel earlier.
The claim by the Bush administration was that they were manufacturing more and newer chemical ones. This was never substantiated.
But that presumes the burden of proof was on Bush. Saddam was proven to have chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in the first gulf war. One of the most important conditions for allowing Saddam to remain in power and for the end of first gulf war short of his removal was the admittance and allowing of international inspectors to verify the termination of those programs. More than a decade later Saddam was still blocking inspectors. The fact was inspections had failed to confirm Saddam's compliance with ending his WMD programs. So much so that many of the inspectors, Like Scott Ritter objected to the war on the grounds that chemical weapons would be likely be deployed against allied forces. That of course didn't stop Ritter from being a cheer leader in chorus afterwards pointing out the failure to find WMDs...
The reason for war was WMDs like nuclear and biological weapons
The real reason was they happened to be sitting on vast oil reserves. Now all their base are belong to us.
"If you like your plan, you can keep it. Period." ..later..
"That's not what I said. What I said was.."
No sane person is going to think an "old" WMD is just fine and a "new" WMD is not. Old or new, if the basis for the war was that Iraq had WMDs in its possession, this fits the bill. Even if the US and Europe are implicated in the manufacture of them, they were still in Iraq's possession. It's irrelevant either way at this point, we left. There's no reason to spin it unless we're going to try and hold someone accountable for them being in Iraq. Are people so hateful of Bush that this kind of spin is even seen as worthwhile?
Me thinks your side is changing its story now to match the facts... But OK... So I'll put it this way.. Bush didn't knowingly tell a falsehood but was stressing what the content of his intelligence briefs said. He might have pushed one aspect a bit too hard, but it wasn't with intent to deceive you. Which is MUCH different than what we have in the oval office now... "You can keep your plan.. " "It was a video"... "You can keep your doctor" ... "Not a smidgen of corruption".. "Ebola will never get here"...
That's NOT why we went to war. We went to war because we were told Saddam was in bed with Alqaida. Then 'weapons of mass destruction' which were originally nukes but could include chemical weapons. So 2nd or 3rd reason offered when the previous didn't pan out.
Why the US would keep secret the very reason we changed our story too really makes you wonder what they were hiding given the lengths they were trying to go to to prove they were 'right' about invading Iraq....
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
No sane person is going to think an "old" WMD is just fine and a "new" WMD is not.
You do realize that not all weaponry lasts forever right? Even nuclear weapons are retired because the components may not be as effective as when they were put into service. Since the Iran-Iraq War, the world knew Iraq had mustard and sarin gas. This is not news.
Old or new, if the basis for the war was that Iraq had WMDs in its possession, this fits the bill.
Not when the actual claim by Colin Powell and the administration was that Iraq was MANUFACTURING new chemical weapons.
Let's look at one. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji (ph). This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapon shells. Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.
It's irrelevant either way at this point, we left. There's no reason to spin it unless we're going to try and hold someone accountable for them being in Iraq. Are people so hateful of Bush that this kind of spin is even seen as worthwhile?
No, it's conservatives that are spinning these discoveries that Bush was right when in reality they are not. That's dishonest. That is spin.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
As I understand it (in hindsight):
- Saddam was supposed to stop his production of new WMDs and estroy the old stuff.
- He apparently complied, at least with stopping new production. (His guys - maybe at his orders, maybe on their own - apparently hid some of the key components of the nuclear program so it could potentially be restarted at some later date without starting from zero.)
- But a lot of the old stuff was still around.
- Meanwhile, he had enemies all around, and one of the deterrents was that they thought he had all this nasty weaponry.
- So to keep them at bay, he made it look to his neighbors like he really was posturing about stopping and destroying, while still having much and making more. ("I got rid of all that stuff." Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.) As a "good client dictator" he counted on the US diplomatic and intelligence communities to know that he really did it, was tellnig the truth to us, and putting on a show for his neighbors.
- Unfortunately for him, the show he put on for his neighbors convinced the US that he still had and was still making. Oops!
- Meanwhile, his neighbors planted stories, disguised as intelligence reports, about his continuation. (One such that hit the press was the forged documents for the "yellowcake" uranium ore purchase. The guy who fabricated it bragged about it after the war.)
- So the US decided he'd gone (too) rogue and had to be taken out.
- The US went in looking for the NEW stuff and the CURRENT production and research. Oops! Didn't find it. Found a bunch of old stuff, but that didn't support the argument for going to war. Either it didn't exist (and the US had done a BIG boo-boo) or it was just well enough hidden that it hadn't been found yet.
- So it was politically expedient for the administration to not mention the old stuff while they kept looking for the new stuff they still believed was there.
- It was also politically expedient for the opposition to crow about not finding the stuff that was the reason for the war. The old stuff weakened the message, so they didn't mention it.
- Most of the mainstream press was solidly in the opposition's pocket. So they didn't mention the old stuff, either. This made any reports of it from the remainder of the press look like a pro-administration fabrication.
Thus, if you weren't watching many sources and making really good estimates of what was correct, important, fluff, and/or fabrications, you either didn't hear about the old weaponry or thought such stories were disinformation, and came away with the idea that there wasn't any WMD material to be had in Iraq
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Matt Daemon didn't find anything and nearly died trying to prove it was all a conspiracy... Oh well, All this would make a good movie I guess.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That's a myth. It cost a lot, since you have to pay a civilian quite a bit to go into a hostile area to do engineering (and engineers made quite a premium in the area even in peacetime), but e.g. Haliburton earnings were unimpressive (I bought the stock, hoping the conspiracy theorists were on to something, but it seems they were merely on something).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is old news. There are forgotten caches of weapons from the Iran-Iraq War (mostly produced by the U.S.) that were left to rot out in the desert, as well as munitions that Saddam had laying around in case the Kurds got out of hand.
Anyone that ever said he didn't have *any* WMDs *ever* would simply be ignorant of the well-known facts. What was clearly a bald-faced lie was that he was currently producing nerve gas and nukes in preparation for invading his neighboring countries. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Show me the nukes and I will personally apologize to George Bush. Until then, no, this ain't that.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Seems to be kosher... but fails to answer the real questions https://www.cia.gov/library/re...
https://www.cia.gov/library/re...
https://www.cia.gov/library/re... so that's not it
While the US and Western Europe had been complicit in Saddam's weapons programs up to GW1, after that it was speculated that the main supplier of many weapons systems and tech after 1991 were the Soviets/Russians.
So, if the narrative is that much of this was relocated to the local Soviet/Russian client Syria...one doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to then wonder that, at the collapse of the civil situation there, that (surprise?) Russia jumped up to volunteer to go 'deal' with the chem stockpiles in Syria. Likely they would have cleaned up any Iraqi leftovers as well, and we (the current administration) were likely fine with that.
-Styopa
It was common knowledge that Saddam had chemical weapons as far back as the 80's. Bush and co were pushing a bogus "mushroom" line and worse still they knew they were doing it (although I think Powell may have been set up as a fall guy), that slide show at the UN made a lot of people (including me) angry, but to be fair Saddam was pretending he had them so maybe they did believe it, who's to say what a politician actually believes? - What Bush and co actually believed at the time we will never really know, but we are left with two unflattering explanations, either they were incompetent ideologues or despicable warmongers.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Except that the EU, China, and India get more Iraqi oil than the US. Their base may belong to us, but the oil tends to flow to other countries...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The "diplomatic process" was intended (by whom?) to give Hussein time to hide this
To be fair, the GP didn't make this claim. He claimed that the effect of the diplomatic process was to give Hussein time to hid the WMD project(s), not that that was the purpose of the process.
I agree with the rest of your post.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Actually, we went to war to keep Saddam from selling oil in Euros, so it was in fact Misson Accomplished. The whole WMD thing was just to satisfy Joe Q. Public.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Invade Belgium and you'll probably find 50000 tonnes of 'hidden' chemical weapons. UNSC resolution 1441 was a pretext, and I'm not falling for it that the islamic state suddenly got WMD capabilities . None of these remnants can actually be fired and deliver the originally intended result. It is just a pile of toxic waste.
Bush claimed there were new factories manufacturing nuclear and biological weapons. These did not exist. Source: I served in Iraq, and one of my primary jobs was to search for WMD. As far as I am aware the only thing ever found was old chemical weapons from the 80s. Bush was not right. There were no new WMD factories, and there were no new nuclear or biological weapons. Either he was wrong, or he lied. That is up to the reader to decide.
I thought everyone knew that Iraq had no WMDs (yes, chemical weapons are WMDs), so how could our soldiers be injured by chemical weapons in Iraq?
Likewise, we don't have to worry about ISIS capturing any chemical weapons in Iraq, since Iraq had no WMDs, therefore no chemical weapons....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Anyone who defines chemical weapons as "WMDs" is doing it wrong. Very wrong.
There are two practical kinds of WMDs at this time: Biological weapons that introduce contagion(s), and nuclear weapons. In the future (probably not that far away), we can also look forward to kinetic energy weapons, IE big rocks coming down very fast from space onto a target area. Cheap, yields below, to, and above nuclear levels (almost arbitrarily above... these will be the primo WMD of the future -- want a hundred gigaton explosive yield? No problem, a KIW is your weapon of choice. Cost, fuel and time, nothing else), totally practical CEP (circular error probable... in other words, they can miss by more than they actually will miss, and they will still totally destroy the target. Even if the "target" was something the size of Texas. Or the asian continent.) And oh, yes, there will be side effects. That's the only thing that introduces practical limits to the yield of a KIW, in fact. If you want to live on the same planet afterwards, you're going to have to limit your ambitions to be known as "the big banger."
Chemical weapons can be defended against, rendered harmless via other chemicals, rendered ineffective via protective devices, and in any device I've ever heard of, are small-area denial weapons more than anything else. The most annoying thing about them is persistence, so a really wide dispersal weapon literally denies the area to anyone not properly suited up until the dispersal can be remediated. That's a very useful trick in warfare, by the way, though somewhat less effective these days what with various non-ground transport being so easily accomplished. Still, if you don't have to worry about ground troops, you can concentrate on the air. The most useful thing about chemical weapons is they inconvenience the heck out of the enemy you deploy them against; infrastructure becomes unusable, required operations in the affected area become enormously cumbersome, food supplies are rendered useless, agriculture is knocked back to the stone age... very much a "reduce enemy capacity to operate / make war" kind of weapon.
Calling Saddam's stuff WMDs is like calling an infantryman an army. (oh wait, we do that, don't we? "army of one" lol)
Sure, they can kill more than one person at once. But so can a conventional dumb bomb, a grenade, a machine gun (in fact, a machine gun, if you really think about it, has almost unlimited killing capacity, given that it is maintained correctly. If a machine gun kills a thousand, and a chemical weapon simply makes people wear funny suits, which one is the WMD? Have we inadvertently redefined "destruction" entirely here?)
And what about FABs like the MOAB? (typically fuel-air bombs, "Massive Ordnance Air Blast / mother of all bombs") You want wide-area destruction and death? Holy crap, they'll give you what you want. MOAB yield is 11 kilotons... the Hiroshima nuke was only ~16 kilotons. And the Russians, bless their competitive little hearts, have come up with a FAB with 44 kiloton yield.
Saddam's crap... those weren't exactly high end chemical weapons anyway. Mustard gas, etc.
Tempest in a teapot. And certainly NO reason to start a war with them. That was a complete bungle/lie/fuckup on the part of the Bush administration.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Sure - they could be used in the implementation of RFC 1149.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I swear you're the only other person who gets that. Saddam wanted the same deal that North Korea got.
Clinton bought off NK when they were pursuing WMD, with a nuclear reactor, food and gas. I want to say that Saddam's biggest mistake was that it was Bush, and not Clinton, he was dealing with, but is largely irrelevant. We could not invade NK and depose the government, whereas in Iraq, we had that option. Clinton had no choice but to make a deal. (I'm not saying he would have invaded anybody in any case) Saddam hadn't looked at the map lately, and perhaps he really thought that one of the reasons that Bush Sr. stopped had anything to do with him or his army.
Yes, there was a difference between the two men. Bush Jr. is somewhat of a Texan; once you've lied to him, you're probably not going to be able to make a deal. Clinton takes nothing personally in politics, especially lying, and whenever you're ready to come to the table, he'll deal. And he's likely to get the better end of it, because he's damn good at it.
But Saddam was playing games with Bush, and Bush basically fell for it, so maybe that tempers the ideologue part of the label. Yes, he doctored the 'evidence' to get us to sign off on the war, but in his heart; he knew he was going to find out what Saddam was up to, and it was something. The simple warmonger option makes no sense to me. Why? He got nothing out of it, and a whole lot of grief to boot. He can't do the speaking circuit and fundraisers like an ex-prez is supposed to. He's trapped painting in his compound. Cheney? He was already rich as shit. Blackwater? Please.
There is just no way they wanted this kind of fallout from not finding WMDs, and thus, invading Iraq for no reason. So, of your two options, only the incompetent option is logically possible. It feels a bit weak, I admit, but the warmonger makes no sense at all. Also, there is actually a third option, a theory if you will... wayyy out there, that most perfectly fits everything that has happened so far. But it's just too crazy to post on /.
Insightful.
These WMDs weren't the pretext we used to go to war. Our pretext for war was Nuclear mushrom clouds and small box clouds. It's pretty trivial to make Sarin gas and these weapons predate Gulf War 1. It was pretty much just shoddy disposal of an inconvenient and expensive problem (old weapons). The same problem the US has had. So to save a buck they just burried them in the desert and kind of ignored them hoping they would go away.
When the US arrived we obviously weren't ok with insurgents breaking out their metal detectors and going on a toxic waste scavenger hunt so we kept quiet. In fact many of the stockpiles were already registered with the United Nations. So securing them early in the war was a priority for the military.
Also this isn't just leaking, this was in the news back in Bush's second term.
Your mistake was in thinking the value to haliburton would be passed along to public shareholders rather than flowed through to privately owned subcontractors.
The kind of ham-fisted profiteering that you were looking for is a relic of decades past. Nowadays only the idiots do it in such a public way. Everybody else knows how to avoid the sunlight that comes from public records.
Seeing that the whole raison d'etre for Gulf War 11 was the non-existent WMDs, it's most curious at this coming to light just now. Is this part of some propaganda effort, talking up the war against ISIL/ISIS/al-Qaeda/ ...
My coworker, a retired Marine sergeant, is in Jackson Hole right now. What's the address? :)
More seriously I think there may be something to your rant. Saddam Hussein was our bought and paid for guy up until then late 1980's then he wanted to go independent and refused to stay bought. I think at least part of the reason we went after him was as an object lesson to our other bought and paid for dictators around the world. Problem was they didn't really consider all of the chaos that would come from deposing him.
RE"So there were chemical weapons in Iraq?"
Iraq invaded Iran and the West was very happy to see Iran fully degraded.
Iraq was winning so Iran was supported a bit. Then Iran was winning so Iraq was supported a bit. Other nations got to sell all kinds of support and old mil spare parts over the years to both sides for huge amounts of cash.
It was a huge arms sale and everybody was winning but Iraq and Iran.
Iran finally got creative and was able to push Iraq back in open battle. This was not good so the US, UK and EU offered the chemical weapons systems to push Iran back and restore the expected no-win situation.
So Iraq was full of US, UK, EU supplied raw materials, production lines and brands.
Iran, Iraq, the US, the UK, UN, world press all knew what was going on and had the paper work.
Years later all Iraq had was out of date raw materials in bulk, listed with the UN and US, UK.
When the UK and UK invaded and occupied Iraq they found, walked into sites with the out of date, UN registered raw materials.
Did all the US and UK troops have all the protective equipment needed all the time for industrial exposure at all sites? Where all the filters fitted correctly, in good working order and in good condition to protect the US and UK troops per site, every time? The on site UK and UK had two options. Destroy on site or secure the sites and allow contractors to make a site safe later.
If the raw material sites where destroyed where all US and UK troops in the area fully protected over the time until safe?
If not US and UK troops would have returned home with different levels of industrial exposure.
That would be costly to any US or UK medical system. Better for the West to say and do nothing and hint their own exposed troops where suffering from stress.
Any tests done would have to be cleared by gov experts on cost and need. No need for complex tests if its just stress after war and occupation.
Govs and mil never have to tell the public too much about their export deals to Iraq or lack of clean up skills during occupation.
Brands that exported to Iraq are safe thanks to state and federal political leaders.
Troops exposed to US and UK export grade chemicals or products is just not an issue that fits with the winning, greeted with "sweets and flowers" talking points.
Win win win. Iran and Iraq are degraded while been supplied by the West. The costs of keeping troops in wars and occupations by the contractors was wonderful.
The troops returned with "stress" after many years of duty.
Now the media and medical experts are finally reporting reality but the only real question is:
Did your quality filter work well and was it on at the right times in Iraq or (other nations if in "special" forces) every time?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Are you retarded? Those old UN-tagged long-expired weapons were publically known at the time, you can even find photos of them in news. Those were not the weapons claimed by Bush, he was claiming ongoing active weapons program and functioning maintained WMD.
The people who sold chemical weapons tech to Iraq were European countries like Germany, assisted by France and others. The weapons casings were from Spain and China. The ones made in Spain were based on old US designs (which is mentioned in the article, but the part where they were knockoff designs without US input was glossed over).
The US sold Iraq some smaller helicopters and some agricultural insecticides (which were not, in any reasonable fashion, convertible to chemical weapons). We didn't sell them any sort of chemical weapons - or weapons of any kind, for that matter.
We did send them some biological agents - again, for agricultural purposes, like anthrax. Look up "American Type Culture Collection" for how this works. Iraq tried to repurpose the anthrax for weapons (and failed, apparently).
> MOAB yield is 11 kilotons.
Lol. It's okay, I made a ridiculous error in a post I made here a couple of weeks ago.
Besides the obvious fact that implies one bomb would take out a major city, I guess it didn't occur to you that you were claiming the MOAB weighs MILLIONS of pounds? Sure, you might guess that current HE is twice as powerful as tnt, but that's still eleven million pounds just for the explosive composition and the metal casing is going to weigh more than that. You're going to need an awfully big plane to carry a 22 million pound bomb.
Didn't think there were many of you left - you must have epic Twister competitions with Obamabots in contorting yourselves into rationalizing this stuff.
Have you sued Obamabots for ripping off the Bushie "criticism must first be balanced by acknowledging accomplishments" shtick? They've been shamelessly ripping you guys off for years.
You could also point out there's no comparison between that an invasion that ended up with a million dead Iraqis and thousands of American deaths, but that would sail over your head.
Not the same - Bush got Congressional authorization for his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama, not so much for his wars in Libya or Syria. Make sure and taunt the Obots with that factoid at your next Twister game.
Obama wanted to extend the Iraq occupation, but had to follow Bush's SOFA with Iraq when, for some odd reason, the Iraqis refused to grant continued immunity to U.S. forces for war crimes.
You're mostly right. There was the claim that Iraq had sought out and possibly obtained yellowcake from Africa to create a nuclear weapon, even if it was only a dirty bomb.
Other than the parts and pieces of chemical weapons factories were found in Iraq. It obviously wasn't in place in active production, but why does that matter?
This BTW is the argument that went in circles a little over a decade ago, where sadly there were a great many people in denial that there were any kind of chemical stockpiles much less factories making this stuff in Iraq. I do remember the discussions, including here on Slashdot, that rehashed this same argument over and over again... even to the point some moderators modded my comments down when I pointed out just as you have that Iraq had pre-existing stockpiles.
This wasn't nearly so obvious in the heat of that very public discussion, with considerable misinformation going on sort of like you were suggesting that Iraq was going to nuke New York City if we didn't invade... although that was never claimed by Bush or for that matter Hillary Clinton when she cast her vote to support the invasion of Iraq. That particular vote in Congress is one that IMHO was done by members of congress who were very well informed not just by intelligence agencies but also by their constituents in terms of what the sentiment was from their states & districts when those votes were cast. Anybody claiming ignorance or that they were fooled when that vote was cast is just being stupid and trying to rewrite their own history.
"The war resumed". Ah, the old "1441 excuse" that the war was authorized by the security council under 1441 a dozen-odd years earlier. Except Powell attempted to make the case about WMDs before the security council and was turned down. That *invalidates* the 1441 excuse, as a later ruling supercedes the earlier. You don't get to say, "well, there's no evidence but we know in our hearts there's WMDs" on your own.
So the "war" (UN police action) did *not* resume with a coalition of 35 nations with authorization. It was just a unilateral decision to invade.
It's fashionable to ignore the UN as a worthless/toothless/corrupt/your-insult-here, but you can't actually ignore that there's a treaty (the UN Charter is a treaty) that's US law under the constitution, and signers agreed not to cross other nation's borders with force without security council authorization...that's actually the article under which the whole 1441 resolution was based! Saddam was held to it by 35 nations.
Yah, yah, mea culpa, dammit. You're right. Everyone who pointed it out is right. I'm getting old and my brain is really beginning to suck at little things like... the facts. :)
Sigh.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This.
Everyone is talking about WMDs, but this is the *real* reason. Saddam Hussein announced he was going to open an oil bourse denominated in Euros, which might have hurt the value of the USD. Forcing everyone to buy USD in order to buy oil helps maintain the value of the USD. So, to keep those petrodollars flowing (instead of petroeuros), we invaded, and now Iraq has no choice but to trade its oil in USD.
If the Bush administration had used this as their rationale, no one would have supported it. The average person doesn't know what an oil bourse is and doesn't give a shit what currency oil is traded in, but you can be sure that Dick Cheney knows. Mushroom clouds, on the other hand, are scaaaaaary.
In 2008, Iran opened an oil bourse trading with non-USD. The only reason we haven't invaded Iran over it is because it would damage our relationship with China, which has some leverage over the value of the USD - they hold a large amount of T-bills; they tie their currency to the USD; and, of course, we have a huge trade relationship.
Look up "we knew he had WMD because we had the receipts"... It was practically a meme in 2006, though I'd imagine it wouldn't have been a popular one in certain circles.
Found it. This is what I read first, but days ago, that probably sent me off on my trail of errors:
"In September 2007 Russia exploded the largest thermobaric weapon ever made. The weapon's yield was reportedly greater than that of the smallest dial-a-yield nuclear weapons at their lowest settings.[41][42] Russia named this particular ordnance the "Father of All Bombs" in response to the United States developed "Massive Ordnance Air Blast" (MOAB) bomb whose backronym is the "Mother of All Bombs", and which previously held the accolade of the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in history.[43] The bomb contains an about 7 tons charge of a liquid fuel such as ethylene oxide, mixed with an energetic nanoparticle such as aluminium, surrounding a high explosive burster[44] that when detonated created an explosion equivalent to 44 metric tons of TNT."
Blah. Details. Why are they so hard?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No way, the pigeons would get way too tired carrying those big cigars around. If you had bigger tubes though you could probably adapt the protocol for transmission by pipe organ.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yes, Clinton did some stupid violent pounding of Iraq -- bombing -- for about four days. You'll not get me to defend that action -- more abject stupidity from our Dear Leaders, fine, I'm onboard. Idiotic. Didn't result in any useful gains of any kind for anyone but bomb-makers -- and perhaps beer vendors in redneck towns.
That doesn't make Bush II's war, his, though.
Bush II, however...
Nearly five thousand dead American service members (and more of our co-warmakers) plus somewhere between 170 thousand and a million civilians dead (depending on whose survey you take seriously), 1.1 trillion dollars spent, the employment of 80 M1 abrams tanks, 55 M2 bradleys, 20 strykers, 20 M113 APCs, 250 humvees, 500+ mine clearing vehicles, heavy/medium trucks, and trailers, and 10 AAVs, not to mention the aerial and major naval assets... now that's something you might reasonably characterize as someone's war. At least IMHO. Perhaps I just think too small. But in that case, Clinton's actions... irrelevant.
But hey, Mission Accomplished, right? Right? We... were saved from the those highly dangerous aluminum rods coming from southern africa somewhere, shut down all the WMD plants, and destroyed all terrorist threats, you betcha! Plus NOW Iraq is TOTALLY a proud bastion of US Style Democracy!!! And we sure taught the Saudis who funded and comprised the majority of those who executed the entire WTC acts of terror a lesson didn't we! I mean, they'll NEVER Try THAT again!!! Saudi Arabia is rebuilding to this day, right? RIGHT? 'MERKA, BITCHES! Thank JEBUS Geo Bush II saved us from those Highly Dangerous Iraqis!
All that, and Bush II is a truly execrable painter, too. Probably should go back to his coke habit, wave his hands towards jebus some more. The only thing he was ever good at was royally hosing our economy, getting Americans and Iraqis killed to no purpose at all, giving a presidential blow job to the military industrial complex, and grinding our civil rights into the smallest, most meaningless remainder he could possibly manage. Real hero, Bush II.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
âoeWe do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons â" including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weaponsâ"including anthrax and botulism toxin, and possibly smallpox.â -- Rumsfeld to Congres
Iraq did not have biological weapons. Iraq was known to have sarin and mustard gas. So what?
Powell:
Let's look at one. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji (ph). This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapon shells.
Your contention it was for already and new weapons is ludicrous. By the time of the invasion that gas that they already had was decades old and highly ineffective. That's why they needed to manufacture new ones.
You are attempting to revise history by claiming it was only for new ones. There are many, many quotes and papers stating they were also looking for stockpiles. Stop lying idiot.
So when the Bush administration found the chemical weapons, they were so vindicated that they trotted them out in front of Congress? Hell no. You know why? The weapons they found were of so little importance that they barely mentioned it. Why don't you stop spinning this, you coward.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Other than the parts and pieces of chemical weapons factories were found in Iraq. It obviously wasn't in place in active production, but why does that matter?
It matters because that was one of the claims that the administration made. It matters because the effectiveness of the older stockpiles would decrease over time and it was a question whether their existing stockpiles could be used as they would be at least 30 years old by the invasion. It would be more like toxic waste at that point rather than an effective weapon. That's why Iraq would need to manufacture new ones.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Sadly it seems pretty clear that you can ignore it as I'm yet to see any remotely serious consideration of the idea of actually doing anything about the, imo, illegal intervention in Iraq.
How far back are suppose to report buried munitions? WWI.....
When the United States was not in imminent danger, yes.
So the part about mobile chemical weapons trucks making chemical weapons wasn't important....ass-hat.
Old munitions....oh the humanity....
Read the words on the page:
" Sure, you might guess that current HE is twice as powerful as tnt, but that's still eleven million pounds just for the explosive composition "
Don't you hate it when you act like a complete ass, then it turns out you're the dummy.
Bush was do desperate to find WMD in order to justify the invasion, there is NO WAY they would keep it a secret. And the pictures are pictures of a fuel, not a WMD.
This is just another attempt by the new boss (same as the old boss) to convince the public to support him as he continues his illegal, unconstitutional, treasonous acts of insurrection and rebellion against the United States by attacking Syria/Assad by pretending to attack ISIL/ISIS.
Not happening. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Cheney's crowd is no longer in power, and say what you want for Obama's near-sighted policy on pulling out all the troops... you'll have a hell of a time getting them back on the ground unless you have a significantly less flimsy pretext. Heck, you'll have trouble enough getting them back on the ground for a *good* reason.
Bush Jr. is somewhat of a Texan; once you've lied to him, you're probably not going to be able to make a deal.
Fool me once, shame on... Uh, shame.... A FOOLED GUY CAN'T GET FOOLED AGAIN.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
There's lots of things in first-hand accounts of people who were there, and doing their best to be accurate, that turn out to be garbage. This isn't new to the 21st Century. Soldiers are often not in a situation where they understand everything they're doing, and they can misidentify things. They are going to be overstressed, often sleep-deprived, and busy.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The burden of proof was indeed on Bush. He's the guy who started a war of conquest that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, spent trillions of US dollars, and destabilized the region. To justify that, he needed solid evidence, and he didn't have it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I live in America.
The numbers describe the actual situation and that is, the number of uninsured has dropped under the ACA.
You see, you're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts. And the facts tell the story without any doubt: Obama got his citizens more access to healthcare. Anyone's claims otherwise are utterly without foundation.
It is unfortunate that many gullible people trust the right-wing agitprop that spreads false data and assertions. But we're well into this now, and the facts are well established. Eventually, as public awareness grows, Rush and crew will find something new to lie about. So it goes.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Seriously If you agree to report them, and the treaty doesn't specify a time period then it's for as far as your able; there are farmers in France that would be very happy if somebody would come in and clear all of that old chemical shit and unexploded munitions from their fields and yes Mustard from WW I still causes burn even today. Quite a bit of chemical weapons got dumped into the Baltic Sea after Germany surrendered and it's keeps turning up also.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Yes. Tell that to the soldiers described in the article that received the Purple Heart from injuries caused by those harmless old munitions that Saddam didn't have.,
What if the pigeons gripped them by their husks? Or maybe two of them can carry one on a line....
I have a hard time calling what is described in the article as "weapons". To me a "weapon" must contain actual capability. If we pull a 300-year-old rusty barnacle-covered canon from the bottom of the ocean, is that a "weapon"? I don't think so. It doesn't fire, it can't be directed at an enemy with deadly force.
What this article describes is that there were chemicals in Iraq, not so much chemical weapons. (And, to the more general point, nothing at all like what was described as a justification for the war. That justification is not at all supported by this story.)
I'm not failing to say anything.
First of all, the only reasons an employer healthcare plan gets cancelled WRT anything to do with the ACA, is 1, they don't meet the minimum standards (which means the plan sucked and its former members need to get themselves onto a plan that doesn't) or that 2, your employer decided to cancel it, in which case, your beef is with your employer. There no even moderately adequate plan, anywhere, that the ACA caused to stop working or otherwise interfered with.
Health care does the best for the most when it is available to all people who are sick and/or injured. Not just for people who make money. If you want diseased people walking the streets without treatment, you're clueless. If you think ER treatment is sufficient to deal with that, you're clueless. If you think ER care is cheaper than proper prophylactic care, you're clueless. If you think forcing sick people to come to work is good for the most important things -- the economy, the other workers, the individual -- you're clueless. If you think people suffering in pain and without adequate treatment is ok if they're not working, you're not only clueless, you're an ass. If you think the government making sure that no one (ok, fewer people... but it's a start) goes without health care is a *bad* idea, then you have failed to rub enough brain cells together to create the required spark of intelligence you need to properly evaluate these issues. So you probably want to rethink this, preferably this time with the facts at hand instead of drooling right wing agitprop.
Now, what has your lack of a job got to do with the ACA, other than the fact that you have more options for healthcare, assuming your state isn't one where the right wingers have destroyed the bottom rung of the ACA by rejecting the medicare expansion?
Yes, the tree of liberty has some very severe problems right now, but the ACA isn't one of them.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It wasn't covered up, I sat and watched the reports.
But the news services stopped reporting it as the election approached, apperently because they wanted to avoid calling their party a liar... 8-P
It sounds like the news people are trying to blame the silence on someone other than themselves.