Former director of the CIA says reports on Iraq were "an honest mistake"
I have been searching for this on google news to find a context, but I can't find any story about this. The only "honest mistake" that I have found in the news this was Sandy Berger accidentally stuffing top secret documents down his pants.
Also says that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq
2 things- #1- That is not what the report says. The report enumerates the many Iraq/Al Qaeda connections, but says there is no evidence that Iraq contributed to 9/11. The plausability of such a contribution is not discussed. #2- We are fighting a war against terrorism, not a war against Al Qaeda. Iraq was one of the biggest state supporters of terrorism in the world.
though most of the hijackers did move through Iran.
You mean Iran supports terrorists too? Its almost like they are in an axis of evil or something.
And oddly enough, that threat you mentioned? The one that was so dangerous it fell in less than two weeks?
Yup- rational people see that as a big achievement for the President.
The one which we STILL haven't found any proof of actually being even remotely close to the threat the president and the Republicans kept hollering about?
If you were actually as knowledgable about the current events as you claim to be, you would realize how retarded that sounds.
Well, it's gone, but some of the terrorists who are there now are going to be beheading an american citizen every 72 hours.
Actually, it looks like they have figured out that beheading Americans doesn't do them any good, because (unlike Spain and the Philippines) we don't roll over and play dead when the terrorists make a threat.
In other words, shut the fuck up, you ignorant fool
Why am I not surprized that you resort so quickly to childish insults?
Re:How does this differ from other efforts?
on
Linux in Iraq
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· Score: 1
Halliburton and its KBR subsidiary are the best and most capable companies in the oil services industry in the world. It would have been a disservice to the Iraqi people to use anybody else.
Re:How does this differ from other efforts?
on
Linux in Iraq
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
As of right now the "rebuilding" efforts of Iraq are in the hands of corporate contractors (from the liberating nations) who are being offered large sums of money to "help" over there. Will Linux be able to compete with the puppet-government mandated contractors who are likely more interested in filling their own coffers rather than those of the Iraqi people?
I know that "corporation" is a pseudonym for evil here on/., but just who the hell do you suggest should be doing the work in Iraq instead?
This case DOES matter to the other 30 states that DIDN'T already have this law on the books...
And they still don't. Like I said, this doesn't change anything. States could pass laws like this before (like those 20 states did), and they can chose not to pass laws like this now. If you are concerned, then contact your state representative.
Um, yes they did. The police were called out on a report of a domestic disturbance between Hiibel and his daughter. Hiibel and his daughter were fighting -his daughter admits it when they start to question her- so I would say that the police did have reasonable suspicion to question him.
Before this ruling, we were not required so much as identify ourselves to the police if they had no probably cause for arrest. Now, we are.
What? This case was a challenge to the laws that 20 different states, including Nevada and New York, ALREADY have on the books that required people to identify themselves to the police if the they have "reasonable suspicion" to ask for it. This ruling doesn't change anything.
I don't believe we could effectivly fight terrorism if we left the significant and festering terrorist threat of Iraq alone. The fact is we should have dealt with Iraq long before we did, but it took a 9/11 wake-up call to make us realize that we cannot ignore these gathering terrorist threats any longer. Its the same reason we attacked Germany after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor even though Germany hadn't attacked us.
No, no, no. The UN resolutions against Iraq were not a big game of hide and seek. The goal was to disarm him of the weapons that we knew he had (he even admitted to having these). You can't do that by simply not finding those weapons. Sure some stuff gets lots in paperwork, but UNMOVIC was not asking Saddam for anything unreasonable (in fact, you can see exactly what information Hans Blix wanted in his Jan 27, 2003 update to the Security Council).
Saddam had been caught in his lies about WMD too many times over the past 12 years to do it any other way.
BTW, Islamism? What The Fuck is That? sayin' it's understandable, given his post, that he mis-understood the term. a fucking (poorly) made up word, and you justifying it.
Please read up so you don't sound retarded in the future.
Its a keystone of the Bush administration's policy that we are in fact not in a state of war.
What in the hell are you talking about? Seriously. Aside from some rogue prison guards who are getting punished, we have followed the Geneva conventions to a T. Our handling of enemy combatents would not change at all if Congress declared a war because the Geneva conventions explicitly exclude the non-uniformed combatents from their "protection".
Just curious- where do you get your "information" from?
Their is a very specific legal definition of "state of war". Its something nations enter in to with a declaration of war, and its usually confined to armed conflicts between states.
8 years ago Osama Bin Laden declared war on us. He has been planning and carrying out attacks ever since. He doesn't care about the legal definition of war- he just wants to kill you.
What do you suggest we do about this? Roll over and play dead? Because it sounds like that is what you are advocating.
Where exactly did you forget this thing called tolerance, human rights and other unimportant stuff?
Osama Bin Laden wants to kill YOU because you don't share his religious beliefs, and you are questioning our tolerance? He wants to force women to wear burkas in public and tell you how long your beard has to be, and you are questioning our beliefs on human rights?
I think it's worth giving a damn about, especially if our troops are being put at risk in Iraq. I think it's something many of the troops would give a damn about.
You are missing the point. We are at war with terrorism, not just al Qaeda or Bin Laden. Saddam supported terrorists, including Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the PKK, Abu Nidal, Hamas, and Ansar al Islam.. Iraq has been on our State Department's list of states that sponser terrorism for almost 20 years. The Clinton administration alledged Iraq/al Qaeda ties several times, including in this 1998 indictment. Even if Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, they were very legitimate and important target in the War on Terrorism.
It's an interesting story, but I don't think it's too likely in the wake of the commisson's report. Got a (credible) link for me?
We haven't seen the commission's report yet. The interim report that created a stir of sensational headlines last week was not from the commission- it was from a runaway commission staff, and the report's broad conclusions about Iraq/Al Qaeda ties have since been denounced by both the Chair and Vice-Chair of the commission.
Oh- and the commission has just been made aware of the al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia that the parent mentioned.
Really? Then why can't we find any?
The fact that Saddam had proscribed weapons that he couldn't account for is not in dispute.
And why aren't we attacking other countries that possess WMD in violation of international law?
No other country is in violation of a dozen unanimous UN security council resolutions requiring them to disarm. Iraq was a very logical step in the war.
The idea that Bush used unfair and malicious means to win the election?
Yes- I object to that.
Nobody seems to disagree that the Republicans unfairly prevented thousands of people from voting by mistakenly labeling them as felons.
I will say this in the kindest terms possible: bull freaking crap.
There weren't thousands of people that were incorrectly prevented from voting because they were on the felon list. The USCCR was able to identify 4 innocent people that were actually removed from voter registration, and 3 of those people were allowed to vote anyway.
If somebody was incorrectly prevented from voting, the blame lies on the Election Supervisor of the county that he/she lives in. According to Florida law, the County Election Supervisor is the ONLY person with the authority to remove somebody from the voter registration- NOT Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush or "the Republicans".
Florida law also stipulates that the Election Supervisor must verify the names on the felon list before taking any action. The law was designed to create a list with as many possible matches as they could get, and they would let the individual County Election Supervisors sort it out. In retrospect, that isn't the best solution, but the 2000 election was the first test of this statute, and they have changed it since then.
The 1998 Florida statute that required the state to compile a felon scrub list was passed in a bi-partisan vote of the Florida state legislature, and not just by the Republicans.
The company (DBT, who later merged with ChoicePoint) that provided the felon list to Florida was contracted by a Democrat named Ethel Baxtor.
Nobody is disagreeing with Greg Palast because his claims are so incorrect and blatently partisan that nobody takes him seriously.
In the case of Florida the close results triggered an automatic recount, as was mandated by the Florida constitution. Although that certainly gave me hope that the recount would favor Gore, i wanted the recount to happen fairly and if the new results still favored Bush i would have accepted that.
The mandated recounts did happen, twice. It was the hand recounts in a few heavily Democrat counties that the Republicans (and the Supreme Court by a 7-2 vote) objected to.
There are numerous possible sources for the single weapon that was found
No there aren't. The US, Russia, and Iraq (and probably Germany since they invented the stuff) are the only countries that we know of that have the ability to make Sarin. The Bush administration has said that they suspect Syria has some, but there isn't much proof. Aum Shinrikyo was able to make some low quality liquid sarin for their subway attacks in Japan, but making Sarin is pretty complicated, and the number of people that have it is very limited.
You do not know where that weapon came from.
True, but the options are pretty limited, and the number of people that have been able to weaponize sarin in an artillery shell is even more limited.
In addition, the presence of a single armed shell is not indicative of the presence of an entire stockpile.
True- but it is indicative that no matter what Saddam said, he had not fully disarmed.
On top of that, it's well known that there numerous unexploded munitions, many of which are likely to contain gas or germs, due to duds from live fire ranges.
There are some unexploded munitions in Iraq, but there is no evidence that any of them are chemical or biological. Additionally, there is no way this artillery shell that we just found was an unexploded munition from before. Why? Because it was a binary shell that begins to mix the stable precurser agents together at launch, and the resulting sarin gas does not last very long. So if this had been a "dud" that was launched and just didn't explode, the gas inside would have still been mixed and long since been worthless.
in a country that sworn up and down that they had destroyed all of their sarin
in a binary artillery shell exactly like the ones Iraq produced
in a country that has admitted to producing 790 tons of sarin and cannot account for all 790 tons
in the only country that has used sarin in combat, ever
Although you can make sarin from common chemicals, it is very complicated and dangerous to produce. The people that actually have/had the means to produce it is pretty limited. Finding a single shell with sarin alone would not be as big of a deal, but under these circumstances it is very significant.
Why don't you check how many UN resolutions Israel is in violation of
Why don't you compare apples to apples. Iraq was in violation of 17 UNSEC resolutions that specifically cite Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Chapter VII is the only place in the charter that authorizes military action. Guess how many resolutions have been passed against Israel under chapter VII? Zero.
Sure, Saddam was a 'bad guy', but let's not forget we created him.
We did not create Saddam. Saddam rose to power quite independant of our involvement in the middle east.
And if we're going to go after all the 'bad guys', there are many worse than Saddam we should start with.
Like who? Who else was in violation of 17 unanimous UNSEC resolutions, had direct ties to terrorist organizations, known supplies of WMDs, and some of the richest natural resources in the world to finance almost anything that he wanted.
And yes, please show me a link between Saddam and terrorists.
Ok. Here is the Council on Foreign Relations' report on Iraq's terrorist connections. Saddam had known ties to Ansar al Islam, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the PKK, the Abu Nidal Organization, and Hamas. He even went on TV and gave money to encourage suicide bombers! Again, George Bush is not the first to claim any of this. This has been the official policy of the US for 15 years.
Bush did lie about Saddam trying to buy plutonium from Africa
Bush said that British intelligence found that he had sought Uranium in Africa, and British intelligence still stands by this claim. There was no lie.
Nevermind that these are weapons that WE (the US) gave him because we didn't like the Iranians.
Those were not the weapons we gave him. Between 1973 and 1990, the US only accounted for 1% of Iraq's arms imports (source). The USSR, France, China, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Brazil, Egypt, Romania, Denmark, and Libya all supplied Iraq with more weapons that we did. And the chemical weapons that Saddam has used are definately NOT from us either (source). You are going to have to find a better reason to hate the US.
If Saddam had complied with the UN resolutions, we would know where the WMDs are. He didn't comply. That alone is a violation of the cease-fire from the first Gulf War and justification for military action. I know I am in a minority, but I still firmly believe that the WMDs will be found.
President Bush never said that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the US- on the contrary he was very clear that we must act before Iraq becomes an imminent threat.
The executive branch has claimed that Saddam had ties with terrorism, not just al Qaeda. This is not a new claim- Iraq has been on the State Department's list of terrorism supporting states for 15 years.
Let's be honest though, this action in Iraq has weakened the US's ability to deal with terrorists
How? Allow me to quote from the President's (excellent) speech last night:
The rise of a free and self-governing Iraq will deny terrorists a base of operation, discredit their narrow ideology and give momentum to reformers across the region.
This will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power and a victory for the security of America and the civilized world.
the fact that all of the whimsical reasons for justifying it have been debunked as lies.
What? Just what do you think that President Bush lied about? That Iraq was not in complience with 17 unanimous UNSEC resolutions? That there were unaccounted WMD in Iraq? That Saddam wanted more WMD? That Saddam supported terrorists? Exactly what has he lied about?
You see, President Bush is not the first one to say these things. These are facts that have been well established over the past 15 years.
I don't deny that we helped Iraq with some WMD capability in the 1980's (thats what I meant by us "helping" them). That fact that we did is well documented. And I don't think it was an entirely unreasonable decision of ours to do this based on the situation we were in and the information that we had at the time. It is easy to second guess that now because we do have more information.
But there is no evidence that Saddam used any of the illegal weapons that he got from us. I am not making this claim- the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is. From the link above:
The absence in the sample analysed in Sweden and Switzerland of polysulphides and of more than a trace of sulphur indicates that it is not of past US-government manufacture, for all US mustard was made by the Levinstein process from ethylene and mixed sulphur chlorides.
Interesting. I didn't know nicotine was that lethal. A google search found several sites that confirm that 50mg number.
Anyway, I did some more digging about Sarin. Here are some more numbers.
A "lethal" dose of sarin (50% would die with that exposure) is 100 mg-min/cu.m. This means that while resting, if you inhaled air with a concentration of 100mg of sarin per cubic meter for 1 minute, you would probably die. It is cumulative, so the same goes with a 50mg per cubic meter concentration for 2 minutes, or 25mg for 4 minites, etc. If you were exercising or breathing heavier, then the concentrations would be lower.
So if my calculations are correct, if this 6kg of sarin was fully mixed and evenly dispursed across 60,000 cubic meters (I know- it wouldn't), it would kill 50% of the people within those 60,000 cubic meters (or everybody within about 30 meters of the detonation) if they breathed it for 1 minute.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh brother...
Former director of the CIA says reports on Iraq were "an honest mistake"
I have been searching for this on google news to find a context, but I can't find any story about this. The only "honest mistake" that I have found in the news this was Sandy Berger accidentally stuffing top secret documents down his pants.
Also says that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq
2 things-
#1- That is not what the report says. The report enumerates the many Iraq/Al Qaeda connections, but says there is no evidence that Iraq contributed to 9/11. The plausability of such a contribution is not discussed.
#2- We are fighting a war against terrorism, not a war against Al Qaeda. Iraq was one of the biggest state supporters of terrorism in the world.
though most of the hijackers did move through Iran.
You mean Iran supports terrorists too? Its almost like they are in an axis of evil or something.
And oddly enough, that threat you mentioned? The one that was so dangerous it fell in less than two weeks?
Yup- rational people see that as a big achievement for the President.
The one which we STILL haven't found any proof of actually being even remotely close to the threat the president and the Republicans kept hollering about?
If you were actually as knowledgable about the current events as you claim to be, you would realize how retarded that sounds.
Well, it's gone, but some of the terrorists who are there now are going to be beheading an american citizen every 72 hours.
Actually, it looks like they have figured out that beheading Americans doesn't do them any good, because (unlike Spain and the Philippines) we don't roll over and play dead when the terrorists make a threat.
In other words, shut the fuck up, you ignorant fool
Why am I not surprized that you resort so quickly to childish insults?
Halliburton and its KBR subsidiary are the best and most capable companies in the oil services industry in the world. It would have been a disservice to the Iraqi people to use anybody else.
As of right now the "rebuilding" efforts of Iraq are in the hands of corporate contractors (from the liberating nations) who are being offered large sums of money to "help" over there. Will Linux be able to compete with the puppet-government mandated contractors who are likely more interested in filling their own coffers rather than those of the Iraqi people?
/., but just who the hell do you suggest should be doing the work in Iraq instead?
I know that "corporation" is a pseudonym for evil here on
This case DOES matter to the other 30 states that DIDN'T already have this law on the books...
And they still don't. Like I said, this doesn't change anything. States could pass laws like this before (like those 20 states did), and they can chose not to pass laws like this now. If you are concerned, then contact your state representative.
Um, yes they did. The police were called out on a report of a domestic disturbance between Hiibel and his daughter. Hiibel and his daughter were fighting -his daughter admits it when they start to question her- so I would say that the police did have reasonable suspicion to question him.
Before this ruling, we were not required so much as identify ourselves to the police if they had no probably cause for arrest. Now, we are.
What? This case was a challenge to the laws that 20 different states, including Nevada and New York, ALREADY have on the books that required people to identify themselves to the police if the they have "reasonable suspicion" to ask for it. This ruling doesn't change anything.
We are at war against terrorism. Bin Laden is a terrorist. Saddam supported terrorists. Its really not that difficult.
I don't believe we could effectivly fight terrorism if we left the significant and festering terrorist threat of Iraq alone. The fact is we should have dealt with Iraq long before we did, but it took a 9/11 wake-up call to make us realize that we cannot ignore these gathering terrorist threats any longer. Its the same reason we attacked Germany after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor even though Germany hadn't attacked us.
No, no, no. The UN resolutions against Iraq were not a big game of hide and seek. The goal was to disarm him of the weapons that we knew he had (he even admitted to having these). You can't do that by simply not finding those weapons. Sure some stuff gets lots in paperwork, but UNMOVIC was not asking Saddam for anything unreasonable (in fact, you can see exactly what information Hans Blix wanted in his Jan 27, 2003 update to the Security Council).
Saddam had been caught in his lies about WMD too many times over the past 12 years to do it any other way.
BTW, Islamism? What The Fuck is That? sayin' it's understandable, given his post, that he mis-understood the term. a fucking (poorly) made up word, and you justifying it.
Please read up so you don't sound retarded in the future.
Its a keystone of the Bush administration's policy that we are in fact not in a state of war.
What in the hell are you talking about? Seriously. Aside from some rogue prison guards who are getting punished, we have followed the Geneva conventions to a T. Our handling of enemy combatents would not change at all if Congress declared a war because the Geneva conventions explicitly exclude the non-uniformed combatents from their "protection".
Just curious- where do you get your "information" from?
Their is a very specific legal definition of "state of war". Its something nations enter in to with a declaration of war, and its usually confined to armed conflicts between states.
8 years ago Osama Bin Laden declared war on us. He has been planning and carrying out attacks ever since. He doesn't care about the legal definition of war- he just wants to kill you.
What do you suggest we do about this? Roll over and play dead? Because it sounds like that is what you are advocating.
Where exactly did you forget this thing called tolerance, human rights and other unimportant stuff?
Osama Bin Laden wants to kill YOU because you don't share his religious beliefs, and you are questioning our tolerance? He wants to force women to wear burkas in public and tell you how long your beard has to be, and you are questioning our beliefs on human rights?
What kind of crack are you smoking?
I think it's worth giving a damn about, especially if our troops are being put at risk in Iraq. I think it's something many of the troops would give a damn about.
You are missing the point. We are at war with terrorism, not just al Qaeda or Bin Laden. Saddam supported terrorists, including Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the PKK, Abu Nidal, Hamas, and Ansar al Islam.. Iraq has been on our State Department's list of states that sponser terrorism for almost 20 years. The Clinton administration alledged Iraq/al Qaeda ties several times, including in this 1998 indictment. Even if Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, they were very legitimate and important target in the War on Terrorism.
It's an interesting story, but I don't think it's too likely in the wake of the commisson's report. Got a (credible) link for me?
We haven't seen the commission's report yet. The interim report that created a stir of sensational headlines last week was not from the commission- it was from a runaway commission staff, and the report's broad conclusions about Iraq/Al Qaeda ties have since been denounced by both the Chair and Vice-Chair of the commission.
Oh- and the commission has just been made aware of the al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia that the parent mentioned.
Really? Then why can't we find any?
The fact that Saddam had proscribed weapons that he couldn't account for is not in dispute.
And why aren't we attacking other countries that possess WMD in violation of international law?
No other country is in violation of a dozen unanimous UN security council resolutions requiring them to disarm. Iraq was a very logical step in the war.
Yes- I object to that.
Nobody seems to disagree that the Republicans unfairly prevented thousands of people from voting by mistakenly labeling them as felons.
I will say this in the kindest terms possible: bull freaking crap.
There weren't thousands of people that were incorrectly prevented from voting because they were on the felon list. The USCCR was able to identify 4 innocent people that were actually removed from voter registration, and 3 of those people were allowed to vote anyway.
If somebody was incorrectly prevented from voting, the blame lies on the Election Supervisor of the county that he/she lives in. According to Florida law, the County Election Supervisor is the ONLY person with the authority to remove somebody from the voter registration- NOT Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush or "the Republicans".
Florida law also stipulates that the Election Supervisor must verify the names on the felon list before taking any action. The law was designed to create a list with as many possible matches as they could get, and they would let the individual County Election Supervisors sort it out. In retrospect, that isn't the best solution, but the 2000 election was the first test of this statute, and they have changed it since then.
The 1998 Florida statute that required the state to compile a felon scrub list was passed in a bi-partisan vote of the Florida state legislature, and not just by the Republicans.
The company (DBT, who later merged with ChoicePoint) that provided the felon list to Florida was contracted by a Democrat named Ethel Baxtor.
Nobody is disagreeing with Greg Palast because his claims are so incorrect and blatently partisan that nobody takes him seriously.
In the case of Florida the close results triggered an automatic recount, as was mandated by the Florida constitution. Although that certainly gave me hope that the recount would favor Gore, i wanted the recount to happen fairly and if the new results still favored Bush i would have accepted that.
The mandated recounts did happen, twice. It was the hand recounts in a few heavily Democrat counties that the Republicans (and the Supreme Court by a 7-2 vote) objected to.
I honestly do think it's odd that the entire Bin Laden family got to fly home after 9-11 while all other flights were grounded.
Why? What is odd about that?
Actually, the saddest thing is that you and the parent poster appear to actually believe the crap that you are saying.
In your honor, I think I will double my contribution to Bush/Cheney '04 this month.
Boy- you really are a mad poster. Anyway:
There are numerous possible sources for the single weapon that was found
No there aren't. The US, Russia, and Iraq (and probably Germany since they invented the stuff) are the only countries that we know of that have the ability to make Sarin. The Bush administration has said that they suspect Syria has some, but there isn't much proof. Aum Shinrikyo was able to make some low quality liquid sarin for their subway attacks in Japan, but making Sarin is pretty complicated, and the number of people that have it is very limited.
You do not know where that weapon came from.
True, but the options are pretty limited, and the number of people that have been able to weaponize sarin in an artillery shell is even more limited.
In addition, the presence of a single armed shell is not indicative of the presence of an entire stockpile.
True- but it is indicative that no matter what Saddam said, he had not fully disarmed.
On top of that, it's well known that there numerous unexploded munitions, many of which are likely to contain gas or germs, due to duds from live fire ranges.
There are some unexploded munitions in Iraq, but there is no evidence that any of them are chemical or biological. Additionally, there is no way this artillery shell that we just found was an unexploded munition from before. Why? Because it was a binary shell that begins to mix the stable precurser agents together at launch, and the resulting sarin gas does not last very long. So if this had been a "dud" that was launched and just didn't explode, the gas inside would have still been mixed and long since been worthless.
Ah- so in other words, you are willing to consider all possibilities except the one that President Bush is right?
in a country that sworn up and down that they had destroyed all of their sarin
in a binary artillery shell exactly like the ones Iraq produced
in a country that has admitted to producing 790 tons of sarin and cannot account for all 790 tons
in the only country that has used sarin in combat, ever
Although you can make sarin from common chemicals, it is very complicated and dangerous to produce. The people that actually have/had the means to produce it is pretty limited. Finding a single shell with sarin alone would not be as big of a deal, but under these circumstances it is very significant.
Why don't you check how many UN resolutions Israel is in violation of
Why don't you compare apples to apples. Iraq was in violation of 17 UNSEC resolutions that specifically cite Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Chapter VII is the only place in the charter that authorizes military action. Guess how many resolutions have been passed against Israel under chapter VII? Zero.
Sure, Saddam was a 'bad guy', but let's not forget we created him.
We did not create Saddam. Saddam rose to power quite independant of our involvement in the middle east.
And if we're going to go after all the 'bad guys', there are many worse than Saddam we should start with.
Like who? Who else was in violation of 17 unanimous UNSEC resolutions, had direct ties to terrorist organizations, known supplies of WMDs, and some of the richest natural resources in the world to finance almost anything that he wanted.
And yes, please show me a link between Saddam and terrorists.
Ok. Here is the Council on Foreign Relations' report on Iraq's terrorist connections. Saddam had known ties to Ansar al Islam, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the PKK, the Abu Nidal Organization, and Hamas. He even went on TV and gave money to encourage suicide bombers! Again, George Bush is not the first to claim any of this. This has been the official policy of the US for 15 years.
Bush did lie about Saddam trying to buy plutonium from Africa
Bush said that British intelligence found that he had sought Uranium in Africa, and British intelligence still stands by this claim. There was no lie.
Nevermind that these are weapons that WE (the US) gave him because we didn't like the Iranians.
Those were not the weapons we gave him. Between 1973 and 1990, the US only accounted for 1% of Iraq's arms imports (source). The USSR, France, China, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Brazil, Egypt, Romania, Denmark, and Libya all supplied Iraq with more weapons that we did. And the chemical weapons that Saddam has used are definately NOT from us either (source). You are going to have to find a better reason to hate the US.
If Saddam had complied with the UN resolutions, we would know where the WMDs are. He didn't comply. That alone is a violation of the cease-fire from the first Gulf War and justification for military action. I know I am in a minority, but I still firmly believe that the WMDs will be found.
President Bush never said that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the US- on the contrary he was very clear that we must act before Iraq becomes an imminent threat.
The executive branch has claimed that Saddam had ties with terrorism, not just al Qaeda. This is not a new claim- Iraq has been on the State Department's list of terrorism supporting states for 15 years.
That said, there is some strong evidence that Saddam did work with al Qaeda
Let's be honest though, this action in Iraq has weakened the US's ability to deal with terrorists
How? Allow me to quote from the President's (excellent) speech last night:
the fact that all of the whimsical reasons for justifying it have been debunked as lies.
What? Just what do you think that President Bush lied about? That Iraq was not in complience with 17 unanimous UNSEC resolutions? That there were unaccounted WMD in Iraq? That Saddam wanted more WMD? That Saddam supported terrorists? Exactly what has he lied about?
You see, President Bush is not the first one to say these things. These are facts that have been well established over the past 15 years.
But there is no evidence that Saddam used any of the illegal weapons that he got from us. I am not making this claim- the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is. From the link above:
Interesting. I didn't know nicotine was that lethal. A google search found several sites that confirm that 50mg number.
Anyway, I did some more digging about Sarin. Here are some more numbers.
A "lethal" dose of sarin (50% would die with that exposure) is 100 mg-min/cu.m. This means that while resting, if you inhaled air with a concentration of 100mg of sarin per cubic meter for 1 minute, you would probably die. It is cumulative, so the same goes with a 50mg per cubic meter concentration for 2 minutes, or 25mg for 4 minites, etc. If you were exercising or breathing heavier, then the concentrations would be lower.
So if my calculations are correct, if this 6kg of sarin was fully mixed and evenly dispursed across 60,000 cubic meters (I know- it wouldn't), it would kill 50% of the people within those 60,000 cubic meters (or everybody within about 30 meters of the detonation) if they breathed it for 1 minute.