Proving you don't have something?

[imported_Chuck Weinstock]

I just read an Associated Press story that says that the US claims that Iraq has failed to prove that it doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. This made me wonder...how do you prove something like this even if you have the best of intentions. Clearly the Bush Administration (and many of the rest of us) are skeptical of claims that Iraq does not have such weapons...but I can't think of any possible way for Iraq to prove it doesn't...which makes the whole UN inspection thing a farce.

[Phat Mack]

It sounds strange to me, too. It reminds me of all the self-justifying rhetoric that preceeded WWII. I wonder why it neccessary. Sometimes people BS to fool others, sometimes to fool themselves.

[MMMMMM]

Saddam was supposed to give an accounting of his relevant weapons, past and present. So while he might not be able to absolutely "prove" he has no WMD, he could at least have provided an accounting (with some supporting evidence) of what was done with the WMD which were found to exist by the prior U.N. inspection. He failed completely to do this--not even addressing the issue in his lengthy report. That's far from the required "complete accounting." Today's U.N. Inspection Team has stated that the information he provided is merely a rehash of old and very incomplete information. So Saddam is acting in bad faith--as always. In addition, he was required to make available his country's WMD-related scientists for interview by the U.N. Inspection Team. Not surprisingly, quite a few of these top scientists have recently disappeared.

[andyfox]

Farce is a good word here. Saddam is not going to allow any of his weapons to be found. The UN inspections being conducted for the United States to later say that its invasion were justified by the results of the UN inspections. And the U.S. insistence that Saddam prove hs doesn't have anything is, as you point out, an impossible thing to do. Military action will thus be necessary.

[IrishHand]

Your point is a wise one, but one which shall surely be ignored by Americans. The propaganda machine seems to have generated just enough support to go forward with the war, so go forward we shall.

As you note, it's nearly impossible to prove a negative in this sense. I've never done drugs in my life, but I can't prove it. I've never owned a gun in my life, but I can't prove it.

You don't think we'd have asked him to prove something he was capable of proving, do you? As any sane lawyer will tell you - never ask a question in court to which you don't already know the answer...

"Do you have any WMD?"
"No."
"We believe you do - prove you don't."

Right...

[Ray Zee]

bush wants to go to war. and he must get it going by the end of feb. or it will be too hot there. he needs to drum up excuses as the inspectors havent found anything substantial enough to justify an invasion. bush might have an ace up his sleeve though. he is holding back some tidbit from the inspectors that he will spring upon the world soon and use that as the excuse for war. mark my words.

[MMMMMM]

But given that it is known he had WMD's (before the UN inspectors were booted out some years ago), he could at least provide an accounting of what he did with them (and hopefully a little corroborating evidence). Is that really too much to ask? If he won't do that then why should anyone believe he did away with them--all his past actions have been to avoid, delay, obscure and forestall, not to mention to outright lie. So even if he can't disprove something, he could at least offer a little good faith accounting and a bit of evidence as to what he did with these huge stocks of weapons after he booted the UN inspectors out. This is what the recent UN resolution calls for, and he is just flat-out ignoring it.

[MMMMMM]

Saddam has hidden a few needles in a gigantic haystack (or even moved them to Syria) and he is simply stonewalling as he always did before. If he was operating in good faith he would have provided the UN team with some sort of accounting of his known prior WMD's and what he did with them--as the resolution requires.

I agree that Bush seems very determined to get this war going quite soon and you are probably correct. I also suspect that there is good reason besides the weather to do this this year--perhaps because by next year North Korea will have taken their two old reactors out of mothballs and will be producing nuclear bombs at the rate of one per week. So we have to be freed up somewhat by that time in order to deal effectively with them if necessary. Also once they see how much faster we do Iraq this time around they may have second thoughts about testing our limits. So this may be both to show North Korea who they are dealing with as well as to be prepared to stop them in their tracks if they really do start cranking out bombs at a terrific rate by next year. After all we don't want to have to fight them when they have 30 or 100 nukes on 780-mile range missiles all poised to obliterate our bases and allies in the region. And it also may be because Iraq is expected to soon provide terrorist groups with biological weapons if they haven't already done so.

[Ray Zee]

you may find we dont do iraq quickly this time. he is no fool. he wont fight in the open like last time. it will be in the cities from buildings. remember what happened to us in somalia when we thought we could walk in and just win right away. most powers have learned the american people do not have the stomach for the long drawn out conflicts that cost them their money day after day. but this time sadam wont stay in power like his dad left him because father bush gave in quickly to politics. i read his lips and they said weakling.

[MMMMMM]

I agree with all those points including Bush Sr. at the time although there may well have been pragmatic reasons for leaving Saddam in power then.

There is no guarantee Iraq will be quick but given that our warfare techniques are so much more advanced now (considerably more so than even in Afghanistan recently), and given the Iraqi army's propensity to surrender, I think it will be relatively quick but messy. We now count the number of targets one plane can smart bomb, rather than the number of planes it takes to smart bomb one target, and cloud cover is no problem with GPS-guided bombs. The Republican Guard will be tough and the threat of Saddam using WMD is real, and Baghdad itself will probably be very messy. How's this for a scenario: nobody will have proved anything about Saddam's having or not having WMD's until the war starts. Then Saddam will prove it himself by using them.

[IrishHand]

it is known he had WMD's
Prove it. I know that's what the pro-military portions of our government would like you to believe, but I'd like to see actual evidence before I believe politicians (a personal failing of mine, I know - probably a consequence of law school). Yes, he had mustard gas and a few short/medium-range missiles. Those hardly qualify as "weapons of mass destruction".

Again - don't get me wrong. Hussein is a psycho and the world will be a nicer place when we remove him from it. I'd just prefer it if we were honest about the reasons for it. The world's full of homocidal psychos that we choose to do nothing about.

all his past actions have been to avoid, delay, obscure and forestall
Sounds an awful lot like the party line, so I'll refer you to my two previous paragraphs.
Next...onto your other reply relating to actual warfare in Iraq.

There is no guarantee Iraq will be quick but given that our warfare techniques are so much more advanced now (considerably more so than even in Afghanistan recently),
(a) It will be as quick as we want it to be. We could have a 'war' over in about a half hour if we wanted to - but that would radioactively contaminate our future oil supply, so that's not particularly likely. It's all a question of domestic support.
(b) "so much more advanced now"? Which military are you talking about? I'm sure it's not the one that I'm an officer in, 'cause apart from some extra urban warfare training and a few experimental gadgets, our military is the same as a year ago. Again...there's a world of difference between the line spouted to the military (eg. "we've learned so much from Afghanistan and we're so much better now") and the reality (eg. "we made a ton of mistakes there, but Iraq's totally different so they probably won't repeat themselves").

the threat of Saddam using WMD is real
It's the exact same people who spout nonsense like that that declare that he hid all his WMD after the first Gulf War. Again - Hussein is a homocidal freak. If he'd been able to kill a few more Americans (or Israelis or anyone else in range) during the first conflict, he would have. He was unable to now, and we have no reason to believe he's any more able to now.
When we attack him this time - it will be essentially the same as last time. We'll destroy his communication networks, then steamroll his normal army. The difference will be that this time we'll probably feel inspired to take Baghdad (thereby inspiring Hussein to take the quick road to the hearafter). The only question will be how the Iraquis react to this, and how the military in the city proper react to this. If the people don't oppose us, and the military there caves like they did a dozen years ago, it'll be no problem and Americans will be happy. If the army there is a little more motivated (his Republican Guard has this potential, apparently), then the perils of urban warfare will be revealed again. Ultimately, I suspect we'll opt to simply level city block after city block with bombs and artillery fire rather than expose US troops to guaranteed high casualty rates in street-fighting. In the end, it'll amount to the same thing - us disposing of a government we don't like and installing a pro-US government. We'll be winners again and the middle east will go on hating us.

Irish

[MMMMMM]

Didn't UNSCOM report on Iraq still having WMD's when they left four years ago? Didn't they also catch Iraq in a number of lies--such as the Iraqi claim to have "lost" 550 mustard gas shells?

You claim that Iraq would never use WMD and ridicule those who think it a real possibility. Just how can you be so sure?

Well, you're in the military: haven't there been significant advances in JDAM technology over the last year or so?

[John Cole]

Basically, Ari Fleischer claimed Iraq lied in their report the day after it was received. Given the bulk of the report, somewhere around 8,000 pages, it seems Ari did quite a bit of reading in one night.

John

[MMMMMM]

Since it took the Blix team quite a bit longer to reach approximately the same conclusion, how much higher would you estimate Ari's Verbal SAT score to be compared to that of the average Blix team member?

[IrishHand]

Ari submitted the paper to his kids, who promptly assured him it was 'boo, boo, caca.' It was clear to him then that the Iraquis were lying.

[IrishHand]

Didn't UNSCOM report on Iraq still having WMD's when they left four years ago?
No. I believe that it was reported they probably had mustard gas and scud missiles (both normal ones, and ones modified for longer range). Neither of those is a "weapon of mass destruction", despite what our media would have us believe.

You claim that Iraq would never use WMD and ridicule those who think it a real possibility. Just how can you be so sure?
You're inventing both your claims. I'm 100% certain that if Iraq had anything reasonably characterized as a "weapon of mass destruction" they would have used it in the first Gulf War. Hussein, again, is a homicidal psycho, but he was surely of the (rational) conclusion that his time as leader of Iraq was coming to a close at that time. If he'd had a chance to martyr himself a little better by taking down a pile of Americans or Israilis with him, he'd have surely done it in a second. The only question, then, is whether he's gotten some in the past dozen years. Given my understanding of the international situation, that's got to be highly unlikely. Our sanctions have mutilated his economy. If he weren't still trading mass quantitites of oil "illegally" (it still makes me laugh that his trading his only valuable resourse is some sort of violation), he'd be ruling over a middle eastern Ethiopia.

Certainly, if we know for a fact that he's managed to aquire some weapons of mass destruction, we should reasonably expect him to use them. Of course, if we knew for a fact that he did, we'd have pasted that all over CNN et al long ago and used that as our pretext to begin our upcoming Iraqi annihilation.

haven't there been significant advances in JDAM technology over the last year or so?
What does JDAM have to do with improving the quality of our military in attacking Iraq?? We have no problem bombing anyone into oblivion. Whether that takes 20,000 bombs or 15,000 makes no difference. We would enjoy complete air superiority attacking any country in the world except Israel (and that's only 'cause we gave them the aircraft and training to be as good as us). The primary area where increased technology or experience would be helpful for our attack on Iraq would be in urban warfare.

Basically, we can come up with endless improvements in airplanes, bombs and missiles and that's not going to have the slightest effect on attacking Iraq. In that aspect of the war, we've already flopped a royal flush. It's only on the ground where we might be able to improve on our full house.

Just my 2 cents, as always...

[rounder]

[nicky g]

that's quite an impressive accusation given that :
saddam and the ayatollah are mortal enemies (see Iran-Iraq war, continuing prisoner situation, secularist sunni vs. radica shi'ite etc)
saddam and osama are mortal enemies (secularist vs. lunactic sunni/wahibi)
the ayatollah and osama are mortal enemies (radical shi'ite vs. radical sunni/wahibi)
Qadafi is a mortal enemy of at least two of them (gven that he's a notional Marxist and has given information to the allies because he hates al-Qaida)

Saddam and Qadafi aren't radical Islamists, aren't supported by radical Islamists, and in fact suppress them, as did Arafat for many years.
still, facts eh? who needs 'em? keep it up.

[MMMMMM]

More evidence that kids have smarter natural instincts than 99% of the adults out there.

Years ago, when Saddam tried to pat that kid on the head (in the video), that kid knew he was lying, too.

[MMMMMM]

just to add a small point: evidence continues to accumulate that Saddam in more recent years has been involved with terrorists. Also, al-Qaeda (may pig dung be upon them) has commenced an initiative to target Israel, probably in an effort to rally more Arabs to their cause. Arafat however warned them not to attempt to "hijack the Palestinian cause."

[nicky g]

Certainly there's plenty of evidence he's been involved with terrorists; eg Abu Nidal, a lunatic Palestinian who I think killed a lot of people in the 70s and ended up a bit of a one-man band (and more of a gangster by the end than an ideologically motivated terrorist), until they killed him (probably) last year. But Saddam and Bin Laden are ideological opposites and there's very little evidence of any involvement - Iraq could possibly be pushed towards overcoming their hate for Al-Qaida by desperation, but that's an argument for not going to war, I'd say. Nor can I see any of the terrorists he may or may not be more likely to be involved with ever decding to use WMD's - it takes a very particular brand of lunatic to do that.

[IrishHand]

I agree. I don't know this Alger fellow you have a crush on, but I don't believe he serves in the Navy. In addition to the fine fellows you listed, I'm also a radical Islamic supporter of Hitler, Stalin, Pot, Kim, and anyone with a Shi Tzu.

[Chris Alger]

Honorably discharged in 1/24/84. Submarine Sonar Technician. Nor do I know how I got involved in this thread. Nor is Ray correct that I deliberately post under aliases.

[Ray Zee]

chris
i am in this thread and i dont think you are talking about this ray- being me. but if you are i never said this or anything i can remember, about you.

[Chris Alger]

I'm sorry Ray, I failed to realize that you were in this thread and should have made it clear that I wasn't refering to you.