Re: Bush43 Haters Can\'t Have It Both Ways
I'll try one more time, with some simple facts for you.
"You are under the impression, for some reason, that ALL weapon sites were under seal and monitoring. They were not."
All of these sites were by definition under monitoring. All known sites storing dual use equipment and materials that had not been destroyed from past WMD programmes were monitored.
"There was a systematic attempt by Saddam and his regime to undermine the efforts of the UN to monitor his weapons programs. It worked."
It did not work - the consensus of all serious involved people including those intially arguing for the war such as Duelfer and the governements invloved is that Saddam had next to nothing or nothing in the way of clandestine WMD activities for years prior to the war, that his large stockplies of chemical weapons were destroyed and that his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes were ended.
"Saddam expelled UN monitoring teams on more than 1 occasion."
He "expelled" them once. In fact they were withdrawn by the UN because of imminent allied airstrikes on Iraq. The Iraqis subsequently declared they would not cooperate with them if they returned as they correctly inisted they had already disarmed and were gaining nothing for their efforts, and claimed that the monitoring teams had been infiltrated by US and UK intelligence which was using infomration garnered amongst other things to select targets for airstrikes - a charge that subsequently turned out to be true. They were eventually readmitted and were their right up until the war with no indication of future explusion.
"The UN's monitoring and inspection teams were unsucessful. "
See above. The programme was clearly successful.
I also see you have gone completely off the orignial topic. You claimed that the existence of these sites is some kind of revelation or about turn. It is not; they were known about and monitored, and their existence was not part of the case for war or a bone of contention, it was agreed upon as a storage method for materials that weren;t to be destoryed for whatever reasons (dual use, the right of future use etc).
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