WMDs the final word?

[Cyrus]

"The president is a wholly public figure and his actions as a whole have an effect on the nation."

If anything that a Prez does in private is actually a public affair, do you think that (this is a serious question) a President of the United States should engage, for example, in an act of sodomy, under any circumstances?

Would this be giving out wrong signals and have any kind of bad effects on the great American nation if it becomes a public matter? What is your opinion?

Once more, I am serious - and curious about this.

[Utah]

If anything that a Prez does in private is actually a public affair, do you think that (this is a serious question) a President of the United States should engage, for example, in an act of sodomy, under any circumstances?

Depends if she's cute (or "he" for the culturally sensitive)

Although I have no problem with sodomy, he should not do it simply because of the potential adverse effects on the nation (simply put - if found out it would raise a s#$%t storm)- whether those effects are borne out of ignorance or other factors is besides the point. Also, please don't construe my "morality clause" to mean anything to do with morality (which I dont believe in) - its just what they are called.

Lets take away the loaded issues relating to sex. Lets say the president, in his free time, was penning a book called "Why I hate blacks". The book was private and it was somehow stolen from his bedroom. Do you think that these same people who said the sex was a private act would say the same thing about the book, since it was legal, private, and done on his own time? Further, lets say there was no evidence in his public life of this bigotry.

The public/private line is difficult to draw and to be honest, I am not sure of the exact answer. However, I think the overriding principle is that it rests in the public domain if it has the potential to effect the nation. I think his health exams are a good example. Ones health is about a private an issue as you can come by. However, the results of the president's exam are public at a high level (e.g., "The president is in good health". The president needs surgery").

[MMMMMM]

"Kay has officially stated that he believes it unlikely that there were any WMDs."

No, he stated that he does not think there are any WMD's in Iraq now.

Kay definitely does think there were WMD's (or WMD components) in Iraq, and he thinks they were transported to Syria.

On Jan. 25, 2004, David Kay said this:

(excerpt)
Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 25/01/2004)

David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved." (end excerpt)

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai.../25/wirq25.xml

[Taxman]

Yes you've already provided this information. Say what you will about this slight swing, but he has stated now (today) that he does not believe there ever were WMDs in Iraq. It's all over the news as we speak. "unspecified materials" doesn't really mean much anyway, even if some of them potentially could be used in the formation of WMDs.

[MMMMMM]

"WMD components" don't count anymore then? heh.

Don't worry, we'll find them when we go into Syria (probably after the election).

[Chris Alger]

In his NPR interview yesterday, David Kay was asked the following question about Con Coughlin's alleged quotation by him in the Telegraph and gave the following answer.

Q: "You told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that you do believe that some weapons materials may have been moved to Syria. What can you tell us about that?"

Kay: "I think that's a compressed [laughter] view of what I said. What I said is there's ample evidence of movement to Syria, uh, before the war. I mean there's satellite photography, there are reports on the ground, of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don't know what was moved. And that's an important area for which continued work has to be done. Although I must say there's very little you can do in Iraq to determine what was moved, the real answers to that are in Syria. And the Syrian government has shown absolutely no interest in helping us resolve this issue."

In other words, prior to the bombing, people unsurprisingly fled. It is therefore conceivable that something Kay is looking for went with them, but he can't say if there's any evidence of this other than "movement" of people and vehicles. He offers nothing about weapons, weapons components, weapons program-related components, or any of the other increasingly distant threat words the White House now uses to justify the war.

Three things are interesting here:

1. Con Coughlin's reputation as an unscrupulous shill for the war is unabated. After reporting huge Iraqi demonstrations in support of the war that no other journalist ever sees, after reporting secret documents linking Iraq to al Qaeda that not even the U.S. government sees, and now a "compressed" (i.e., overly specific) "quote" from Kay. Small wonder that Coughlin doesn't report even the nature of the evidence he claims Kay disclosed. (Coughlin's boss Conrad Black, BTW, also publisher of the Israeli propaganda tabloid The Jerusalem Post, is being sued for looting $200 million from the Candian holding company while it's directors looked the other way. One of the directors is Iraq war architect Richard Perle).

2. Ariel Sharon claimed back in December 2002 that "We are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria." So why hasn't the leading recipient of U.S. aid refused to disclose to the CIA's chief weapons inspector even the slightest evidence for the alleged certainty? Why doesn't Bush castigate Israel by saying "we give it $5 billion of taxpayer money every year and Israel won't even give us a clue about what went to Syria, even though lack of WMD is undermining my credibility and Israel is 'certain' of its proof?" Because it's transparent nonsense.

3. Kay's last comment about Syria's refusal to cooperate is a telling indicator of how U.S. policy actually undermines efforts to curtail terror and the spread of WMD. I think it was Nicky that posted some excellent stuff about Syria's early cooperation with the U.S. in tracking down al Qaeda members. This budding relationship, however, was terminated by the White House in order to maintain a constant state of hostility toward Syria. Syria was also the sponser of a UN resolution to verifiably ban all WMD's from the Middle East. The U.S., of course, opposed this, meaning that it died on the vine, because it would also apply to Israeli nukes which threaten the entire region.

These bits of innuendo about Syria are nothing more than scraps of red meat the right occasionally throws to race warriors like you to support bloodbaths in more Arab countries, as you evidently hope for, "after the election."

[MMMMMM]

Thanks for the additional information.

I cannot, however, but take issue with the foloowing statement of yours:

"These bits of innuendo about Syria are nothing more than scraps of red meat the right occasionally throws to race warriors like you to support bloodbaths in more Arab countries, as you evidently hope for, "after the election.""

Syria promotes and supports terrorism, and the government is Baathist as was Saddam's. The terrorist training camps should be eliminated and if Assad won't do it, I'll bet we will.

You truly cannot be thinking straight if you think I am in any way a race warrior. I despise bigotry based on race, and I despise ideologies and political systems which deny their citizens equality before the law.

Apparently, according to Chris Alger, despising bigotry or totalitarianism is itself bigotry. Amazing.

According to Alger, despising a system such as Islamic law under which women are treated as chattel instead of as human beings, is bigotry--which makes me a race warrior, lol.

I despise intolerance. I am only intolerant of cruelty, stupidity, and intolerance--and systems which institutionalize such things.

[andyfox]

The White House retreated Monday from its once-confident claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Democrats swiftly sought to turn the about-face into an election-year issue against President Bush [gee, really? af].

The administration's switch came after retired chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said he had concluded, after nine months of searching, that Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of forbidden weapons. Asked about Kay's remarks, White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to repeat oft-stated assertions that prohibited weapons eventually would be found.

McClellan said the inspectors should continue their work "so that they can draw as complete a picture as possible. And then we can learn - it will help us learn the truth."

-Would have been nice if we had had a complete a picture as possible and had we learned the truth, and had the truth been related to us, before we went to war. But again, not too many governments in history have told the truth about why they go to war.

[andyfox]

Even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq, the U.S.-led war was justified because it eliminated the threat that Saddam Hussein might again resort to "evil chemistry and evil biology," Attorney General John Ashcroft said Monday.

Saddam's willingness to use such weapons was sufficient cause to overthrow his regime, Ashcroft told reporters, alluding to the use of chemical and biological arms against Iraqi Kurds in 1988 and during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.
"Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern, not only to the United States but also to the world community. They were the subject of U.N. resolutions," Ashcroft said.

So, according to our chief law enforcement officer, it doesn't matter if we went to war to eliminate the WMDs and they're not found; Saddam might resort to evil science once again, since he did it in the 1980s.

Mr. Ashcroft neglected to point out, of course, that the United States supplied components of the evil science used in the 1980s, as well as the aircraft with which to deliver it. And after all he had it then, abetted by us, why not go to war over it two decades later?

If Bush were smart, he'd tell Ashcroft to shut up; Ashcroft has Howard-Dean-Foot-in-the-Mouth Disease.

Can you imagine the ridicule, had Hussein invaded the United States and overthrown its government, a statement like the following would have been greeted with by the world community, especially if Hussein had supplied the chemical components and transportation equipment used to deploy them?:

"Even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in the United States, the Iraq-led war was justified because it eliminated the threat that the U.S. government might again resort to "evil chemistry and evil biology," Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein said Monday.

The U.S. governnment's willingness to use such weapons was sufficient cause to overthrow his regime, Hussein told reporters, alluding to the use of chemical and biological arms against the Vietnamese in the late 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War. "Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern, not only to Iraq but also to the world community. They were the subject of U.N. resolutions," Hussein said.

Let's face the facts:

-All governments lie, especially when going to war.

-All governments distort intelligence to make it conform with what they already know and/or believe and would like the public to know and/or believe.

-All governments cover up some of their true reasons for going to war, especially governments that are facing reelection.

-Many of the primary figures in the current Bush administration had been calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein for many years, long before 9/11. One cabinet member has said that the administration had made up its mind to go to war against Hussein long before 9/11. Rumsfeld called for war against Hussein only hours after the 9/11 attacks.

-The administration sent its own people into the intelligence services to hand pick the intelligence it wanted, even when those services insisted the intelligence they wanted was of poor quality. This information was then presented as gospel at cabinet meetings and to the American people.

-No WMDs have been found. The chief weapons inspector says they won't be because they don't exist, certainly not in the quantities or the quality alleged by the administration, because our intelligence was faulty.

-Several administration officials have backed off from their professed certainty that Hussein had WMDs and that we would find them. The president himself used very different language in his most recent State of the Union speech than he did one year ago.

-Either our intelligence was faulty or the use of it by the administration was faulty, or both.

-Claims that the war was necessary because Hussein was a threat to us and others because of his WMD program are clearly untrue.

-The administration refused to face up to the problems of post-war Iraq before the invasion because it knew paying attention to this issue would create doubt as to the wisdom of the invasion. Every problem that has come up from looting to elections was analyzed and addressed by intelligence agencies and analysts prior to the war, and ignored by the administration.

Looks like the conservatives can fvck foreign policy up just like the liberals. One wouldn't have believed it had one not experienced it.

[daveymck]

You also missed the fact that Saddam also used the fact the US was the only country to ever deploy nuclear weapons and was expanding the nuclear program to put missles into space.

As well as having programs to design smaller nuclear devices to penetrate underground bunkers.

I'll also add not signing the treaty to reduce global pollution as well.

Better stop I'll get accused of being anti US, which I'm not I just dont agree with everything that is done in the US or the UK for that matter.