quote:Lt. Col. Ronnie McCourt, a British spokesman at Camp As Sayliyah, said Iraq fired three missiles into northern Kuwait, one of them an intercepted Scud.
Iraq is barred from possessing Scud missiles with ranges greater than 93 miles. [Edit: Which is ALL of them - the Scud A had a range of 111 miles ] U.N. inspectors sent after the 1991 Gulf War discovered Iraq had 819 Scuds exceeding that limit. Iraq declared all but two were used or destroyed.
But chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who headed the latest effort to find Iraq's banned weapons, told the Security Council this month it was "questionable" whether the Iraqis really had destroyed all of its Scuds and about 50 Scud warheads were unaccounted for.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
It's easy to find a missile when it's flying through the air. A little bit harder when it's been intentionally hidden away. Takes time to find it. But, then, we couldn't give the inspectors that time, could we?
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posted
The inspectors shouldn't have needed more than half an hour. Sadaam was required to hand this stuff over voluntarily. He didn't, and was therefore in violation. Nor do you have any reason to believe that the inspectors would have actually found these missiles in any amount of time, and further, that there are not WMDs in development in similarly hidden locations, in which case allowing that time would have been a serious mistake.
So your point was...?
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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posted
Is there anyone here that still thinks Lee isn't an asshole?
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Cartman
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posted
I don't. While being over the top as usual, he's just about right. Mr. Bush never wanted the inpections to work because he never really wanted to disarm Iraq.
There is no telling how long Mr. Bush has wanted to go after Saddam, but those he surrounded himself with have wanted to do it for years. The attacks on the WTC presented his cadre with an excellent opportunity to push their hawkish ideas for not only this action , but a complete change in foreign policy. And wasting little time on the Iraq front, I read somewhare that Rumsfeld apparently brought the subject up only thrity hours after the attacks.
To my mind, Mr. Bush wanted to settle an old personal score and he needed an easy country to attack and win against so we could prove to the world that he was ready to use preemption as a tool of foreign policy.
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
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posted
Bush never wanted the inpections to work because he never really wanted to disarm Iraq.
The point of inspection wasn't to destroy weapons, it was to ensure that Sadaam was destroying them. Thus, as evidenced by recent events, they failed all on their own, not due to any intervention by Bush. As for your paranoid fantasies about Bush's motivations, well, seeing as we've had good reason to remove Sadaam for a decade now, Bush and company really really wanting to remove him is nothing but a sign of their wisdom regarding foreign affairs.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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quote:Is there anyone here that still thinks Lee isn't an asshole?
It's called sarcasm. And no, I don't think he's an asshole.
quote:Originally posted by Omega: As for your paranoid fantasies about Bush's motivations, well, seeing as we've had good reason to remove Sadaam for a decade now, Bush and company really really wanting to remove him is nothing but a sign of their wisdom regarding foreign affairs.
Oh, that's rich. Bush's wisdom in foreign affairs? Bullshit. I may be resigned to the apparent need for this attack, but as I've said, I can't support the so-called "diplomacy" that preceded this conflict.
The simple fact remains that their actions aren't matching their words. If Bush wanted to disarm Iraq as its primary goal, why were the first missiles targeted at Saddam himself? And don't give the weak excuse about knocking out the command and control capabilities -- that first missile barrage was a lot more. Bush is definitely obsessed with getting this guy -- possibly for valid reasons, but the press and announcements are not acknowledging that, which is amounting to a lie.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Apparently the hawk types in here have the foreign policy wisdom of a four-year-old.
"I told you to clean your room a couple of days ago, you said you would. I am now going to insepct your room and if I find one sock out of place I'm going to throw you out of the house."
No doubt that would work with a four-year-old, but countries, foreign relations and disrarmament are such different things.
I give Mr. Bush some credit for getting inspectors back into Iraq and at the same time fault Mr. Clinton for letting Saddam remove them. But the simple point of the matters is that the inspectors are there and working.
That Mr. Bush goal is not about about disarmament or forcing Saddam to comply with U.N. resolutions is evident not in the fact that he tried to kill Hussein, but in the fact that he failed to even try and change the inspection process.
If the current system of inspection is not working to the desired degree and if you are really serious about disarming Iraq without resorting to war as a first option, then you change that system from a passive inspection process to an active inspection process.
If the goal was disarmament, we may or may not be at war right now, but there certainly would have been more steps in between asking where the violations were and then bombing.
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
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posted
If Bush wanted to disarm Iraq as its primary goal, why were the first missiles targeted at Saddam himself?
To remove the one responsible for the attempted rearmament of Iraq in the first place, and just about every bad thing that's happened to the Iraqi people since he came to power. Not that you actually need more of an explaination, of course. Regardless of whether you accept them, our reasons as stated are quite good on their own, as shown by their apparent effectiveness.
And Jay's analogy is flawed. Sadaam is not a four-year-old, nor is a SCUD missile a sock. Unless, of course, the four-year-old has had a history of using his socks to kill lots and lots of people.
That Mr. Bush goal is not about about disarmament or forcing Saddam to comply with U.N. resolutions is evident not in the fact that he tried to kill Hussein, but in the fact that he failed to even try and change the inspection process.
Again, the inspections existed to determine Iraqi compliance (or lack thereof), not to enforce it.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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Which implies that the Patriot Missiles could find Scuds in the first Gulf War. Since they couldn't, the above makes no sense. Is this sarcastic? In light of the article, which says that they were "intercepted" (no doubt by the new and improved patriot missile), I must assume that Rob has been hit on the head.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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posted
You're showing me my analogy is flawed by saying that Hussein is a bad person and not actually a sock??
quote:Again, the inspections existed to determine Iraqi compliance (or lack thereof), not to enforce it.
This "find an alledged violation, go to war" almost screams out the fact that Mr. Bush had no real intention of trying to find a peaceful way of either measuring or ensuring Iraq's compliance with U.N. resolutions.
The only thing Mr. Bush's appraoch was about was removing Saddam Hussein. His was an approach that simply looked for excuses to invade Iraq so he could accomplish that goal.
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
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