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Both introduced this year. By Democrats, even! And I'm all "The heck?" Because, you know, Caeserlike extensions of power are supposed to be part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy this time around.

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Originally posted by Omega:
3) the weapons are still intact somewhere else, like Syria for example.

Such is my chain of reasoning at this point.

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Originally posted by Veers:
First of Two: I am interested in your PERSONAL OPINION on the hunt for WMD. None have been found, yet you claim Bush was not lying. So...where do you think they are, or what do you think was done to them, or why do you think they have not been found?

Please, back up your opinions and do not resort to bringing up past instances of lying/deceit.

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If I could back up my opinions with solid data, they wouldn't be opinions, they'd be facts.

I should point out that "None have been found, yet you claim Bush was not lying." is indicative of the "either-or" thought proccess that certain of us have chided in Omega re: evoluton.

Even IF no WMD are ever found, in the unlikely even that they were not there to be found in the first place, it is possible, for example, that Bush was provided with false or misleading intelligence regarding the weapons. If you are working from false data given to you by trusted sources, you cannot legitimately be said to be "lying" about it.

(To use an analogy, if you took an action, such as writing a petition or sending money to a person or organization, based upon a story told to you by a trusted person - mom or dad, or whomever you trust - and that story later turned out to be inaccurate, false, or an urban legend, would YOU deserve the blame for acting on information you believed to be true at the time?)

This would not be the first time a national leader was provided with inaccurate data by his sources. Nor would it be the first time that the US entered into a conflict because of said data.

(Personal Opinion: Possible, but doubtful)

Or they just haven't found them in the place where they are yet, which is my opinion.

My opinion is that the Iraqis used the 14-month run-up period (beginning at the moment that they understood that this administration was serious about making sure Iraq was disarmed - which was fairly early on) to war to hide whatever they could that they hadn't already managed to hide from the 1991-1998 inspector cycle. Remember, the Iraqis successfully hid their nuclear program from Hans Blix's team IAEA of inspectors in the years leading up to 1991, (Washington Post, Aug 6, 1991) and that the UN agencies left Iraq in 1998 with a general consensus that the Iraqis had not been forthcoming with their information and that they had discovered only a fraction of what the Iraqis were hiding.

I should note also, at this point, that the arguments that Iraq's chemical weapons would have exceeded their 'shelf life' is untenable for several reasons: Anthrax, for example, has a rather extended lifespan. IIRC, Guinard Island, which during WWII was test-infected with anthrax, was declared uninhabitable for 48 years, (and even after the 'cleanup,' some claim spores remain and could be infectious. Additionally, the argument depends on the certainty that no "seed stocks" remain (an unlikely 'certainty,' since the 1998 inspectors believed that they had not found all the stocks.)

I should also note that I have not heard a great deal about Iraq's underground complexes. Apparently, there are a number of them which have not been fully explored yet. Saddam Hussein's bodyguard, when debriefed by Israeli intelligence, is said to have claimed that weapons were stored in these bunkers. (If I were running things, these people who claimed to have knowledge of weapons locations would be made to lead us to them personally - at the end of long chains.)

Since I have seen no checklist of sites checked (or how thorough such checking was - I wouldn't be surprised if some folks were counting as "inspected" any site on which a US soldier set foot), I cannot tell whether these sites have been checked yet.

For those of you who might want to check this out for yourself, the claims of Abu Hamdi Mahmoud include:

Saddam has maintained an underground chemical weapons facility at the southern end of the Jadray Peninsula in Baghdad;

an assembly area near Ramadi for SCUD missiles imported from North Korea; and

two underground bunkers in Iraq's Western Desert that contain biological weapons;

and other weapons of mass destruction are concealed in a tunnel complex built by Chinese engineers beneath Baghdad's sewer system.

an underground complex in Ouja, to the north of Tikrit. The complex was built five years ago with help from Chinese engineers. The entrance to the site is through a house in Tikrit. It is the home of one of Saddam's cousins and is more than half a mile from where the weapons are stored."

Now as someone who lives in Southwestern PA, a place which is honeycombed by endless miles of underground tunnels (we mine coal here), I can't even begin to imagine how long searching through them would take. Especially if you didn't know where the entrances were. Especially if those entrances were deliberately concealed. Or destroyed, during evacuation of personnel.

Are they there, somewhere? I think so. I have been given no good reason yet to doubt the thesis.

Can I prove it? Fuck, if I could, would I be wasting time here talking to you bozos?

Ask me me again if, after all 1600+ suspected sites are visited, and every lead from every informant has been run into the ground, there still hasn't been anything found.

We will see.

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"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

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Wasn't he, after all, such an immediate threat to the security of the United States that he had to be preempted before he could use them on us?

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