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Please don't mention Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a utopia under his leadership compared to now.
Yeah no kidding! What a huge mistake and I feel so bad for the military used in such a way. Talk about no regard for our own military's lives, let alone those people living in Iraq. Saddam was a strong arm, but over that way, a strong arm was needed. There were a pile of different churches in Iraq of all denominations back when Saddam was in power. Now it is a shambles. It is a shame the US doesn't learn very well, but it seems Obama is seeing the light a little bit. He is getting other countries involved so we aren't the only policing country. I am more than tired of us spending billions and billions way over there when our infrastructure is crumbling. Let them deal with their own problems. We are not ruled by Israel, or are we? I certainly hope not.
4,487 american military deaths in iraq & 2,349 in afghanistan and thats not enough for john mccain. he wants to see more killed.
Here is the quote for you about the viability of the some of the shells. The context is that earlier in the article they say that even at 43% purity they are viable:
By 2006, the American military had found dozens of these blister-agent shells in Iraq, and had reports of others circulating on black markets, several techs said. Tests determined that many still contained mustard agent, some at a purity level of 84 percent, officials said.
Separate quote.
Had these results been publicly disclosed, they would have shown that American assertions about Iraq’s chemical weapons posing no militarily significant threat could be misread,
and again, just for context here:
Its canisters had ruptured during the roadside bomb’s detonation, mixing precursors to create sarin with a purity of 43 percent — more than enough to be lethal.
Its canisters had ruptured during the roadside bomb’s detonation, mixing precursors to create sarin with a purity of 43 percent — more than enough to be lethal.
bullets are lethal also. we can kill a lot of people with non-wmd's. i dont see why i should be particularly bothered by a wmd death vs a bullet/bomb/etc. death.
how many individuals could one of those canisters realistically be expected to kill?
bullets are lethal also. we can kill a lot of people with non-wmd's. i dont see why i should be particularly bothered by a wmd death vs a bullet/bomb/etc. death.
how many individuals could one of those canisters realistically be expected to kill?
And that is an argument that you have every right to. I am not trying to convince you that the war was justified.
I am just giving some facts here. We found WMD, as described by our boots on the ground, "all over the place" and it has not been accurately reported it to the American people BY ANYONE.
We found 5000 shells with estimated thousands more destroyed at operational level without being reported. There was also the 500 tons of yellowcake uranium.
However, at this point when discussing this historically, we do have to do away with a few canards
1) There was viable banned WMD found and not a small amount.
2) Bush did not solely cite ongoing weapons programs as the basis for the war, but gave several reasons including Saddam's refusal to co-operate with UN inspectors over existing WMD.
Your position as enunciated is a more fair criticism of the war.
And that is an argument that you have every right to. I am not trying to convince you that the war was justified.
I am just giving some facts here. We found WMD, as described by our boots on the ground, "all over the place" and it has not been accurately reported it to the American people BY ANYONE.
We found 5000 shells with estimated thousands more destroyed at operational level without being reported. There was also the 500 tons of yellowcake uranium.
However, at this point when discussing this historically, we do have to do away with a few canards
1) There was viable banned WMD found and not a small amount.
2) Bush did not solely cite ongoing weapons programs as the basis for the war, but gave several reasons including Saddam's refusal to co-operate with UN inspectors over existing WMD.
Your position as enunciated is a more fair criticism of the war.
yeah, i understand that in a lot of people's minds wmd was a justification for war and that seems to make sense for them. so i see that mentioning "wmds" were found shouldnt important to them and its true that many are unaware of that.
but i get bothered by seeing people pretend that possession of wmd's was so critical as to justify trillions of dollars and thousands of lives wasted over. bush cited other reasons for the war but not the real reason. i hope people have learned from our experience.
I didn't think there were people who didn't know about Iraq's chemical weapons program from the 80s and how the US helped them with it.
The US gave them all kinds of weapons in the 80s. Donald Rumsfeld assisted the Reagan admin with that.
If they had found any of the WMDs that the Bush/Cheney admin were looking for, pretty sure they would have trumpeted that rather than have Bush making jokes about looking for WMDs under the bed during a WH Correspondence Dinner.
They keep recycling old news about the storage facility which was used to dispose of Iraq's chemical weapons under UN supervision.
Quote:
In the aftermath of Iraq's military defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, the cease-fire agreement—United Nations Security Council Resolution 687—required Iraq to eliminate its entire chemical weapons stockpile under the supervision of inspectors from a newly created UN disarmament agency, the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM). Chemical munitions, bulk agent, and precursors stored throughout Iraq were consolidated at Muthanna and destroyed by incineration or neutralization. The destruction campaign, which lasted from June 1992 to June 1994, disposed of more than 38,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions, 690 metric tons of bulk and weaponized CW agents, and over 3,000 metric tons of precursor chemicals.[4]
Although the damaged Bunker 13 at Muthanna contained thousands of sarin-filled rockets, the presence of leaking munitions and unstable propellant and explosive charges made it too hazardous for UNSCOM inspectors to enter. Because the rockets could not be recovered safely, Iraq declared the munitions in Bunker 13 as "destroyed in the Gulf War" and they were not included in the inventory of chemical weapons eliminated under UNSCOM supervision.
The US helped in the design and helped effect the manufacture of the chemical weapons. To release information that this happened during the time in question would have created a political nightmare.
It is common knowledge that in the US, we move on as quickly as possible, away from knowledge of the past and holding people accountable.
Same thing...he did not have the capacity to build new stuff, but sure had plenty of the old.
A quote:
Jarrod Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of 'wounds that never happened' from 'that stuff that didn't exist'.
'I love it when I hear, ‘'Oh there weren't any chemical weapons in Iraq'',’ he said. 'There were plenty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cachibatches
I agree, but they are not nothing either. They are still a violation of the agreement to destroy the weapons, and they are still dangerous. Especially the chemical weapons, which have apparently been subsequently used.
As for the yellowcake, Libya had an active nuclear program at the time, and there is some evidence that Iraq had negotiations with them. In any event, a dirty bomb is an oft discussed terrorist tactic.
It is just something to think about. 5000 chemical shells, even old ones, and 500 tons of yellowcake are not negligible. I agree that this is not what Bush was selling when he was talking about mushroom clouds, but it does, definitively put to bed the idea that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Also, there is almost certainly more to the story, as I believe that it is now more strongly accepted that more shells made it to Syria, and some were destroyed at operational level without being reported. I also heard on the radio that he had a duel use high explosive, but I can't find a print source for that.
I saw a report that centrifuges were being hidden, and then another that debunks it by saying that they were buried just to get rid of them.
Various other things, nothing a slam dunk, but all of them significant to a degree.
While it is significant that unsecured old munitions can be located and used by insurgents (although by the sounds of the NY Times article they will probably harm themselves more than they will be able to deploy them against US interests). But these old munitions do not provide anything like support for the claims made by the Bush Administration in the run up to Iraq. I think these revelations are only damning--they show that not only were there no active weapons programs, but the invasion planning and execution failed to provide adequate facilities and training for troops to protect themselves against exposure to old munitions (and even after the old munitions were discovered to have active chemical agents, failed to share that information with ordinance disposal teams and medical teams).
Also, keep in mind that the vast majority of the old chemical munitions were unusable militarily. They were no longer WMDs, but a small (though significant) percentage were essentially active toxic waste.
As to the nuclear material, it was secured in the early 90s by the IAEA. Getting it out of country was necessary because the invasion destabilized Iraq.
There is simply no evidence that Iraq was pursuing a dirty bomb, building centrifuges, or had any active WMD program at all. The "dual-use" explosives had been secured by IAEA and were part of the old weapons programs. The invasion itself unsecured them. There were no centrifuges.
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