RV 6 in Sydney Australia

On Wed, 05 May 2004 21:10:38 -0700, Mark Hickey
wrote:

I'd really, really like to think there weren't any WMDs in Iraq, but
it's hard to figure out why Saddam would rather get removed than to
simply tell the UN where and how he got rid of the the ones he admits
having. I hope we don't find out where they went "the hard way"...

There is a possible explanation: Hussein actually thought he **DID**
have weapons of mass destruction because that's what his underlings
were telling him. A number of them were telling him that for several
reasons, 1. Their lives depended on their ability to produce WMD's so
they told him they were being made. It wasn't healthy to say no, or
they couldn't do it to Saddam Hussein. 2. His experts didn't really
have the expertise to produce WMD. 3. His experts were being paid a
lot of money to produce WMD and they for SURE did not want to tell
Saddam that they were getting all this money and nothing was
happening, so they told him they were making progress.

This is the angle (the human foibles factor) that the President's
cabinet, the ones who decided they did not like the intelligence they
were getting so they set up their own ad hoc intelligence group,
ignored: The possibility that there really were no WMDs.

The professional intelligence groups were saying that they could not
verify that WMD actually existed and Cheney and company just could not
believe it, given Hussein's retoric. They didn't think it was
possible that he was nothing more than a sadistic blowhard. But it
appears that is in fact what he was.

Corky Scott

Mike Patterson wrote:
On Mon, 03 May 2004 22:41:34 GMT, "Blueskies" wrote:


The arrogance continues...comparing dubya and his actions to the actions of the greatest generation 60 years ago. Not
even close, baby...


Yeah, we all know that GWB is the root of all that is evil on earth,
and those poor chaps who keep strapping bombs on their bodies to blow
up buses loaded with children and housewives are heroes.

The USA should never involve itself in world affairs until and unless
directly attacked.

Oh wait...nevermind that part.

OK, make that "until attacked with nuclear, chemical, or biological
weapons by a nation-state".

If so attacked by organized religious zealots, we should hunt them
down with police agencies and serve them all with subpeonas. If our
staunch allies like, say, the Germans capture and convict them, I'm
sure they'll put them away in a safe place where they'll no longer
pose a threat to anyone.

I just hope they hit -your- town before they hit -mine-. That way I
can keep my eyes closed as long as possible before I head for the
hills.

By the way, how much information do -you- get from the daily CIA, NSA
and other intel briefings?


Mike Patterson
Please remove the spamtrap to email me.

Geesh, you make tongue in cheek comment to a joke and you get all the
cowboys coming out of the woodwork!

Fellas.....GET A LIFE....

and definitely stay up there until the Prozac kicks in!


Rgds

John

wrote:

The professional intelligence groups were saying that they could not
verify that WMD actually existed and Cheney and company just could not
believe it, given Hussein's retoric. They didn't think it was
possible that he was nothing more than a sadistic blowhard. But it
appears that is in fact what he was.

The "professional intelligence groups" were pretty much unanimous in
stating that it was almost certain that Iraq had massive stores of
WMD, and certainly had the ability to produce lots more in short
order. The UN weapons inspection report just before the war concluded
that it was nearly certain they were sitting on 10,000 liters of
viable anthrax, for example (not that the 10 second snippets from Hans
Blix would have led the average news viewer to understand that).

I really, really hope you're right and that somehow his WMDs had gone
inert - though that wouldn't make a lot of sense given the known Iraqi
abilities in production of WMDs.

Mark Hickey

On Thu, 06 May 2004 23:38:39 -0700, Mark Hickey wrote:

wrote:

The professional intelligence groups were saying that they could not
verify that WMD actually existed and Cheney and company just could not
believe it, given Hussein's retoric. They didn't think it was possible
that he was nothing more than a sadistic blowhard. But it appears that
is in fact what he was.

The "professional intelligence groups" were pretty much unanimous in
stating that it was almost certain that Iraq had massive stores of WMD,
and certainly had the ability to produce lots more in short order. The UN
weapons inspection report just before the war concluded that it was nearly
certain they were sitting on 10,000 liters of viable anthrax, for example
(not that the 10 second snippets from Hans Blix would have led the average
news viewer to understand that).

I really, really hope you're right and that somehow his WMDs had gone
inert - though that wouldn't make a lot of sense given the known Iraqi
abilities in production of WMDs.

Mark Hickey

This WMD stuff really baffles me. If Saddam had WMD, and he knew the US
was coming to get them, did we really think he would just leave them to be
found? Shouldn't we have expected him to get them out of the country,
into unknown hands? Would we be safer with the WMD in Iraq, where we
could try to keep an eye on them, or in unknown hands? Is GWB
stupid enough to prefer having WMD in unknown hands to having them
contained in Irag? I doubt it.

And if the US really believed he had WMD, and then they weren't found,
shouldn't they have concluded that they had to have been spirited out of
the country, and shouldn't there have been a massive panic to find them?

Something doesn't add up somewhere.

--
Kevin Horton RV-8 (finishing kit)
Ottawa, Canada
http://go.phpwebhosting.com/~khorton/rv8/
e-mail: khorton02(_at_)rogers(_dot_)com

Kevin Horton wrote:

This WMD stuff really baffles me. If Saddam had WMD, and he knew the US
was coming to get them, did we really think he would just leave them to be
found? Shouldn't we have expected him to get them out of the country,
into unknown hands?

They wouldn't do him much good in the hands of his neighbors (most of
whom he couldn't trust anyway).

Would we be safer with the WMD in Iraq, where we
could try to keep an eye on them, or in unknown hands? Is GWB
stupid enough to prefer having WMD in unknown hands to having them
contained in Irag? I doubt it.

Unless I missed something, the whole point is we could NOT "keep an
eye on them". No one knew where they were. I know that it's "common
knowledge" that the WMD were "contained". I've just never had anyone
explain to me how that keeps WMD from getting out of the country.
When you consider how many bad guys and equipment are flowing into and
out of Iraq across the very pourous borders AFTER the country is full
of US troops, it's pretty unrealistic to think we could have kept a
few thousand liters of anthrax from filtering through.

And if the US really believed he had WMD, and then they weren't found,
shouldn't they have concluded that they had to have been spirited out of
the country, and shouldn't there have been a massive panic to find them?

I suspect there was... I'll wager there is a lot of searching going on
now that "won't make the news" for obvious reasons. And heck, if
they're finding jet fighters buried in the desert, there are obviously
some places we haven't looked IN Iraq yet.

Mark Hickey

Oh, get off your sanctimonious high horse will you. This ain't world war II.
We've been invading THEIR country since the very beginning. We "discovered"
an already occupied country then proceeded to slaughter the original
occupants for the next 3 centuries. US covert operations and our installed
proxies are responsible for the deaths of 100s of thousands in the middle
east, southeast Asia and south America. Iraq is nothing but a welfare
program for Halliburton and the other Bush cronies. America is the biggest
terrorist nation in the world. But of course if your only source of
information is the mind altering BS of Limbaugh and the other right wing
media corporate whores you wouldn't know that would you.

"Rich S." wrote in message
news:8ISdnXwpsZpGWQvdRVn- It's not boring up here. We are at war with those
who have invaded our
country and would destroy Western civilization. You just keep on fishing
and
enjoying the fruits of a free society (your airplane kit) while we act the
cowboy, as the greatest generation did some sixty years ago. Didn't some
of
yours (when things got close to your borders) share the foxholes - and the
bleeding - with us? Those were great times, eh?

"John Duncan" wrote in message
...

Fellas.....GET A LIFE....

and definitely stay up there until the Prozac kicks in!


Americans are nothing if not sanctimonious. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE
AMERICA EVER! We are the GREATEST NATION IN THE WORLD! Whether it's true or
not it's been drilled into our heads since day one. I just hope my Aus PR
comes thru so I can finally leave this land of vulture capitalism (where
making a killing on killing is just good business sense) and live in a
civilized country.

"Boo" wrote in message
s.com...
(snipped rant) . . . I just hope my Aus PR
comes thru so I can finally leave this land of vulture capitalism (where
making a killing on killing is just good business sense) and live in a
civilized country.

Godspeed.

Rich S.