Colin Powell's New Book: War With Iraq Never Debated

Saddam was NEVER the leader of the ME.

Iraq was crippled by two decades of sanctions and war.

They couldn't practice good reserve mgmt and they couldn't even get water treatment up and running.

Saddam was NO threat.

 

Still pushing the whole blood for oil bull(*)(*)(*)(*)? Keep re-writing history. It's what Progressives have been doing since 1913.

 

Doesn't even compare to turning our backs on our ally and friend, Ho Chih Minh by allowing the French back into Indo-China after World War II. That cost us many more lives in a Vietnamese conflict that could have been avoided if we would have remained friends with a man and people who truly loved us.

 

Greece, then Spain. We can't take a chance on them handling their debt crises. It might drag our economy down.

 

Not quite. America is the number one refiner in the world. The thing is we refine oil for the rest of the world. So, for instance, if Nigeria buys 100 million barrels on the market and doesn't have the capacity to refine it, they send what they can't refine to us. It's not our oil, but we refine it for a price we agree on, then ship their oil back to them.

 

Vietnam might be a worse mistake, more lives were wasted and even less was accomplished in a total defeat. That being said, Iraq was also an enormous mistake. And of course, you still have idiots who think that criticizing either one is "unpatriotic".

And hindsight is showing more and more how the Bush administration first term was led around by the nose by Dick Cheney and his cabel from the "project for the new american century" pals. The case for war was nothing more than a pre-determined policy being supported by cherry picked intelligence and outright lies.

 

Yep.. none of the dual citizen neocons of the PNAC ever served.

They didn't want to fight a war.. They just wanted to orchestrate one.

 

In truth, the vote for authorization of force was taken before Saddam allowed inspectors back into the country and is the reason why inspectors were allowed back in. Read the vote and it states it's primary objective is to enforce UN resolutions. The authorization did exactly what it was supposed to do, which is enforce UN resolutions. Saddam capitulated and allowed inspectors in with unfettered access. We could investigate any intelligence on WMD at any time. The resolution worked and accomplished it's goals... That is when President Bush rushed to launch an invasion within 3 months of inspectors being back in the country. He saw the window to invade closing. So to say that Congress authorized the use of force under the conditions that force was used is false.

 

Let me ask you some questions that will clarify Libya...

1) How many americans did Gaddhafi kill in terrorist attacks and how many did Saddam kill?

2) Was Libya conducted in conjuntion with NATO and our treaty obligations with NATO would neccessitate our involvement. Did NATO or any other international body authorize the invasion of Iraq, or was it led by the USA with a coalition of the "willing" which means "willing to be bought".

3) Did Libya end with US troops controlling the country and thousands of americans dead?

4) How can one country with WMD and a Nuclear program be such a terrible threat, even though they have never commited a terrorist act against us, and another country with WMD and a nuclear program not be a threat to us when they HAVE commited terrorist acts against us?

To try to compare Libya with Iraq is a joke. Libya was a success in that a dictator was removed and was done without any american lives lost, and with the power vacum filled by the country, not by us.

 

Good post.. Critical thinking always shows.

 

of course it was never debated cuz it was an oil war headed by war profiteers. Who in their right mind would debate making more money when one does not care about lives and has no soul

 

You need to learn more about what really happened. Have you heard of the "office of special plans"? The neocons from the PNAC setup an "intelligence" office in the pentagon to bypass the standard intelligence agencies. They needed to do this to ensure that the intelligence was cherry picked to make hte case for war. They needed to bypass the standard intelligence agencies because they would not distort the intelligence the way the OSP would.

Bad intelligence you say.... Remember the speech that Bush gave to outline the case for war in Cinncinatti. The old, don't wait for a mushroom cloud speech: http://articles.cnn.com/2002-10-07/...ces-terror-murderous-tyrant?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS

In hindsight, if you look at this speech and look at what has come out, it is a riddled with lies. For example, Bush said

So if you are quoting the head of Iraqs military industries, his intelligence was credible, right. But he specifically told us that Iraq had destroyed all their WMD. But Bush uses a source that says there was no WMD and lies in his speech to claim that source says Iraq has WMD.

In his speech Bush claims:

But UN inspectors were allowed into the country and could inspect these facilities and the evidence was that they were not WMD facilities.

The whole section on links to terrorism is a big lie:

The Al Qaida and Iraq links have been shown to have no operational value. There was never any evidence that Iraq trained Al Qaida members. Of the two terrorists mentioned by name, one had renounced terrorism and was even allowed to peace negotiations in Isreal by the Isrealis and the other was already dead, with the possibility that Saddam had killed him.

Books can be written on this, but the fact is that in hindsight as the picture gets clearer, it is becoming clearer and clearer that Bush used a series of lies, cherry picked unreliable intelligence and ignoring or burying credible intelligence that Saddam did not have WMD to justify the war. It was NOT bad intelliegence. It was deliberate manipulation for the purpose of starting a war based upon lies.

 

Did Iraq have WMD's? Saddam's sons in law said yes when they defected to Jordan in 1995. They oversaw Iraq's secret weapons program, including the buildup of missiles and atomic, chemical and biological weapons before the Persian Gulf War.

Saddam eventually told the fathers of his grandchildren that everything was forgiven and they will be allowed to return to Iraq. They were killed shortly after their return. Who was it that said Saddam was not a threat?

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/a...ons-in-law-defect-to-jordan-with-familie.html

 

Wrong. His son in law said that they were all destroyed. So how can the testimony of someone who said that they were all destroyed and there were no WMD be used to claim there was? That is part of the bug lie you are regurgitating.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/iraq/defector.shtml

 

The supposed WMD's which thrusted the United States into Iraq were never found. All such weapons were either used against the Kurds, or disposed of by Sadaam Hussein in accordance with UN efforts prior to the war in Iraq.

 

???? No. The UN required him to account for all his WMD AND account for their destruction. Claiming they are destroyed isnt accounting for their destruction.

 

I never stated that the UN actually disposed of such weapons. The United Nations has such an ability to do so, but they simply overseed the destruction of WMD's, with significant objections from the Hussein regime.

In regards to specifics, Sadaam Hussein disposed of 29,000 special munitions that could carry chemical or biological weapons during the 1990's. 411 tons of bulk chemical weapons agents were destroyed under UN supervision. Unilaterally, Iraq supposedly destroyed thousands of liters of anthrax and botulinum toxin. Iraq's nuclear program never really got up and running.

Overall, Hussein had disposed of any known WMD's prior to the invasion of Iraq.

 

LOLOL.. We didn't get any oil from Iraq.. Production fell to an alltime low and is still recovering.

 

You didn't need to invade Iraq because the UN weapons inspectorate already confirmed that no WMD existed. But Georgie-boy needed his war to prove to Daddy Bush what a tough-guy he was.
What followed was probably the biggest military blunder in America's woeful history of military screw-ups.

 

Colin Powell's career peaked with Operation Desert Shield/Storm.

It's been downhill ever since.

 

Saddam was anything but compliant, from not releasing political prisoners, to not allowing WMD inspections to take place, to continuing his support for terrorism, and the brutal oppression of his own people. He wasn't much of a threat to America, but he may have been one day, that's the problem. It's weird when I hear someone like Galloway saying "if you knew anything about him you'd know he has dignity." or something along those lines when describing his execution, which was criminal. But hey I don't think anyone can argue that he deserved it. You're not dealing with a sane man here, he spent the countries money on something like 19 palaces, I remember something about calling on the nation to hand in their personal gold, to support the Iran war, and low and behold he turns up in a solid gold chariot soon after His school system was good though.

He didn't have WMD, but he was trying to get his hands on it. So you have to think, what would have happened with Iraq had nothing been done about Saddam. I'm not condoning all the problems with the war, like tactics on the ground and contracts that weren't honoured to help build Iraq up, or the support of clerical fundamentalist Al Maliki, but in principle it seems to me Saddam had to go for a lot of reasons.

 

Iraq never accounted for all the weapons the UN expected them to have. As a matter of fact, hundreds of WMD were found in Iraq, but it was said they were older ones and not the ones they were looking for.

There has been at least two investigations, if not more as to the information that was gotten. There is no evidence that shows Bush got information not given to Congress. You can bet you ass if there was, the Democrats would have been all over Bush and the Republicans about it. another conspiracy story.

 

Marine, Iraq was broken by two decades of war and sanctions.. They were NOT a threat. Saddam was unquestionably a ruthless chit, but his public works projects were an effort to create JOBS.

 

Most of the WMD's that were found were of no threat to the United States. Thousands upon thousands of chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons and munitions were destroyed unilaterally, under UN supervision, or used against Kurdish citizens. There was mere traces of weapons upon invasion in Iraq, so little and not useful that it did not pay to even report such.

 

Iraq wasn't a threat as far as conventional weapons goes. They did consider him a threat as far as WMD goes. All the intelligence services disagreed on what weapons Iraq had, but they all agreed Iraq had them and what he didn't have he was working on getting. This was stated by CIA directer at one of those hearings.