Topic awaiting preservation: USA, amendments, and strategic plans. (Page 1 of 1)

It's been a few days now that the US governement admitted not having found any mass destruction weapons (or any proof of their existence) in Iraq. Nobody seemed to launch this topic, so I'm going to do this.

If my memory is correct, the main reason of the USA to go to war with Iraq was that they found some "irrefutable evidence of the existence of mass destruction weapons that could threat the USA". They used and abused of this to convince the public opinion that going to war was "legal". Mr Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, said something very interesting about it :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,967491,00.html

quote:

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[Mr Wolfowitz] also pointed to another important consequence of the war - the strategic reordering of the Middle East.

"There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed-but it's huge-is that by complete mutual agreement between the US and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia," he said.

---

So, even the US leaders admit this war was made in a strategic purpose, probably willingly knowing there were no mass destruction weapons in Iraq. It explains also the global misiformation about the power of the Iraqi army and the imperial guard...

I would like to hear now the ones that found this war to be legitimated, how they consider this.

Furthermore, all these revelations take place in a new international context : the USA are again willing to trade with us French. What a change of ideas ! What a upheaval !

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,967466,00.html

quote:

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[Mr Bush] told Le Figaro that the American people had been "disappointed and frustrated by France's attitude on Iraq".

The president said he was "looking forward to having a good discussion with Jacques Chirac. I will obviously need to work on convincing those French who doubt the Americans' sincerity. But Jacques Chirac ... will have to work to convince his own citizens and show that France is ready to cooperate with the United States".

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So after all this junk about us, all this wave of belittling and stupid renamings, the USA still want to discuss with the French ? Given the silliness of the first reactions towards us, I wouldn't have thought the US governement was ready to make a step towards diplomacy... And anyway Mr Bush doesn't seem ready to give up anything ("will have to work to convince his own citizens and show that France is ready to cooperate with the United States") nor to forget our opposition in this war.

So, are the USA merely trying to amend themselves ? Or is this again just a strategic reconciliation ?

Whatever the end of this summit will be, this is not a "Vive la France!" that will convince me.



Edit : spelling, grammar...

[This message has been edited by Moon Shadow (edited 06-01-2003).]

Did they or didn't they find weapons of mass destruction?
Okay, maybe not, but they might have had nukes in the coming months/years.
~looks around in mild confusion~

quote:

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Marines find underground nuke complex
Captain guarding facility: 'How did the world miss all of this?'

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Posted: April 9, 2003
7:00 p.m. Eastern

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© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

U.S. Marines have located an underground nuclear complex near Baghdad that apparently went unnoticed by U.N. weapons inspectors.

Hidden beneath the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission's Al-Tuwaitha facility, 18 miles south of the capital, is a vast array of warehouses and bombproof offices that could contain the "smoking gun" sought by intelligence agencies, reported the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

"I've never seen anything like it, ever," said Marine Capt. John Seegar. "How did the world miss all of this? Why couldn't they see what was happening here?"

Marine nuclear and intelligence experts say that at least 14 buildings at Al-Tuwaitha indicate high levels of radiation and some show lethal amounts of nuclear residue, according to the Pittsburgh daily. The site was examined numerous times by U.N. weapons inspectors, who found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

"They went through that site multiple times, but did they go underground? I never heard anything about that," said physicist David Albright, a former International Atomic Energy Agency inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997.

In a 1999 report, Albright said, "Iraq developed procedures to limit access to these buildings by IAEA inspectors who had a right to inspect the fuel fabrication facility."

"On days when the inspectors were scheduled to visit, only the fuel fabrication rooms were open to them," he said in the report, written with Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear engineer who defected in 1994. "Usually, employees were told to take to their rooms so that the inspectors did not see an unusually large number of people."

Chief Warrant Officer Darrin Flick, the battalion's nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist, said radiation levels were particularly high at a place near the complex where local residents say the "missile water" is stored in mammoth caverns.

"It's amazing," Flick said. "I went to the off-site storage buildings, and the rad detector went off the charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums, many, many drums, of highly radioactive material."

Iraq began to develop its nuclear program at Al-Tuwaitha in the 1970s, according to the Institute for Science and International Security. Israel destroyed a French-built reactor there in 1981 and a reactor built by the Russians was destroyed during the 1991 Gulf War.

Hamza testified before Congress last August that if left unchecked, Iraq could have had nuclear weapons by 2005.

Noting that the ground in the area is muddy and composed of clay, Hamza was surprised to learn of the Marines' discovery, the Tribune-Review said. He wondered if the Iraqis went to the colossal expense of pumping enough water to build the subterranean complex because no reasonable inspector would think anything might be built underground there.

"Nobody would expect it," Hamza said. "Nobody would think twice about going back there."

Michael Levi of the Federation of American Scientists said the Iraqis continued rebuilding the Al-Tuwaitha facility after weapons inspections ended in 1998.

"I do not believe the latest round of inspections included anything underground, so anything you find underground would be very suspicious," said Levi. "It sounds absolutely amazing."

The Pittsburgh paper said nuclear scientists, engineers and technicians, housed in a plush neighborhood near the campus, have fled, along with Baathist party loyalists.

"It's going to take some very smart people a very long time to sift through everything here," said Flick. "All this machinery. All this technology. They could do a lot of very bad things with all of this."

Marine Capt. Seegar said his unit will continue to hold the nuclear site until international authorities can take over. Last night, they monitored gun and artillery battles by U.S. Marines against Iraqi Republican Guards and Fedayeen terrorists.

The offices underground are replete with videos and pictures that indicate the complex was built largely over the last four years, the Tribune-Review said.

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[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 06-01-2003).]

Well of course the United States didn't find WMD. Honestly, were people expecting otherwise?

When a nation wide search is going on in a country with large amounts of oil and a U.S. administration claims to have evidence of these WMD that they can't share with the weapons inspectors or U.S. citizens, odds are real good the evidence doesn't exist.

Not to suggest this war was over oil or anything. I mean I'm *real* sure the U.S. had that evidence before they misplaced it. Fortunately, key allies in the Bush administration recieved multi-billion contracts.

Politics is politics.

Jestah

[This message has been edited by Jestah (edited 06-02-2003).]

It's very interesting the comments Tony Blair has made though. He has stated that they will be found, and that he has seen evidence proving their existence. So irrespective of what you think of what evidence/opinion that you have seen, how do you think Mr. Blair can essentially risk his career on this, without some pretty good idea of the facts?

Either he knows some pretty important information, or it's a grave misjudgement - I see no way he can worm out of this. That doesn't change my opinion, which is that it would have been a lot easier, and proper, to bring these facts out before we went to war. If this "new" information cannot justify the war, then it would have been better to debate it before we went into Iraq

Both US Congress and UK Parliament have been putting a lot of pressure on the respective leaders to come forward with their evidence but so far they haven't. Without seeing a single photograph or file, many educated members of this forum have been convinced of Iraq's WMD program, is it really that difficult to think PM Blair was party to an effort without ever seeing evidence? With the fortune companies stand to make in the area, is it also that difficult to think that we invaded a country for financial gain? Rather then look for WMD, just about our first action in Iraq was to seek to lift United Nation sanctions against the country so we can begin selling oil.

A mass of weapons, so much that it threatened global security, shouldn't be so difficult to find. It makes matters that much frustrating when men such as Blair and Bush have admitted to seeing this evidence. It makes me wonder how many Americans and Brits would have supported the campaign had they have known evidence would be "classified" indefinetly and we'd be staying there many, many years.

Blix report fuels doubts on weapons of mass destruction

Ex-Army boss: Pentagon won't admit reality in Iraq

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION FOUND!!!


Jestah

[This message has been edited by Jestah (edited 06-03-2003).]

Bush: 'We'll reveal the truth'


Jestah

Well, I'm quick enough to say that I'm proud to be an American, so I guess it's only fair to say that I'm ashamed of some of the anti-French ranting that came from this side of the Atlantic. I think that most of it came more from stupidity than from general malice, but I'm not sure whether that makes it better or worse. In the USA, France is associated with everything sophisticated, so someone who is anti-intellectual will have a grudge against the French. Not logical, but then that's appropriate for an anti-intellectual.
Now our international relationship is at least superficially better; we had the famous phone call and the famous handshake. But Chirac had to meet Bush more than halfway, or so it seemed. Of course, I get most of my news about Franco-American relations from Les Guignols de l'Info.
As far as the actual WMD, it seems that the administration listened to those who were telling them what they wanted to hear. I think that whether they find them now is beside the point; it seems that they didn't know where they were, or they would have found them by now. And if they didn't know where they were, then they were just guessing about their very existence. Most of the pro-war guys have tried to shift the focus as quickly as possible from "Weapons of Mass Destruction," to "Saddam is bad." As the Iraqi opposition leader who supplied us with so much of the WMD intel said in a recent interview, "Well, we may not have found any weapons of mass destruction, but we did find mass graves." This is true, but it seems incomplete. The president of Liberia was just indicted for numerous war crimes, but I haven't heard anything about "regime change" there.

Iraq Weapons Dossier 'Changed
on Orders of No 10'


INTELLIGENCE services were allegedly asked at least six times to rewrite the controversial dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The British Prime Minister was at one stage personally involved in the decision to get the document redrafted, a source "close to British intelligence" told the BBC.

The source said Downing Street returned draft versions of the dossier, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) "six to eight times" before it was published last September.

The new claim appears to back up the allegation, originally made by the BBC's defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan on Radio 4's Today programme, that intelligence services were told by No 10 to "sex up" the dossier to boost support for the war.

The final version claimed Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of Saddam Hussein giving the order.

Mr Blair's official spokesman has denied the dossier had caused a "major row" at the JIC.

However, he could not comment on the nature of any discussions over the document that might have taken place in the committee.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have repeated their calls for an independent inquiry into the way the dossier was drawn up.

Meanwhile, in an interview with BBC News 24, United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said he was "disappointed'' at the quality of the intelligence he received from Britain and America before the war.

"We went to a great many sites that were given to us by intelligence, and only in three cases did we find anything - and they did not relate to weapons of mass destruction,'' he said.

"I had been told that they would give the best intelligence they had, so I thought 'My God, if this is the best intelligence they had and we find nothing, what about the rest?' That shook me a bit, I must say."

"nuff said"