"Allah is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam"

[steve_bank]

Not as violent, Christian conservatives I have known are just as hateful.

Anti Jew, anti Muslim, anti Catholic, anti Mormon, anti g0vt. An evangelical I knew said he wanted to take 0ut Obama but there was no biblical mandate. Obama being the anti Christ and the harbinger of communism.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Another factor: We thought Saddam had WMD because we were listening in on the reports he was getting--from his underlings successfully hiding WMD from the inspectors.

What we didn't realize is that those underlings were lying, most of the WMD had never existed in the first place and they feared reporting failure. We found the real stuff early on and then we were on a snipe hunt for the stuff they thought they had. Since it didn't really exist of course it kept slipping through our fingers.

Can you post any links to these claimed messages from underlings? This is the first time I’ve heard this claim. I remember Bush’s people citing reports from ‘curveball’ who German intelligence said was a known drunken liar.

You really think the actual messages wouldn't be classified???

Note that we had the same problem with evaluating Russian capabilities in the Cold War.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Inspections were on-going; Was there any real chance that Scuds could be used to attack Israel with sarin?

The intent was to disarm him and leave--but that never happened because he kept trying to hide his weapons--that he didn't realize he didn't even have.

Best would have been to arrange Saddam's exile and install a less nasty Baathist dictator. The real problem was that Fratboy Dubya had turned the country over to Rove and Cheney. Fratboy knew Rove was evil; when did he figure out Cheney was evil as well?)

There was no remotely good answer in Iraq. I don't think putting in an oppressor would have bean a politically acceptable solution.

:emoticon: But isn't this all off-topic? The discussion was whether it is Iran or the U.S. which is the larger promulgator of death in the Middle East. The U.S. appeared to be "winning" and Mr. Pechtel suddenly and adroitly shifts his interest to other matters!

And Mr. Pechtel please, and I mean this most sincerely, do NOT take this personally! I admire your posting. I apologize for not clicking the Rep/Like button as often as I should have.

I am always eager to read your posts, and usually agree with them -- which is why this subthread here startles me slightly.
Loren, you argue eloquently and intelligently. If you concede that the U.S.A., especially under assholes like Bush, Bush or Trump, is at least as major a contributant to Mideast violence as Iran, then we can move on.

Except most of that violence wasn't our actions.

The half a million dead during the inspection era in Iraq? Most of that was Saddam deliberately hurting his people for political benefit. He never used all the oil-for-food money so a lack of money can't be blamed for the deaths. Also, he was exporting food to get money to buy weapons.

The deaths since? Most of them were Iranian-backed ethnic cleansing.

 

[bilby]

Another factor: We thought Saddam had WMD because we were listening in on the reports he was getting--from his underlings successfully hiding WMD from the inspectors.

What we didn't realize is that those underlings were lying, most of the WMD had never existed in the first place and they feared reporting failure. We found the real stuff early on and then we were on a snipe hunt for the stuff they thought they had. Since it didn't really exist of course it kept slipping through our fingers.

Can you post any links to these claimed messages from underlings? This is the first time I’ve heard this claim. I remember Bush’s people citing reports from ‘curveball’ who German intelligence said was a known drunken liar.

You really think the actual messages wouldn't be classified???

Note that we had the same problem with evaluating Russian capabilities in the Cold War.

So, either you have a very high level of access to classified material, and are breaking a lot of rules by even hinting at this stuff on an Internet discussion board; or you're making this shit up, and using the fact that it would be classified if it existed as an excuse for having no evidence to support your claims.

Hmmm. I wonder which.

 

[fromderinside]

So, either you have a very high level of access to classified material, and are breaking a lot of rules by even hinting at this stuff on an Internet discussion board; or you're making this shit up, and using the fact that it would be classified if it existed as an excuse for having no evidence to support your claims.

Hmmm. I wonder which.

Most of what Loren Pechtel conspiritates can be found in the press of the period in the US.

I think the articles below gets the point across pretty well.

http://Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.
"Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," he said. "They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."

Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-lies-and-weapons-what-went-wrong/302878/

The final element in the context for our pre-invasion analysis involved discrepancies between how much WMD material went into Iraq and how much Iraq could prove it had destroyed. Before the Gulf War (and to a certain extent afterward) Baghdad imported enormous quantities of equipment and raw materials for WMD. The UN inspectors, with remarkable diligence, obtained virtually all the import figures, either from the Iraqis or from their suppliers. They then asked the Iraqis to either produce the materials or account for their destruction. In many cases the Iraqis could not. The difference between what they had imported and what they could account for was seen as important evidence of an ambitious clandestine WMD program. These are the numbers—of bombs, of liters of precursor chemicals, and so on—that the world regularly heard Bush Administration officials intone during the run-up to the 2003 war.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Most of what Loren Pechtel conspiritates can be found in the press of the period in the US.

I think the articles below gets the point across pretty well.

http://Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war




Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-lies-and-weapons-what-went-wrong/302878/

The final element in the context for our pre-invasion analysis involved discrepancies between how much WMD material went into Iraq and how much Iraq could prove it had destroyed. Before the Gulf War (and to a certain extent afterward) Baghdad imported enormous quantities of equipment and raw materials for WMD. The UN inspectors, with remarkable diligence, obtained virtually all the import figures, either from the Iraqis or from their suppliers. They then asked the Iraqis to either produce the materials or account for their destruction. In many cases the Iraqis could not. The difference between what they had imported and what they could account for was seen as important evidence of an ambitious clandestine WMD program. These are the numbers—of bombs, of liters of precursor chemicals, and so on—that the world regularly heard Bush Administration officials intone during the run-up to the 2003 war.

Exactly. It was in the press at the time, just not on the front page.

 

[marc]

Most of what Loren Pechtel conspiritates can be found in the press of the period in the US.

I think the articles below gets the point across pretty well.

http://Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war




Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/01/spies-lies-and-weapons-what-went-wrong/302878/

The final element in the context for our pre-invasion analysis involved discrepancies between how much WMD material went into Iraq and how much Iraq could prove it had destroyed. Before the Gulf War (and to a certain extent afterward) Baghdad imported enormous quantities of equipment and raw materials for WMD. The UN inspectors, with remarkable diligence, obtained virtually all the import figures, either from the Iraqis or from their suppliers. They then asked the Iraqis to either produce the materials or account for their destruction. In many cases the Iraqis could not. The difference between what they had imported and what they could account for was seen as important evidence of an ambitious clandestine WMD program. These are the numbers—of bombs, of liters of precursor chemicals, and so on—that the world regularly heard Bush Administration officials intone during the run-up to the 2003 war.

None of that seems to contain the claim of listening in on reports Saddam was getting from his underlings that they were successfully hiding WMDs.