Do you really believe Bush Lied? It makes no sense.

[jman220]

[ QUOTE ]
it was better to allow the attack to take place

[/ QUOTE ]

Still doesn't explain why the fleet wasn't at least put on alert, this would not have tipped the Japanese off. This conspiracy theory is ridiculously stupid.

[andyfox]

The thing I've never really understood is how the administration got away with telling us what a grave danger Saddam Hussein was in the wake of Hussein's regime falling apart as soon as we went in. If Hussein's military capabilities were such a danger to us, why didn't he use those capabilities to save his regime? The "war" was a cakewalk for us and Husssein himself was found hiding in a hole.

What makes no sense is that a man who was a threat to our way of life, and who knew for months that his country would be attacked, had so little defense for the invasion. What sense would hiding his weapons in Syria make? When would he be able to use them?

[jman220]

[ QUOTE ]
The thing I've never really understood is how the administration got away with telling us what a grave danger Saddam Hussein was in the wake of Hussein's regime falling apart as soon as we went in. If Hussein's military capabilities were such a danger to us, why didn't he use those capabilities to save his regime? The "war" was a cakewalk for us and Husssein himself was found hiding in a hole.

What makes no sense is that a man who was a threat to our way of life, and who knew for months that his country would be attacked, had so little defense for the invasion. What sense would hiding his weapons in Syria make? When would he be able to use them?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not saying our reasons for going to war were good, however, the Bush administration wasn't arguing that Hussein was a danger to us because he had a strong army that could invade America. The justification was that he had WMD, and could provide them to terrorists.

[bills217]

[ QUOTE ]
The thing I've never really understood is how the administration got away with telling us what a grave danger Saddam Hussein was in the wake of Hussein's regime falling apart as soon as we went in. If Hussein's military capabilities were such a danger to us, why didn't he use those capabilities to save his regime? The "war" was a cakewalk for us and Husssein himself was found hiding in a hole.

What makes no sense is that a man who was a threat to our way of life, and who knew for months that his country would be attacked, had so little defense for the invasion. What sense would hiding his weapons in Syria make? When would he be able to use them?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand Saddam's thought process at all.

It looks to me like he was faced with choosing between:

A) Let the inspectors in, keep regime/palaces etc., after all, you don't have any WMD's to hide anyway right?

B) Don't let the inspectors in, lose regime/palaces etc., have large weapons fired in your direction, end up hiding in hole.

So why in the [censored] did Saddam choose option B? What a stupid [censored]. (Unless of course he really DID have something to hide...)

Blame Bush/Right Wing Conspiracy all you want, but this never happens if Saddam doesn't repeatedly fail to comply with UN resolutions...and for what?

[jman220]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The thing I've never really understood is how the administration got away with telling us what a grave danger Saddam Hussein was in the wake of Hussein's regime falling apart as soon as we went in. If Hussein's military capabilities were such a danger to us, why didn't he use those capabilities to save his regime? The "war" was a cakewalk for us and Husssein himself was found hiding in a hole.

What makes no sense is that a man who was a threat to our way of life, and who knew for months that his country would be attacked, had so little defense for the invasion. What sense would hiding his weapons in Syria make? When would he be able to use them?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand Saddam's thought process at all.

It looks to me like he was faced with choosing between:

A) Let the inspectors in, keep regime/palaces etc., after all, you don't have any WMD's to hide anyway right?

B) Don't let the inspectors in, lose regime/palaces etc., have large weapons fired in your direction, end up hiding in hole.

So why in the [censored] did Saddam choose option B? What a stupid [censored]. (Unless of course he really DID have something to hide...)

Blame Bush/Right Wing Conspiracy all you want, but this never happens if Saddam doesn't repeatedly fail to comply with UN resolutions...and for what?

[/ QUOTE ]

At the end though, Saddam did allow weapons inspectors unfettered access, we kept claiming he wasn't making complete disclosures of his WMD and thats why he was violating UN Resolutions. However, it looks like he was making complete disclosures, since we haven't found any.

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The thing I've never really understood is how the administration got away with telling us what a grave danger Saddam Hussein was in the wake of Hussein's regime falling apart as soon as we went in. If Hussein's military capabilities were such a danger to us, why didn't he use those capabilities to save his regime? The "war" was a cakewalk for us and Husssein himself was found hiding in a hole.

What makes no sense is that a man who was a threat to our way of life, and who knew for months that his country would be attacked, had so little defense for the invasion. What sense would hiding his weapons in Syria make? When would he be able to use them?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand Saddam's thought process at all.

It looks to me like he was faced with choosing between:

A) Let the inspectors in, keep regime/palaces etc., after all, you don't have any WMD's to hide anyway right?

B) Don't let the inspectors in, lose regime/palaces etc., have large weapons fired in your direction, end up hiding in hole.

So why in the [censored] did Saddam choose option B? What a stupid [censored]. (Unless of course he really DID have something to hide...)

Blame Bush/Right Wing Conspiracy all you want, but this never happens if Saddam doesn't repeatedly fail to comply with UN resolutions...and for what?

[/ QUOTE ]

At the end though, Saddam did allow weapons inspectors unfettered access, we kept claiming he wasn't making complete disclosures of his WMD and thats why he was violating UN Resolutions. However, it looks like he was making complete disclosures, since we haven't found any.

[/ QUOTE ]

he never allowed unfettered access as far as i recall

[matrix]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
it was better to allow the attack to take place

[/ QUOTE ]

Still doesn't explain why the fleet wasn't at least put on alert, this would not have tipped the Japanese off.

[/ QUOTE ]

yes it does and yes it would I think...

I am not saying the CT on this is right or wrong - in fact I'm just pointing out that there exists a perfectly rational explanation as to why the attack was allowed to continue the way it did - with NO conspiracy theory needed at all.

PH was a Japanese sneak attack - it's not much of a sneak attack if the ships are on high alert at some odd time of the day and pick off the attack planes as they come in - they might well have thought .oO(they knew we were coming - our codes have been broken - lets change them) had the fleet not been totally surprised by the attack. AFAIK the powers in charge of the US military thought that the knowledge of future Japanese military movements was worth the cost of the fleet that was attacked there, and even warning them was too risky.

[bills217]

[ QUOTE ]
he never allowed unfettered access as far as i recall

[/ QUOTE ]

[morphball]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The thing I've never really understood is how the administration got away with telling us what a grave danger Saddam Hussein was in the wake of Hussein's regime falling apart as soon as we went in. If Hussein's military capabilities were such a danger to us, why didn't he use those capabilities to save his regime? The "war" was a cakewalk for us and Husssein himself was found hiding in a hole.

What makes no sense is that a man who was a threat to our way of life, and who knew for months that his country would be attacked, had so little defense for the invasion. What sense would hiding his weapons in Syria make? When would he be able to use them?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand Saddam's thought process at all.

It looks to me like he was faced with choosing between:

A) Let the inspectors in, keep regime/palaces etc., after all, you don't have any WMD's to hide anyway right?

B) Don't let the inspectors in, lose regime/palaces etc., have large weapons fired in your direction, end up hiding in hole.

So why in the [censored] did Saddam choose option B? What a stupid [censored]. (Unless of course he really DID have something to hide...)

Blame Bush/Right Wing Conspiracy all you want, but this never happens if Saddam doesn't repeatedly fail to comply with UN resolutions...and for what?

[/ QUOTE ]

Saddam originally had himself a bit of a Catch-22. His actual choices were:

1. Keep up the pretense of having WMD's and use diplomatic support (China, France and Russian) <u>to hopefully</u> block off a US invasion, while at the same time being able to represent an adequately equipped military to hold off the Iranian threat; or

2. Allow weapons inspectors to come in and declare no WMDs and have no credibility of representing to the Iranians that Iraq's military was equipped to handle the threat.

This was Saddam's original option, but once the US began to amass its armies and begin supply chains, it shortly became apparent that his "options" were really the following FUBAR situation...

The USA is concerned about the Iranian influence in the Middle East and is going to invade Iraq no matter what so that the US can maintain a military presence in order to deter that threat.

[Chris Alger]

Which is directly analogous to the absurd statement that Islamic Jihad terrorizes Israel to enforce UN resolutions.

Israel, Turkey and Morocco are the world's most flagrant violators of UN security council resolutions. Those laws cannot be enforced against because the U.S. won't tolerate substantial UN interfence with its clients, regardless of right or wrong, legal or illegal. So the notion that the U.S. went to war to bolster the authority of the UN can't be reconciled with plain facts.

Also, Iraq's supposed violations of those resolutions all related to WMD with which, we now know, Iraq had substanially and materially complied. So "enforcing UN resolutions" is just another way of falsely claiming Iraq had WMD. The U.S. further had no authority or right to enforce any UN resolution against Iraq, much less the right to use mass violence under this pretext. As we know, the Security Council refused to endorse Bush's war plans, putting him in the class of criminals we hanged at Nuremburg.

That the U.S. was willing to slaught innocents by the tens of thousands because international law compelled it is among the most hypocritical and easily refutable arguments of the war apologist camp.