peacenik

Where is Saddam's massive stockpile of WMD's? Wasn't this the sole justification for the war; wasn't the "liberation" of the Iraqi people merely suppose to be a nice external benefit.

If this is "really" about the "liberation" of the Iraqi people, then when are we going to liberate China, Cuba, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Iran, ect. ect. Do we need to conquer the world in order to "democratize" everyone?

yaktldg

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Warwick

There will be a confirmation of WMD in time and no, it's not really about liberation.

peacenik

Really, I guess the shipments of VX, nerve gas and mustard gas are on their way from Nevada. Wonderful.

OK, then why is the official name of this illegal act of aggression "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Warwick

This is a public relations move and an attempt to be politically correct.

theyeti

Are you serious? You mean they'd mislead us like that?!

****

BTW peacenik, I wouldn't get too adamant about demanding WMD so soon. There's still a very good chance that some will be found within the next few weeks. What they find however almost certainly won't be anything that represents a credible threat. And the chances of the stuff falling into terrorist hands has gone from extremely slim to highly likely in the last 3 weeks. That makes the WMD excuse pretty lame, but you knew that already.

theyeti

PsycheDelia

like jay leno said - they wanted to call it 'operation iraqi liberation' and then changed their minds when they realised that the acronym would be o-i-l

leonarde

You know there are two mutually self-contradictory tropes on this Iraq question among the peaceniks:

1) every preliminary rumour, report, allegation that evinces a coalition achievement of some sort and later is acknowledged by CENTCOM to be erroneous, an exaggeration, a half-truth etc is held up as just-more-of-the-same-American propaganda.

2) these same people grousing about the "propaganda" want instantaneous pronouncements about chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons storage and production facilities.

You can't have it both ways: we probably won't know for weeks or even months after hostilities cease the extent of the WMD programs. And once again that's after hostilities cease .
Tikrit and Mosul, here we come!

Cheers!

Sue Sponte

Hasn't this in fact happened repeatedly on key issues, such as having killed Hussein or having found a chemical weapons facility?

Beyond that, aren't erroneous, exaggerated, or half true statements in fact propaganda?

Zar

leonarde,

You are not making an sense whatsoever. Haven't you been watching this war? Claims made by CENTCOM were often trumpeted only to be mollified later. This is a problem, and the reaction is predictable, especially for critics. Doesn't this seem elementary?

Furthermore, on the WMD issue, we only had to deal with several months of unrelenting propaganda on that, with fake, plagiarized evidence to boot. Why shouldn't people be putting pressure on them? We're talking about matters of war and peace on shaky premises. You wanted the heat, now take it!

I personally think there is no reason to believe Iraq has any banned weapons. But I also agree that the U.S. hasn't finished checking yet, though they have looked at nearly all the sites they had on their list and have gone totally BUST. But the quieting down of official voices on WMDs is a sign that they really want to play this down in the likely case they don't find anything.

I'll be patiently awaiting the final collapse of this pretense.