I have another question. Should we have waited until Iraq had a full arsenal of nuclear weapons or other WMD before starting the war?

-Rudey

No. We should have waited until Iraq detinated two nuclear war heads on enemy cities because the first one could have been a mistake.

Although i could care less, it's just funny to me that we're so down for the war, but none of these young men here are willing to fight it. Ksig, I'm that you're itching to teach the terrorist a lesson aren' t you?


And before you open your mouth, I actually served in the armed forces.

I can comment on that entire post but, I want to focus on the last comment.

How so? please post that. Please dispute what was put in that article. But I'll warn you, it's hard to beat the Truth. Heck even Dubya and Cheney agree with me.


WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had no weapons of mass destruction, even as they tried to shift the Iraq (news - web sites) war debate to a new issue — whether the invasion was justified because Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...d=540&ncid=716

I tell you, that truth just doesn't play fair.:D

Thanks for serving in the armed forces.

While you're mostly right, most of us here have no intention of serving, there are some notable exceptions. Dekeguy is a military officer and has served in Iraq. Here's him commenting on the loss of a soldier and the soldier's mother heckling Laura Bush:

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...threadid=57073

Also, many of my fraternity brothers have volunteered to serve. I support them. I agree with them when they come back here and tell me all the good things they've done and how the media really isn't giving them a fair shake. I actually believe them when they tell me things are goin pretty well over there.

Others do not.

I'm thankful for your service, since you haven't even brought it up until the 4th page, I'll give you a pass. But please, don't hold that up as a holier than thou statement. Our military is a voluntary one. Since you volunteered, I thank you.

I could care less if you served in the Armed Forces - its a voluntary action, which people are highly educated on the issue of going to war when they sign on the dotted line. I don't fight for my country because I choose not to fight for my country, thats called Freedom.

Are you a quitter, why are you no longer in the military?

First, thank you for serving in our military - I do appreciate the efforts of all who have served, and I give you a ton of credit for doing so.

Second, my father was in the Army in Vietnam, and based on his experiences has made it clear that he does not want me enlisting unless absolutely necessary. He made his reasons clear to me, and I don't feel like challenging those reasons.

Again, thank you for your service to our country, but please know that some of us have reasons for the choices we make.

Also, check your PM box.

What you're saying here at least in the underlined part is absolutely tacky and won't serve any purpose besides getting this thread closed. I think it's a decent thread, so please try to leave such attacks out.

What you said would have been okay except for that last part.

Honorable discharge my good friend.

Holla.

I said BEFORE we went to Iraq that there wasn't WMDs there. Now truth be told, I didn't have intelligence nor did I know my statement would be proven true, but I have said it. I just needed more proof shown to me before I could ride along with committing troops.


So what if Saddam was lying on his military ability? We know that Saddam army couldn't hurt us. Let's pretend he did have WMD, how was he going to get it to the US? Bush Sr. did a GREAT JOB of smashing him in 91.

There are several totalitarian governments in the world Russ. My problem with how Iraq was handled was the fact that I think we open a can of worms because we're now seen as the world police. NOW EVERYBODY EXPECTS AMERICAN TROOPS to walk in and save them.

For anyone interested, here is another article from the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/po...rint&position=

October 8, 2004
THE SANCTIONS
U.S. Report Says Hussein Bought Arms With Ease
By ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - Enriched with billions of dollars raised by exploiting the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Saddam Hussein spent heavily on arms imports starting in 1999, finding six governments and private companies from a dozen other nations that were willing to ignore sanctions prohibiting arms sales, the report by the top American arms inspector for Iraq has found.

The purchases, which included components of long-range missiles, spare parts for tanks and night-vision equipment, were not enough to allow Iraq to significantly rebuild its conventional military or create a viable chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program, according to the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, which was released Wednesday.

But the relative ease with which Mr. Hussein was able to buy weapons - working directly with governments in Syria, Belarus, Yemen, North Korea, the former Yugoslavia and possibly Russia, as well as with private companies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East - is documented in extraordinary detail, including repeated visits by government officials and arms merchants to Iraq and complicated schemes to disguise illegal shipments to Iraq.

"Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem," the report says. "Indeed, Iraq was designing missile systems with the assumption that sanctioned material would be readily available."

The report suggests that Mr. Hussein was justified when, speaking at a gathering of leaders of the Iraqi armed forces in January 2000, he boasted that despite efforts by the United States and the United Nations to isolate Iraq, he would still be able to buy just about whatever he wanted. "We have said with certainty that the embargo will not be lifted by a Security Council resolution, but will corrode by itself," Mr. Hussein said in the speech, a remark that is quoted on the cover of the chapter in Mr. Duelfer's report that details the ineffectiveness of the embargo.

The report is replete with names, dates and documents detailing negotiations over arms purchases and technical advice, which continued until just days before the United States-led invasion in March 2003. An Iraqi memo from 2000 tells military officials in Baghdad that the deputy general manager of the French company Sofema, a military-component marketer, will be bringing a company catalog so that they can "discuss your needs with him."

President Bush, speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday, said the report demonstrated that Iraq was determined to illegally rebuild its military. "Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the United Nations oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," he said.

While the scope of the inquiry did not extend beyond Iraq, the report raises fundamental questions about the effectiveness of sanctions, a tool the United States has frequently used as a foreign policy tool short of military action. Offered lucrative contracts by Mr. Hussein, both arms suppliers and government officials seem not to have hesitated to ignore United Nations trade restrictions, going so far as to disguise tank engines as agricultural parts.

What actions, if any, the United States will take toward sanctions violators is unclear, as are the implications for current United States standoffs with nations like Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons programs. But sanctions remain one of the few options in many complex international disputes.

"They're often better than nothing," said Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is writing a book on the United Nations.

The illicit trade accelerated as the years passed and the threats of possible military action by the United States increased, with the number of deals among the top suppliers climbing from about 5 transactions in 1998 to more than 15 in 2000 and more than 35 in 2002, the report says.

North Korea and Belarus made perhaps the most aggressive effort to sell advanced military equipment to Iraq, the report says, delivering items that included radar technology that was ultimately used against American attack planes.

President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus was involved in the deals, the report says, noting that he "was anxious that illicit trade should continue on a regular basis and requested that a firm called Belarus Afta be established in Baghdad as a clearinghouse for illicit military trade."

A spokesman from the Belarus Embassy in Washington said that any items sold to Iraq complied with United Nations' rules. "We have always maintained and we continue to maintain that all these accusations are preposterous," said the spokesman, Valentin Rybakov.

Among European allies, France's military industry had extensive contacts with Iraqi officials. The report describes, for example, repeated trips by an executive from the French company Lura, which sold Iraq a tank carrier.

Other private companies from Jordan, China, India, South Korea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, Poland, Romania, Taiwan, Italy and Turkey offered or sold items that supported Iraq's conventional arms programs or could have been used by Mr. Hussein to make weapons of mass destruction, the report says.

No American individuals or companies were named in the report as supplying Iraq with military goods or other prohibited items. But a number of United States companies and at least two American citizens are listed as having received oil vouchers that permitted them to profit from the oil-for-food program.

Unlike hundreds of voucher recipients from other countries, the American recipients are not named in the report but only listed as "United States company" or "United States person," an omission that a government official said was required by American privacy laws.

In January, an Iraqi newspaper, Al Mada, ran a list of 270 recipients of oil vouchers that appears to closely parallel the list in the Duelfer report. That list included two Americans, Shaker al-Khafaji and Samir Vincent, neither of whom could be reached for comment on Thursday.

Iraq went to great lengths to build a missile system with a range longer than the limits imposed by the United Nations, a major technological challenge that required the import of an array of banned parts. Companies from China and Russia sold, or negotiated to sell, missile guidance systems, the report says. A Polish company supplied a propulsion system. An Indian company built and sold Iraq a missile-fuel processing plant.

In some cases, governments moved to stop the illicit trade. In 2002, for example, Indian authorities arrested executives at NEC Engineering, which the report says imported solid propellant ingredients for Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles.

The report describes in detail the extraordinary measures taken to move illicit goods into Iraq and to cover the tracks of violators. Iraqi diplomats smuggled radar-jamming devices in diplomatic pouches. An airline created by Iraq and Belarus used four Boeing 747's to move goods from Minsk, the Belarussian capital, to Baghdad "under cover of humanitarian aid missions."

"During the sanction years, traders used a pool of private dhows, barges, and tankers to smuggle oil out and commodities into and out of Iraq's southern ports with relative ease," the report says.

The report also cites evidence that the Jordanian government closely monitored illegal shipments and canceled an inspection arrangement with Lloyd's Register Group of London, an independent monitor of trade, to make smuggling easier.

-Rudey

Thanks for the link and posting the article.

Interesting read.

A little harsh, aren't we? He served his time, I don't think ANY of us should attack him for that.

Like Kevin said, the rest of your post is fine, but you didn't need the last part.

The notion that Saddam was a threat to America is absurd, Saddam and his forces couldn't even defeat Iran in eighties w/ the help of America. Saddam was just a loud mouth bully w/ no bite so it should be of no surprise that no WMDs were found there. This debate has been going on for over a year now any reasonable person would have known that Saddam had no WMDs and for the record the world is not a safer place w/o Saddam.

Hmmm... by your ignorant statement I'd have to assume your one of the armchair breed... so I have to ask, since you challenged him... in such a crass and ignorant way...


Are you a coward, why have you never enlisted in the military?