Because 20-year-old, outdated rockets are totally the same thing as actual usable chemical loads and fissile material.
Well as long as you're cherry picking data, I might as well too.
"Many rockets were in poor condition and some were empty or held a nonlethal liquid, the officials said."
"These munitions were remnants of an Iraqi special weapons program that was abandoned long before the 2003 invasion, and they turned up sporadically during the American occupation in buried caches, as part of improvised bombs or on black markets."
"'If we were aware of these compounds, and as it became clear over the course of the war that our troops had been exposed to them, why wasn’t more done to protect the guys on the ground?' he said. 'It speaks to the broader failure.'"
Clearly the Bushies knew they didn't have anything credible, so the public was never apprised as such.
Though as the Pentagon/Administration was unable to even conceal a half-assed weapons trove without fucking something up, numerous American soldiers were injured through contact with the leaking weapons.
In any event, it is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised. It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam.
I know what article it came from (like how you left out the parts like "The analysis of sarin samples from 2005 found that the purity level reached 13 percent — higher than expected given the relatively low quality and instability of Iraq’s sarin production in the 1980s, officials said. Samples from Boraks recovered in 2004 had contained concentrations no higher than 4 percent."...and "In confidential declarations in the 1990s to the United Nations, Iraq gave shifting production numbers, up to 18,500. It also claimed to have destroyed its remaining stock before international inspectors arrived after the Persian Gulf war."), and I know its one of many articles since that they have released about different material here and there (thought it would be a good lead-in for posting the above...its always easy to find a 'Bush lied' reflex in some folks...thanks for helping out).
Serious question though...what number of munitions does the stockpile suddenly become legit? 500? 1000? 5000? More? Nobody cares when they were made...only that they exist and if they could/can function.
Did I say that Bush lied? It's a dumb canard anyways.
More accurately they found degraded chemical weapons which didn't match the pre-war hype, quietly hushed everything up, and used the fleeting success of the "Surge" to run the clock out until Obama could be inaugurated. Which ironically is kind of what Obama is doing currently in Afghanistan.
Doogsinparadise pere still insists that the chemical stocks were smuggled into Syria in 2003, which is probably a better argument then that this stuff means anything.
As for the efficacy of the Iraq War, well you've just got to look at what has happened there in the last decade. One civil war following the invasion, and then an effective sectarian partition with the south under massive Iranian influence and the north under the tyranny of ISIS. Saddam was a cuntbag, but by 2003 he was hardly worse than any of the other despots that we've coddled and propped up over the last few decades. The neocons let their emotions get the best of them--which we saw again in Libya--and look what happened. Have American interests been advanced in the Middle East? Fuck no.
@Doogles this would have taken place during and just after my year in Baghdad. Those types of old rockets and others like 155mm artillery rounds were used quite a bit for IED's. We were blown up by quite a few IED's and it's certainly possible that some had trace amounts of chemical agents but nothing that was obviously a chemical attack (that I came across)
Did I say that Bush lied? It's a dumb canard anyways.
More accurately they found degraded chemical weapons which didn't match the pre-war hype, quietly hushed everything up, and used the fleeting success of the "Surge" to run the clock out until Obama could be inaugurated. Which ironically is kind of what Obama is doing currently in Afghanistan.
Doogsinparadise pere still insists that the chemical stocks were smuggled into Syria in 2003, which is probably a better argument then that this stuff means anything.
As for the efficacy of the Iraq War, well you've just got to look at what has happened there in the last decade. One civil war following the invasion, and then an effective sectarian partition with the south under massive Iranian influence and the north under the tyranny of ISIS. Saddam was a cuntbag, but by 2003 he was hardly worse than any of the other despots that we've coddled and propped up over the last few decades. The neocons let their emotions get the best of them--which we saw again in Libya--and look what happened. Have American interests been advanced in the Middle East? Fuck no.
I kind of have to agree. I told my dads yesterday that at this poont I'd take Saddam back.
HoustonHusky
Member Posts: 5,954
Comments
Well as long as you're cherry picking data, I might as well too.
"Many rockets were in poor condition and some were empty or held a nonlethal liquid, the officials said."
"These munitions were remnants of an Iraqi special weapons program that was abandoned long before the 2003 invasion, and they turned up sporadically during the American occupation in buried caches, as part of improvised bombs or on black markets."
"'If we were aware of these compounds, and as it became clear over the course of the war that our troops had been exposed to them, why wasn’t more done to protect the guys on the ground?' he said. 'It speaks to the broader failure.'"
nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have-bought-and-destroyed-iraqi-chemical-weapons.html
Clearly the Bushies knew they didn't have anything credible, so the public was never apprised as such.
Though as the Pentagon/Administration was unable to even conceal a half-assed weapons trove without fucking something up, numerous American soldiers were injured through contact with the leaking weapons.
nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/iraq-chemical-weapons-medical-records.html
The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’: Some journalists (and random folks) still peddle this canard as if it were fact. This is defamatory and could end up hurting the country.
By Laurence H. Silberman
In any event, it is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised. It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam.
I know what article it came from (like how you left out the parts like "The analysis of sarin samples from 2005 found that the purity level reached 13 percent — higher than expected given the relatively low quality and instability of Iraq’s sarin production in the 1980s, officials said. Samples from Boraks recovered in 2004 had contained concentrations no higher than 4 percent."...and "In confidential declarations in the 1990s to the United Nations, Iraq gave shifting production numbers, up to 18,500. It also claimed to have destroyed its remaining stock before international inspectors arrived after the Persian Gulf war."), and I know its one of many articles since that they have released about different material here and there (thought it would be a good lead-in for posting the above...its always easy to find a 'Bush lied' reflex in some folks...thanks for helping out).
Serious question though...what number of munitions does the stockpile suddenly become legit? 500? 1000? 5000? More? Nobody cares when they were made...only that they exist and if they could/can function.
More accurately they found degraded chemical weapons which didn't match the pre-war hype, quietly hushed everything up, and used the fleeting success of the "Surge" to run the clock out until Obama could be inaugurated. Which ironically is kind of what Obama is doing currently in Afghanistan.
Doogsinparadise pere still insists that the chemical stocks were smuggled into Syria in 2003, which is probably a better argument then that this stuff means anything.
As for the efficacy of the Iraq War, well you've just got to look at what has happened there in the last decade. One civil war following the invasion, and then an effective sectarian partition with the south under massive Iranian influence and the north under the tyranny of ISIS. Saddam was a cuntbag, but by 2003 he was hardly worse than any of the other despots that we've coddled and propped up over the last few decades. The neocons let their emotions get the best of them--which we saw again in Libya--and look what happened. Have American interests been advanced in the Middle East? Fuck no.
All this is not surprising, nor should it be
Fucking dreckfest.