It's rather curious, but as of this writing, much of the news reports from Google regarding WMD evidence falls either in one of two camps: either the Bush administration defending their evidence and everyone else questioning it. The sole exception seemed to be a Fox News article which suggested that the evidence was forthcoming. Had that article not been from a purveyor of blatantly jingoistic reporting, it may have carried more weight.
Given that this has been a slow buildup to this point, I can't help but wonder if this is really "news", or if the news sources are simply jumping on the latest media bandwagon.
One interesting quote from Hans Blix:
"They did not have patience for that (prolonged U.N. inspections)," Blix said in a telephone interview broadcast Friday on Colombian radio.
"However, of course what I notice now is that when the American inspectors do not find anything, then it is suggested we should have patience."
Re:I had a feeling that it would be so ...
pudge on 2003-06-26T00:06:45
I supported it, and I am not quiet about it, but I maintained for months leading up to the war that whether or not Hussein had weapons was not the point. And Blix's quote shows he still doesn't get that. The impatience the American government had was not for finding weapons or not, it was for Iraqi cooperation, which was never the full (let alone immediate) cooperation required by UN resolutions.
I don't know if there are weapons in Iraq, or were, and I only care for reasons OTHER than whether war was actually justified (the reliability of U.S. and British and international intelligence, the effect it will have on the elections, the credibility of the President, etc.). To me, this is unrelated to the justification for war. As I said half a year ago, when a cop is pointing a gun at a known criminal and tells him to put his hands on his head, but he keeps them jammed in his coat pockets, the cop will pull the trigger if the criminal makes any sudden moves...
Re:I had a feeling that it would be so ...
Ovid on 2003-06-26T01:19:01
For the record, I absolutely do not buy your argument, but at least it's a darned sight more intellectually honest than most pro-war arguments that I hear.
Re:I had a feeling that it would be so ...
pudge on 2003-06-26T01:38:33
Heh. Well, I don't see what's to buy. Resolution 1441 listed as a material breach only one thing: not cooperating (and we know, indisputably, that Iraq did not fully cooperate, as it flatly refused to allow inspectors to interview their people under UN terms, as required by 1441).
Resolution 687 (from 1991, the cease-fire agreement) said that it was Iraq's responsibility to prove that it had no weapons. It can only do that by fully cooperating, because any lack of cooperating means they could be hiding something, and we cannot know if they are hiding something without -- say it with me -- full cooperation. Resolution 687 ends with the ominous words that if Iraq does not comply fully, if the plan of inspections does not disarm Iraq, then further actions will be taken to ensure Iraq's disarmament. That necessarily means that as a last resort, if Iraq does not cooperate, if Iraq cannot be disarmed through other means, that force will be used. France and Russia and China and Iraq all agreed to that.
Of course, the part left to "buy" is whether force was warranted at the current time. My answer to that is that no one at all in the United Nations offered any alternative, except for more inspections, which the resolutions -- signed by France et al -- said cannot work without full cooperation, which Iraq was not providing, at any time. If Iraq had been providing full cooperation, I would have said to let inspections continue. But they weren't.
So there was no other option but to either use force, or continue on a course that had no possibility of working, by definition: without full cooperation, you could never be sure that Iraq was fully disarmed. Blix seemed to think, well, we will do what we can now, and hopefully at some point Iraq will cooperate in regard to interviews. But there was not one sign Iraq was ever going to do that, as Iraq had never done that in the years since the cease-fire of 1991, and even with their backs to the wall, they still refused.
Yes, we could have waited, but it just would have meant a war later instead of sooner, unless you think Iraq was going to cooperate fully later, which you have no reason whatsoever to believe.
