In message , Kevin Brooks
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
I'm not really seeing anything funny - I've got family currently being
shot at because of this.

Oh, spare us the attempt at gravity--you have often used sarcasm and
ridicule when arguing this same subject. Yet now I am supposed to prostrate
myself before you because "you've got family..."? Please...

Fine, let me know so I can laugh when a relative of yours becomes a
casualty. Wouldn't *that* be funny? Or would you need your "humor
switch" recalibrating?

Of course, Iraqi accounting was always honest and believable?

That is the point--it was not honest. Hence it was in violation. Case
closed.

In other words, war with Iraq was inevitable and unstoppable because of
one shell?

Impressive.

And the discrepancy was noted years ago.

Really? Can you point to where these unaccounted for binary weapons are
mentioned in the UNSCOM or UNMOVIC reports? How many did they say were
unaccounted for?

Read the reports yourself, I've already cited them and given you URLs.

Of course he didn't! Trouble is, even *he* didn't know what he had.

Geeze, your attempts to defend him are unbelievable--

Of course they're unbelieveable, because I'm not defending him.

However, you go on building strawmen all you like.

now you want to claim
it was A-OK 'cause he did not know what he had?

How does Hussein pose a threat with weapons he does not know about?

After you already
acknowledged he was not being "honest" with his disclosures?

Absolutely not. Some were complete fantasy: "production programs" were
cited at places that were just empty desert, because the officer in
charge had grabbed the money and absconded.

Which way is
it--was he dishonest, and therefore in violation, or inept, and therefore in
violation?

Both - he was both dishonest and inept. And yet he didn't pose a WME
threat.

That's the trouble with looking at real life rather than political
slogans.


And it was claimed that he was hiding hundreds of tons of chemicals and
entire production lines, and that was why we had to invade and secure
that threat Right Now. Forty-five minutes from order to firing, with
weapons able to reach as far as Cyprus - the UK Government claimed that
was its experts' judgement. (Trouble is, when analysts say 'probably
not' and the political advisors suggest 'can we delete that "not" to
tighten up the sentence?' then the message changes a little in
transit...)

As it turns out... "whoops", to date.

Wow. Faulty intel that does not reflect an accurate scope of the violations.

That's a very generous understatement.

Who'd have thunk it? Of course, to use that hammer you have to ignore the
fact that he was in violation in the first place...

Indeed, he owned at least two chemical munitions.

Of course, we can't go setting firm criteria for action, which may
explain why two Iraqi shells demand immediate invasion while _real_ WME
threats in the hands of proven terrorist supporters and weapons
proliferators are politely ignored.

"Well, he was only a
LITTLE bit guilty, not a *LOT* guilty!

There was supposed to be a imminent and serious threat.

Not "cultures hidden in refrigerators", not "centrifuges buried for a
decade", not single decade-old munitions.


Now, you seem to believe that if Saddam Hussein owned a pair of used
nail scissors then those could qualify as a weapon of mass effect (just
imagine what you could catch if someone jabbed you with them! Plus you
could have someone's *eye* out with those!). I'm more minded to stick to
realistic definitions of the threat.

And that hidden equipment, cultures,
documentation, etc....nah, he could *never* have been using that as a way of
trying to preserve his program..." is not a reasonable approach, IMO.

None of that is an immediate or imminent threat.

You've got him in custody, ask him.

So, you can't come up with an excuse for the fact that he reported other
low-density/R&D products, but not the one that we subsequently had used
against us. Odd, that.

I don't have access to the man to question him. Did he *know* he had
binary sarin research underway? Or, just for giggles, what if it's a
Syrian or Iranian import and not Iraqi at all?

Lots of possibilities: you're drawing extremely firm conclusions from
very limited data.

Which makes insisting that they must be recent, something of a stretch,
no? They were strongly suspected of having a R&D effort aimed at such
rounds, and Iraq denied it, but then if you believe the Hussein regime
then the US military was exterminated outside Baghdad and are currently
having their bellies barbecued in Hell.

Nobody has said they "must be recent"; OTOH, it does call into question the
applicability of stating beyond a doubt that they predated ODS.

I'm wary of turning speculation into certainty too quickly. What *is*
certain is that we've still not found anything capable of producing
those rounds in Iraq - and it's harder to hide production lines than
individual munitions.

Perhaps yet again it might be wise to wait for the results of the
detailed analysis before making too many firm claims.

Which is why I have not, AFAIK, made any "firm claims" that these rounds
*had* to be of recent manufacture--

Oh, but Saddam was in violation by their mere existence regardless of
their date, remember?

or are you going to resort to your
doctoring-of-statements to put those words in my mouth, as you did a week or
two ago when you falsely claimed that I had said that WMD's were not a
factor in the decision to go to war?

Stop bull****ting, Kevin. You repeatedly claimed that it wasn't just
about WMEs - but yet you won't say what it *was* about. (When asked, you
go very, very shy)

Inventing false accusations is a poor distraction. This is the third
time I've explained that if there isn't a name and attribution to let it
be traced, it's not a quote: it's the third time I've apologised for the
misunderstanding: and I'm beginning to believe that you're more
interested in histrionics than facts.

See what happens when you start
dissembling like that? Trust is a precious commodity, and you have tarnished
that quality in your own case.

Too bad, how sad, because you're failing to distinguish yourself by the
integrity of your conduct here.

Remember, we've gone from "significant and imminent" Iraqi WMEs, the
evidence of which was reliable and solid (but of course too secret to
share)... to odds and ends buried in gardens, hidden in fridges and used
by insurgents in roadside IEDs. Yet you're insisting that nothing has
changed?


No, I'm just accustomed to the fact that he was both an accomplished
liar and that he may not have known as much as he believed about the
projects he sponsored.

Shades of the Hitler days: you can report "encouraging progress" on the
250,000-ton fantasy battleship and get more funding to stay in Kiel, or
you can admit it's a ludicrous pipedream and you and your entire design
team can pick up your rifles and go fight on the Eastern Front.

We're stuck with what we can find after a year and a half of searching,
for the "true picture" of what he had. Is the US so grossly incompetent
that, having much of the regime's top staff in custody and under
interrogation, that it can't get *one* of them to admit to one of the
Vast Concealed Stockpiles or the Hidden Underground Factories?

It has shown that he continued to run at least one bio program up until the
time we attacked. That is another violation. Are you noting that the number
of violations keeps increasing as we go through this discussion?

Of course - now, where are the threats?

He had twelve years to get his act straight
in terms of meeting the requirements of 687 (*all* of them), and we now know
that he refused to do so even under threat of attack, yielding a
justification the the area of WMD in my view--add to that the "other"
reasons (missiles that exceeded the allowed range, continual NFZ violations,
one assasination attempt on a former US President, harboring a couple of
known terrorists, supporting suicide bombers, etc.)--you know, the ones I
have given you before, but you claimed I never provided to you?

In other words, pretty much business as ususal for the Middle East.

Yep. One elderly shell isn't a threat. That's a fact we can both agree
on. You measure chemical weapons in terms of tons of agent.

Is it a violation?

Sure.

Is "a violation" a good enough reason to tie us down in Iraq for the
next few years?

And had you been on the ground that day when it went off
(thankfully without acheiving a full yield of sarin), how much of a "threat"
do you suppose it would have been to you?

Less than a 155mm HE in that particular case.

So, where are the weapons? There was supposed to be a threat. Where is
it?

You have been told this numerous times, but apparently you keep wanting to
insert "great numbers of rounds in massive stockpiles" for the term
"violations of 687".

Read the UK government dossiers. Compare them to the reality on the
ground. Wonder at the discrepancies between the case made for the
operation, and the facts made on the ground.

Uncle Tom Cobbley and all knew that Iraq was in violation of 687, would
continue to try to violate 687, and even if by some miracle they
renounced WME and tried to clean up their act, some stray munitions
would still be adrift - therefore they could *never* fully, completely
satisfy 687.

The question is, were they so thoroughly in violation that they had
produced workable weapons in effective quantities?

I don't doctor quotes.

The hell you don't.

No, I don't, and I'm tiring of explaining this to you.

Hence your past assertion that I was claiming WMD's were
not a factor, when what I actually said was, "It is not *all* about WMD's."

I'm noting your continued evasion on the "other factors".

If I quote, I make it properly attributable so it
can be checked. If you don't see a name on it, then it's not a quote.
(Who would I be quoting? If I write "Kevin Brooks is a big fat poopie
head" then who, precisely, is supposed to have said this and how could
you challenge them?)

I told you this already - I'm willing to be charitable and accept you
ignored it in a fit of pique, but if you prefer I'll find a less amiable
interpretation.

I find false accusations unpleasant, personally, but again you may just
have been indulging in histrionics and refused to read it.

This one was a very true accusation. You had my quote, and you chose to
leave out the "all" when you paraphrased it.

And I didn't attribute it to you, or insist it was your exact wording,
because *even you* immediately recognised it as a paraphrase rather than
a quotation.

Interestingly, you chose then - and continued to choose - to shriek
about your wounded pride, rather than address the issue of "then what
*were* the other factors"?

You screwed up, Paul--admit it.

I did. I apologised. Several times. Either you didn't read, or didn't
reply.

I'm beginning to consider that you're using this as an invented
diversion.

heck, you could have said, "Oops, I am sorry--I missed the "all" in that
statement, my apologies, you did not claim that WMD were no facor in the
decision." But no, you couldn't bring yourself to do that--you had to start
wriggling, in the best traditions of your hero, Vkince.

Your internal fantasy life must be very interesting to behold.
Apparently I have a shrine to Saddam Hussein and worship the name of
Brannigan?

Prior to that I held
you in some regard--we might disagree, but you were honest and respectable.
Now I place you somewhere just above Vkince on the honor scale--and that
ain't real high, let me tell you.

Well, Kevin, let me tell you just how hurt, wounded and mortified I feel
that in between accusing me of being a Hussein appeaser you've decided
you don't like me as much as you once did.

I'm sure he had some unpaid parking tickets too.

"I'm not really seeing anything funny - I've got family currently being shot
at because of this." Got off your high horse in a hurry there, didn't you?

Absolutely. I can decide when to ride it and when not to, not you.

So what? Less than a
ton is "research quantities" for other nations interested in
self-defence against chemical weapons, and there's the minor
_realpolitik_ that Iraq still has a border and a recent bloody war with
Iran, who is *also* an enthusiastic producer of chemical weapons. Tricky
to handle that one, unless you want to commit US troops to protecting
the Shi'a south against an Iranian rescue from Iraq's hateful
oppression...

Sounds like you are making a case for justifying Saddam continuing WMD
programs there--not going to get too far with that one.

Just interested to know what the US position would be if the Iranians
decide to stage Anschluss with Basra and the southern oilfields, using
chemical weapons generously (claiming, of course, that it's just
retaliation for Iraq's first use).

Nor is your attempt
to draw Iran into the framework of much use.

You don't consider Iran to be a factor in the Middle East?

Just what are you smoking and where can it be bought?

Again, was he in violation of
687, on numerous accounts, or not?

Of course he was. How could he *not* be in violation, with a
sufficiently detailed and dogmatic accounting?

Out of interest, since you're suddenly so fond of the UN, when was
military action in response to the breach of 687 authorised?

Because it's cheap and easy. You can cook up ricin in a domestic kitchen
(we arrested a group doing just that in London). You can talk up how
hugely lethal it is and how many thousands you could kill with Just This
Test-Tube! While carefully skipping over the inconvenient problems of
administration (best-known ricin victim is Georgi Markov - you're going
to get an agent close enough to a President to jab an umbrella in his
leg?) Ricin just needs castorbeans and some commercial equipment to
produce.

So in Paulian World, ricin is A-OK for Saddam to continue working on, and if
he did acheive weaponization--oh, well, too bad, right? And in Paulian World
work on ricin was not a violation of the terms of 687?

No, and no, as you know well - but then who *has* achieved weaponised
ricin? It's a vicious toxin when correctly administered, but the
administration remains a massive and unsolved problem. (I have this
vision of Iraqi troops with umbrellas trying to close with their enemies
under fire...)

Handy if you need an excuse, but not a serious threat.


Chicken and egg - were they after ricin for its enormous battlefield
effectiveness, or were they proudly developing a hugely lethal
biological weapon for the glory of Saddam Hussein (may blessings rain
from Heaven on His name) with resources they could easily get hold of
and which they'd get funding and prestige for?

It does not matter--it was a violation.

And because it was "not just about the WMEs" then the least violation of
687 is complete casus belli?

I'd be worried about the *confirmed* threats, but that's just me.

You might want to look into the definition of "threat". IMO, Saddam with any
amount of proscribed WMD's, or programs in search of same, constituted a
definite "threat". Your mileage may differ.

I'm more worried about the North Koreans, who have the weapons and the
habit of exporting anything to anyone for cash; the Syrians, who also
have the weapons and are enthusiastic terrorist supporters; the
Iranians, who *also* have WMEs in significant quantity and a solid track
record of sponsoring anti-US terrorism... need I go on?

The ones you won't state?

No, the ones I have repeatedly stated--

At last and after much prodding.

You mean, Hussein sponsors suicide bombers against Israel - like Syria,
like Iran, and like some of the more enthusiastic Saudi madrassahs?

"Missiles that exceed the allowed range" - yes, that's a real one. They
jerry-rigged some SA-2 engines together and produced a missile that,
without payload, exceeded their maximum allowed range. (Give it a
payload and it met the limit, but that's life)

"continual NFZ violations" - how *dare* they defend their own airspace?
And just how effective were those "violations"? When was the last time
they fired a SAM with guidance, for instance? (The air defence teams had
to put up a fight, so they lofted unguided missiles up and tried not to
be where the retaliation landed)

"one assasination attempt on a former US President" - this one's often
asserted but the proof is lacking. Wasn't this while Bush Sr. was in
Kuwait or Saudi, which are much more al-Qaeda's stamping grounds?


Which of these pose any significant threat to the US and require an
immediate invasion? Which of these isn't topped by other states in the
region? (The US can't fly over Syria, who has many TBMs with chemical
warheads and generously sponsors terrorists operating against Israel...
but, of course, we must judge each case on its merits)

Or perhaps I'm mistaken and you *did* state them - in which case I
apologise (again) for missing them. Could you point me to them, please?
(asked again)

Asked and answered--repeatedly.

Thank you.

No, I didn't. "It's Iraq and it's a special case." was the best summary.
Which may be true, but the evasiveness is an automatic hackle-raiser.

No evasiveness required--just situational dependent, something you obviously
refuse to grasp.

So what made Iraq more of a threat than Syria?

Or perhaps I'm more interested in real issues than demonising Saddam
Hussein?

Apparently no, since you keep tapdancing around the "was he in violation"

Other nations are in violation, except that they weren't defeated and
had 687 enacted upon them,

question with your "only massive amounts fit the bill" bit.

Militarily significant quanties. Are you claiming I ever said "massive
amounts" or will you retract this heinous and dishonourable misquotation
of my words?

But how can this be? Aren't all the al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq? How can
there be terrorists in other countries?

Newsflash, but they are in lots of places.

So it seems. Not quite what's been claimed, but then so much has been
claimed it's often hard to keep track.

That's okay - the hugely efficient Saudi military and security services
will handle the problem.

If they can't, the large US presence in the country will handle it.


(Your last sentence is extremely troubling, though. How much do you
actually understand about the general situation in Saudi Arabia, and the
particulars of the House of Saud's relationship with the Wahabbi sect
and al-Qaeda's reaction to all the above? Or do you really believe that
"because al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi then the house of Saud must be their
sworn enemies and our true and trusted allies?")

Apparently my understanding is plenty realistic, unlike your's, which was
IIRC a "why have you not attacked Saudid Arabia if you are attacking Iraq"
gambit.

You understand incorrectly, it seems.

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk