please stop bashing France

"tscottme" wrote in message
...
So you have no trouble making excuses for Saddam? How typical, how long
have you been a Liberal?

I made no such excuse. It's obvious he certainly did hold weaponised stocks
of those materials in the past, but he used them almost 20 years ago. My
argument is simply that we went to war on the "evidence" of a clear and
present danger from such weaponised materials today. As I said, I can't
imagine a regime that used them without compunction against it's own people
wouldn't use them in even a last ditch attempt to save itself. That's not
apologist, simply logic. As for being Liberal, well I suspect the term
means slightly different things in our different political systems. To me
it's more a compliment than an insult. The alternative to liberalism is
radicalism.

Saddam used the weapons, he declared vast
amounts of them, intelligence services all over the world documented the
tons and tons of material and machines to produce and maintain the WMDs,
and as the article points out, the thorough inspections have only
cleared about 10 or 20 of the 130 known munitions storage areas. How
many aircraft were buried in the desert of Iraq that we only found out
about because locals brought it to our attention. The anthrax stocks
could fit in a few 55 gallon drums which take up less space than one of
those buried MiGs. In addition people and trucks were streaming out of
Iraq into Syria before, during, and just after the war.

There's no doubt Iraq was attempting to build a substantial NBC capability
some years ago. Whether they exaggerated their own declarations (as I
suggested in the previous msg) to scare neighbouring nations is a view that
is gaining credibility in the US intelligence circles and has been discussed
in the media. Doesn't mean it has to be the only reason as to why nothing's
been found, but until something is found (if it ever will be) it has to be
considered. There's evidence both superpowers during the Cold War also
exaggerated their nuclear arsenals for the same reasons.

Si