More on the coalition of the bribed and bought

(That would be France, Germany, Russia, and the UN)

Published on October 7, 2004 By IanTyger In Politics

Glenn Reynolds finds them, and pulls out the gems. I link to them, and add my comments.

I must call attention to one thing here though. DW came to me this morning and said the UN inspectors looking for WMD in Iraq have concluded that Iraq had none. To which my response was "That's not the point of the war." And now I find out the rest of the story:

"Although they found no evidence that Saddam had made any WMD since 1992, they found documents which showed the "guiding theme" of his regime was to be able to start making them again with as short a lead time as possible."

So the only thing keeping him from making WMD was pressure from the US and UK, pressure that was impossible to maintain in the wake of Sept 11th. We had already heard cries from the rest of the world to "normalize" relations with Iraq. So we had a choice, to let Saddam go, and wait until he had acquired WMD, or take him out early, and be in a better position to deal with the rest of the Middle East...

Comments

drmiler

on Oct 07, 2004

EXACTLY!!! But nobody wants to look at it from that perspective. NO war is good, but some just *need* being done!

Solitair

on Oct 07, 2004

That's all true and that very arguement was one that many made (including myself) for the need to go to war. The problem is that that is NOT the arguement the government made and many feel that they were therefore lied to as to why we went to war. In fairness to your title though, there is still no proof that anyone in western countries received bribes from Saddam. A number of the 40 or so individuals named in the report deny having received any food for oil vouchers. It is something that needs further investigation. Either someone is guitly of bribery with prrof abvailable to convict them, or else they are innocent.

Paul.

IanTyger

on Oct 07, 2004

See the washington times today - a CIA report on french perfidity in this matter.

The government made many arguements, most of which boiled down to "Saddam Hussein's Iraq isw too dangerous to be allowed to exist post 9/11". The obvious spreahead for this arguement is the WMD issue. So that's what he went with. But there were other arguements raised, and the result is one less country trying to develop WMD that is hostile to the US.

Solitair

on Oct 08, 2004

IanTyler,
reading the washington post article is a brilliant example of smoke and mirrors. Time and time again it makes accusations with no proof. It takes the data, military equipment originating from France, and jumps to the conclusion that the French government was colluding with Iraq. French equipment in iraq is NOT proof of French assistance. French blank passports is NOT proof of French collusion. France sells military equipment all over the world and while it is awful that some of it arrived in iraq, there is no proof that that was the intended destination.

What amazes me is that within the same article attacks can also be made against France's anti war stance of no WMD proof. How deluded do you have to be to still believe that the French were wrong? How deluded do you have to be to take the raw data of military components from the worlds 5th biggest military supplier as PROOF of collusion?

No, this is an example of the sad lack of analysis skills that exists in parts of the US. The same lack of analysis skills that led to the proof that Iraq had WMD.

Paul.

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