Typical response by the left to any criticism- roll off a list of all the bad things the right has ever done. But don't you guys get the whole point of the argument? He's already acknowledged that the right has 'screwed' over the kurds in the past. He's saying that the western left are the latest to do so, because on the whole they're not supporting democratic parties in Iraq. In predicting a response to this post, I would assume that I'd just get the next typical response- the supposed democratic parties in Iraq are just puppets of the oil hungry imperialists la-de-da. Of course in doing so, they'll prove Nolan's whole point- that democratic parties in Iraq aren't getting any help from the Western left.

Oh, and regarding WMD's, check out the final report of the Iraq Survey Group.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/index.html

Read the whole thing. It's amazing how different the actual report is from how the media reported it. It basically says that Saddam had latent WMD capabilities and fully intended to ramp up the program if ever sanctions were lifted.

There's the bait. Let's see if they bite.

Dozer, dozer, dozer - still dozing. The senate report that was released last month says a couple of little things.

1. the assessment that Iraq had WMD was known by the US in 1995 to be utterly false - he had destroyed everything in 1991.
2. by March 2001 the US knew that Curveball was a liar and a fraud and so were the other people in Chalabi's group.

3. Unless it would have been possible for Saddam to commit mass murder by paper cut he simply had no documents. The republican lead senate said clearly "at some point it just has to be admitted that an absence of evidence is really an abscence".

Iraq never had weapons and at the time they used them on the Kurds in 1988 the entire western world sat and watched. And the AWB built the bunkers to "bury them in".

Give it a rest now dozer - I am sick to death of these blatant attempts to pretend an absence of evidence means there was evidence.

Dozy

"Saddam had latent WMD capabilities and fully intended to ramp up the program if ever sanctions were lifted."

OK if I accept this is true (which I don't) why invade? Why not keep the sanctions in place?

Better to slowly starve the population than to bomb the crap out of them?

Why invade?

OK I took the bait, will you have the balls to answer my questions?

Well said. And another case in point closer to home. What has the Left been saying about Burma recently? Close to nothing. The greatest supporter of the democracy cause in Burma and opponent of the junta is none other than the Bush Administration. What is the position of the Left on this issue? Are they too scared to be seen agreeing with Bush and Condy?

Regarding the lack of documents on Iraqi WMD:

from http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/isg-final-report_vol1_rsi-05.htm,

"Saddam's personalized and intricate administrative methods meant that control of WMD development and its deployment was never far from his touch. His chain of command for WMD was optimized for his control rather than to ensure the participation of Iraq’s normal political, administrative or military structures."

"(In the 1990's) Saddam spoke often in one-to-one sessions with first Husayn Kamil and later ‘Abd-al-Tawab ‘Abdallah Al Mullah Huwaysh on research and industrial issues supporting WMD. There are no indications that Saddam issued detailed written instructions to either individual to direct WMD work."

So, Saddam didn't want to leave a paper trail. Furthermore, while Saddam did not have a WMD capability, he wanted to create doubt in his opponents' (both internal and external) minds, to maintain a level of deterrence.

"While it appears that Iraq, by the mid-1990s, was essentially free of militarily significant WMD stocks, Saddam’s perceived requirement to bluff about WMD capabilities made it too dangerous to clearly reveal this to the international community, especially Iran."

There was a wealth of information on the Iraqi WMD program, some suggesting that Saddam had WMD capabilities, others that he didn't. Even the respective heads of UNSCOM couldn't agree- Scott Ritter didn't believe they had anything left, while Richard Butler, was convinced that the continual obfuscating behaviour, specific comments made to him by Tariq Aziz, and constant lies upon lies meant that the regime had something to hide. In short, evidence of whether or not Iraq had WMD was ambiguous. But Saddam had form, so he couldn't be given the benefit of the doubt.

And Saddam always intended to reconstitute his WMD capability after sanctions were lifted.

from http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/isg-final-report_vol1_rsi-06.htm,

"The Regime made a token effort to comply with the disarmament process, but the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions. Outward acts of compliance belied a covert desire to resume WMD activities. Several senior officials also either inferred or heard Saddam say that he reserved the right to resume WMD research after sanctions."

cont...

This leaves us with the legal and moral problem: If we had known this, should we still have invaded? It would have been very difficult to get agreement for such a war. However, Iraq was a problem that would not have gone away. I'm sure Steve Madden is aware of the irony of the conundrum- do we bomb them or do we starve them? It was quite clear, (despite the fact that Saddam was actively diverting funds which were supposed to go the Iraqi people,) that the sanctions were immoral.

But if the sanctions had been lifted, Iraq would probably have acquired a WMD capacity. And there is a pattern throughout history of states which acquire WMD behaving in a more aggressive and risky way (including the US) because they think that the deterrent value of WMD will let them get away with it. (Unfortunately, Iran has learned this the hard way during its war with Iraq. We should never have let Iraq get away with using WMD against the Kurds or Iran.)

The AWB's association with the Iraqi government is a national disgrace. Unfortunately the Baath party seemed able to corrupt many:

"In 1988, Iraq paid 1 million dollars to the French Socialist Party, according to a captured IIS report dated 9 September 1992. ‘Abd-al-Razzaq Al Hashimi, former Iraqi ambassador to France, handed the money to French Defense Minister Pierre Joxe, according the report. The IIS instructed Hashimi to “utilize it to remind French Defense Minister, Pierre Joxe, indirectly about Iraq’s previous positions toward France, in general, and the French Socialist party, in particular”.

"Aziz says he personally awarded several French individuals substantial oil allotments. Both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift UN sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council.

"As of June 2000, Iraq had awarded short term contracts under the OFF program to France totalling $1.78 billion, equalling approximately 15 percent of the oil contracts allocated under the OFF program."

what's that about my balls...