IceCold

Yes, but let's take a look at the United Nations' track record in this area...

Here's how it'll go:

UN: Iran, you need to scrap your nuke program.
Iran: No.
UN: Iran, you need to scrap your nuke program, OR ELSE!
Iran: No.
UN: Please?
Iran: No.
UN: OK, at least let us come look at your program...
Iran: No.
UN: Pretty please?
Iran: No.
UN: Alright, we're serious this time, stop your WMD programs or you're gonna be in big trouble!
Iran: No.
UN: How about if we put a cherry on top?
Iran: No.
UN: OK, if you don't, you can expect serious consequences!
Iran: No.
USA: Screw this, mobilize the First Marine Expeditionary Force, we're going in...

phyllis

Ice...I must say that is very good...funny stuff...
Sadly, it's true...USofA is the backbone of UN security... thank goodness America has the balls to stand up and put a stop to the things the UN can't/won't. Unfortunetly(sp) this is how it is, and if we don't stand up against these threats....who will? alone ? No other country out there would do what we have, but...do we get any thanks for our people dying to accomplish these things? Not usually... normally...it's " lookout, the war-mongering USofA is at it again". I wish(no...actually I don't) that America would/could stand down from one of these situations, and see how well the UN does at containing said issue, without our support. We get dumped on to be the "world police", but then in the backstab, it's ooooh...look at their aggression...

...meh....I'll shush up now...

/rant

edit: this is aimed at no one personally, just my view...take what you want...and toss the rest...

GhostintheShell

DudeMan

those are some pretty serious questions, its how we answer them that will determine our safety.

being canadian you may not have as much to worry about as the US or the UK, the people making the loudest noises are the people who neede to see exactly whats happening because they are the target.

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The Queen
"Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life,"
Atrocities such as these simply reinforce our sense of community

TheFeniX
"Guns don't kill people: effeminate men in green tunics do"

GhostintheShell

Yes, Icecold, I'm sure thats exactly how UN negotiations go.

Its easy to make fun of the UN, but I think it still serves an important purpose, if only that of a place for all the world's countries to have a seat at the table to communicate and negotiate over world problems. If the UN doesn't function properly its the fault of all the worlds various governments, as they are the ones who provide representation in the UN.

Doesn't this drum beating about Iran sound too familiar to what happened before the Iraq war? (Which in my opinion is a complete failure.)

CingularDuality

What should have been done with Iraq? Should the UN have issued another ultimatum?

See, this is what's wrong with the world. I liken it to parenting (or the lack thereof). If you tell your kid not to do something, and he/she does it anyway, then there must be consequences. If there aren't, then the kid is going to keep on ignoring you. And why not?

Iraq and its former gov't was a big baby that needed the crap slapped out of it...

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leejo

Turn it around. Does it help or hurt the EU and/or UN's negotiating position with Iran for Bush to say these things? Suppose that he'd publicly stated that the USA has no intenetions of undertaking military action against Iran; the EU and UN have our full support and we wish them the best of luck but any enforcement of their position is up to them. How well do you suppose their talks with Iran would go then?

GhostintheShell

I still don't understand why you guys had to do anything about Iraq.

Now Bush is threatening Iran to divulge info about their nuke program. This is a catch22 in itself, if they were persuing a nuclear weapons offensive capability they'd never tell, and if they aren't then they don't have any info to give and it looks like they are holding out.

leejo

So your great plan is to leave Iraq and Iran alone?

GhostintheShell

I don't need a great plan, its not like they were never a genuine threat.
So far no WMD have been found, I don't think there ever will be, IMO 10 years of UN sanctions and IAEA weapons inspectors did their job. He destroyed whatever he had a long time ago, he admitted that.


Wanna hear a joke I heard today?

How does Pres. Bush know that Saddam has WMD?
...Bush Sr. still has the receipts....

leejo

I think you're living in fantasy land if you think Saddam Hussein admitted destroying whatever he had. Hans Blix's own reports dispute that claim.

The 10 years of UN sanctions and IEAE weapons inspections were supported by around the clock air power in the form of US and British airmen, many of whom were shot at by the Iraq military. A friend of mine had a SAM sight launch at his f-14 over Iraq. So for 10 years these counties' taxpayers footed the bill and our military accepted the occasional attempt to kill one of its members and destroy an $8-figure piece of equipment so you and your type your enjoy the non-threat of Iraq. When you start paying such a bill, you can have a responsible voice in determining what sort of threat Iraq posed.

With regard to Iran, are you kidding? The EU and UN have been screaming murder about Iran's nuclear programs but now that Bush opens his mouth all of a sudden the USA is making all of this up?

I think you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. I don't know where the WMDs went, but they probably weren't destroyed and the Iraqi government certainly didn't comply with the final UN resolution calling for full disclosure.

GhostintheShell

THE O'REILLY FACTOR

March 15, 2004 Monday

Bill O'Reilly Interviews Hans Blix -

O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. In the "Unresolved Problem" Segment tonight, the threat Iraq posed under Saddam Hussein. That is still one of the most widely discussed and controversial topics the world over.

With us now is a man who knows all about it. Hans Blix is the former executive director of the U.N. Weapons Monitoring Commission and author of the brand-new book "Disarming Iraq."

I've got lots of questions for you, Mr. Blix, and I'm -- this is the no-spin zone, so you're going to give me the straight, all right? Why do you think Saddam Hussein did not cooperate more with you guys if he didn't have any WMDs?

HANS BLIX, AUTHOR, "DISARMING IRAQ": Well, one can speculate on a number of reasons.

And the first one, I think, would be that he was often told that it didn't help very much to come clean and to help -- cooperate with inspectors and that the only thing that would lift sanctions would be for himself to disappear. That did not give him any incentive to cooperate.

But there could have been other reasons like his own pride, that he wouldn't let people into his palaces, for instance.

O'REILLY: Right. Now do you understand the United States' point of view that we fight a Gulf War, we lose our soldiers, we liberate Iraq -- liberate Kuwait, all right, and then we have a treaty, and the treaty says U.N. weapons inspectors are allowed to do X, Y, and Z, and 17 times Saddam says -- violates those. Now you can understand why the United States government might be a little teed off about that.

BLIX: Yes. Why only the United States government? Don't you think others were?

O'REILLY: I don't think the United States was -- the United Nations was that upset. No, I don't. I didn't see any anger there.

BLIX: There are more countries than the United States in the United Nations, aren't there?

O'REILLY: I know, but we lost the bulk of our people in the Gulf War. You've got to understand that. We were the point man. We were angry. I didn't see the same level of anger at the United Nations.

BLIX: Well, you better look a little more carefully. The British were angry, many others were angry, and the inspectors were angry, and so I don't really see why you suggest that only the U.S. was angry.

O'REILLY: But do you understand that when you have 17 violations of a treaty, a war treaty, that you basically have to take action?

BLIX: Well, you're talking about a war treaty. It was a cease-fire. It was not a war treaty.

O'REILLY: Oh, come on. Now don't play semantics here, sir.

BLIX: Second -- all right. I'm trying to be precise. You are imprecise. I'm sorry.

O'REILLY: Well, it was a war treaty. They signed the treaty, stop the war. Yes, cease-fire bologna. We could have wiped them out in two days, and you know that. I was there. You were there. Highway to death. We could have wiped them in two days out.

So, anyway, look, we were angry. The Bush administration took it up a notch after 9/11. But I didn't see the sympatico from the United Nations. Why?

BLIX: Well, they were -- the foreign ministers of Europe said that they were not at all excluding using force, but they were not in favor of doing it in March 2003. They wanted to have a little bit more inspections. We had only three-and-a-half months of inspections. That was not in the resolution.

O'REILLY: Because -- but he wasn't cooperating along those lines. Now I want to read...

BLIX: Well, I beg your pardon. He was cooperating a fair amount on access. I did not think that in January he was cooperating sufficiently on...

O'REILLY: Right. And you said so.

BLIX: I said so.

O'REILLY: But 17 violations doesn't sound like cooperation to me.

BLIX: Those 17 violations were before 1998.

O'REILLY: OK, but it was a cumulative effect of this guy snubbing his nose at the world.

BLIX: Sure, sure.

O'REILLY: All right. Now you said in March 6, 2003, all right, that Baghdad may possess 10,000 liters of anthrax, which caught my attention, Scud missile warheads filled with deadly biological and chemical agents, and drones capable of flying beyond the 93-mile limit. Do you -- why did you say that?

BLIX: Because they were unaccounted for, and they might exist, and the difference between us and some of the countries on the Security Council was that they were pretty sure they did exist. I did not presume either that they exist or that they didn't exist.

O'REILLY: OK. So you said it's possible that they had the 10,000 liters of anthrax.

BLIX: It's possible. Precisely. Precisely.

O'REILLY: Because, as a journalist, I saw that, and that made me nervous, all right, but...

BLIX: Yes, yes.

O'REILLY: ... you didn't say -- now if you couldn't interview the scientists without, you know, being sure they weren't intimidated and you only had a few guys, a huge country, we're still over there not finding anything, weren't the odds are that he was playing a cat-and-mouse game?

BLIX: No, they were not playing cat and mouse because they let us in everywhere, and we went on 700 inspections, and we went to a great number of sites that were given to us by the U.S. and the U.K. and others where they said these were the best sites, and we didn't find weapons of mass destruction in any one of them. So that's when i...

O'REILLY: So what do you think...

BLIX: That's when I became to doubt that their intelligence was so good.

O'REILLY: OK. And, subsequently, your doubts, I think, have been proven correct, and I said that on this broadcast. Where do you think the 10,000 liters of anthrax went?

BLIX: I think they might have destroyed them in the summer of 2001.

O'REILLY: 2001?

BLIX: Yes.

O'REILLY: And where would that be? Where would that destruction take place?

BLIX: Well, the UNSCOM went and we also went to a site where they said they had disposed them in the ground. There was no question but that they had destroyed a lot of anthrax, a lot of chemical evidence on this site.

O'REILLY: Did you find traces in the ground?

BLIX: Yes.

O'REILLY: You did?

BLIX: Yes, they did. But the problem was, you see, you couldn't verify the quantity of them. They had not allowed the inspectors to be there. So UNSCOM and we, too, suspected they might have spirited it away.

O'REILLY: All right. But nobody ever told you, Mr. Blix, this is what they did? No scientist...

BLIX: Yes.

O'REILLY: Did they tell you that?

BLIX: Yes, they said -- they said -- consistently said that they had destroyed it.

O'REILLY: Who's they? I mean did...

BLIX: The Iraqi scientists.

O'REILLY: The Iraqi scientists?

BLIX: Yes.

O'REILLY: OK. Why did...

BLIX: The Iraqi government. The scientists, too.

O'REILLY: ... they did they do that? Why did they do that?

BLIX: Why did they destroy it or why did they say?

O'REILLY: Yes. Why did they destroy it?

BLIX: Well, they were ordered to destroy it. They were ordered to destroy it under the supervision of the inspectors, and that was where they failed. If they had the inspectors present, they wouldn't have had this problem.

O'REILLY: Right. So I think it's safe to say that this guy Saddam -- he didn't cooperate with you, he didn't cooperate with the U.S., he was playing a game, and it led to his demise and a war. Now Saddam is out of power. Is the world a better place?

BLIX: Well, some -- it's better without him, yes. But whether the world is a better place in total, that's a different matter. I mean if the intention was to put a clear signal to terrorists that they should not commit terrorist deeds, well, then I think we've seen a breeding of terrorism, rather than anything else.

O'REILLY: But the terror was at a pretty high level. Before the Iraq invasion, we lost 3,000 people here.

BLIX: Yes.

O'REILLY: I mean do you think that the -- this caused more terrorism in Iraq?

BLIX: Well, in Iraq, I think we have seen a lot of terrorism being bred by this war. I'm not defending Saddam Hussein and the regime. I think that's the one blessing, that he's gone. He was a terrorist, a brutal regime. That is the gain. But if I draw a balance under the -- no, I think it was -- it's not...

O'REILLY: So if you -- if you were President Bush, you would not have invaded them?

BLIX: I would have waited. I would have allowed inspections for a few more months. We would have gone to all the sites that the U.S. and the U.K. would have seen and suggested us to go, and we would have found nothing, and we would have told them.

O'REILLY: But then he'd still be in power, Saddam.

BLIX: He would still be in power. That's very likely, yes.

O'REILLY: And the world a better place for that?

BLIX: No, but they -- the U.S. argument for going to war was not that Saddam should be taken out. It was that the weapons of mass destruction should be taken out.

O'REILLY: That's true. They didn't sell it the right way...

BLIX: No.

O'REILLY: ... but I think the Bush doctrine is...

BLIX: Well...

O'REILLY: ... remove terror regimes.

BLIX: Well -- but they didn't bring the right justification. I mean was this insincerity if they really felt there was something else than weapons of mass destruction?

O'REILLY: Well, I think they believe there were weapons of mass destruction.

BLIX: I think they did. I have never cast doubt about their good faith.

O'REILLY: Right. You've never accused the president of being...

BLIX: No, but they would not...

O'REILLY: ... a liar.

BLIX: They would not have been authorized, I think, either in London or in Washington to go to war if they had simply said we want to take out Saddam.

O'REILLY: Mr. Blix, thanks very much for coming in. We appreciate it.

BLIX: Thank you very much.

DudeMan

yeah some how i dont think the bomb dropped on halabja was sold to him by us.

and further more before we get inot this again just go and read the damn threads we have had already.

WEPAONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WAS ONE REASON WHJY WE WENT TO WAR, NOT THE REASON!

__________________


The Queen
"Those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life,"
Atrocities such as these simply reinforce our sense of community

TheFeniX
"Guns don't kill people: effeminate men in green tunics do"

GhostintheShell

I don't think it gets much better than the words from the mouth of Hans Blix himself, as to WMD in Iraq.

And yes it was "the reason", the only reason as a matter of fact, until there were no WMD found and it became apparent that none would probably ever be found, then it became all about "Iraqi freedom".

phyllis

Somewhere here..(in the forums) was a post that had a link to the MiG(29's I think) buried in the desert. Now...begging ones pardon, but hiding a couple MiGs in the sand would be a much larger undertaking than hiding vials, even many, many, many of them. Alot of the CBW weapons material would be in small enough containers to have scattered throughout how many acres of sand ? There will be weapons material found, I truly have no problem believing that...it's just a matter of time.(Has anyone checked in Syria yet ? )