Bush Administration made 935 false statements because of the Iraq War

[Symphony D.]

I'm sure France had their own programs, and if the French programs had indicated Iraq was a direct threat, don't you think they would have gone along with the war?

The simple counter to that is Iraq was clearly not a direct threat, considering it had no weapons capable of reaching France, or French interests. As Verbose has pointed out rather well, the European view of the situation was that it was contained. If it was contained, why would they go to war, even if it did possess weapons?

Again, why would France take American intelligence carte blanch when it has its own intelligence network? Why would it not make statements if it found American intelligence to be inaccurate? Furthermore, they sent a weapons inspector. That, in and of itself, implies suspicion that something might be there, does it not?

In the initial leadup to the war, before any hard data was garnered directly in Iraq by the IAEA (and before Hans Blix said "ain't nothin here ya'll"), the UNSC members did not dispute American findings. I really hate having to repeat this, but that leads to one of only three conclusions:

1. All of them were idiots who apparently believed anything America said, despite extremely good reasons not to.
2. All of them agreed, because they could not find serious indications America was wrong.
3. All of them wanted America to get into a war and played along for a good laugh.

They then sent the IAEA to do follow up work and determine more accurately what was going on. But prior to that, they did not disagree. This is the point I keep coming back to over and over again. Everybody was on the same page until the questions of what to do came up, and on-the-ground information started coming in. Ergo, either somebody duped all the UNSC members, or they were all seeing the same thing.

I do not know how many more times I can repeat the same argument in different ways.

There was no way that France or any other country could have reasonably and completely refuted the US intelligence.

There's this thing in the American legal system called reasonable doubt. Nobody had to refute anything completely, or even reasonably. They simply had to refute it to their own satisfaction. They could simply have said "Our sources disagree," and blocked the movements of the UNSC at every turn.

 

[Gibsie]

Well I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. If I recall correctly one of the main reasons the US took its action was that France had promised to veto any proposal for military action against Iraq- if you don't think that's a genuine attempt to block the UNSC from making war on Iraq, then err I suppose that's a valid opinion...

Generally speaking it's rare for one nation to publicly disagree with another nation's intelligence findings. Given that the US intelligence stated Iraq was a clear and present danger, I don't agree that Europe agreed with the US intel and also considered the threat contained at the same time. Those are mutually exclusive statements. As you say, it's a binary statement: they believed that Iraq was ready to hit us with WMDs as we were told, or they didn't. Remember, it was up to those in favour of the war to come up with evidence to convince everyone else. They failed. There was no need for France or anyone else to present evidence. They saw the evidence, they didn't buy it. Nor did most the world, and many of those that did regret accepting what Bush said (Blair has said he was wrong to do so). I still cannot fathom what shape evidence of a lack of weapons program would take anyway, beyond the findings from weapons inspections, myself...

 

[Ultima_Thule]

".....and we're going for 1000!!! woohoo!"

FORK GEORGE BUSH man. He skrewed up the world.

 

[C~G]

Symphony D. you said you liked Occam's Razor and that thing is seriously blocking understanding the situation...

The right answer is:

4. All of them agreed partly, because they were idiots who believed in good will and after events of 911 what US presented to them.(despite extremely good reasons not to.) Later after further investigation they disagreed as they could not find serious indications America was right.

All other countries including european states approved the US intelligence at first as it was very convincing and there was feeling it was showing something was going on and it needed further study to show what it was exactly. If further information couldn't be gathered example through investigation it might imply that there might be something wrong with intel. It was clearly difference in degree how europeans believed that how it should be reacted towards the intel compared to US. Eventually it became clear that only source for the intel was US itself and there wasn't any other information to show for or against the US intel. So most europeans decided it would be US decision to do whatever they like and it started to look like US tried to push towards for the war from the day one in UN. At this point it was countries like France who wouldn't go along with only US intel to war against sovereign country without any further evidence. So yes, european states were as idiotic as american citizens believing that US government was going to war because of Iraq having WMD's but that was only for initial resolution, europeans played along as long as it seemed to be true, not any longer (not counting the lapdog and couple of puppies wanting to be a good little lapdogs). They at least didn't vote for the guy and believe the evidence second time around.

This isn't checkers, it's chess.

 

[bathsheba666]

I really hate having to repeat this, but that leads to one of only three conclusions:

1. All of them were idiots who apparently believed anything America said, despite extremely good reasons not to.
2. All of them agreed, because they could not find serious indications America was wrong.
3. All of them wanted America to get into a war and played along for a good laugh.

I really hate you feeling you have to repeat it also.

You come out with three strawman projections of why the world might act in a particular way,
then claim their unreasonableness justifies your assumptions.

Who do you think you are convincing?

 

[Berzerker]

Again, why would France take American intelligence carte blanch when it has its own intelligence network?

That is an interesting question given how Bush was citing foreign intel instead of our own for his main accusations

 

[Ecofarm]

2. Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council; and accordingly decides to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process established by resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent resolutions of the Council;

Where's the gray area? He defied that last chance for a long long time (in his final address to the UN, Blix could not gaurentee disarmament long after the resolution was passed) before a coalition finally took action, under authority of the above resolution (UNR1441).

What do you think follows a "final opportunity to comply"? Another final opportunity? The US even tried to get a further resolution passed (how rediculas). I guess the thinking was that if a resolution was passed that flat out said "We are invading you", then he might have come clean. Who knows, that might have avoided some trouble, but no, the UN sat on its hands and resolution 1441 was enforced.

 

[Verbose]

And the bottom line is still that the US encountered opposition to going to war on Iraq because such a move was deemed to be like insanely difficult and dangerous, with unforseeable mid- to long-term implications. Just the kind of thing most nations with anything like a stake in the knife-juggling act of Mid Eastern politics considered bad, bad news.

Regardless if there were French officials on the take from Iraq or whatever (never mind how these guys are supposed to have set French policies), and whether the US government was kind of optimistic and believed it would be easy or not, that still stands.

That the US government ended up insulting half of the world in the process, first indirectly by seemingly treating everyone as if they were half-wits, and then more directly when it didn't get things their way just helped to cement the polarisation.

 

[Berzerker]

if the world dont like what we're doing, they can just stop buying our stuff

oops

 

[brennan]

In the initial leadup to the war, before any hard data was garnered directly in Iraq by the IAEA (and before Hans Blix said "ain't nothin here ya'll"), the UNSC members did not dispute American findings. I really hate having to repeat this, but that leads to one of only three conclusions:

I'm sorry but this is just not true. In the face of the fact that they were unable to conclusively account for all the produced Iraqi WMD the weapons inspectors were actively warning against jumping to the conclusion that they still had any.

You are making a lot of claims, but you in no way address the 'evidence' you are supporting. Of which there was precious little. The evidence consisted almost entirely of hearsay from defectors, a notoriously unreliable source and hardly the basis for claims of a watertight case. The fact was that the US always said it knew, unquestionably, that there was a smoking gun, the rest of the world initially took this on good faith, but it became increasingly obvious that there was no actua substance behind the claims being made. When Colin Powell sat down in front of the UN and insulted the world's intelligence with his photographs of bunkers and distinctly un-damning phone calls the lack was entirely obvious.