I was implying that Ritter is driven by policy concerns, not by anything resembling an unbiased consideration of the evidence.

 

He's trying to make the point that Ritter's thinking follows suit with Kerry's in regard to the Iraq stance flip-flop.

EDIT: *What Dave (subaruguru) ^said^*

 

There you go again with the false dichotomy, you seem to imply that it is not possible that a person can weigh both policy trends and objective evidence, (and heck, even their personal value system) -on a matter before taking a position.

Apparently for you, that is the case, but most of us are able to think about things, and see value in differing perspectives.

The other main point thats been raised here again and again is the fact that situations change, and if a person cannot adjust their view or their position to deal with a changing situation, they will not be very well prepared to deal with reality.



to quote dre:
Situations change, being dynamic is a strength more then it is a disability.

and being a closed-minded butthead is definetly a shortcoming.

(not that I'm saying anyone here is.....)

 

possibly to make sure they never became an issue.

 

But according to Ritter they were already a threat when he was inspector. He even suggested little was being done to cleanse Saddam's Iraq of WMD's pre-dubya. That’s the point of this argument!

 

Yes, well, if that's the case, then what changed in Iraq? It would be hard to argue that this is what happened with Ritter, considering the fact that he didn't base his "No WMD" comments on an inspection in Iraq. He wasn't an inspector by that time anymore. And, I correlated his change in opinion to the change in administrations. Will you at least admit that? Before Bush, Ritter thinks Iraq and WMD's are a problem. After Bush, Ritter says Iraq doesn't have a program. That much should be settled fact from the articles.

Now, what else changed his mind? Show me that and I'll have to admit he didn't totally disregard the facts. As it stands, I'm not seeing him having too many justifications to change his mind when he did.

 

...my guess as to why Ritter changed his mind when the administrations changed is that Iraq used to have weapons, and then they got rid of them. That's what Iraq claimed from a while ago, and Ritter probably had good information that said Iraq had gotten rid of their weapons. No one ever claimed that Iraq never had WMDs...just that they haven't had them since BushJr's been in office and since we tore up Iraq looking for them.

 

How would Ritter have come across this information? He was not on the inspection team anymore.

And, if Saddam had them then, then he had the ability to make them, right? Or did someone sell the weapons to him?

 

...Saddam did buy weapons...from the UNITED STATES! That's why BushJr. thought he had them...we literaly had receipts...but Iraq had since sold and dismantled them...all of this is not really debated, it's just the way it went...Saddam also had some factorys set up to makes some bioweapons...the equipment for those was also from the US...but everyone knows that those were scrapped and sold as scrap metal after the 1st Iraqi war because Iraq was damn near bankrupt at that point. Iraq has not been a threat to the US, or anyone else besides themselves, since Bush Sr. went to town on them the first time. They have had no WMDs since then, no NCBs since then...and still, there are people who believe going to Iraq for round two was justified...I guess it is, if you believe our armed forces should be the world's police...but that type of foreign policy usually leads to the downfall of a world power...

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/me...iraq-0308.html

And just because Ritter wasn't on the inspection team doesn't mean he couldn't have heard about something...like that another country had the weapons, or that the remaining inspectors found evidence that the weapons were removed...I still have hook ups from a job I had 5 years ago, you don't think Ritter kept in touch?

 

Well, the remaining inspectors didn't inspect. That was the precipitation to the entire war; Iraq did not allow a UN mission to complete its inspection.

Now, about your weapons sold to Iraq...you're even more wrong about that than you were about Chile. The US did not, has not, and will never sell chemical, biological, or any other weapons of that magnitude to third world/middle eastern governments. There are no receipts for bio weapons sales to Iraq because no one has sold bio weapons to Iraq. Iraq had its own chemical weapons program, most likely supported from several sources (soviets top the list of suspects there) in the 80's which it used to beat Iran. (Before it used them on Iran, Iran was winning the war despite Iraq having the largest army in the arab world.) The supposed "weapons" you're talking about sold to the Iraq by the US were CONVENTIONAL weapons of the same sort that were illegally being sold to Iran at the same time.

Get your facts straight. Geez, I mean, I don't like to get personal in debates ever...but it's not that hard to just google this stuff.

 

At ease, William Shatner...

That has to be the most poorly constructed sentence I have ever seen in my entire life. Hasn’t anyone told you that it’s hard present a credible argument with elementary grammar?

Anyways… what kind of conspiracy has you selling WMD's to prime enemies?! That's like accusing Kerry of secretly funneling money to the bush campaign!

 

Hahaha, alright...first of all Salty, even if I didn't use proper punctuation the sentence(s) make sense (but the Shatner line and the link are hilarious so props for that). I apologize for mutating the common syntactical norms. Second of all, did either of you read the link I posted? We did sell them conventional weapons (a lot of them). But if you look at the list of US companies that have confirmed sales to Iraq, you see companies that specialize in biological and chemical warfare development in addition to the companies that supplied conventional weapons. It isn't a conspiracy; the United States definatly supplied Saddam with some of the weapons that we thought we would find in Iraq. The weapons are gone now because Iraq has been in no shape to be thinking about international conflicts for a while, so they've been sold or recycled. The ONLY thing that Saddam/Iraq did recently was to treat their own people horribly.

Maybe I was unclear the first time; the US hasn't sold weapons to Iraq in years, and we're not currently doing so, but in the past Saddam and his Iraq were looked at not as enemys but as a lesser evil when compared to his neighbors. So we sold them weapons.

 

Defense corporations are normally HUGE. So, a company that might have a part that works on biological/chemical weapons working somewhere else is pretty much meaningless. I'm sure Hughes has worked on delivery systems that can be adapted to nuclear warheads; does that mean everywhere hughes does business is getting nuclear warhead delivery secrets????

Now, where are these receipts you mentioned for chemical weapons? And, what on earth would make you think that the US would WANT to sell chemical weapons to a government that it never liked in the first place!? See Salty's post on Kerry.

Edited to add:

That source is lousy. I forgot to comment on it because it's so full of conjecture. It's based on a deleted section of a UN report, so, the source material is no longer available for anyone to see. And, it cites articles all over...without providing any links or dates. It's a standard piece of geocities journalism from what I see. And, it doesn't give any direct evidence of the biological weapons...it just lists companies that encompass thousands of Defense functions, and then assumes that because some fucntions of some companies are biological/chemical, that that's what they were doing in Iraq.

Not even close to a substantiating source.

 

Guru, read the link I posted...you think a company called "American Type Culture Collection" makes conventional weapons too? NO, they make biological cultures of various microbes. Most of which have military applications. How about DuPont? They made chemicals and have for years and years. They don't make anything that could be considered a conventional weapon. But they do happen to make napalm and other chemicals that have military applications. And why would the US want to sell weapons to a gov't they didn't like? Because they didn't like them less than they didn't like other countries Iraq was at odds with. So Iraq got weapons, and some training, and we expected them to take out our enemies and then chill out. As we all know, they didn't chill out they invaded Kuwait. So we stepped in and sent them home. But since then, they haven't done a damn thing to anyone but themselves; they've been scrabling to stabilize their economy, and they've been murdering thousands of their own citizens. That's all.

Edit: Yeah, I'm not proud of that link as a source...but I've read the same list before from better sources, I just can't find it right now.

 

http://www.rense.com/general32/suppe.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true


"The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague." _WashPost