Inspections in Iraq

[sandnsea]

Did we need them in 2002, regardless of whether we knew there were WMD or not? Did we trust Saddam to never develop WMD in the future? Was containment hurting the Iraqi people? Was a vote to move forward on getting inspections in Iraq, by threat of force, reasonable? If Saddam had not complied with inspections, should he have been overthrown?

I am not happy with Kerry's words today, but these questions still need to be considered.

[truthspeaker]

1. We needed inspections, but need was not as urgent as many claimed

Saddam had to be dealt with eventually in some fashion.

[mike_c]

5. it would have cost 2.5 billion annually to keep Saddam...

...Hussein contained using preinvasion measures-- that's the Pentagon's estimate, ironically used by some to argue in favor of invading. At that rate of expenditure we could have simply waited for Saddam Hussein to die of old age and the price would have been lower than that of the invasion, not to mention all the innocent lives lost.

on edit-- I don't think it would have played out that way, though. If the U.S. had not invaded, the economic sanctions would have been lifted in another year or two. Blix would have certified Iraq's disarmament, the U.S. would have stalled and pounded sand for a couple of years, but eventually Iraq would have emerged from purgatory. Hussein would never rise above the level of simply trying to hold his disparate constituencies together, but the neocons would have lost a bogey man vital to the PNAC's objectives for the ME. That could not be allowed under any circumstances. A minority of congressional democrats apparently agreed.

[JI7]

6. the war was already on with the sanctions which were killing

many innocent people for years.

[sandnsea]

8. You're dreaming

"Hussein would never rise above the level of simply trying to hold his disparate constituencies together" He's been a threat to the ME since the day he came to power and there's absolutely no reason to believe he wouldn't have continued.

[K-W]

10. No you are dreaming.

You are buying into the mythical story of the Middle East.

Saddam is a rational human being. Not a storybook villian. He is a threat only insomuch that all of those nations are a threat. He attacked Kuwait because he thought he could get away with it, I doubt he would make that mistake again, and with his nation crippled he would have had a good fight on his hands to retain power. He knew full well that the US had it out for them, and he wasnt going to be the one to give them a reason to end his power.

[mike_c]

12. he was an aging despot with a broken military...

...a shattered country, and he'd be under intense scrutiny for the rest of his regime. The no-fly patrols had fostered semi-autonomous ethnic groups that would never go back under Saddam's rule easily.

His successor might have become a problem eventually, presumably one of his sons, but that's no excuse for invading.

[sandnsea]

14. Not true

Lifting sanctions and ending the no-fly zones is part of almost every letter I linked to in my post below. The will to keep the sanctions in place was fading. There was absolutely no guarantee he would have been under intense scrutiny at all. Still no excuse for invading, but certainly a reason to get tougher on inspections and try to put together a plan to put that country on a different path. I think there were ways to do that, with UN peacekeepers and more aid to the north and south. But trusting Saddam Hussein doesn't fit into any plan in my view.

[JI7]

2. he isn't letting Bush off the hook

he is sticking to the line that it is bush who is the problem. the republicans would like for kerry to say anything to back off his vote which would just go into the whole flip flopper, or soft on defense and other things rather than discuss actual details of the issue.

most people don't pay attention to the details of the issues and bills.

[sandnsea]

3. It doesn't sound good

He better clarify what he meant by that statement and it better not be he would have gone to war too. That makes no damned sense at all and he's said in the past he wouldn't have done it. If he says he would have authorized force because of inspections and Saddam's history, fine. If he says he would have invaded, that's a whole different story. May have invaded, depending on the inspections process, okay. Definitely would have? I will not be a happy camper if he says that.

[mike_c]

4. in october 2002...

Iraq's WMD program was history and had been since the late '90's, there was a process in place for U.N. certification-- it was not up to us to make that determination unilaterally-- Hussein's ambitions were contained at considerably less cost in dollars and lives than the invasion entailed, Hussein had already given the inspectors unlimited access, and Iraq was a broken and bleeding country that was not a threat to anyone. Its people were sick, starving and destitute after 12 years of economic embarrgo following two decimating wars. These are inescapable truths.

Iraq was not a threat to anyone.

We've beaten this dead horse rather thoroughly looking for a revisionist perspective that somehow justifies the need to authorize additional force to achieve objectives that had already been achieved. That's the inescapable part-- Iraq was already disarmed, blunted, and contained.

[sandnsea]

7. Disagree, always have

He had not given the inspectors unlimited access, ever. Containment was leaving the people sick and starving, as you state. The choice was leaving it to the UN, which would have meant Saddam fully in charge with no inspections at all; or the US takes the lead. The inescapable part is that Saddam was not a leader to be trusted and was not a leader who did right by his people. Even with no WMD, moving forward on permanent inspections would have been right. A war to accomplish that would have been wrong.

[mike_c]

9. "Iraq agrees to weapons inspections"

Iraq agrees to weapons inspections

September 17, 2002 Posted: 3:26 AM EDT (0726 GMT)
Annan confirmed Monday that Iraq had agreed to allow weapons inspectors to return without conditions.


UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- In a letter handed over to the United Nations on Monday, Iraq said it would allow the return of U.N. weapons inspectors "without conditions" to "remove any doubts Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction."

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/16/iraq.un.letter/

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The U.S. immediately began trying to sabotage any possible finding that Iraq had complied with the U.N. mandate:

Friday, 20 September, 2002, 04:08 GMT 05:08 UK

US threat to stop Iraq inspections

The Iraqis could be facing another US assault

The American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has said the United States will find ways to stop weapons inspectors going back to Iraq unless there is a new United Nations Security Council resolution on the issue.


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Inspections began on 27 November 2002 and ended March 18 2003 as inspectors were forced to withdraw from Iraq in the face of a U.S. invasion:

After more than two months and more than 350 inspections, the UN teams have failed to find the arsenal of banned weapons the US and Britain claim Iraq has. Nor are there any signs of programs to build such weapons. The London Observer reports that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors are convinced Iraq does not have a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. “IAEA officials and intelligence sources admit it is extremely unlikely that Iraq has nuclear weapons squirreled away,” The Observer reports, explaining that “... the IAEA revealed that analysis of samples taken by UN nuclear inspectors in Iraq ... showed no evidence of prohibited nuclear activity.”

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq&iraq_themes=weaponsInspections

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And finally:

Published on Thursday, November 21, 2002 by the Mirror/UK
Bush Aide: Inspections or Not, We'll Attack Iraq
by Paul Gilfeather


GEORGE Bush's top security adviser last night admitted the US would attack Iraq even if UN inspectors fail to find weapons.

Dr Richard Perle stunned MPs by insisting a "clean bill of health" from UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix would not halt America's war machine.

Evidence from ONE witness on Saddam Hussein's weapons program will be enough to trigger a fresh military onslaught, he told an all- party meeting on global security.

Former defense minister and Labour backbencher Peter Kilfoyle said: "America is duping the world into believing it supports these inspections. President Bush intends to go to war even if inspectors find nothing.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1121-08.htm


This last is what congress handed the Bush administration with the IWR.

[sandnsea]

13. And lift sanctions

Every single letter they wrote included lifting sanctions as part of the deal. People who claim containment was working and then ignore the connections between inspections and sanctions just aren't being honest about the situation.

http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/Index_Iraq.htm

[K-W]

11. No one is talking about trusting him. You need to get real.

You cant trust anyone. Saddam wasnt a good man, few leaders of nations are, that doesnt mean he isnt a relatively smart man with rational goals and actions. He wasnt going to do anything unless he thought he could benefit from it. All we had to do is keep up the conditions neccessary to make sure he had no expectation of benefitting from military action. And the UN was perfectly capable of that. After gulf war one, he knew he wasnt going to be allowed to sneeze on another country without the US crushing him.

You are buying into the neocon worldview a touch too much.

[Zynx]

15. Keeping Saddam contained was the correct policy.

He was getting continually weaker and was unable to reconstitute his military, much less his WMD programs. This was evident to me without having to look at classified information.

Now, as for Kerry's vote, I would not have voted the same way he did, but I understand that he felt that the threat of force would get inspectors back in and here it appears he was correct. What was not correct was him trusting Bush not to use that authority to go to war. I no longer hold this against Kerry because he must have been thinking that Bush didn't want war as a first course of action, but he was mistaken. Indeed, it was Bush's fault. He abused that resolution to go to war.

[HFishbine]

16. You need to

read Mike's post above. As you'll note, Saddam agreed to inspections in September. The Senate approved the Iraq war resolution on October 11th. The "voted for the resolutions to get inspectors back in" excuse is lame.

[K-W]

17. You arent being fair.

The argument is that without the threat of force Saddam wouldnt give inspectors full access. And while I dont really agree with that, considering the amount of misinformation about Saddam and the villification that the neocons spread in washinton for over a decade, it is really understandable that Kerry could think a threat of force was neccessary.

[HFishbine]

18. Oh, come on

Let's face it. Nobody has a clear understanding of why Kerry did what he did. He's explainations have run the gamut.