No Duh I didn\'t write that. But there are the reasons you asked for Vid. I didn\'t try to see you come up with anything saying why they are so stupid. But you didn\'t say they\'re stupid. You just didn\'t say anything about them. I read them all and theres more:
The example of North Korea reminds us that even when bad people acquire nuclear capability, we have response options other than war.
There is no identifiable connection between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. In fact, the Islamist fundamentalists are mortal enemies of the secular Iraqi Bathists.
Absent real evidence, the administration has shown its willingness to fudge facts: Rumsfeld\'s "bulletproof evidence" showing an Al Qaeda-Iraq link turned out to be riddled with holes.
Instead of accepting the burden of proof, U.S. policy has put Iraqi officials in the position of proving a negative. It has the same logic as that of an inquisitor who threatens to tighten the thumbscrews with every denial. "The inspections have yet to uncover compelling evidence of banned weapons programmes, but the United States has said they are designed as a test of cooperation with a U.N. disarmament resolution rather than an effort to find hidden arms."
War plans are based on a dishonest history of arms inspections. Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq says, "The politics of fear have clouded the collective judgment of the people of the United States to the point where we, unfortunately, are willing to accept at face value almost any allegation of wrongdoing on the part of Iraq without first demanding to know the factual basis of such an allegation."
The 1990s arms inspections were "in the end corrupted by those who chose to use the unique access ? to deliberately provoke a crisis that, in turn, was used to justify the continuation of economic sanctions," Ritter says.
Ritter also charges that inspectors left in 1998, "not because the Iraqis kicked them out, but rather that they were ordered out by former executive chairman of the weapons inspection regime Richard Butler under pressure from the United States and without the permission of the Security Council, in order to clear the way for a military aggression in December 1998."
Desert Fox: Its mission was "To strike military and security targets in Iraq that contribute to Iraq\'s ability to produce, store, maintain and deliver weapons of mass destruction." But Ritter claims that "the vast majority of the more than 100 targets bombed by the United States and Great Britain during Desert Fox had nothing to do with weapons production capability, but rather the leadership and security establishments of the government of Iraq and that the precision in which these targets were bombed was due in a large part due to the information gathered by weapons inspectors."
Those "chemical warheads" that recent headlines are screaming about are bogus.
Purported weapons factories have turned out to be nonfunctional and often in ruins.
A nuclear weapons program is "very expensive and readily detectable." The gas centrifuge facilities "emit gamma radiation, as well as many other frequencies. It\'s detectable. Iraq could not get around this."
Two of the three types of "nerve agents" formerly made in Iraq ? Sarin and Tabus ? "have a shelf life of five years. Even if Iraq had somehow managed to hide this vast number of weapons from inspectors, what they\'re now storing is nothing more than useless, harmless goo."
Iraq\'s capability for developing the third type, VX (about which Iraqis lied to inspectors repeatedly) was destroyed by inspectors in 1996. The above three points are detailed in War on Iraq, by William Rivers Pitt with Scott Ritter, which explains that the weapons inspections during the 1990s were effective.
"Contrary to popular mythology, there\'s absolutely no evidence Iraq worked on smallpox, Ebola, or any other horrific nightmare weapons the media likes to talk about today," according to the same source.
Iraqis made anthrax, "weaponized" it, then "lied about this capability for some time?. Finally they admitted it, and we blew up the plant [in 1995]?. Liquid bulk anthrax, even under ideal storage conditions, germinates in three years, becoming useless? Iraq has no biological weapons today, because both the anthrax and the botulinum toxin are useless. For Iraq to have biological weapons today, they\'d have to reconstitute a biological manufacturing base." (same source.)
Saddam has not been able to replace what inspectors destroyed during the \'90s. "They\'d have to start from scratch, having been deprived of all equipment, facilities and research. They\'d have to procure the complicated tools and technology required through front companies. This would be detected. The manufacture of chemical weapons emits vented gases that would have been detected by now if they existed. We\'ve been watching, via satellite and other means, and have seen none of this. If Iraq was producing weapons today, we\'d have definitive proof, plain and simple." (same source.)
"The idea that Iraq can suddenly pop up with a long range missile is ludicrous? they can\'t conduct tests indoors. You have to bring rockets out, fire them on test stands. This is detectable. No one has detected any evidence of Iraq doing this." (same source.)
Under pressures of an actual shooting war, Gestapo-type spying would become even more customary and acceptable here in the "homeland." Already, our government is "chipping away at the wall that has existed for nearly three decades between domestic law enforcement and international intelligence gathering."
There is no clear and imminent danger, and so no compelling reason to move precipitously.
The Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago (among many other religious and faith-based coalitions) has petitioned Bush to avoid war on Iraq. Their letter, "an unprecedented, unanimous call," was signed by Chicago\'s Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders, and reflects the "opinion across a broad spectrum of society, " according to the Council\'s executive director.
Pope John Paul II has added his plea for peace and the solidarity of all peoples within a framework of international law. The Vatican has repeatedly asserted its opposition to war in Iraq.
Chicago\'s City Council has passed a resolution against the war, joining almost 50 other cities, and making Chicago the largest U.S. municipality to do so.
Our plans for a war on Iraq are in conflict with the American values we teach our children. I will never forget how disillusioned I was as a kid when it was my beloved President Eisenhower, and not that nasty Premier Khruschev, who turned out to be the liar in the U2 incident. How are young Americans supposed to reconcile preemptive war with what they\'ve been taught about our country\'s values?
....I will give you the source where I got them from. The site is down for some strange reason.........hmm................
