Don't ya just hate people who continually ask the same simple and reasonable question. DAMMIT!!!! LOL JB
Isn't it amazing that such a SIMPLE and REASONABLE question causes someone to run the "other" way and disappear? How convenient and typical. Quite typical.
Some peoples minds are already made up Wags...please don't confuse them with facts -- it just gets ugly. JB
This is the evidence: January 26, 1998 The Honorable William J. Clinton President of the United States Washington, DC Dear Mr. President: We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Husseinâs regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor. The policy of âcontainmentâ of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraqâs chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddamâs secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons. Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the worldâs supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat. Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council. We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk. Sincerely, Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick
Bombing Iraq Isn't Enough William Kristol & Robert Kagan The New York Times January 30, 1998 Saddam Hussein must go. This imperative may seem too simple for some experts and too daunting for the Clinton Administration. But if the United States is committed, as the President said in his State of the Union Message, to insuring that the Iraqi leader never again uses weapons of mass destruction, the only way to achieve that goal is to remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power. Any policy short of that will fail. The good news is this: The Administration has abandoned efforts to win over the Iraqi leader with various carrots. It is clear that Mr. Hussein wants his weapons of mass destruction more than he wants oil revenue or relief for hungry Iraqi children. Now the Administration is reportedly planning military action -- a three- or four-day bombing campaign against Iraqi weapons sites and other strategic targets. But the bad news is that this too will fail. In fact, when the dust settles, we may be in worse shape than we are today. Think about what the world will look like the day after the bombing ends. Mr. Hussein will still be in power -- if five weeks of heavy bombing in 1991 failed to knock him out, five days of bombing won't either. Can the air attacks insure that he will never be able to use weapons of mass destruction again? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Even our smart bombs cannot reliably hit and destroy every weapons and storage site in Iraq, for the simple reason that we do not know where all the sites are. After the bombing stops, Mr. Hussein will still be able to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. Pentagon officials admit this. What will President Clinton do then? Administration officials talk of further punitive measures, like declaring a no-fly zone over all of Iraq, or even more bombing. But the fact is that the United States will have shot its bolt. Mr. Hussein will have proved the futility of American air power. The United Nations inspection regime will have collapsed; American diplomacy will be in disarray. Those who opposed military action all along -- the Russians, French and Chinese -- will demand the lifting of sanctions, and Mr. Hussein will be out of his box, free to terrorize our allies and threaten our interests. Mr. Hussein has obviously thought through this scenario, and he likes his chances. That is why he provoked the present crisis, fully aware that it could lead to American bombing strikes. He has survived them before, and he is confident he can survive them again. They will not succeed in forcing him to abandon his efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The only way to remove the threat of those weapons is to remove him, and that means using air power and ground forces, and finishing the task left undone in 1991. We can do this job. Mr. Hussein's army is much weaker than before the Persian Gulf war. He has no political support beyond his own bodyguards and generals. An effective military campaign combined with a political strategy to support the broad opposition forces in Iraq could well bring his regime down faster than many imagine. And Iraq's Arab neighbors are more likely to support a military effort to remove him than an ineffectual bombing raid that leaves a dangerous man in power. Does the United States really have to bear this burden? Yes. Unless we act, Saddam Hussein will prevail, the Middle East will be destabilized, other aggressors around the world will follow his example, and American soldiers will have to pay a far heavier price when the international peace sustained by American leadership begins to collapse. If Mr. Clinton is serious about protecting us and our allies from Iraqi biological and chemical weapons, he will order ground forces to the gulf. Four heavy divisions and two airborne divisions are available for deployment. The President should act, and Congress should support him in the only policy that can succeed. William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard. Robert Kagan is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (Bungrider doubts that "Bombing Iraq Isn't Enough" was what Andrew Carnegie had in mind when he founded the Carnegie Endowment for Int'l Peace). http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-013098.htm
(From the same PNAC organization that wrote the famed letter making case against war with Iraq): How to Attack Iraq (*.pdf) http://www.newamericancentury.org/AttackIraq-Nov16,98.pdf A Way to Oust Saddam Robert Kagan Weekly Standard September 28, 1998 Seven months after the Clinton administration backed down from its confrontation with Saddam Hussein, the disastrous consequences of that retreat are on full display. Whether or not Saddam makes good on his threat to throw out the U.N. weapons inspectors, he has now enjoyed almost two months without U.N. inspections. What does the administration believe he's been doing with all the free time? Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been warning Congress that the day is not far off -- maybe a matter of a few months -- when Saddam will suddenly present the United States and the world with a horrifying fait accompli: He will have his weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. If that day comes, no sanctions, no threat of sanctions, no angry U.N. resolutions, and no threat of "force" will be of any use. Saddam's new weapons would dramatically shift the strategic balance in the Middle East, putting at severe risk the safety of Israel, of moderate Arab states, and of the energy resources on which the United States and its allies depend. The Clinton administration clearly has no idea how to handle this imminent and devastating threat to American interests. Clinton officials want Americans to believe that winning votes in the U.N. Security Council constitutes a policy for dealing with the Saddam menace. They dismiss Scott Ritter as "clueless." But this Clintonian charade is a mammoth deception that will cause real damage in the world. The unstated but de facto policy of the administration is now this slender hope: If and when Saddam builds his weapons of mass destruction, the United States will still be able to deter him from aggression against his neighbors. This must be mighty comforting to the folks in Jerusalem, Riyadh, and Kuwait City, as well as to anyone else who cares about American credibility and Middle East peace. It has long been clear that the only way to rid the world of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is to rid Iraq of Saddam. Last week, Paul Wolfowitz, a defense official in the Bush administration, laid out in testimony before Congress a thoughtful and coherent strategy to accomplish that goal. The Wolfowitz plan calls for the establishment of a "liberated zone" in southern Iraq much like the zone the Bush administration created in the north of the country in 1991. The zone would be a safe haven for opponents of Saddam's regime. They could rally and organize, establish a provisional government there, gain international recognition, and set up a credible alternative to Saddam's dictatorship. Control of the southern zone would give Saddam's opponents a staging area to which discontented Iraqi army units could defect, as well as access to the country's largest oil field. Arab officials have told Wolfowitz that the effect on Saddam's regime would be "devastating." Wolfowitz predicts that the creation of such a zone would lead to "the unraveling of the regime." Unlike some of the ideas circulating on Capitol Hill, which suppose that Saddam will be toppled without any military action, the Wolfowitz plan rests on a guarantee of military support to protect the opposition within the liberated zone. If, as would be likely, Saddam sent his tanks to wipe out this new threat to his regime, the United States would have to be ready to defend the Iraqi opposition with overwhelming force. The United States could not again stand by while an uprising was crushed by Saddam. Some on the Hill have been looking for an easy way out of the Iraq crisis, hoping that a few million dollars for the Iraqi opposition will by itself take care of the problem. But any serious effort to oust Saddam must also be backed by U.S. military might. Republicans and Democrats on the Hill should advance the Wolfowitz plan in two ways. They should continue pressing the administration to support the Iraqi opposition -- with money, weapons, and political recognition. And they should now pass a resolution authorizing the president to use force against Iraq as part of a strategy of removing Saddam from power. The administration has proven itself incapable of carrying out a credible policy against Saddam. There is a real alternative to the present charade. Congress ought to let Americans know that. http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-092898.htm
I must say that your "cut and paste" logic defies all ability to reason and you are without question, highly disengenious in your presentation. As a result, not only does your argument lack credibility, but you do as well. Do you always find articles that offer nothing more than "hypotheticals" and no conclusive physical evidence and simply quote the words of a top UN weapon's inspector such as Scott Ritter, who last time I checked said that Saddam Hussein has no weapons of mass destruction and that ousting Saddam Hussein is "extremely dangerous". How convenient of you to leave Ritter's most recent comments out. Hmmmmm..... http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,351165,00.html Do you always "paste and cut" with such fraudulent tactics?
Isn't it rather strange, that even under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) put out a memo in September of 2002 saying that there "is no reliable evidence to suggest that the Iraqis have biological or chemical weapons, or that they are producing them" Guess you don't want to mention that either, eh Bungy? :eek:
Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor under George Bush, Sr and Gerald Ford comes out against attacking Iraq: http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/archives/000504.html
Did you even read that article, or just look at the headline? If you had read it, you might have noticed this line of reasoning from Scowcroft, "He (Saddam) is unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address." But, wait, I thought Saddam had no WMD's?!!? What a convenient omission for you. People can disagree over the best course of action to deal with Iraq. Scowcroft believed he could be contained. He also cited an often used argument for not attacking Iraq when he wrote "Saddam would be likely to conclude he had nothing left to lose, leading him to unleash whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses." The left made this argument non-stop prior to the invasion. But why? Why would anyone have this fear when EVERYONE knew he didn't have any WMD's? Scowcroft also believed the war with Iraq would be incredibly difficult, especially when facing the "elite" Republican Guard. It wasn't. The aftermath has been bloodier than hoped for obviously, as new terror regimes try to take hold in the post-war environment. Scowcroft believed Saddam and his WMD's could be contained. Bush believed that risk was too great. But to suggest that only the Bush administration really believed he had any WMDs is nonsensical in the extreme, and simply political fodder for the Monday morning quarterbacking, Bush-hating left.