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Recently quit weapons inspector speaks


Guest donaltopablo

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Nice post, Raleigh-NC. :)

I have listened to the BBC many times and seen their broadcast on our local PBS station. I usually like the BBC and it's nice to hear a perspective other than what we're used to in the United States, but the BBC's war coverage was a huge disappointment with its blantant anti-US/anti-Blair slant. Now that Lord Hutton has exonerated Mr. Blair, it is good to see that those responsible for the BBC fiasco have the honor to resign their positions.

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I used to listen to BBC before, almost daily. I liked their coverage, but when it came to opinions I started feeling a bit disappointed. That was a few years ago... During the war in Iraq, their reporters tried to present a "written in stone" view every time they had to interview an American. Some times they would go as far as saying (note: please don't take this literally) "the sky is green, and no one can argue about it; what color is the sky now?". You can't interview a person and try to present your views as facts. The purpose of the interview is to extract information from the other person, not to manipulate him/her... Unless you host the "Morton Downey Jr Show" (does anyone remember that?) you have to have more respect for the people you talk to, especially when the entire world is listening.

Anyway, the most disturbing part was not the opinions of BBC, but the fact that anything they stated was taken for granted by most anti-war/anti-Bush people. That was more disturbing than anything else. Every time I read foreign newspapers, I would end up with a huge list of lies and misinterpretations. My wife would give me the Russian viewpoint, which differred between the Russian people, the Russian government and the Russian media... go figure. She was very disappointed with the way Russian media was presenting the war and she would constantly laugh with the twisting of truth. This is how low-level journalism works overseas. When I went to Greece I had to have a million debates about the war, and none of the arguments I heard made sense. Of course, when you hear only one side you can form a very nice opinion. European countries found a nice way to distract their people from their MANY problems... They had a new "enemy" to focus on, thus stopping all the internal friction. Many countries opposed the US out of need, not out of (dis)belief. Of course, this is MY evaluation... nothing written in stone. I don't want to sink as low as BBC did. I hope that the latter improves its coverage and focus on the facts instead of cheap [anti-American] propaganda.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Overall in any event it would seem that they would have gone to war in any event, sugarcoating it with freeing people and mascarading it as part of the war on terror. There maybe some truth in the case presented to go to war in Iraq but it's more than possible that the main objective was to increase their military and economic grip worldwide, if that's not the first step.

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One thing I find interesting is the sense that if we haven't found the WMDs then they don't exist... What about Eric Rudolph? The guy lived in the mountains in OUR COUNTRY for 5 years or so and we couldn't find him. We've been in Iraq for months. It's possible they were distroyed, it's possible they are in Syria or some other nation. It's possible they are hidden really well. Sometimes it seems as though people expect there to be a big sign or pile of weapons just sitting in the desert, and because there isn't, then that must mean there isn't any WMD there. The evidence he had them and used them on his own people is proof enough. How many more people had to die for there be enough reason to topple a dangerous dictator that not only had and used chemical weapons but funded terrorist activity?

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The whole issue is complicated, it's also true that out of the 40 or so regime leaders they've captured, the coalition hasn't been able to get anything out of any of them, and no one else in the country seems to have come forward in all this time. Then there's the issue of whether or not he truly was a threat to the US homeland, or any neighboring land knowing the consequences. Plus when he had weapons I don't recall an incident when he gave actual weapons to anyone in the past.

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The whole issue is complicated, it's also true that out of the 40 or so regime leaders they've captured, the coalition hasn't been able to get anything out of any of them, and no one else in the country seems to have come forward in all this time. Then there's the issue of whether or not he truly was a threat to the US homeland, or any neighboring land knowing the consequences. Plus when he had weapons I don't recall an incident when he gave actual weapons to anyone in the past.

I think that is the problem, the general public doesn't know for certain. Another dictator in the early 1900's killed many citizens of his country and continent and it started a World War... but somehow when Hussein did it, the people that end his regime are the bad guys?

As ironic as this sounds, sometimes war is necessary to ensure peace.

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Very recently I read something (both in a foreign and a domestic paper) that had come up in the past, and that was related to how much Saddam, himself, truly knew about Iraq's WMD program. From what I gather, Saddam's strategy was to have his opponents fear that he already had WMDs, without making it too obvious. It served him as a weapon, whether he was actually interested in using them against the US, or not. The article said that Saddam overestimated his country's capabilities and he "misled" the West into believing that he truly was capable. This doesn't provide excuses for the international intelligence community's failures, but it does give a different perspective. After all, it wasn't just the US intelligence that failed. On the other hand, I have to agree with bthomas' last statement, as much as I would have loved to see Saddam being removed without war. Hopefully, we'll be more careful in the future and fight evil before it even becomes a threat.

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