Saddam may have bluffed

[Spentastic]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3157246.stm

"David Kay will tell the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress that Saddam pretended his battlefield commanders had chemical weapons, in order to deter invasion, according to the Washington Post"

At the same time Tony Blair keeps sayiong that this report will show that the UN would have voted for war if they'd known what we now know.

This is the stupidest spin thus far. If I were a rogue state I'd start bluffing that I had nukes.

Oh wait! N Korea already worked that out.

[punpirate]

1. Invasion was inevitable...

... and the US and GB knew Hussein had no WMD to use. If they knew the opposite, they would have released every page of the Iraqi statement to the UN on those weapons, instead of hiding many thousands of pages.

More spin.

Cheers.

[underpants]

6. Yes but Saddam had fake power dropped from helicopters on the Kurds

Of course he was bluffing not just to keep the US out but to keep the Kurds and Shi'ites down and the Iranians and alQuaeda out.

No Navy to speak of
Never really good with their Air Force (the Iranians air defense tore them up during the Iran/Iraq war)
Cannabalized Armor and Helicopter units.

What's left to defend yourself with? The APPEARANCE of WMD.

The helicopter story came from this TIME article (long but worth printing out and reading)

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101031006/wwmd.html

A bluff like that had worked for him before: in 1991, during an uprising among Iraqi Kurds in Kirkuk, soldiers inside helicopters dropped a harmless white powder onto the rebels below, terrifying them into thinking it was a chemical attack.

Hans Blix, head of the U.N. inspection team that entered Iraq last November and left just before the war, told Australian national radio two weeks ago that "you can put up a sign on your door, beware of the dog, without having a dog."

[ProfessorGAC]

8. I've Been Saying That Here For 2 Months

When DU'ers were all convinced Hussein had no WMD's, my take was then, and still is, that he played his shell game with the inspectors to give the impression he had something to hide.

It was the only way to keep the Iranians, Kuwaitis, and the opposing factions in his own country at bay. After the '91 war, and his army obliterated and air force rendered non-existent, the only way he could hold down the fort was this huge arsenal of nasty weapons. As the inspectors destroyed them and the ability to make them, his only hope was to pretend they had missed something important. Otherwise he would be revealed as a toothless tiger.

Now the media is finally catching up, and even David Kay can't spin this in any other way that we went to war by calling a bluff. Not much of a reason for war, no matter how they frame it.
The Professor

[underpants]

9. The absence of evidence is NOT the evidence of absence

The Repube spin is something like that.

I love the Blix quote.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. Yeah, and My Answer To That Has Been. . .

. . .there is no such thing as evidence of absence. So, to even use that term is revealing of the intellectual vacuum that is Republicanism in 2003.
The Professor

[scisyhp]

7. If they knew the opposite, they would never invaded.

The best proof that they knew of the absence of any WMDs in Iraq
is the very fact that the invasion took place. What "bluff"
are they talking about? Every Iraqi official, including Saddam
Hussein himself, kept telling to everyone willing to listen
that Iraq had no WMDs. UN inspectors were allowed everywhere
and found nothing. Sooner or later the inspectors would have
to sertify Iraq WMD-free, and UN would have no recourse against
lifting the sanctions. Freed from the sanctions regime the Iraq
would use its oil revenues to quickly rebuild and regain its
stature and influence in the Arab world, not to mention to
drastically improve the standards of living for its citizens. All
that under Saddam Hussein's leadership. That's why they had to
invade.

[rocktivity]

10. No WMD's, no invasion, no oil

Originally posted by Scisyhp:
...Freed from the sanctions...Iraq would use its oil revenues to quickly rebuild and regain its stature and influence in the Arab world, not to mention to drastically improve the standards of living for its citizens. All that under Saddam Hussein's leadership. That's why they had to invade.

Also, the Preztel-Dunce and his friends wanted Iraq's oil revenues for themselves, and to make it a strategic home base for invading other Middle Eastern countries. But if no WMDs were found, not only would Iraq's sanctions be lifted, there would no longer be a REASON to invade! That's why Georgie was in such a hurry that he short-circuted the inspection process. And during Powell's ill-fated UN presentation, I realized that there was NOTHING Saddam could do that would have made Georgie pack up his soldiers and go home.


rocknation

[underpants]

12. "Bringing liberty to the Iraqi people" -not a selling point to their base

Let alone to the American people. Of course (if we remember) 67% wanted W to get UN help but he totally ignored the public will and went ahead. Then no one wanted to be against the President at a time of war so his numbers shot way up (they were important then but not now that they are in the 49-54% range).

No they had to sell this to their base with strong punishing chastising fearmongering reasons, wishywashy word like "liberty" and "democracy" don't sell to them.

They were going anyway but the focus groups must have told them to go with WMD/Threat/Ties to terrorism.

[Joe the Revelator]

2. But....but...

our intel said it was there!....guys?..guys?

[emad]

3. They called it 'sabre - rattling' in the UK:

From 1992 to 2001 all Saddam intelligence was taken with a large pinch of salt because he was the world's No 1 acknowledged spinner when it came to weapons of masturbation and "my weapon is more awesome than your weapon" propaganda....

Then Dubya slimed his way into the White House via a Supreme Court majority decision, Vladimir 'Ras' Putin ousted drunken madman Yeltsin and Ariel Sharon did a dirty deal about his disgusting Shatilla and Sabra past to get the vote in Israel, and what happens???

Mass outbreak of stupidity or highly co-ordinated and multi-orchestrated breakdown of previously sound intelligence gathering (9-11)?

Followed by Opus Dei-driven hysterical over reaction to US corporate corruption (Enron, Tyco, Worldcom) etcetc) resulting in another mass outbreak of stupidity in the intelligence gathering sector re wmds and Iraq.

All those international corporate investors that lost bigtime when their portfolios went down the pan now looking for a new investment opportunity now that 1) Libya has 'admitted' culpability for the Lockerbie bombing and got off a 15 years of sanctions dilemma, paving the way to massive new investment opps and 2) Iraq pipelines re opening after 12 years of sanctions after Gulf 1.

I have always thought it significant that on the morning of 9-11 UK TV and radio made an announcement that new evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was about to be put into the public domain showing huge CIA cover up of the London link in the Pan Am bomb, whereby a security breach in London's Heathrow airport showed baggage handling 'irregularities' that pointed to the possibility of the bomb being smuggled on board in the UK and not in Frankfurt, Germany, as the prosecution alleged.

That story was squashed and the planes struck the WTC......

[rman]

4. crazy

Either
Bush and Blair 'knew' this beforehand and didn't tell the UN. Why would they not have presented a plausible reason to go to war if they had one? By not telling, it cannot be justification.

Or
They did not know beforehand but 'found out' after they started the war, in which case it also can not be not a legitimate reason to go to war.

In the mean time this is another attempt to justify after the fact; Neocon justice. F*ck that.

[jjsocrates]

5. Our source of intelligence revealed.

Now we know how the White House found out that Saddam had weapons of mass distraction...Bush looked deep into his eyes and saw his soul. And took Saddam's word for it.

My God...our President got out bluffed by a third world dictator. Could W. be the WORST poker player EVER?

Who needs the CIA anymore? Let's just take people's WORD for it!

[ze_dscherman]

11. What bluff?

Iraq told the U.N. it had destroyed all prohibited weapons.

This was called a lie, and the "fact" that Iraq was "dodging" the U.N. resolution was cited as a reason for war.

[denverbill]

14. Absolutely correct. You don't bluff by claiming NOT to have something.

Why don't these morons accept the obvious.

Saddams scientists lied to Saddam in the early 90's when they told him how much WMD they had created. When it was destroyed, they destroyed it all, but the original totals were lies, so it appeared there should still be some left.

Saddam believed he had none, the scientists knew they had none, the only people that didn't believe it were the ones who believed the original lists.

[loudsue]

15. This is DOUBLE-LYING spin...Saddam always SAID he had NO WMD'S

AGAIN AND AGAIN!!!! How can we let them get away with this!?? How in the hell stupid do they think we are????

The "bluff" is happening on THIS side of the pond! Saddam said he did 'NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT' have WMD's. How in the hell can they first, lie that Saddam said he

DID

have WMD's, and then they tell the second lie that he "made us do it" because he "said" < see FIRST repuke lie> he 'did' have them.

The people running this country right now are so

SICK!!!!

And they are f***ing with the minds of our citizens on a daily basis, in the most insidious and sinister way.

I'VE HAD IT!!

:kick::kick::kick:

[fizzana]

16. What Saddam didn't realize was that he was dealing with

someone who is equally psychotic.