I'd be in that half.

so saddam was just joking around with his cabinet people?

*boggle*

I'm not sure how these tapes change what was found in the country at the time of invasion.

The tapes clarify a few things...

Sadam declares his intention of rebuilding his wmd programmes after he had allready signed the treaty to not reinsate them, as well as his intentions to not report truthfully to the UN inspectors.

According to the orignal translation, as apposed to the ABC one, Saddam was planning on using terrorist agents when he rebuilt his weapons so as not to draw attention to himself.

as an aside...

1. There is the whole moving the weapons to Syria thing...
2. If I were to lie about reasons for attacking a country, when I landed, I would be sure to plant the evidence that hid the fact I was lieing, but thats just me.

There was no reason to invade and occupy Iraq that didn't apply to half the countries of the world, including the invaders.

I can't believe there are still Australian troops over there, in needless danger.

One reason there isn't a big lot of interest anymore, at least for me, is that I've given up all hope in our modern leaders.

Just out of curiosity... You do know the difference between lieing and being wrong?

I don't think Bush's advisors fabricated evidence too often, if that's what you mean.

I do think they deliberately misled the American people so that an ulterior motive for the capture, control and imposition of new structure on Iraq was finally realized.


Edit: Of course, the moment America invades Tibet or Sudan to liberate the people from oppressive regimes, I will admit I was wrong.

When Americans applaud the Chinese soldiers that roll tanks through their suburbs in a peacekeeping mission to secure the dangerous nuclear weapon capacities of the west, I'll admit I was wrong.

When America and its allies turn around and ask the Iraqi people, "What sort of country do YOU want?", and actually let them keep control of the country and its assets, then I'll admit I was wrong.

---

And I'd also like to add, that regardless of whether or not Iraq actually had these nuclear capacities or not (they obviously didn't), a world in which an entire country can be preemptively attacked and subsequently occupied going on nothing more than a hunch isn't one that I look forward to living very long in.

I'm 100% with Avaer. Nuff said

To be quite honest, no tape is going to matter on this subject. What would matter is if the WMDs were found in Iraq and thus advocates of the US invasion into Iraq could justify it. That's really what it rides on - hardcore proof.

I don't think anyone defends Saddam; however, the accusation made has not been proven. If he had the intent to do this or that it doesn't matter. Intent doesn't count. The US spelled clear that it was aware of weapons in Iraq... which aren't there.

My problem is that there are plenty of crappy leaders and oppressed peoples in the world. If we truly cared, we'd be doing more to help, instead of picking a country we don't like (which happens to be full of oil, and strategically located) to screw with.

And the whole 'bringing them freedom' thing is BS. Democracy is a nice system of government compared to a lot of others, but it has MANY flaws, as they all do. Look at the damn Palestinian elections and see what democracy can do. It doesn't automatically make things better.

We need to stop caring so much about other people (only when convienent for us, though) and spend more money on domestic problems. Cut the freaking military budget a bit. We're outspending almost every other major power combined on our military, and falling farther and farther in education and health care.

Daganev,

Most of those who claim he was lying didn't spend most of early 1991 and early 2003 wearing gas-masks.

I say we just all grab a gun, six bullets each. Last person standing owns the world.

I request proof that everybody has only 6 bullets and nobody is cheating. And international tribunal. Inspectors.

I will make drawings with a computer as proof that some middle east countries have actually 8 bullets each.

Damn terrorists.

Let me just state one HUGE GLARING Difference between Iraq and other oppressive regimes.

Other Oppressive regimes are not currently working under a treaty that called to an end to hostilites in responce to the dismantling of a nuclear weapons program, as well as a promise to never start it up again. And then, ignoring the resollutions and the UN.

If the UN never passed sanctions, and if Iraq never signed a peace treaty that said they will not in the future ever built a WMD program (Like Japan did, and still holds to) then Iraq would never have been invaded.

I think thats a fact many people seem to forget... the whole 2 years of UN inspection evasion, and these tapes show that those 2 years actually were lasting a decade.

I think a world where countries can just ignore the UN and not come to any from from it, and in fact -profit- from it, is much more scary.

I think you're still missing the point here. Everyone knows that at the time that these tapes were made, Iraq had WMDs. Of course we knew this, we gave them to him. The fact that it's not relevant is because they've always said they destroyed all of their stocks of them...after this point. So it's never been a question of whether Saddam at some point had WMDs. It's whether he actually destroyed them when he claimed to have.

Whatever might have been said as a translation in these tapes is only relevant in that it might justify the search for the WMDs. Since we had such a search - a rather extensive one, and long drawn out - and found nothing, it's difficult to argue that this is some ground breaking revelation.

Incorrect, at the time of the tapes it was assumed that Saddam had destroyed the WMDs per the agreement to end the first Iraq War. The few weapons that they were thought to have were under constant servailance of the UN. These tapes discuss weapons that the UN had no inspection of, and thus did not know existed.

From the Telegraph:"According to hours of tape recordings made about 10 years ago"
From the BBC:"Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein predicted in the mid-1990s"
From the New York Times:"he was said to have made in his presidential office during the 1990's"

You're missing the point, Daganev. A discussion about hiding WMDs ten years ago does not constitute proof that Iraq has WMDs ten years later, and is not grounds to invade a sovereign nation.

In the 1990s, the US was fully aware of the biological and chemical capabilities of Iraq through the activities of their intelligence agencies. They did not share this information with UN inspection teams at the time, and as a result, many factories were overlooked on first inspection, including the largest one in the country which was being described as a 'milk formula factory'.

Following the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam mostly disarmed, but kept stockpiles of certain weapons, including mustard gas loaded into artillery shells. Prior to the Gulf War, the US government had sold various weaponizable pathogens to Saddam's government. Why, precisely, was nothing done about it then?

And the UN, lead by a Gulf War 1 veteran from the US Marine Corps, believed Saddam had disarmed:



The war itself was premeditated long before September 11. To quote a paper dated September 2000 written by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff):

- Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century

Let's get this totally clear. The war in Iraq wasn't about WMDs any more than it was about terrorism or Osama. It wasn't about concern over Hussein's human rights abuses, because it was the US that put him in power in the first place. It was about regime change, and punishing someone for embarassing the US, and it was about extending US power.

@rhysus: unless you mean "everyone knew" the same way that "everyone knew" that he moved the weapons to syria two months before the invasion and still refused to allow UN inspectors into his country on principal.