"Palme D'Or" for Mike Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11&

[dwa]

"Ahem... The "UN" is the United Nations, and "WMD's" would be weapons of mass destruction, which United Nations inspectors had determined were, to a fair degree of certainty, no longer resident in Iraq."

Indeed, reading Hans Blix's book on the topic, the only things that had been lacking since the early '90s were a) wholehearted cooperation and b ) documentation of the destruction of WMD. No evidence was ever found that WMD were still around, that they were being produced, or even that there was any kind of preparation for their production. All sites investigated, including-but-not-limited-to the "best" that the various intelligence agencies could come up with, turned out to be astoundingly negative. They were, not generally but totally, exactly what the Iraqis said they were, totally harmless facilities for something else.

As for their stubborn resistance to inspections and lack of documentation, it can now only be assumed that this was exactly the most banal thing it could be: sheer pride. Iraq did not want to appear to capitulate, so they destroyed their weapons quickly and secretly, without any ceremony or documentation, and just assumed that this would be enough to get the UN off their backs while retaining their pride. Their non-cooperation was also an issue of pride, sensing that opening up the palaces of the "Emperor of Mesopotamia" to inspection would be a crippling blow to their image as the great military power of the Arab world.

So apparently, the US went to war over a lack of documentation and a few harsh words.

As for this...

"What the UNMOVIC report said was that Iraq had remaining illegal weapons when the inspectors were forced to leave the country."

If they said that, they certainly regretted it later. Do you (Moldran) have a link? This is not the impression I got from Dr. Blix's book at all. As far as I could tell, the only thing they really said was that Iraq had not adequately accounted for the destruction of some WMD, from which it could be assumed (but NOT confirmed) that they probably kept them. That assumption, apparently, was quite wrong, and it was the danger of that assumption being wrong that led to calls for continued inspections until either a substantial breach was found or Iraq found some way of convincing the inspectors that the weapons were actually gone. But some, apparently, wanted a war, and they got one. I hope they liked it, because the rest of the world sure didn't.

Jester

So, let me get this straight. You are of the opinion that Bush was ludicrous to go to war with a man who was a)known to have used chemical and biological agents against his enemies, having gassed the Kurds and used such muntions against the Iranians, B) had promised to destroy these stockpiles, and agreed to have outside inspectors verify this, which he c) refused to do. So, we have no confirmation that a man who is our enemy, who also has demonstrated the will to use WMD, has in fact complied with requirements to disarm, and had in fact never even made the claim that he did, and yet we're supposed to just assume that that's okay? Color me confused, because that sounds like the worst possibly strategy one can take when dealing with these matters. And this is without even getting past the ridiculous "WMD was the only valid argument for war" nonsense.