Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "'Not particularly motivated': US general assesses Russian troops" video.
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@Syllaren Read the UNSC resolutions. Saddam had no less than twenty MAJOR infractions to his discredit.
WMD as a rationale were a MEDIA creation.
BTW, hundreds of (illegal) binary nerve agent shells were discovered over the years by the US Army in Iraq.
The NY Times only came clean, 'fessed-up, after Obama pulled the last American troops out in 2011.
Then the Times published a FULL page tell-all about how they'd been lying all along -- at the behest of the US Army.
A SINGLE binary shell, properly rigged, could easily kill 5,000 souls in a subway system. (rush hour)
Imagine NY, Moscow, LA, SF, London, Madrid, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, .... all losing their subway systems to this threat.
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@Thetequilashooter1 It made perfect sense.
Crazy Saddam labelled his nerve agent shells identically to those of normal high explosive. Crazy ? You bet. He's the only one to pull that stunt. Why ? He was being advised by the French -- and Frenchmen HATE chemical warfare. (See WWI)
Yes, Saddam was firing these rounds right in front of French officers -- onto Iranian positions so far distant that it was impossible to see what was up with even decent scopes.
Now think. The Sunni fanatics were finding nerve agent shells right in the mix with conventional 155mm rounds. So they were treating them likewise. For IED purposes, such shells were duds. This was how the US Army first discovered them. Early in, nerve agents were so expected that all ordnance disposal teams tested for same as a matter of routine. Orders, you see.
Wham! Positive indications started coming up. Because these were binary shells, no actual nerve agents existed. Just their precursors. The field test actually tested for the precursors at the same time as the daughter nerve agent.
It quickly dawned on the US Army engineers what had transpired. With horror, they realized that Saddam had some crazy stash of these rounds -- and that the fanatics had no idea of what they had their hands on.
So there was no way on this Earth that the US Army was going to put them wise. THAT'S the reason the Pentagon and the NY Times kept lying about discovering WMD. They simply HAD to. That the Times could now dog W. Bush to death -- that was just a plus. The Times desk must have been having a howl... those in on the secret.
It was only after Obama pulled our boys out that the Times just couldn't keep the secret. I could argue that they should not have exposed the truth. In any event, by the time the US Army had pulled out, the engineers figured that they'd dealt with virtually all of the chemical rounds. I'm sure that even now, we don't have the full story.
Saddam admitted -- on the way to the gallows -- that HE was the source of the WMD misinformation. THAT'S why every agency from the Mossad to the CIA to MI-6 to the GRU was caught looking foolish. Saddam was deliberately leaking intel that he had such a program. So, give Powell a break. The dope he was feeding the UN was as solid as anything any intelligence agency could ever pick up.
Every intelligence agency on Earth simply had to take seriously the BS they were being fed. The Russians, in particular, knew for a fact that Saddam really did have an atomic program. They provided the technical help. They (reasonably) assumed that Saddam had cleverly faked out the IAEA inspectors. (Which is not so hard to do in a police state.)
The real reason Bush and Blair invaded Iraq: to save the UNSC. Saddam had bought off Paris, Moscow, Ottawa and Kofi Annan. (The cash went to Kofi's son.) All of this dirt was discovered by Volker's Commission. That Canada was suborned was the ultimate shocker. Volker never saw that angle coming.
That Kofi was corrupt -- that was like saying the sky is blue. That was just about the first thing discovered.
If Saddam succeeded, that would be the end of the UNSC -- and really -- the end of the UN. It would surely suffer the same fate as the League of Nations...which led directly to WWII... which Japan started in Asia.
Neither the UK or the US could bear to see the UN die. For all its faults, it has utility.
From memory, the NY Times article occupied a full even-numbered page. Now a decade old, my memory fades on more details.
Due to domestic politics, (the Times hates Bush, Trump, any (R)) the Times has never let up on its bogus no MWD mantra. It's still working GREAT... even though it's a lie.
The invasion was launched to save the UN, not to find WMD. Yes, that's what the legal paperwork shows. The UNSC actually never focused on such weapons in its sanctions. Instead, Saddams actual sins all turned on disobedience to prior UNSC demands. THEY were the grounds to eject him.
Bush screwed up. He wanted to expand his mandate up to recreating the Marshall Plan. What a fool.
I was in favor of ejecting Saddam -- and then leaving PDQ. Hanging around was a catastrophe -- and that it would go that way was obvious very quickly. Instead, idiot Bush doubled down. Worse, he gave command to the State Department. (Powell) The Pentagon was already howling about hanging around. The brass hats wanted to leave PDQ. Bush figured that since Powell was a retired 4-star -- he was giving the job to Dad's favorite general.
BTW, the more you get into W, the more you realize that his biggest boners ALL came from his Dad's phone calls. H.W. Bush was actually a lousy president. He got globalism going -- which has been a disaster for American's average Joe.
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