Can somebody debunk these two pro-Iraq War talking points?

[Ignacio Upton]

1. The French and the Germans and most of the countries opposed to the war believed that Saddam had WMDs

2. The French as early as May 2002 pledged to Iraq that they would block international involvement in the war, and that France had a conflict of interest because of Oil for Food.

[aquart]

1. I don't understand the relevance.

What difference does French or German support or opposition matter? Iraq did NOT have WMD and WE knew it.

Many nations have WMD. We have not attacked them BECAUSE they have WMD and could get even. (That, for those who have forgotten, is the basis of nuclear policy: mutually-assured destruction.) We attacked Iraq because our leaders confidently believed that Iraq was unable to fight back AND IT WOULD BE AN EASY WIN.

Turns out, even with conventional and/or improvised weapons, people can get real pissy when their country is attacked WITHOUT PROVOCATION.

NEVER PLAY BY THEIR RULES OR ARGUE THE STRAW MEN THEY HAVE SET UP.

[silverweb]

2. Instead...

How about asking the person making these assertions to back them up?

I used to waste a lot of time searching for evidence to "debunk" RW crap assertions. Then I realized that when I asked them to back up their statements instead of just repeating them, they'd shut up pretty quick.

[troubleinwinter]

5. "instead of... repeating them". Halleluja.

[chalky]

8. Hear, hear.

n/t

[RobertSeattle]

3. I'll take a quick stab

1. Cuz they got the intelligence FROM The United States Intelligence Services. We are allies - we share intelligence - duh. And prior to the Iraq Invasion, they respected our intelligence products - they don't now.

2. Classic "Prove it" - sounds like a factless assertion. American firms were involved in Oil for Food as well.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. I don't know what they believed about the WMD, but they DID believe

that Saddam was contained and that if he did have WMDs, inspections would find them. They believed, as every ETHICAL person does, that you don't invade a sovereign nation on account of what you think they might do if your suspicions of them are correct.

I don't know about the French situation.

The important thing is that the U.S. attacked a sovereign nation on trumped-up charges, is continuing an occupation that is not welcomed by the majority of the population, has no clear plan for getting out of the mess, and has actually motivated more people to terrorism because of its wanton killing and torture of Iraqi civilians.

In other words, EVERYTHING the anti-war people predicted before the illegal invasion has come true.

[garybeck]

6. C'mon, open your eyes!

to answer #1. that is pretty obvious. other people thought there were WMDs for the same reason the dems in our congress did, and the same reason the american people did: THEY WERE LIED TO. Also you can't speak for "france" saying they thought anything as an entire country.

And you're missing the real point. The people who were looking for WMDs, the experts, the UN, **they** did NOT think there were WMDs. If anyone would know it would be them.

for #2 I just think it's irrelevant. Who cares what kind of deal France may or may have not made. I don't see why that is a reason to go to war or not.

"everyone thought they had WMDs"
that is pure SPIN. no they didn't. ask the experts whose job it was to find out if they had it or not. ask Hans Blix. Ask the whistleblowers in the CIA. Most of the people who thought they had WMDs did so because they trusted the administration and the media who were lying to us all along.

[texastoast]

7. Well, if you can get them to actually look at the FACTS . . .

1.
"Between 80 and 90% of the citizens in the 41 countries think that military action is likely to be launched against Iraq in the next few months. Approximately four out of ten interviewees in the Gallup International Iraq Poll 2003, held among 30,000 citizens of 41 different countries, consider military action against Iraq in the coming few months very likely.

"The survey results show that approximately half of the citizens in the world are not in favour of military action against Iraq under any circumstances. The Argentines feel strongest (83%) against military action. A large percentage of the Spanish and the French feel the same way (74% and 60% respectively). A marked one out of five Americans (21%) is in favour of military action under no circumstances. In general, a war against Iraq declared unilaterally by the US and its allies does not receive much public support."

http://www.gallup-international.com/ContentFiles/survey.asp?id=10

"As a result of the U.S. and British campaign, and after prolonged negotiations between the United States, Britain, France, Russia and other U.N. Security Council members, the United Nations declared that Iraq would have to accept even more intrusive inspections than under the previous inspection regime - to be carried out by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - or face "serious consequences." Iraq agreed to accept the U.N. decision and inspections resumed in late November 2002. On December 7, 2002, Iraq submitted its 12,000 page declaration, which claimed that it had no current WMD programs. Intelligence analysts from the United States and other nations immediately began to scrutinize the document, and senior U.S. officials quickly rejected the claims. (Note 2)

"Over the next several months, inspections continued in Iraq, and the chief inspectors, Hans Blix (UNMOVIC) and Mohammed El Baradei (IAEA) provided periodic updates to the U.N. Security Council concerning the extent of Iraqi cooperation, what they had or had not discovered, and what they believed remained to be done. During that period the Bush administration, as well as the Tony Blair administration in the United Kingdom, charged that Iraq was not living up to the requirement that it fully disclose its WMD activities, and declared that if it continued along that path, "serious consequences" - that is, invasion - should follow.

"The trigger for military action preferred by the British government, other allies, and at least some segments of the Bush administration, was a second U.N. resolution that would authorize an armed response. Other key U.N. Security Council members - including France, Germany, and Russia - argued that the inspections were working and that the inspectors should be allowed to continue. When it became apparent that the Council would not approve a second resolution, the United States and Britain terminated their attempts to obtain it. Instead, they, along with other allies, launched Operation Iraqi Freedom on March 19, 2003 - a military campaign that quickly brought about the end of Saddam Hussein's regime and ultimately resulted in his capture. (Note 3)

More here.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/


2.
"It remains unclear whether Merimee was serving with the French government at the time he allegedly received rights to buy Iraqi oil."

More here. Notice the "allegedly" word above. It's key.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/11/AR2005101101384.html

And remind them, Bush LIED to us all and knew he was doing it.

[Ignacio Upton]

9. Thanks for 2. reponse

however I wasn't talking about public opinion on whether or not Saddam was developing WMDs I was talking about French and German intelligence reports, which thanks to information from one poster, were obtained through intelligence sharing from the same American sources was blew their observatio.

[KerryOn]

10. How about this....

Who cares if he had WMD's or not? The US has WMD's, Israel does, Russia does, India does, Pakistan does and so on. What the hell makes the difference?

Re-pug said: "He gassed his own people, so he would use them again. he was an evil dictator that needed to be removed from power."

Lefty said: "And so then why did the US wait 15 frigging years to do something about it?"

[Ignacio Upton]

12. He did have WMDs in the late '80s through early-mid '90s

but they were mostly destroyed or expired in shelf life. For example, we found a sarin gas or mustard gas shell in May 2004 that was leftover from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War that went bad years ago. Bush's justification for war in 2003 was that Saddam had weapons in 2003 that were an active arsenal including mobile biological weapons labs and drones capable of hitting the United States. None of these bullshit claims have ever been proven, and were debunked by Duelfer's report. However, Saddam did have the intent to get WMD's again (and so do many other countries that Bush doesn't consider to invade because they are not in georgraphical locations that matter to us), but this was a long term goal. He also wanted to weaken the sanctions to rebuild Iraq economically and help to rebuild his program. To me this proves that the sanctions were working and that containment was the best option (Clinton's 1998 bombing of potential WMDs facilities is a good example.)

[karlrschneider]

11. You might ask, if France & Germany were so sure, why they didn't join

the 'coalition of the willing'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2862343.stm

[Ignacio Upton]

13. The right claims that they got bribed by Saddam

and stood to gain economically by keeping him in. I know that American firms were also involved in Oil for Food (Halliburton in a seperate incident tried to trade with Saddam!) but I want to be able to refute the claim that the leading anti-war nations were not in conflict of interest.

[derby378]

14. #1 is irrelevant

It doesn't matter what France and Germany believed about WMDs in Iraq; it matters what evidence the Bush administration had concerning the absence of WMDs in Iraq. Nero lied during the SOTU in 2003 and he knew he was lying.

[Tom Bombadil]

15. RW lies, lies, lies

1. The French and the Germans and most of the countries opposed to the war believed that Saddam had WMDs

This is one of those right wing myths that has stood unchallenged for far too long.

The fact is that no country really knew what was going on in Iraq in the 1990's and after. Iraq was a pariah state, shut off from the world as punishment for invading Kuwait and crippled by economic sanctions.

That's how America and Britain got away with fabricating intelligence. There was no intelligence. France and Germany knew this and simply weren't prepared to support a war based on such flimsy evidence.

Surely it stands to reason that if they really believed Saddam posed a true threat to international peace, Germany and France would've joined the 'coalition of the willing'.