Here we go again... illegitimate domestic regime and WMDs

[gonzoliberal]

Panetta just came on CNN saying that "sources indicate" Assad may be considering the use of chemical weapons.

He went on to say that such an action would be over the "red line" and would deserve a severe response from the US.

Any guesses as to what a "severe response" might be?

[dsummoner]

Panetta just came on CNN saying that "sources indicate" Assad may be considering the use of chemical weapons.

He went on to say that such an action would be over the "red line" and would deserve a severe response from the US.

Any guesses as to what a "severe response" might be?

Racist, religiously bigoted, imperialistic and aggressive meddling.

In short, the US shooting itself in the foot yet again.

[Byng]

The phrase the enemy of my enemy is my friend is a proverb that advances the concept that because two parties have a common enemy, they can work with each other to advance their common goals. Often described as an Arabic proverb.

Oh this gets even worse!

So let us walk ourselves through this.

1. Saddam bluffed that he had WMD to keep Iran at bay.

2. Knowing that the United States is going to invade, Saddam transfers his WMD to Syria according to flyboy because the United States is also an enemy of Syria.

3. But wait a minute the Iraqi Ba’athists and Syrian Ba’athists are far from allies in-fact they aren't even friends!

4. Syria’s Allawites are minority Shiites and proxies to Iraq’s arch-enemy Iran Who Saddam says he bluffed about having WMD's to stop invading in the first place!!

5. Syria's Allawites fought on the allied side against Saddam and Iraq in Desert Storm.

So let me see if I have this straight...........Saddam turns over his deadliest weapons of mass destruction to Syria, Iran’s best friend in the region, when the whole reason for having them in the first place was to stop Iran from invading Iraq?

I must be missing something in this enemy of my enemy is your friend, Arab stuff?

[flyboy56]

Oh this gets even worse!

So let us walk ourselves through this.

1. Saddam bluffed that he had WMD to keep Iran at bay.

2. Knowing that the United States is going to invade, Saddam transfers his WMD to Syria according to flyboy because the United States is also an enemy of Syria.

3. But wait a minute the Iraqi Ba’athists and Syrian Ba’athists are far from allies in-fact they aren't even friends!

4. Syria’s Allawites are minority Shiites and proxies to Iraq’s arch-enemy Iran Who Saddam says he bluffed about having WMD's to stop invading in the first place!!

5. Syria's Allawites fought on the allied side against Saddam and Iraq in Desert Storm.

So let me see if I have this straight...........Saddam turns over his deadliest weapons of mass destruction to Syria, Iran’s best friend in the region, when the whole reason for having them in the first place was to stop Iran from invading Iraq?

I must be missing something in this enemy of my enemy is your friend, Arab stuff?

I guess if we secure Assad's WMD and find "Property of U.S. Military" stamped on the cans then you will have to by me a beer or two Byng. At a pub in Ireland.

[Wizard777]

Oh this gets even worse!

So let us walk ourselves through this.

1. Saddam bluffed that he had WMD to keep Iran at bay.

2. Knowing that the United States is going to invade, Saddam transfers his WMD to Syria according to flyboy because the United States is also an enemy of Syria.

3. But wait a minute the Iraqi Ba’athists and Syrian Ba’athists are far from allies in-fact they aren't even friends!

4. Syria’s Allawites are minority Shiites and proxies to Iraq’s arch-enemy Iran Who Saddam says he bluffed about having WMD's to stop invading in the first place!!

5. Syria's Allawites fought on the allied side against Saddam and Iraq in Desert Storm.

So let me see if I have this straight...........Saddam turns over his deadliest weapons of mass destruction to Syria, Iran’s best friend in the region, when the whole reason for having them in the first place was to stop Iran from invading Iraq?

I must be missing something in this enemy of my enemy is your friend, Arab stuff?

Yep! If Saddam would have transfered his WMD's to Syria. They would have loaded them into missiles and sent them right back to him. Russia supplied Syria with their WMD's shortly after we toppled Saddam.

[Joy in Mudville]

On the emphasized, I agree. In the defense of the media and in regards to the dangers of both the a posteriori analytic perspective and the opaque transparency of secrecy, it is from the retrospective perspective, that one sees exactly how poor the case was for the casus belli.

I also was working alot on this at the time although I have never had any type of clearance. If the casual reader just glanced at page one or watched the evening news, he would have come to the conclusion that the Bush administration was coming up with troubling evidence regarding wmd programs in Iraq and that there was unanimity in the intelligence community about these items.

I remember particularly the case of the aluminum tubes. The Bush administration claimed they were obviously for gas centrifuges - page one. Flip through to page A23 and you see that people in the DOE felt that they weren't really the right kind of tubes for centrifuges. Other questions were raised by groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists or ISIS. So, simply delving a little deeper into the topic revealed that the Bush administration's claims were specious at best. Other than McClatchy and the Christian Science Monitor, the media fell down on the job. If I was able to debunk many of these claims, a decent-sized news staff should have been able to do more.

[Joy in Mudville]

Eventually, someone will realize that the 'weapons were moved to Syria' was the employment of rhetorical technique to undercut the contention of competency of the USIC.

If someone in the Bush administration was able to provide evidence that Iraq actually had chemical weapons either immediately before or during the invasion we would have heard about it.