Kate, I don't want to come off like I am PRO war by any means because I truly dread it. I offer the following only to give a few different aspects on the subject and also from a personal motivation of broadening the outlook, for what it's worth. What I have seen from many quarters seems to always want to impute all blame to the U.S. and that is just not a reasonable or truthful stance.
You wrote: >though this time it appears we are not going to the defense of a country but are on the attack...the reasons that those >who support the war give are several: > > 1) to free the citizens from a madman In previous US incursions into war, we have also sought to free people from tyranny, at great personal sacrifice and expense of US citizens and sometimes US interests. I'm sure you have heard of the Iraqi opposition group who have been trying for years to get the international community to help them overthrow Saddam. They have been all over the news now for months. I have heard personally from Iraqis back in the mid-90s, about how horrible the country is under Saddam and how frustrated they are that Americans in general have no idea just how bad it is. > 2) because there are links to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (so where is > this evidence?) I agree we haven't seen the government officials get up on TV and present diagrams and maps and flowcharts of every single bit of evidence and connection. On the other hand, for years now there has been numerous releases of information from not only the US government, but other foreign governments, from widely disparate newspapers and magazines, from books, from personal accounts given on mainstream TV and print media. I could fill several digests with links to all of these sources but I think it is up to everyone to honestly seek the truth for themselves. It's out there if you want to find it. I will give one link that I found particularly interesting. This is the lawsuit filed in Federal Court in New York on behalf of the families and estates of over 300 of the people killed in the 9/11 airline hijackings, the WTC and the Pentagon. It is 79 pages long. Key defendants in addition to Al Queda are Iraq, Saddam and his family and other Iraqi entities. If you can page through it, there are some eye-opening facts alleged. If this link does not work, go to findlaw.com and do a search on the Ashton case. http://news.corporate.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/ashtonalq90302cmp.pdf Also, the January 2003 issue of Vanity Fair has an article on Iraq that many are talking about. Here is an excerpt quoting a CIA official: "In the Cold War...often you'd draw from conclusions on the basis of just four or five reports. Here there are almost 100 separate CIA reports of Iraq-al Qaida cooperation going back to 1992. The CIA grades intelligence reports' credibility. All of the reports examined by the special Pentagon unit, says the official, came from the highest category - defined as a report from a source whose information had proved reliable in the past." > 3) because the country has weapons of mass destruction... And because from Saddam's track record he is most likely to use them at whim against anyone. > there are those who believe that the solution must address the fact that the > usa is the worlds' largest arms dealer & i whole heartedly agree...war is > big business & our government has blood on its hands... If all the US wanted to do was to make money off war they would be waging it constantly. The US has not done that. It has moved reluctantly into every war it has ever entered. As for the edited Iraq dossier, it was widely reported, from official sources including the UN, that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - US, UK, Russia, China and France - would all have complete, unedited versions. The five permanent members have certain rights and privileges above and beyond the other "non-permanent" members. The UN was set up this way and remains so. Part of the reasoning for this as presented by official sources is that the dossier contained sensitive information regarding making bio/chem/nuke weapons that the five permanent members already have, but that they would not want widely disseminated to other countries. The US edited the dossier to remove that information before the other non-permanent member countries could review it. It was interesting to read the translation Sarah provided from the link you sent, which detailed the long list of German- supplied weapons to Iraq. I have read for months that Germany, France and Russia have been the biggest suppliers and it was speculated that may be why they were initially the biggest opponents to taking any action against Iraq. They did not want to disrupt their business relationships and also might be embarrassed by what might be revealed once the US started poking around. If the US is also so complicit, then why is it willing to have this information exposed about itself? The stance that the US's main motivation was to edit out evidence of supplying weapons to Iraq doesn't hold water. Saddam has that information, the five permanent members of the Security Council have that information, Hans Blix has that information, etc. That is something that is not a secret. A thought to consider when reading about weaponry that has US or other countries' "name" on it is to remember that there have been many rogue international arms dealers, such as the infamous Marc Rich among others, who have been doing business with countries such as Iraq for decades. In other words, a perfectly legitimate shipment to France of for example, a weapon part made by Honeywell, can easily get diverted along the route to Iraq instead. Just because it ends up there doesn't mean that the US or even France or Germany, etc., officially, knowingly and unlawfully shipped it there directly. Kakki
