With a total lack of class, I will repeat below again what I wrote a month
before the invasion of Iraq was launched. I consider the last paragraph to be
especially worth reading carefully:

======================================

From: John Clogg ([log in to unmask])
Subject: Re: OT: A powerful argument for war with Iraq
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.mpe
Date: 2003-02-25 13:46:52 PST


Wirt wrote:
>he has no active WMD programs

Please, Wirt, hurry to the UN and share with them your intelligence reports!
Clearly the intelligence services of the western countries have been lying
to their employers!  It's up to you and your personal intelligence agency to
set them straight!

-----Original Message-----
From: Wirt Atmar ([log in to unmask])
Subject: Re: OT: A powerful argument for war with Iraq
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.mpe
Date: 2003-02-25 12:47:00 PST


Gary asks:

> What I don't understand is how much more time we should give.  I keep
> hearing that over and over and over and over.  The Persian Gulf War ended in
> 1991.  Resolutions were passed for Iraq to disarm.  It's now 12 years later
> and we're still arguing about more time.  If Iraq hasn't disarmed by now,
> what makes anyone think he will actually do it at all?

If disobeying or ignoring UN resolutions were to be considered reason enough
for invasion, we should be attacking Israel instead of Iraq. Israel has
steadfastly ignored UN resolutions passed 50 years ago demanding the
Palestinians' right of return, as well as more recent UN resolutions
demanding Israel return to the 1967 borders and evacuate the West Bank.

If engaging in ethnic cleansing, the systematic suppression and humiliation
of whole peoples, and the development of weapons of mass destruction were
sufficient to be considered crimes, we should be attacking Israel instead of
Iraq.

Life is not nearly as simple as the current administration is making it seem.
Perhaps more relevant, nothing Iraq has done lately has posed any threat to
either the United States or any of Iraq's neighbors. Saddam is 65 years old
now, he has no active WMD programs, and he governs an army that is only 30%
to 50% the size it was during the 1991 invasion of Kuwait. The situation in
Iraq will come to an end in another 10 years of its own accord. Containment
as a policy worked for the Soviet Union, for Libya, and it would work for
Iraq. The most pro-western Islamic country in the region is now Iran, and it
became so on its own, primarily because we left it alone.

Would Iraq be better off if it were liberated from Saddam? The most powerful
answer to that question is the Baghdad Stock Index. The BSI has steadily
risen since the first rumblings of a new US invasion; the business and middle
classes of Iraq sees great hope resulting the coming war and the rises in the
BSI reflect that -- in the only manner that public opinion can be expressed
in Iraq.

But will we and the world be better off if Saddam is toppled? Things never
turn out as badly as the worst predictions suggest, nor do they ever turn out
as well as the most optimistic proponents suggest. They always seem to take a
middling, confused course, probably no better or worse than if a course of
containment had been followed, but without the costs in lives or money that a
war will require.

Wirt Atmar

=======================================

As to John Clogg's question of who was lying to their employers (meaning the
people of the United States), the names have become increasingly clear: Paul
Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Richard Perle, George Tenet, Tommy Franks, Donald
Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and George W. Bush, among others.

Wirt Atmar

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