Michael, try following your opinion with something you would consider a supporting fact, which can be demonstrated via a link.
E.g. mechareaper said:
In Iraq weapons inspectors were forced out of Iraq for 4 years, a decent amount of time to smuggle weapons out of Iraq.
This is a common myth. The inspectors were withdrawn on the advice of the US, as they were about to bomb. The UN did not get the chance to determine whether the inspectors would withdrawn, following Saddams refusal to continue certain inspections (not all) after there were strong suspicions that the some of the inspections were being used as spying operations. Saddam also wanted confirmation from the US and UK that if inspections were completed, sanctions would be lifted. The US and UK refused to provide any confirmation.
Find and link articles (preferably news stories or quotes) that back this up. You can find them if you look. I linked to some in this thread
http://moorewatch.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/1410/P25/
There are many many threads on Moorewatch where other supporting links are provided. Read some of them by searching for key words. You’ll see that many us have gone through the main arguments many times. Try and stay on some specific points rather than arguing the whole thing. Rather than having a “the war is wrong” stance and getting abusive about it, pick out the reasons why you believe it is wrong, and then try and back it up with evidence. People can then provide counter-evidence to show why they don’t agree.
mechareaper said:
In Iraq Saadam gassed 50,000 kurds in a single village and arrested, tortured, and killed many more in an attempted genocide.
At the time, the US decided that it was the Iranians that did this.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack
The U.S. State Department, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame. According to an article published in the International Herald Tribune by human rights researcher Joost Hiltermann the US intentionally tried to shift the blame for the gassing of Halabja off of Saddam, and declassified State Department document demonstrate that US diplomats received instructions to press this line with United States allies.
A preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) study at the time concluded, apparently by determining the chemicals used by looking at images of the victims, that it was in fact Iran that was responsible for the attack, an assessment which was used subsequently by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for much of the early 1990’s. The CIA’s senior political analyst for the Iran-Iraq war, Stephen C. Pelletiere, co-authored an unclassified analysis of the war [1] which contained a brief summary of the DIA study’s key points. In a January 31, 2003 New York Times [2] opinion piece, Pelletiere summarized the DIA’s findings and noted that because of the DIA’s conclusion there was not sufficient evidence to definitively determine whether Iraq or Iran was responsible. Pelletiere also felt that the administration of George W. Bush was not being forthright when squarely placing blame on Iraq, since it contradicted the conclusion of the DIA study. However the DIA’s final position on the attack was in fact much less certain than this preliminary report suggests, with its final conclusions, in June 2003, asserting just that there was insufficient evidence, but concluding that “Iraq ..used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians in 1988” [3]. The CIA altered its position radically in the late 1990s and cited Halabja frequently in its evidence of WMD before the 2003 invasion
mechareaper said:
The U.N. did not enforce its own sanctions against Iraq.
I presume you mean enforcing the resolution. Well that’s up to the UN – they are the UN’s resolutions, not owned by any single or group of nations. The wording of the relevant resolution was not the usual wording that results in military action – they use specific wording when they want to give that message. Some at the UN argued that there was a reasonable alternative to invasion just before it happened (i.e. more inspections based on Blix’s comments that it would only take a matter of 3 months or so to complete all necessary inspections).
Get quotes from Blix, reports showing that France and Germany came up with an alternative plan which was not even considered by UK/US. It’s out there. YOU provide it. Don’t expect those who disagree with you to run and find it. Even then, they will no doubt provide a counter-argument. It is their right. It is then up to you to provide more, or to state why perhaps you believe you’ve provided enough evidence to show that a case for pre-emptive war was not made.
mechareaper said:
It seems to me Iraq was a threat to the United States.
No evidence at all of a planned attack. No evidence of the ability to even launch an attack. This is the evidence required under the UN charter, which the US has signed up to. Internal justifications are not relevant.
mechareaper said:
Natural resources have nothing to do with the Iraq war, other wise we would be using Iraqi oil instead of them. In fact, we would probably not bother losing more than the sub standard iraqi oil is worth.
The argument is about the control of resources. Not the ability to out-and-out steal the oil, but to have a position of sufficient strength in the region to enable decisions to be made in the interests of the US. It is long term strategic reasoning. Former US planners have stated that Middle East oil is a “greatest prize of all”.
http://www.addameer.org/september2000/opinion/chomsky.html
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199102--.htm
(note: these are the ARGUMENTS, not the EVIDENCE)
