So we were justified in WWII since no amount of talking would have ended the genocide until... there was no one left to genocide? Let's think about Iraq. 1998 Saddam killed 5,000 Kurds. Gassed them. Furthermore, over Iraqi missiles were launched at population centers inside Iranian cities between 1980 and 1988 resulting in almost 13,000 casualties - mostly civilian. There were several thousand killed on the Iraqi side, mostly Kurd, by the Iraqi Air Force dropping chemical agents on them from the late 1980s through the early 1990s.
WMD? Saddam offered no proof that the remaining stock of missiles laden with chemical agents he used in the 1980s and 1990s were ever destroyed. Furthermore, just because we have yet to find them, everyone is so quick to claim he didn't have them. He had them. He used them. This is a fact. Did he bury them? Did he export them to Syria? I don't know. But there is nonrefutable evidence he had the chemical agents (like sarin, mustard... etc), as well as the delivery method (missiles), and a history of using them.
Quote:
Here, for example, is a description of the chemical attack on Halabja from the 1993 Human Rights Watch report, Genocide in Iraq:
Those outside in the streets could see clearly that these were Iraqi, not Iranian aircraft, since they flew low enough for their markings to be legible. In the afternoon, at about 3:00, those who remained in the shelters became aware of an unusual smell. Like the villagers in the Balisan Valley the previous spring, they compared it most often to sweet apples, or to perfume, or cucumbers, although one man says that it smelled "very bad, like snake poison." No one needed to be told what the smell was. … Some tried to plug the cracks around the entrance with damp towels, or pressed wet cloths to their faces, or set fires. But in the end they had no alternative but to emerge into the streets. It was growing dark and there were no streetlights; the power had been knocked out the day before by artillery fire. In the dim light, the people of Halabja could see nightmarish scenes. Dead bodies—human and animal—littered the streets, huddled in doorways, slumped over the steering wheels of their cars. Survivors stumbled around, laughing hysterically, before collapsing.
United Nations reports from 1986, 1987, and 1988 confirm (based in part on reports from Iraqi soldiers who had been taken prisoner) that Iraq used mustard gas and nerve agents in the Iran-Iraq war and that these killed a growing number of civilians. In 1993, Physicians for Human Rights found evidence of nerve agents in soil samples in the Kurdish village of Birjinni and cited Kurdish eyewitnesses who said that one day in August 1988, they saw Iraqi warplanes drop bombs emitting "a plume of black, then yellowish smoke" and that shortly thereafter villagers "began to have trouble breathing, their eyes watered, their skin blistered, and many vomited—some of whom died. All of these symptoms are consistent with a poison gas attack." The March 24 New Yorker carries a lengthy account by Jeffrey Goldberg of Iraq's systematic gassing of the Kurdish population, based on extensive eyewitness interviews that Goldberg recently conducted in Halabja and other Kurdish-controlled areas in Northern Iraq. None of those interviewed seem to doubt that it was Saddam Hussein's army that gassed them. (Click here for Goldberg's recent Slate "Dialogue" about the piece with the Council on Foreign Relations' Warren Bass.)
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http://www.slate.com/id/2063934
BTW, Human Rights Watch aren't exactly pro-Bush.
Not that I am a fan of the Iraq War. I was/am primarly against it because the obvious outcome was going to be civil war (I am a big Thomas Friedman fan, and he forcasted this 2 months before our invasion). However, I have no doubt Saddam was an evil person, that killed his own people, and that he had the ability to produce WMD. He already had them, already used them. The UN inspectors were making NO progress. Saddam was not making people available to interview, he was not allowing them inside facilities. When he did allow them inside facilities, he did not allow them full access. When he granted interviews, it was not without one of his agents listening to the conversation - therefore none of the people could say anything without fear of reprieval. In previous instances in which Iraqis defected, he had their entire families killed.
Did you know they found over 20 MiGs BURIED in the sand? Buried MiGs. Wow.
Iraq is larger than California. With all of our technology, we can't find all the meth labs, or even missing kids, in California. Everyone is so quick to jump on the "see, he didn't have any" bandwagon just because the WMD haven't been located. My bet is they are in Syria, or buried deep.
BTW, they have found over 500 weapons filled with chemical agents - mostly artillery shells with Sarin gas. BTW, it is against the Geneva convention to use those. They have also found over 1500 gallons of chemicals that were most likely to be used to make these chemical agents.
I wish people would educate themselves on the facts about WMD and Iraq. It was not just something Bush thought of out of thin air. Iraq had a history of using them.