Have your views changed on WMD?

[ceptimus]

I'm not asking in which direction they've changed - just whether they have.

ceptimus.

 

[Tricky]

Yes, my views changed. I was pretty much convinced they would find some WMDs because I trusted the information gathering capabilities of the CIA et. al. In fact, I feared that WMDs would be used during the war. I have had somewhat of a rude awakening with regard to our "intelligence", but it is quite obvious that the Bush administration misled us, by twisting figures, only selecting information that fit their agenda, and even using obviously forged documents to support their point.

I still do not write off the possibility that we may find some WMDs eventually, but certainly nothing like we had been led to expect.

(I must say though, ceptimus, that I am amused by your display of impartiality. Who do you think is going to say they are more certain of WMDs than they were before the war?)

 

[shanek]

I was right all the time. Sure, it's possible that there are WMDs, but I regard that possibility about the same as I did at the beginning. I was always skeptical of the claim and was chastised and even insulted by many because of it.

I think the Bush Administration thought that there almost certainly were many WMDs there, and they figured that if they could just do an end-run around the proper methods of gaining evidence and just leap to any old excuse, they would be justified when the WMDs were found, which they believed was inevitable.

So it turns out they were quite obviously wrong. Even if WMDs are eventually found, it's obvious that the Bush Administration had no direct knowledge of them, that their "evidence" (whatever it was) was bogus, and that the program was nowhere near as advanced as we were led to believe.

This is exactly why skeptical thinking should apply in all areas, no matter how confident you are of what reality is.

 

[Ian Osborne]

What Tricky said. I wasn't expecting a significant arsenal to be found in Iraq, but we really do seem to have been shafted by our glorious leaders. As a result, I (staunch Labour) will never vote for the party while Bliar's still the leader.

 

[Drifterman]

Ian Osborne originally posted:
What Tricky said. I wasn't expecting a significant arsenal to be found in Iraq, but we really do seem to have been shafted by our glorious leaders. As a result, I (staunch Labour) will never vote for the party while Bliar's still the leader.

Who else is there to vote for? I trust the Tories even less than the Labour Party. They were salivating over the prospect of war without even the figleaf of WMD (from what I could observe in the media available in Taiwan). The prospect of IDS and his ilk gaining any sort of power fills me with dread.

 

[Ian Osborne]

Who else is there to vote for?

Lib-Dems. They're closer to traditional Labour values than New Labour anyway.

I trust the Tories even less than the Labour Party. They were salivating over the prospect of war without even the figleaf of WMD (from what I could observe in the media available in Taiwan). The prospect of IDS and his ilk gaining any sort of power fills me with dread.

Seconded. The tories supported the war completely, and must bear their share of the blame for it.

 

[PygmyPlaidGiraffe]

At this time

There is no robust evidence of the existance of WMDs, a nuclear weapons program, of suspect chemical weapons.

If robust and confirmed evidence is found and presented I will consider the new evidence and use that information to decide if the evidence warrants stating :

There is evidence that Saddam's regime recently had WMDs, chemical weapons, and a Nuclear Weapons program.

 

[Drifterman]

Ian Osborne originally posted:
Lib-Dems. They're closer to traditional Labour values than New Labour anyway.

As someone who has been out of the UK since June 2001, when Tony Blair's poularity was riding high, I am a little out of touch with UK politics.

Is your shift from New-Labour to the Lib-Dems representative of many traditional Labour supporters? The recent polls I have seen indicate a rise in support for the Tories, and a decline in support for Labour, with no real movement on the Lib-Dem front. If true, this would indicate to me that it is the more right-wing floating voters that are abandoning Tony in his (self-inflicted) time of trouble, which seems to make little sense to me.

My personal preference has always been for the Lib-Dems - their ideological baggage seems to be far lighter than either of the other 2 parties. I would be heartened by any news of swelling support for them.

As an aside, I had always considered Alex Salmond of the SNP to be a bit of a buffoon (I do not like "nationalist" parties of any description), but his comments in opposition to the war without UN backing gave me a great deal of new respect for him. I particularly enjoyed "The prime minister believes in whatever the White House believes in - and the emptiness of that position is evident."

 

[fhios]

I questioned the evidence from the very beginning. Anyone with overwhelming evidence of the existence of WMDs would've been a fool to keep it to himself when all he had to do was present one good source and he would've been able to ride the greatest wave of popular support for a war since FDR.
So, I'll ask again: has the death of our own uniformed countrymen been anything other than a pointless distraction from the necessary effort to hunt down real terrorists (who seem to improvise their weapons from, say, 747s, rather than going to all the trouble of developping nuclear bombs or killer bugs)? Did our very possibly unelected president let more Americans die in a pointless excursion while completely ignoring the murderer of over two thousand of his own countrymen? It looks to be so.

 

[a_unique_person]

Like Tricky said, I thought they would have found something by now. That's about the only chang.

 

[crocodile deathroll]

I was one of the mislead ones as I fully expected at least few chemical and bio ordinates to be found either hidden in a bunker or buried in the desert by now, even though I was highly skepical of them existing in the numbers that was claimed

 

[E.J.Armstrong]

originally posted by Ian Osbourne
What Tricky said. I wasn't expecting a significant arsenal to be found in Iraq, but we really do seem to have been shafted by our glorious leaders. As a result, I (staunch Labour) will never vote for the party while Bliar's still the leader.

Way to go Ian. This is so similar to my own thoughts you must be psychic. Is that allowable on the site?

 

[corplinx]

The only thing that has surprised me was the backyard uranium enrichment equipment. It made me wonder how many other buried caches of WMD related materials are out there that Saddam was waiting to unearth after inspectors had declared Iraq WMD-free and thus ended sanctions.

 

[ImpyTimpy]

I didn't expect any WMD's to be found in Iraq after going through the reports issued by Hans Blix. However, I still am open to the possibility of there being some WMD programs that were active, as I am open to the possibility of a psychic coming forth and claiming the million dollar prize.

Show me the evidence, I'll analyze it and draw my conclusions from there.

 

[ceptimus]

Bump.

I wonder if peoples views have changed again since this poll. Maybe we should have a fresh poll?

 

[Crossbow]

Before the war started, the big question for me (which I never get answered, although I looked, and looked, and looked some more) was:

Where is the objective evidence that shows Saddam has WMDs right now?

I expected him to have at least a few chemical weapons left over from the Iran/Iraq war, but none of these have been found. So, I guess my original opinion was actually valid; Iraq had little to no WMDs in the months prior to the war. If it were not for the tens of thousands who have been hur and killed, as well as the billions that could have been spent on far more productive purposes, I would be glad that I my opinion was so throughly validated.

Oh well, if anyone says in the future that “sanctions don’t work!” I can now able to provide an excellent example of how well they did work.

 

[plindboe]

Well, I didn't believe any of the heavy US propaganda up to the war at all. I found it to be obvious baloney, especially the 'Threat to world peace' & '45 minutes' claims was laughable in my eyes. But despite of this, I thought it quite possible that he still possessed such weapons, because; 'why would such a madman get rid of such efficient weapons in the first place?'. But I never really cared much about those kinds of weapons anyway, since countries around the world has them, and since conventional weapons can do just as grotesque things to a human body anyway.

Now I believe he probably did get rid of them because he had realized how important the battle in the media was. The US government looks pretty foolish today, and I guess that's the only real victory Saddam has achieved.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

I guess the only change is how frightened I am that, to all appearances, US intel has their collective heads up their collective asses.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

The only thing that has surprised me was the backyard uranium enrichment equipment. It made me wonder how many other buried caches of WMD related materials are out there that Saddam was waiting to unearth after inspectors had declared Iraq WMD-free and thus ended sanctions.

I realise this is a bump, but what backyard uranium enrichment equipment?

 

[charley_bigtime]

Who else is there to vote for? I

You can vote for that page 3 sort out of the Sun who's up against Claire Short in the Birmingham Ladywood constituency.

I like the concept of page three on the psycho-social-sexual level, i.e. it teaches men maximum respect for birds and all the essential work they do in the kitchen.

She hasn't got them out yet, but it's only a matter of time lads.