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Now that there seem to be no chemical weapons in Iraq, we’re told that they’re in Syria. Is Syria next? Where will Syria move their chemical weapons to if they are invaded? Iran? I can’t believe the American people will buy this shit. Why does nobody ask questions about American chemical weapons? We have huge stashes—and then we act surprised when we find gas masks in Iraqi trenches. Can anyone explain to me why America still has chemical weapons (in violation of international law of course)?

amen.

Where are America’s chemical weapons? News to me.

That fact that even informed citizens like mrsanniep don’t know about this is rather disturbing. I did make a mistake above though. The United States only has the world’s second-largest stockpile (after Russia). But nobody knows for sure because we don’t let foreign inspectors into our military facilities and for some reason the government isn’t held responsible for this. Anyway, the administration has committed to destroying its chemical arsenal by 2012, but few think they will meet the deadline. Here’s an article that adresses the issue: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=2777

As one of the dumb Americans who swallows EVERYTHING my government and the media tells me, it is not news that we have biological and chemical agents in the United States. I vigorously resist the implication, however, that the U.S. is just as evil as Saddam Hussein’s regime because it also has biological and/or chemical agents. I can’t imagine any scenario in which the U.S. would use such agents as weapons against other nations or its own people (such a move would mean political suicide in this country). Saddam’s regime, however, had a history of using such agents, seemed willing to use them again and proved to be able to maintain its power without a large backing from the Iraqi people. That is a much more world-threatening situation than the environmental debacle the U.S. government finds itself in with its own chemical agents.

Back to Syria: I do not find it so far-fetched that Syria might have helped/be helping Saddam’s regime for two reasons: 1. Syria has been the biggest contributor of people willing to travel into Iraq to fight against the U.S. and 2. the images of the Iraqis taking down statues of Saddam were not shown on Syrian television. This tells me that Syria is likely to help Saddam’s regime. But maybe the information I received about Syrian people travelling to Iraq to fight against the U.S. and the “liberation” images not being shown on Syrian t.v. is just some lie my sneaky government planted on CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS.

And don’t be so quick to claim there are no biological/chemical weapons in Iraq. You must be more patient, Dan; you must allow the U.S. military to take its time searching for such weapons. Remember what you were saying about the U.N. inspectors? It takes TIME, lots and lots of TIME to find such weapons.

If you were willing to give Hans Blix and his team more time, you ought to recognize the large amounts of time it will take for the U.S. military to do its job and to do it well. Fortunately, though, the U.S. has an advantage over U.N. inspection teams since people won’t be afraid to help the U.S. now that Saddam is no longer in power.

Well grant, I certainly wasn’t implying that you or mrsanniep or anyone else swallows everything you’re told, nor have I ever implied any sort of moral equivalence between Hussein and Bush. I just wonder why Americans trust their government so much. We’re the only nation to have ever dropped nuclear bombs, and when we did, it was on huge cities. Think about agent orange and napalm in Vietnam, blah blah blah. Again, at least our president wasn’t killing his own people—just people over on the other side of the planet. And it was always for a good cause. Like now. So what will the next good cause be?

minor correction. I didn’t say there aren’t WMD in Iraq. I said, when it seems there are none, the administration suggests they’ve been moved into Syria. Patience is what I’ve wanted all along. The administration is anticipating the possibility of not finding any WMD in Iraq and must have another country to invade to cover their butts.

For all I know, Syria is guilty as charged, but I cannot accept one country’s dictatorship over the world, even if it’s my country.

Let’s not play fast and loose with words like dick-’tater-ship. How is the US like a dictatorship? How are you defining dictatorship?

dictatorship = absence of democracy

America is a democracy, but people outside the United States don’t vote there. Yet the American government affects everyone in the world. When most of the world opposes an action like the invasion of Iraq, and the United States does it anyway, it seems to me that the democratic rights of non-Americans are being trampled on. In fact, democratic governments like Turkey’s (and Canada’s for that matter) are being punished for accurately reflecting the views of their people. And many democracies were put in a position of choosing between risking alienation from the United States and representing their people. Many leaders chose to go against the will of their people, and for most it was not for the high moral ideals espoused by Bush.

Assuming America ‘gets the job done’ in a year and leaves, Americans will soon forget Iraq the way they forgot democracy in Kuwait after the Gulf War. And the region will be left to deal with whatever it is that emerges from this mess. The fact remains that nobody asked America to do this, and the only negative consequenses America risks is more terrorist attacks. The region has much worse things to worry about. One of them is feeling helpless in the face of an America that determines their future for them.

I should have been more clear: I’m aware there are chemical weapons in the United States. However, you seemed so sure we Americans were one knee-jerk reaction away from using them, that I thought maybe my interpretation of history was incorrect. From what I’ve read, it appears we are attempting to rid ourselves of our chemical weapons, based on the CWC in the 1990s. Was it a crime to have chemical weapons way-back when we first developed them?

And, Dan, why didn’t we use these chemical weapons during the Persian Gulf War when they were being used on us?