“Justice” in the U.S. has always been a bad joke. The best you can hope for is a completely random outcome (“a jury of your peers“, what a laugh), or, as in this case, a politically motivated campaign that ignores truth, decency, all due process, and the principles why we have something like laws in the first place. In the Silk Road case the pure unadulterated power of corruption would have been completely sufficient to reach the outcome; bothering the law with that is nothing but an embellishment and a fig leaf. I feel reminded of Iraq's WMDs and the embarrassing spectacle around Kim Dotcom. Seems like the U.S. gov't will spread publicly any lies that seem convenient at the time, never mind the consequences.
Thank you for linking to your own opinion on a different website.
Your liberal viewpoint is deeply misinformed. The fear of WMDs was also shared by Bill Clinton when still in power, Hosni Mubarak, the French Intelligence services, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
The WMDs found may not be on a scale with what, say, Russia could produce or even on a scale with what was expected, but they were there.
> The fear of WMDs was also shared by Bill Clinton when still in power, Hosni Mubarak, the French Intelligence services, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Based on misinformation, paranoia, and earlier perspectives.
> The WMDs found
The 'WMDs' were only found when you equivocate on the term 'WMDs' to equate the terrifying prospects specifically laid out by Bush & Cheney, the details of which I quoted in my link (nukes, mobile bio-labs, etc), with the tiny supply of chemical weapons already known about and dealt with by the UN. By your logic, white is black, and 0 is 1. After all, they're very similar, it's just a matter of scale...
> or even on a scale with what was expected.
Bingo. You even understand the point. It's like claiming to be a millionaire when one is actually unemployed and has just a few dollars left in one's bank account. 'Yes, maybe my wealth was not on a scale with what you expected, but it was there!' They're only equivalent if you're blind.
So here's the thing - even if the chemical weapons found were not as massive as you expected, there is still enough evidence there to believe that the invasion was undertaken in good faith.
But, no? I don't understand how you could possibly draw that conclusion. The "WMD" ISIS have discovered were decommissioned WMD from the 90s. They aren't capable of being deployed.
> even if the chemical weapons found were not as massive as you expected
'Even if the promises were only comparable to the reality by exaggerating by many orders of magnitude'
> there is still enough evidence there to believe that the invasion was undertaken in good faith.
No there's not. Did you miss all the research into how Cheney's people spun the evidence and used unreliable defectors to make up a narrative and bully dissenters? Also, is this really what you're reduced to arguing: 'yes, maybe they were completely wrong and I'm desperately equivocating on the term 'WMD' - but at least Bush invaded in good faith!'?
You seem to think that intelligence gathered in a foreign repressive country can be taken as "promises". This is deeply naive.
> No there's not.
Yes there is. Even if what you claim about Cheney is true, how is he supposed to have convinced Clinton of the threat? And what about all the other nations that believed in it?
I am arguing that there was enough evidence of WMDs that several other people, other than Bush, believed they were there.
You seem to argue that all intelligence has to be 100% perfect, which shows a flawed understanding of reality. Even so, the Iraqi people were demonstrably better off (until the premature withdrawal) after the invasion and a vile dictator who gassed kurds (whilst not having WMDs apparently) and killed at random (certainly his children did) was removed. It was a net-win for the world.
> You seem to think that intelligence gathered in a foreign repressive country can be taken as "promises". This is deeply naive.
When you have put your credibility on the line, making certain claims, justifying enormous expenditures with open-ended commitments - well, choose a word you please if you don't like 'promises'.
> Yes there is. Even if what you claim about Cheney is true, how is he supposed to have convinced Clinton of the threat? And what about all the other nations that believed in it?
The other nations which had to be bullied into it or just stayed out of the 'coalition of the willing'?
> Even so, the Iraqi people were demonstrably better off (until the premature withdrawal) after the invasion and a vile dictator who gassed kurds (whilst not having WMDs apparently) and killed at random (certainly his children did) was removed.
Ah yes, it's all good until it isn't. The WMDs were there, and so it was justified! (Unless they weren't.) The invasion was a good thing! (Until it wasn't.) It was worth it! (Until we tote up the million of refugees, the hundreds of thousand of excess deaths, the trillions spent and to be spent.) Some other leaders made the same mistake! (Unless they didn't make the same mistake). It was a net-win for the world! (Well, unless we look at all the embarrassing bits.)
Sad and pitiable. You can't back up your initial claims about WMDs except in the most desperate and misleading way possible, so you immediately spin to other issues like saying some other people agreed with Bush or his intentions were good or maybe some selected post-invasion period was an improvement. I'm not fooled.
The pretext for the war was Iraq having an active WMD program. What ISIS has are stockpiles from before Iraq dismantled their WMD program (which was prior to the invasion).
I was under the impression that the shelf life on most of these WMDs (chemical nerve agents) is only 5 years or so. So we had a pretty good idea about what Saddam was holding, but they were almost certainly unusable at the time of the invasion.
Iraq was sort of bluffing about having chemical weapons after the Gulf War and before the second invasion. It wasn't crazy to think they had an active program.
The Bush administration didn't think they could just make up WMD. They assumed the WMD was there. Their real failure was that they pressured the intelligence community into giving a fast confirmation that WMD existed. It's sort of like when a cop lies on the stand by bolstering his evidence. The cop usually isn't trying to rail road an innocent person but insuring (in his mind) the conviction of a guilty person. That is what Bush's administration thought.
Turns out the program was finished after the Gulf War and never restarted. And a real hard intelligence look should have shown that. But dissenters were quieted.
The "WMD" that was found was lost, pre Gulf War munitions that were degraded to uselessness. They were for most purposes, useless. It was shitty, old as fuck mustard gas. So yes, really no need to worry.
It's more of a semantics issue from bad intel and some FUDdy massaging of the definitions along the way, but I see how you got there. Iraq had chemical weapons, and, if you've seen the news, we found them in 2006, although it wasn't publicly confirmed until recently. The use of the label "WMD" is the matter in contention.
Some chemical weapons can be WMDs, but these weren't. They also weren't active, and they weren't the type or scale that could be used in modern warfare. The situation was closer to cleaning out an old chemical factory than a race against time to find and disarm fleets of intercontinental missiles primed for launch from secret subterranean silos across the country.
