We have a number of countries putting forward the knowledge they have mutually agreed upon. What is shared is known to a high degree of certainty. Any details that are questionable would not have been shared prematurely.
And Many countries did independently investigate, and refuse help.
The UK, Spain, Italy and a few other EU countries took part in the illegal invasion of Iraq.
It was not illegal
> Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (chemical)
Even the US government admitted after the war that it could find no evidence of an Iraqi WMD program. All the US found were a few misplaced ancient, rusting artillery shells from the 1980s. These things were unusable, and were more of a danger to the people handling them than anything else. This is not the WMD stockpile the US claimed Saddam had. Nobody would ever have accepted to go to war on the basis of, "We think there are still a few misplaced, unusable artillery shells with degraded chemical agents in Iraq."
The vast majority of the most recent wars have not been UNSC authorized. UN involvement is not necessary for a war to occur nor do they prevent wars or proxy wars between countries on the UNSC. The "modern international system" is an ideal. The US was attacked.
>ancient, rusting artillery shells (from the 1980s)
20-30 years old isnt ancient, they were serviceable, and they had chemical weapons in the quantity for the potential of wmds. That is only what they found, and I imagine there were more not found.
>Nobody would ever have accepted to go to war
There was reasonable evidence they had more that the allied force didn't find. The international community is more to blame for the conditions after involvement than the instigators 10+ years on. A neighbor is beating up another neighbor and both are blaming it on someone else.
Unless those wars are fought in imminent self-defense, then they're illegal. The invasion of Iraq was an especially egregious violation of international law for two reasons:
1. The US knew that the UN Security Council would reject a resolution authorizing war, so it decided in the end not to ask.
2. The war had catastrophic consequences for Iraq. It's not every day a country of 20+ million people is invaded and its government overthrown. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result.
A third factor making this war particularly egregious is the deliberate campaign of disinformation that was carried out in order to justify it.
> The US was attacked.
Not by Iraq.
> 20-30 years old isnt ancient, they were serviceable, and they had chemical weapons in the quantity for the potential of wmds.
This is how the NY Times described the small number of chemical artillery shells found scattered across Iraq:
> Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.
These were the misplaced remnants of the chemical weapons program that Iraq dismantled in the 1990s.
> There was reasonable evidence they had more that the allied force didn't find.
The US occupied Iraq for nearly a decade. It's simply not credible to claim that there was any sort of sizeable stockpile that the US did not find.
>> The US was attacked.
>Not by Iraq.
Saddam gave material assistance to suicide bombers and network. It would suggest had they not gotten rid of him some of the perpetrators would have tried again. The resulting catastrophe was the result of neighbors meddling in their affairs and an internal domestic power struggle.
>These were the misplaced remnants of the chemical weapons program that Iraq dismantled in the 1990s.
if it was dismantled it wouldn't exist.
>It's simply not credible to claim that there was any sort of sizeable stockpile that the US did not find.
it probably wasnt in Iraq anymore.
Edit: I can't reply to the child but here are some salient quotes from the wiki...
"I will wait until the end of the week before judging – many dark actors playing games. Thanks for your support." - Dr Kelly
"it was subsequently established that neither the knife nor the blister packs showed Kelly's fingerprints on their surfaces"
"The former leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, and the former Liberal Democrat MP, Norman Baker, both think Kelly was murdered.[173] In 2007 Baker published The Strange Death of David Kelly in which he argued that Kelly did not commit suicide."
I do see your point, mind, but I don't think such damning circumstantial evidence is "shit"; by that logic, MI6 could never be responsible for anything, unless of course they signed a confession.
It was about timing too - it was a critical point for Blair and Bush getting the war they so desired. Keeping in mind there was already huge opposition to the war, proper 1st hand evidence being revealed at that point could well have resulted in Blair having to stand down, and potentially even the British not joining the war. Which of course the US services would not have liked.
This regime has remained in power ever since Bush's 8 year reign of terror. In fact, they were in power even before George W. Bush's administration. The name of the president may change, but the people running the US war machine remain the same.
As an aside, I'm not sure what's more frustrating:
Witnessing the Bush administration circa 2001-2004 be called out on these lies, by numerous entities, and still march inexorably toward armed conflict, or...
having to witness these lies being used to disingenuously discredit any future allegations made by the US.
You realize that this wasn't the first time the US did this, so I feel we should question these claims as much as possible.
>>> We have a number of countries putting forward the knowledge they have mutually agreed upon. What is shared is known to a high degree of certainty. Any details that are questionable would not have been shared prematurely.
>> "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." — Dick Cheney, before the US and coalition of the willing invaded Iraq.
> I'd ask that we be more thoughtful on this and evaluate separate allegations on their own merits. Why do you think invoking Cheney's statement is relevant to this discussion?
I think the logic is once an organization or its leaders get something wrong, you should never, ever believe anything that organization ever says ever again. Even 20 years later after the leadership and staff has turned over a couple times.
Of course, that's totally unworkable idea when applied consistently, so it's only used, knowingly or unknowingly, to reenforce existing biases.
After that experience, I'll believe the US government only when they make all their evidence public, and even then, I'll be exceedingly skeptical.
So who do you think carried out these attacks? Do you think that China does not carry out any offensive hacking? Do you think they do, but avoid the US for some reason?
IMHO, these allegations are plausible enough to believe without strong evidence to the contrary. Taking the experience with the Iraqi WMD allegations as your North Star (to the exclusion of all other factors) seems like a heuristic that will be wrong far more often than it's right, and more often wrong than alternative heuristics.
If they claim to have evidence but don't provide it, I assume they don't have evidence, or that the evidence is weaker than they are claiming. If they do provide evidence, I consider the possibility that it has been tampered with, that its provenance is dubious, or that contrary evidence has been concealed.
We're talking about professional liars here. Not everything they say is wrong, but everything they say is suspect.
It's not disingenous and it's not discrediting _any_ future allegation, but to appropriately raise the threshold before belief.
Accordingly, I don't find comparison to prior wars helpful for discussion. Obviously opinions here may differ...
A few years ago, we ran out of fear and urgency on the Islamic terror thing and now we need a new top dog bad guy.
If not, where do you draw the line between real/legitimate security concerns vs. the fake ones?
I'm not saying this is fake, our people should be doing their job mitigating this stuff and hacking them in turn, but it being blown up into a Big Deal is part of the propaganda.
What problem did US solve by invading Iraq?
It's a sad position to take, but we have definitely been misled/lied to by gov't officials.
Why is this particular incident any more legit/not-fake than the totally legit/not-fake WMD evidence?
What, besides credibility of the institutions making the allegations, are these allegations' "own merits"?
Agreed that a reflexive "they lie!" position isn't useful, but... trust doesn't seem like a reasonable default either. In the same vein, it would be naive to trust the Chinese NBS to report unflattering economic statistics honestly. Why? Because of past/recent dishonesty.
Whether it's true or not, I don't think the purpose of this announcement is to inform us. It's part of power games with China, laying public groundwork for updating the NATO mission, new departments/funding/laws/etc... That's not a general paranoia. I get this impression from the NATO statement itself.
from P4:
China’s growing influence and international policies can present challenges that we need to address together as an Alliance. We will engage China with a view to defending the security interests of the Alliance. We are increasingly confronted by cyber, hybrid, and other asymmetric threats, including disinformation campaigns, and by the malicious use of ever-more sophisticated emerging and disruptive technologies. Rapid advances in the space domain are affecting our security. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the erosion of the arms control architecture also undermine our collective security.
Promising to engage China, followed by nonspecific cyber, WMD & space threats.
Here is where I might be paranoid, cynical or whatnot. Is defense against cyberattacks the actual goal, or is cyberwarfare just another long term raison d'etre?
Because China hacking is fairly widespread and so this is not just about a single institution, it's about many.
There's broad consensus here, it's not just 'Dick Cheney & Co.', it's many governments, many agencies, many businesses, academic institutions and the spying/hacking takes a variety of forms.
Yes, this an 'escalation' of sorts, because making it 'NATO' makes it both firmly an issue of national security for not just the US, but for many 'important' actors.
If anything, I think there's not enough action here.
It's definitely worthwhile to keep a very close eye on misinformation and propaganda ... but I think so far we're on the right path.
Okay. What about NATO and "other allies" then?
There are always people trying to expand the definition, but it's usually from more left-leaning critical schools of thought that want to classify landmines, sanctions or guns as WMD.
But in official usage, it's been pretty stable at those three.
A knife is not generally a weapons.
Saddam 100% had WMD's and was capable of making more.
But he didn't have an active program, stockpiles were small and there wasn't really a huge risk of him selling to 'terrorists' etc..
The misrepresentation was really one of magnitude and capabilities and especially how the information is presented.
"He Has WMD's" is very true and legitimate (different than 'he has a knife'), but obviously the misrepresented context makes it a giant lie.
To this end, I suggest that the US would do better in their public communications if they revealed some Twitterable/TikTokable visuals and graphics which highlighted the nature of some of the incursions, so as to more strongly make their case i.e. it's easier to believe 'something material' than accusations.
1) When that was stated there was serious pushback not just from US reporters but also other countries/allies.
2) It's pretty reasonable to believe that it is far easier to obtain hacking tools and knowledge as compared to weapons of mass destruction. You can't just download the knowledge and tools for nuclear weapons through the internet.
I get the cynicism and I agree that we should be doubtful and not trust our leaders at face value. But that doesn't mean that we should throw all evidence to the wind. It just demonstrates that we need to be more thoughtful in our analysis.
For example, the NYTimes just published a piece about a "Rogue" section of the Commerce Department that used racial profiling targeting Chinese Americans:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/us/politics/commerce-depa...
I recall an incident long ago where it was back and forth - you don't know, we know, you don't have proof, we have proof, share proof - it's all bs.. then the frustrated investigators released a trail of this addy, this pic, which was also used for this and that..
what came of it?
not a damn thing changed other than teaching the other side what they needed to not do to not get caught in the same way.
If we are not going to put a missile into a building to stop office building 123456 - because of their theft, then keep the proof under wraps.
a public statement like this does nothing but make it reasonable for us to continue similar theft - meh. no proof needed for that.
MyFitnessPal, Strava, etc are threats to national security and they’re US based, but you think that Tiktok isn’t because someone you don’t like said it is? That’s playground logic.
Yeah, it's pretty much a bomb waiting to be used. It might not have been used yet, but that's no reason to claim it's harmless and sleep next to it.
Though, Facebook and Twitter are not much better, and only somewhat less exploitable by the same adversary (there's capitalism for you).
If you are not American, though, the TikTok drama has been one of the more darkly amusing spectacles.
Wait, it wasn't? I'm not sure why this is a controversial opinion. Social media has often been linked to information leakage. Geo tagging of photos was part of the proof that was used to show that Russia invaded Crimea. Similarly US soldiers have had their locations revealed when posting on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram. In fact if you're over seas and talking to your partner back home they generally have another soldier listening to the conversation. Given all this why is it surprising that a large social media platform that focuses on videos (which reveal more info), grabs a lot of data, and is connected to the US's largest geopolitical adversary is considered a threat?
Sorry but a bunch of politicians agreeing isn't evidence. I have a higher standard.
Tools to fake such attribution and evidence were literally part of the leaked NSA/Equation Group toolkit.
I had only previously heard [0] that similarities in the tools were discovered by Kaspersky, not that there were any leaked docs that pointed the finger back at NSA themselves. Are you maybe thinking of PRISM/Wikileaks?
[0] - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/how-o...
And there are most likely a lot of cases where:
1) "...we got more than that," and...
2) ...data from "IPs and tools that are easily faked" is the only information that could be released publicly without compromising sources and methods.
It's a hopeless wish to want to be able to independently assess (as an amateur!) intelligence findings in all cases. If trusting the official assessments isn't acceptable (cross-checked with general knowledge of the situation), about the only reasonable alternative position is to remain agnostic.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-chinese-nationals-workin...
So no, having a lot of countries saying China bad poopoo together is not enough anymore for me.
Not to me, not to you. You're just believing them. My kid believes in Father Xmas "to a high degree of certainty."
See also Dick Cheney
They could just give us the evidence.
Exchange being hacked has 0 relevance to HN commenters, their knowledge, or their influence. Absolutely nobody cares about the technical specifics, or technical effects of this. This is an exec level political issue, and is more related to the recent trade wars than infosec.
There is a frankly stupid amount of bipartisan US consensus on confronting China. MENA is being put to simmer. A form of “rapprochement” with Russia is underway, and the EU & NATO are barking when told.
The comparisons to the Iraq war are apt in the sense there’s essentially nothing anyone outside those circles can do about this.
Bonus points for the fact there’s 0 chance of this going kinetic anytime soon, so no blood, guts, and (non climate) refugees to affect PR going forward.