Along with many Americans, I supported an invasion of Iraq. For me, freeing Iraq's people from Saddam was as valid a reason for the invasion as the WMD premise which the Administration pontificated. When Colin Powell sat before the Security Council and delineated those items of Iraqi noncompliance which compelled us to urgent action, I believed, along with the majority of Americans, that he was holding much intelligence information in reserve, for the safety of its sources. Now I am convinced that he had nothing of the sort, and each passing day without a significant WMD find hardens that conclusion. What that means, of course, is that we were lied to... that Cheney, Bush, Blair, Fleischer, Powell, et al, were snickering through their forked tongues when they publicly implied or even openly said that Iraq's transgressions were significant and would become clear after an invasion. "Iraq has WMD's!" they cried. "The WMD's have been moved to Syria!" they now proclaim. Yeah, s-u-u-u-r-e. It's no great revelation, of course, to declare that Bush is a shameless liar. We only have to go back to his Harken insider trading affair to remember that he is.... and despite his lies I'm still happy that Saddam has been removed from power. But I resent being lied to, and at the moment I'm dubious about almost everything this Administration says. Is Iran developing nuclear weapons? Pardon me if I need a more credible source than Colin Powell. Does North Korea have nukes? I need verfication that extends beyond this dishonest administration. While we're on the matter of lies, here's another item that should cause you to ask yourself.. "Is there ANYTHING at all we can trust about this Administration?" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/3028585.stm Is the Jessica Lynch story true?
I seriously hope Bush wasn't lying about the WMDs. I agree that Saddam's human rights record justified putting a boot up his ass. I can also see a case for saying Iraq is the easiest place overall to accmoplish a regime change from dictatorship to democracy--which in the long run is better for our national security. But if that was the rationale, they should have come right out and said so. If it turns out that they were lying it serves only to damage our credibility.
Just go on believing that Bush et.al. lied "just to get at Sadaam" and you will fall into the well laid trap that Bin Laden, Sadaam, et.al are laying. Al Quaeda's best offense right now is the divisiveness of the American people. They are letting the debate go on until the liberal dems have worked their minions into a frenzy while the liberal media chums the waters to keep the sharks circling. Their hope is that the Bush people will get so engrossed in damage control that they'll begin to ignore security and then "Bam" another attack on a slumbering giant. Fortunately for all, Bush is not motivated by the need to keep his job and his full attention is concentrated on the task of protecting Americans. He will not waver from this awesome responsibility and, for that, I am grateful. Sadaam had (has) WMDs and woe is he who thinks otherwise.
There's an edit button at the lower right of each post. Make sure you're logged in--you should be able to edit it. If not, I'm sure an admin would be willing to fix it for you.
It looks like you hit the "quote" button which places the message you wish to quote in BOLD print. You then typed your response inside the BOLD brackets. You can edit your post if you are logged in. You can learn about VB code which allows you to format your message here
The Jessica Lynch story in the BBC could be just as flawed. Anything can be skewed to the reporters point of view. Most of the stories about Lynch's injuries came from press reports from "sources" (Kind of like the guy from the NY Times), not the military. I don't remember any reports from the military about her exact condition. Now the question of WMD's can lead to many conclusions. I believe they are there or were being seriously pursured, or could have been disposed of just prior to the war. Several things they have found proves this fact, unless you think those fancy trucks were being used to make beer and the unmanned planes were for crop dusting. And by the way, how mush insecticide does it take to dust crops of sand?
Don't worry, Rex - he's completely honest about his sex life, which is all that counts. I never thought that the administration "knew" that Iraq had wmds because the adm never advanced even a sliver of a piece of evidence to support the claim. I think they figured that iraq probably had them, and so went with the odds. The two reasons advanced for going to iraq: wmds and to free iraq from a dictator, were not, imo, the reasons they went. They did it to: a)we needed to kick someone's ass for 9/11 and b)to stabilize the middle east. a) is stupid (unless it had been AQ's ass that we kicked) but b) still could work - we'll see how powell does - and it certainly sent a message to the rest of the chicken-shit dictators over there. And in the meantime, iraq did lose its dictator, which is a great thing. So as long as we don't fuck up the rebuilding job (and they were off to a good start in doing just that when they chose a proven incompetent to head the effort) it should work out okay.
