THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Nice prevarication, ican. Just like the Chimp-in-Chief.
You have learned well.

You lie about what ideas President Bush has or doesn't have and then have the audacity to accuse me of ad hominem for declaring you lied. You don't know what ideas Bush has or doesn't have, nor even what ideas Bush had or didn't have.

revel wrote:

... Why didn't we invade Saudi Arabia first and use that country as 'light' for other countries to follow into democracy?

I think the answer is simply the close ties the Bush administration (and other previous administration, even clinton) has with the Saudi regime kept them from naturally following the trail of the 9/11 hijackers that actually did harm our country. I am amazed that the bush administration took time out to go to Afghanistan in a half hearted attempt to get Bin Ladden before going to Iraq.

I can only speculate on this one. Possibly you are right. I do know that the so-called close ties between past and present US administrations and the Saudi Royals are exaggerations. What we were doing is trying to get the Saudi Royals to not interfere with our Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts, while at the same time maintaining stable diplomatic relations and stable flows of Saudi oil.

As you probably are aware, the US confronted the Saudis Royal government about tolerating/harboring al Qaeda groups in their country. Unlike the government of Afghanistan and the government of Iraq, the government of Saudi Arabia, actually agreed to begin removing al Qaeda and stop tolerating/harboring them. The result was that much of al Qaeda in general and bin Laden in particular fled first to Afghanistan, then to Sudan, then to Afghanistan again. The Saudis continue to jail al Qaeda members who have either found their way back into Saudi Arabia or have been subsequently recruited by those who have found their way back. In the case of both Afghanistan and Iraq, we had to invade them to begin to remove their al Qaeda encampments.

revel wrote:

It is good that the Iraqi's got to vote, but it still made no sense to invade Iraq when you consider all the other countries that still don't get to vote and are under just as oppressive regime's as Saddam Hussein if not worse. China comes to mind and there are a whole host of others. There are also a lot more terrorist and ties to AQ in other countries with a lot more "harboring" support than Iraq had if taken in the context that you defined "harboring support."

Yes, there are. I think Bush picked Afghanistan and Iraq out of all the rest for two reasons. First he knew or ought to have known our military lacked the means to invade all the rest simultaneously. Second, I think he truly expected Afghanistan and Iraq would be less difficult to convert to democracy than all the rest of the al Qaeda harboring countries. I think he thought that, because of the horrors that were daily being inflicted on civilians by their respective governments.

In my opinion he chose wisely, but did blunder several times in the execution of that choice. US Presidents, unfortunately have a history of blundering many times before they get things right and suceed. George Washington, our first President, unintentionally established that precedent (no pun intended). Both countries border Iran, a big tolerator/harborer of al Qaeda. I bet that when the Iraqi and Afghanistani democracies become adequately secured by their own people, the people of Iran will overthrow their gangster government, and will themselves stop Iran from tolerating/harboring al Qaeda. They will thereby save the US the necessity for invading Iran.... and perhaps any other such harboring countries.

Sunni clerics reject Iraqi vote

I can only speculate on this one. Possibly you are right. I do know that the so-called close ties between past and present US administrations and the Saudi Royals are exaggerations. What we were doing is trying to get the Saudi Royals to not interfere with our Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts, while at the same time maintaining stable diplomatic relations and stable flows of Saudi oil.

I cannot see the Bush administration launching a military strike against any nation not viewed as an imminant threat to the U.S. and/or its allies.

misled the country by overstating the evidence.

The questions over the aluminum tubes point not only to CIA mistakes, but also to Bush administration officials failing to acknowledge doubts about the weapons evidence despite warnings from their own experts.

The tubes in question were some 60,000 aluminum tubes that Iraq was found in 2001 to be seeking.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell made the administration's case for war at the U.N. on February 5, 2003, he said there was little doubt the tubes could have been used for anything else, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante.

"I am no expert on centrifuge tubes, but it strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets," Powell said. "All the experts agree that have analyzed the tubes in our observation, says they can be adapted for centrifuge use."

But in fact, conflicting opinions were coming from senior officials at the Department of Energy. They warned that the tubes were too long, too thick and too shiny for use in the centrifuge process, and were being purchased openly by Iraq, not secretly. Energy Department experts believed the tubes were most likely for use in small artillery rockets.

The Times also reported that the State Department, British intelligence and International Atomic Energy Agency raised similar doubts.

Administration officials rarely addressed those doubts in public. The Times says that in March 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney said Saddam "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time," despite the fact that the CIA had not concluded that was true.

In August of that year, Cheney said, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." He cited a defector who had, in fact, said that the program was discontinued, and who had been assassinated in 1996.

On Sept. 8, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."

On Sunday, Rice admitted she knew the experts weren't certain, but continued to defended the war.

"We were all unhappy that the intelligence was not as good as we had thought that it was, but the essential judgment was absolutely right," she said.

With the war in Iraq a key issue in the presidential campaign, Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry said on Sunday that the report raises serious questions about the truth and honesty of the administration's position going into the war.

To suggest that they did not is about as close to pathological denial as it gets.