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

ican711nm wrote:

First, it was a counter-attack not a pre-emptive strike.

Honey, not even George Bush agrees with you on this, so I don't know who you're going to find to vote for.

Bush will merely continue stumbling short of acceptable but nevertheless improving solutions

... You have repeatedly claimed that AQ and Saddam were connected. You have provided reams of shaky evidence to back up your claim. You have used this connection (which we don't even know the extent of) to justify our invasion of Iraq over and over. Now you are saying it doesn't matter one way or the other.

(apparently according to you we can never base anything on facts), or concede the debate.)

Improving conditions? Take off those rose colored glasses for once. What will you say when the plans for the Iraqi elections go up in smoke.

...The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything...

You needn't feel Cyclo to be a fool. The reason Bush and Company invaded Iraq was justified on the basis of Saddam's WMDs. That was the very first justification used to get congress' approval for the war. Their second justification was Saddam's connection to al Qaeda. Their third justification is to provide freedom and democracy to Iraq.

When this administration keeps changing their justification for this war in Iraq, it says to many of us that they simply "screwed up."

We know that Saddam gave Zarqawi shelter. That is, Saddam gave Zarqawi safe space; space safer than Afghanistani space. Or, if you prefer Zarqawi took Saddam's space and Saddam let him keep it.

Everybody was operating with the best intelligence they had at the time and that included the previous administration. Such intelligence provided legitimate cause for the invasion. Now we find that the original intelligence can no longer be supported by the later intelligence, but the new intelligence also provides legitimate, if somewhat different, cause.

We could have kept the sanctions on Iraq forever which was not free of cost in American treasure and lives and it was creating unbearable hardships on the Iraqi people outside of Baghdad not to mention 300,000 men, women, and children dead in the mass graves and the likelihood of many tens of thousands more who would have been murdered over the next decade. It is now fully known that Saddam and some of his sleazier international buddies were siphoning off the OFF money intended for food and medicine for the Iraqi people.

The 'moving target' is simply regrouping in the face of new information that reassures us that what we are doing in Iraq was not only justified but will be fruitful for Iraq, for the USA, for the Middle East, and for the world. The old Iraq at the very least condoned, harbored, and financed terrorism including inflicting terrorist attacks on their own people. Completing the mission and leaving a free and democratic Iraq is noble on its own merits and ensures that our brave fighting forces have not been sacrificed for no purpose.

To quit or fail to win would send such a strong signal to the terrorists that their tactics prevailed again, no one on the planet would be safe for generations to come. The fastest way to get the job done is for the American people to provide a unified voice to let the terrorists know we are behind the effort to exterminate them and we will not waver.

"The best available intelligence" crap is a dodge anyway. In England as in the United States, intelligence agencies has long discounted the "yellow cake" story, and the administrations in question put pressure on those agencies. "The best intelligence" simply did not exist as it is protrayed in hindsight, and is one of the most egregious examples of conservatives burying their heads in the sand. Conservatives continue to ignore, and in these fora, never respond to, the point that the PNAC, of which Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were founding members, had a plan laid out well in advance for invading Iraq and establishing military bases in southwest Asia. Incredibly, they (the PNAC members) still seem to think they can accomplish that end. Incredibly, the conservatives in America continue to ignore that they have been set up, and bilked in a political game of three card monte which has cost more than a hundred billion, and tens of thousands of lives.

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.

"The best available intelligence" crap is a dodge anyway. In England as in the United States, intelligence agencies has long discounted the "yellow cake" story, and the administrations in question put pressure on those agencies. "The best intelligence" simply did not exist as it is protrayed in hindsight, and is one of the most egregious examples of conservatives burying their heads in the sand. Conservatives continue to ignore, and in these fora, never respond to, the point that the PNAC, of which Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were founding members, had a plan laid out well in advance for invading Iraq and establishing military bases in southwest Asia. Incredibly, they (the PNAC members) still seem to think they can accomplish that end. Incredibly, the conservatives in America continue to ignore that they have been set up, and bilked in a political game of three card monte which has cost more than a hundred billion, and tens of thousands of lives.

Conservatives continue to ignore, and in these fora, never respond to, the point that the PNAC, of which Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were founding members, had a plan laid out well in advance for invading Iraq and establishing military bases in southwest Asia.