Not As Important As Terri Schiavo But....

We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq...

Take it easy Joe.

Based on information we have now, the justifications given 2 years ago have been questioned.

How is it we have the information we have now, and how could we have gained that information 2 years ago?

How do you figure Joe? If they had it, surely someone like Kerry would have stood up in Congress and said "HEY! LOOK AT THIS!"

So obviously almost every member of Congress was "in on it" then?

What were they afraid of? Being voted out of office. Simple as that. Riding on the fear of 9/11, anyone who was against the pres' wishes was demonized by both parties and the media.

Contrast that to the current situation, and you'll see just how badly the Bush admin. mis-stepped in attacking Iraq....

Cycloptichorn

OR, follow me on this... it could have been they agreed with the intelligence and believed, like the president did, that Iraq had WMD's and represented a threat to US interests.

Is that really such a stretch that you can't believe it?

The commission blamed everyone but the true culprits. The president and his band of merry men.

THE BACK BURNER: Last July, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a 511-page report into how the intelligence community erroneously assessed Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass production programs and relationship to Al Qaeda. However, it wasn't complete. Committee members opted to defer inquiry into the politically hazardous questions of how accurately the Bush administration represented the intelligence it possessed on Iraq to the Congress and the public and how appropriately administration policymakers influenced the assessment and presentation of intelligence products within the government until after the November election. Liberals especially have been waiting with bated breath ever since.

Today, Pat Roberts, the Senate intelligence committee chairman, told everyone not to bother. "It's basically on the back burner," Roberts said after a speech on intelligence reform at the Woodrow Wilson Center. "The bottom line is that [the administration] believed the intelligence, and the intelligence was wrong." Some might dispute that characterization, as former CIA Director George Tenet did last year when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee--on which Roberts also serves--that "when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it."

Besides, Roberts added, the "WMD Commission in March will lay it all out." That would be the commission President Bush appointed last February to deflect political heat on the Iraq intelligence debacle--and which doesn't look at policymakers' role in either intelligence production or public representation. [..]