ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

I have a nephew who "voluntaraly" went to Iraq 4 times.

"Believed" somebody had WMDs is a stupid conclusion that determines his choice to go and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

revel, He "volunteered" only once to join the military. What he must do after that is decided by the military honchos.

Al-Qaida had no presence in Iraq. In fact, as a secularist, Saddam hated al-Qaida, which hated Saddam in return.

There is a ton of evidence that Bush lied us into the war with Iraq, and you know it. He even had a group in the White House whose job was to gin up reasons to invade, and suppress evidence arguing against invasion. It was called the Iraq Group. I assume you remember the yellowcake incidence.

The following is indicative of the dangers presented upon the encroachment of a growing Muslim population.
Ad

Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life.


Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components.

Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.

When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well.




Here's how it works.

As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in:

United States -- Muslim 0.6%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1.8%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%




At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. This is happening in:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%




From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in:

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslim 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%
Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world.




When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris , we are already seeing car-burnings. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam, and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam , with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections, in:

Guyana -- Muslim 10%
India -- Muslim 13.4%
Israel -- Muslim 16%
Kenya -- Muslim 10%
Russia -- Muslim 15%




After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:

Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%




At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%




From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in:

Albania -- Muslim 70%
Malaysia -- Muslim 60.4%
Qatar -- Muslim 77.5%
Sudan -- Muslim 70%




After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in:

Bangladesh -- Muslim 83%
Egypt -- Muslim 90%
Gaza -- Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia -- Muslim 86.1%
Iran -- Muslim 98%
Iraq -- Muslim 97%
Jordan -- Muslim 92%
Morocco -- Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan -- Muslim 97%
Palestine -- Muslim 99%
Syria -- Muslim 90%
Tajikistan -- Muslim 90%
Turkey -- Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates -- Muslim 96%




100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' -- the Islamic House of Peace. Here there's supposed to be peace, because everybody is a Muslim, the Madrasses are the only schools, and the Koran is the only word, such as in:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 100%

Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, as in these 100% states the most radical Muslims intimidate and spew hatred, and satisfy their blood lust by killing less radical Muslims, for a variety of reasons.

'Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; the tribe against the world, and all of us against the infidel. -- Leon Uris, 'The Haj'

It is important to understand that in some countries, with well under 100% Muslim populations, such as France, the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos, within which they are 100% Muslim, and within which they live by Sharia Law. The national police do not even enter these ghettos. There are no national courts, nor schools, nor non-Muslim religious facilities. In such situations, Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. The children attend madrasses. They learn only the Koran. To even associate with an infidel is a crime punishable with death. Therefore, in some areas of certain nations, Muslim Imams and extremists exercise more power than the national average would indicate.

Today's 1.5 billion Muslims make up 22% of the world's population. But their birth rates dwarf the birth rates of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and all other believers. Muslims will exceed 50% of the world's population by the end of this century.

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat

Advocate, You are completely wrong. Central Asia is predominantly Muslim (some more than 90%), but they are about as secular as any democracy can be. Most women do not wear burkas or those coveralls found in places like Pakistan. Many attend American University, and learn many languages. The youngsters there are very friendly towards Americans, and many have approached us to practice their English and to take pictures with us.

You need to get around more, and quit learning all the negatives about one group of people.

YOUR ARE DEAD WRONG, Advocate!






Advocate, its long past time for you to do your own research and to stop relying on the common media for your informattion.

He volunteered once to join the army but was conscripted to go to Iran 4 times by Bush and his WMD actions.

It is all BS ginned up to justify Bush's grab for Iraq's oil. Proclamations of various sorts do not establish the truth of the matter, which is that there was virtually no al-Qaida presence in Iraq when we invaded. However, due to our torture and other atrocities, al-Qaida now has a serious presence.

Ican, let's be honest for a change.

REPORT: ABUSIVE TACTICS USED TO ESTABLISH PRESENCE OF AL-QAIDA


By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON " The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

The use of abusive interrogation " widely considered torture " as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly " Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 " according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Excerpts from Burney's interview appeared in a full, declassified report on a two-year investigation into detainee abuse released on Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., called Burney's statement "very significant."

"I think it's obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq)," Levin said in a conference call with reporters. "They made out links where they didn't exist."

Levin recalled Cheney's assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

A senior Guantanamo Bay interrogator, David Becker, told the committee that only "a couple of nebulous links" between al Qaida and Iraq were uncovered during interrogations of unidentified detainees, the report said.

Others in the interrogation operation "agreed there was pressure to produce intelligence, but did not recall pressure to identify links between Iraq and al Qaida," the report said.

The report, the executive summary of which was released in November, found that Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other former senior Bush administration officials were responsible for the abusive interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld approved extreme interrogation techniques for Guantanamo in December 2002. He withdrew his authorization the following month amid protests by senior military lawyers that some techniques could amount to torture, violating U.S. and international laws.

Military interrogators, however, continued employing some techniques in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

Bush and his top lieutenants charged that Saddam was secretly pursuing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in defiance of a United Nations ban, and had to be overthrown because he might provide them to al Qaida for an attack on the U.S. or its allies.

(John Walcott and Warren P. Strobel contributed to this article.)

Landay's idiotic article was disputed by so many sources that it is impossible to list them all.

While the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, and Congress were all operating with incomplete intelligence, ALL were in agreement that what intelligence was there was compelling and MOST were in agreement that it was sufficient to act:

The facts remain:

The Sept 21, 2001 PDB (I’ve never seen a Sept 12, 2001 PDB regarding regime ties)President’s Daily Brief (PDB)
-Sept, 21, 2001
-Just 10 days after the 911 attacks this summary assessment clearly suffered from lack of intelligence gathering and analysis since at the time it still wasn’t 100% clear that Al Queda was behind the 911 attacks.

NESA Report on Iraq’s Ties to Terrorism (terrorism in general/not specific to Al Queda). This was basically a preliminary draft of the CIA’s “Iraqi Support for Terrorism 2002” and “Iraqi Support for Terrorism 2003” reports -October 2001- Formed no conclusions (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq) -cited a lack of evidence and a lack of investigations into the matter as no formal investigation and analysis had ever been conducted (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq)

“Iraq and al-Qa’ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship”
-6/12/02 -Formed no conclusions (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq) -specifically cited a lack of evidence gathered (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq)

“Iraqi Support for Terrorism 2002”
-9/18/02 -Formed no conclusions (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq) -specifically cited a lack of evidence gathered (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq)

Letter from DCI Tenet, head of the CIA, to Sen. Bob Graham, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee -10/7/02 -Formed no conclusions, simply reiterated closed door testimony from CIA officials to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the more time passes, the more likely it is that Saddam would make WMD and use Al Queda to covertly and deniably attack the United States -Lists several examples of Saddam’s support for terrorism, Al Queda, and its proxy terror affiliates.

“Report of the Joint Inquiry Into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001-By the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence” -December 2002 -Reiterated the comments from the 9/21/01 PDB and the 10/7/02 Tenet Letter -Added more reports of possible Iraqi involvement in the 911 attacks, but added caveats that the reports hadn’t been fully investigated by Dec 2002
-cited a lack of evidence gathered as a problem that prevented forming any conclusions (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq)

“Iraqi Support for Terrorism 2003” -January 2003 -This was basically a rehash of the 2002 version with a little new info since the CIA finally got a spy back into Iraq just a few weeks prior to its release (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq) -Formed no conclusions (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq) -specifically cited a lack of evidence gathered (per Sen Intel Com rpt on pre-war intel regarding Iraq)

“Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Investigation Into Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq (Phase I report)” -July 7, 2004 -confirmed the various reports of ties between Saddam’s regime and Al Queda as presented in other reports (including confirmation of most of the comments made by Feith and his office), and repeatedly stated that the Bush Administration’s claims were “reasonable” as well as often accurate reflections of the intelligence reporting at the time. -“Due to the limited amount and questionable quality of reporting on the leadership intentions of Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Ladin, the CIA was unable to make conclusive assessments in Iraqi Support for Terrorism regarding Iraq’s relationship with al-Qaida. The CIA stated in the Scope Note: ‘Our knowledge of Iraq’s ties to terrorism is evolving DELETED. . . . ‘” -at the rollout of the report, several of the senators-including Sen. Rockefeller (D), addressed the press and made it clear that the issue of regime ties to Al Queda was not looked at: “…the committee concluded there was a failure by intelligence community managers to adequately encourage analysts to challenge their assumptions, to fully consider alternative arguments, to accurately characterize intelligence reporting and to counsel analysts who had lost their objectivity.”

Senator Pat Roberts 070904 SIC Release of WMD investigation report Press Conference transcript -”Most alarmingly, after 1998 and the exit of the U.N. inspectors, the CIA had no human intelligence sources inside Iraq who were collecting against the WMD target.” -”But with respect to Saddam Hussein’s regime and his link to terrorists, the committee did find that the CIA judgments were reasonable, based on the available intelligence. The agency was also more careful to inform policy-makers about uncertainties with their analysis.” -”Finally, the committee found no evidence that the intelligence community’s mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure.” -”Our human intelligence collection, as Pat Roberts has pointed out, was inadequate. Not only did we not have people on the ground after 1998 when the inspectors left, but we relied when they had left too much on the fragmentary reporting from years before, from the early ’90s, from the post-Iran/Iraq War situation and were never able to pin anything down.”

“911 Commission Final Report” -July 22, 2004 -Formed no conclusions regarding regime ties to Al Queda -members later specifically cited a lack of evidence gathered and asked that the question of regime ties to Al Queda be examined further-not dismissed or otherwise closed. -John Lehman (a 911 Commissioner) said, “There may well be"and probably will be"additional intelligence coming in from interrogations and from analysis of captured records and so forth which will fill out the intelligence picture. This is not phrased as"nor meant to be"the definitive word on Iraqi Intelligence activities.” -“This is a very significant set of facts,” former 9/11 commissioner, Mr. Kerry said yesterday. “I personally and strongly believe you don’t have to prove that Iraq was collaborating against Osama bin Laden on the September 11 attacks to prove he was an enemy and that he would collaborate with people who would do our country harm. This presents facts should not be used to tie Saddam to attacks on September 11. It does tie him into a circle that meant to damage the United States.” (I believe he even went on Jon Stewart’s, The Daily Show, and reiterated that the issue of regime ties was never fully investigated, analyzed, or concluded, and he said that he thought it needed to be re-opened.

-Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton also said: there was a lack of intelligence gathered which led to problems, that the matter was never concluded (or even started), and that it should be re-examined.

“Iraqi Perspective Project Report” (DoD) -March 2006 -Confirmed many of the previously reported ties between the regime and Al Queda -Found many more examples of ties and further demonstrated that there was in fact a relationship between the two, that it was dangerous, and that it was growing faster than expected -Cited a lack of intelligence gathered before the war, and an even larger, more deliberate, and more unexplained refusal to investigate the relationship after the invasion given the wealth of captured intelligence and detained regime members.

“REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE ON POSTWAR FINDINGS ABOUT IRAQ’S WMD PROGRAMS AND LINKS TO TERRORISM AND HOW THEY COMPARE WITH PREWAR ASSESSMENTS (Phase II report)” -September 9, 2006 -Cited the post-war refusal of any and all intelligence agencies to investigate the depth and threat of the relationship between Saddam’s regime and Al Queda -Used the refusal of intelligence agencies to investigate pre-war intelligence and the causes for the lack thereof, the Senate Intelligence Committee openly, freely, and admittedly took it upon itself to act as an intelligence agency and form an intelligence assessment on its own. -(U) The CIA has not published a “fully researched, coordinated and approved position” on the postwar reporting on the former regime’s links to al-Qa’ida, but has published such a paper on the postwar reporting on Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and the former Iraqi regime. The CIA told the Committee that regarding Iraq’s links to terrorism, “the research the Counterterrorist Center has done on this issue has called into question some of the reports of contacts and training . . . revealed other contacts of which we were unaware, and shed new light on some contacts that appeared in prewar reporting. On balance, this research suggests that the prewar judgment remains valid.“l54 (Recall that previous investigations had determined that pre-war judgments as presented by the Bush Administration were “accurate” and “reasonable.”)

Now, could this discussion be moved to the Iraq thread or the interminable other Bush-bashing threads so that we can focus on the topic of this thread?

Ican, you really should open your mind to facts you feel are inconvenient.


Pentagon report debunks prewar Iraq-Al Qaeda connection
Declassified document cites lack of 'evidence of a long-term relationship,' although No. 3 Defense staffer called contact 'mature and symbiotic.'
By Jesse Nunes | csmonitor.com
posted April 06, 2007 at 2:30 p.m. EDT


A declassified report by the Pentagon's acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble provides new insight into the circumstances behind former Pentagon official Douglas Feith's pre-Iraq war assessment of an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection " an assessment that was contrary to US intelligence agency findings, and helped bolster the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war.

The report, which was made public in summary form in February, was released in full on Thursday by Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In a statement accompanying the 121-page report, Senator Levin said: "It is important for the public to see why the Pentagon's Inspector General concluded that Secretary Feith's office 'developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship,' which included 'conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community.' "

The Feith office alternative intelligence assessments concluded that Iraq and al Qaeda were cooperating and had a "mature, symbiotic" relationship, a view that was not supported by the available intelligence, and was contrary to the consensus view of the Intelligence Community. These alternative assessments were used by the Administration to support its public arguments in its case for war. As the DOD IG report confirms, the Intelligence Community never found an operational relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda; the report specifically states that," the CIA and DIA disavowed any 'mature, symbiotic' relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida."

The Los Angeles Times reports that in excerpts of the report released in February, Mr. Gimble called Feith's alternative intelligence "improper," but that it wasn't illegal or unauthorized because then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assigned the work. The Times also reports that a prewar memo from Mr. Wolfowitz to Feith requesting that an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection be identified was among the newly released documents.

"We don't seem to be making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Wolfowitz wrote in the Jan. 22, 2002, memo to Douglas J. Feith, the department's No. 3 official.

Using Pentagon jargon for the secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, he added: "We owe SecDef some analysis of this subject. Please give me a recommendation on how best to proceed. Appreciate the short turn-around."

The Times reports that the memo "marked the beginnings of what would become a controversial yearlong Pentagon project" to convince White House officials of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a connection "that was hotly disputed by U.S. intelligence agencies at the time and has been discredited in the years since."

The New York Times reports that presentation slides used during a Pentagon briefing at the White House were also released Thursday. The slides showed how Feith criticised US intelligence agencies that had found little or no Al Qaeda-Iraq link.

The slide used by the Pentagon analysts to brief the White House officials states the intelligence agencies assumed "that secularists and Islamists will not cooperate, even when they have common interests," and there was "consistent underestimation of importance that would be attached by Iraq and Al Qaeda to hiding a relationship."

The Pentagon, in written comments included in the report, strongly disputed that the White House briefing and the slide citing "Fundamental Problems" undercut the intelligence community.

"The intelligence community was fully aware of the work under review and commented on it several times," the Pentagon said, adding that [former CIA Diector George] Tenet, at the suggestion of the defense secretary then, Donald H. Rumsfeld, "was personally briefed."

The Times notes that the Pentagon analysts' appraisal of the CIA's approach was "in contrast" to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in its 2004 report on prewar intelligence, which praised the CIA's approach as methodical, reasonable, and objective.

On a website set up to challenge Gimble's assessment in his report, Feith argues that the key issue at hand is "whether the CIA should be protected against criticism by policy officials." Feith also challenged Gimble's characterization of his intelligence assessment as "inappropriate."

The IG got this point wrong and it would be dangerous to follow his badly reasoned opinion on the issue. It would damage the quality of the government's intelligence and policy. The CIA has made important errors over the years - think of the Iraqi WMD assessments. To guard against such errors, policy officials should be praised, not slapped, for challenging CIA products.

Despite the release of Gimble's report, the Associated Press reports that Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday appeared on a conservative radio show and reiterated his stance that Al Qaeda had links to Iraq before the US invasion in 2003.

"[Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. "As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."

The Washington Post, however, reports that Mr. Zarqawi only publicly allied himself with Al Qaeda after the US invasion, and until then "was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts."

Foxy, did you read what you posted. There were caveats on caveats for almost every item. It cited various congressional reports. As you know, the committees were controlled by Reps who, all along, had a predisposition to support the administration on everything. I think you know by now that Cheney was essentially living at the CIA coercing it to support administration views of the facts (which were phony).

Then where is that oil?
Why hasnt the US gotten any of it?
Where is it going?

Not only was the oil supposed to pay for all the cost of the war, but for the reconstruction of their country. It wasn't that long ago under Bush that Iraq reported having over fifty billion in their bank from selling oil, but I doubt very much we have seen a penny of that money.

I not only read it, but I could have added a lot more. Without exception, the early investigations could not make a link between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein, but niether did they presume to rule out such a link. They were honest and up front that there was insufficient intelligence to be sure, but that there was sufficient intelligence re the threat that Saddam posed to justify actions that were ultimately taken.

You have consistently taken any opportunity to express your hatred and loathing of George Bush. I think that prevents you from any ability to be objective about the military intervention in Iraq that was not only proposed but was urged by Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress, the Clinton administration and various experts well before 9/11. No subsequent investigation has presumed to suggest that, based on the intelligence that we had, there was insufficient evidence to warrant the invasion.

If we had gone there just for the oil, we would have simply taken out the army, seized the oil fields, and let the Iraqi people fend for themselves. To date, the USA has not taken one drop of Iraqi oil.

Some here seem to irrationally loathe and despise Israel and accuse it of all manner of things of which it is not guilty. While certainly the Israelis have committed 'sin's and been imprudent at times, you would surely appreciate its critics taking a more objective view and at least being fair and honest re the circumstances.

I would suggest that you should do the same in your views about President Bush and the war in Iraq.

Foxie, You'll never learn; when Bush presumed Saddam had WMDs for his justification to attack Iraq, all other "presumptions" become secondary - or worthless presumptions. We all know now there was never any connection between Saddam and al Qaida.

We should never start any war on presumptions; it gets people killed.

So if we start a war on KNOWN, VERIFIED FACTS, are you saying nobody will get killed?

Of coarse, but there would be a "justifiable" reason for it. Big difference, mm, whether you can grasp that idea or not.

SIMPLE: If any country attacks us, that is a justifiable reason for us to retaliate. If a terrorist group attacks us, we are justified to retaliate.

Iraq never had the means or weapons to attack us.

Like everything else, Bush screwed up his attempt to get the oil. He thought that we would be conquering heroes to the Iraqis, who would happily give us access to the oil. It would be impossible to get at the oil without the cooperation of the Iraqis, who could very easily blow-up pipelines, etc.