weapons found

[MMMMMM]

You make a fair point but also remember that the flip side of the equation carried a potential penalty too: if Iraq was indeed developing WMD which would end up in terrorists' hands, the penalty for not taking action might be a 9/11 or worse.

Also in intelligence circles, much is based on incomplete information. It's not like everything the CIA or Mossad or German Intelligence "knows" is 100% certain, especially because a lot of the information comes filtered through humans. In a sense the inteligence services are using lots of bits and pieces of incomplete information to put together parts of jigsaw puzzles.

In the best case we averted another attack somehow by denying terrorists their future deliveries of WMD, and got started building a democracy in Iraq. In the worst case at least we removed the Butcher of Baghdad from power.

[brad]

youre totally missing the point. we have no contract with (had no) with iraq. thats the meaning of 'sovereign nation'. as nixon put it in that film nixon (when hes getting articles of impeachment read to him) they cant impeach me on that 'the president can bomb the hell out of whoever he wants' ... heh

but seriouly the 'contract' i was talking about was the one between people and (elected) government. the gov violated it, but the only penalty clause (feedback mechanism) seems to be 'broken', as elections dont seem to fix anyhthng, and impeachment of the executive just isnt doable.

to sum up: looks like what we have is much closer to a limited dictatorship than a republic, precisely because of a lack of feedback mechanism vis a vis voters and reps.

[MMMMMM]

I don't know, brad: the government being wrong but acting in good faith (if indeed they did act in good fath) is still somehow a violation of that "contract?" Well OK but let's not forget that the government also has a clear contract to protect the American people. If these "contracts" are in conflict with each other which should take precedence, and which carries more force legally?

[Timer]

[ QUOTE ]
Jim,

Last election I voted for Ralph Nader. So, this time I'm not going to vote for a party canidate that takes away votes from democrates and leaves the republicans in charge.

Mark


[/ QUOTE ]

Nader didn't take votes away from anyone. Those who voted for him might not have voted for anybody; they might have voted for democrats; they might have voted for republicans. Either way, every vote for Nader was a vote for Nader--not a non-vote for someone else.

[adios]

Would you say the US government is being honest when it states that it has not found WMD's in Iraq? If so why wouldn't they lie about that? Again let me point out that Congress voted. From a previous post:


Senate Approves Iraq War Resolution

The Senate vote authorizing an attack on Iraq was 77 authorizing and 23 for not authorizing. In the House it was 296 authorizing and 133 for not authorizing. Didn't know the Republicans had that big of a majority [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. Gephardt, Lieberman, and Kerry all voted for the resolution.


Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., Presidential Candidate

An excerpt from the interview:

CAVUTO: Well, Howard Dean seems to give the impression he'd pull all our troops out.

GEPHARDT: I think that is a big mistake. I mean, you can disagree on why we went there and what the information was and all of that. I understand all that.I still believe it was the right thing to do because I’m worried about weapons of mass destruction in the United States. And I didn’t just listen to George Bush. I went to the CIA myself, listened to all of their information. I talked to former Clinton officials, and they all felt there was a real danger, that either he had weapons or the components of weapons.

CAVUTO: Where do you think those weapons are now?

GEPHARDT: I don’t know. Hopefully, we’ll find what was there and what wasn't there. I also think we need a blue ribbon commission from the outside, not just Congress, looking at the intelligence.

CAVUTO: But some of your colleagues, sir, have said that the president misled the people. Do you think that this president misled either you or your colleagues about the presence of weapons of mass destruction, or the threat of Iraq, period?

GEPHARDT: I didn't just take his word for it. It may be that, in the end, we find out that the intelligence was not what the CIA thought it was, or even former Clinton administration officials thought it was. That is why we need an outside commission. You are getting into partisan fights now in the intelligence committee. You are never going to solve this that way. We need outside sources.

But let me go further. Put all of that aside. Once we’re there, we cannot fail. We cannot just cut and run and leave the place, as we did Afghanistan in 1989, in chaos. It will be the mother of all terrorist training camps. It will be a continuing source of turmoil and problems not only for the region, but for the United States as well. So we've got to see this through but we need help. The president is failing us by not getting the help we need.

Hussein being in possession of WMD's has been US policy ever since the Gulf War. I guess Gephardt is a hawk too believing that the Iraqi action was in his words, "the right thing to do.

The Democrats in Congress were briefed on the situation and many simply reached the same conclusion that Bush did. Also a leading Democratic candidate for President as well as being an experienced leader in Congress comes out and states that the action in Iraq was the right thing to do.