Re: Questions and Answers
 

Bill Richardson's statement seems like it must have been taken out of context, because not even Republicans have said that Saddam had nukes.

The other statements still don't say anything about him actually having any WMD, only that he was trying to develop them, something which I don't believe anyone refutes.

Re: Disgusting Comment by President Bush
 

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Shame on you for distorting and rewriting history. But then, I realize you are just following the lead of the media and the Democrat talking points.

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Rule #1 of Republican Attack Politics :

When you haven't got an answer,
attack the person posing the question.


q/q

Re: Questions and Answers
 

Let's assume you're correct about the uranium stockpiles and that they could have been used for weapons production. Still, we knew their nuclear weapons development program was moribund. From this, Bush conjures a mushroom cloud over America. Quite a stretch.

Bush on finding the WMDS: Interview of the President by TVP, Poland, 2003-05-29:

Q: But, still, those countries who didn't support the Iraqi Freedom operation use the same argument, weapons of mass destruction haven't been found. So what argument will you use now to justify this war?

THE PRESIDENT: We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.

The "mobile labs" didn't exist. Two truck trailers were indeed found. Neither had biological agents in them. The equipment in them was used to make hydrogen for weather balloons. The information that there were mobile weapons labs was given to the U.S. by the agent named "curveball," who had already been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar.

As for the "good police work," In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then top anti-terrorism adviser to look for a link between Iraq and the attacks, despite being told there didn't seem to be one. As early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan. When Rumsfeld was told we needed to bomb Afghanistan, he responded that there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq.

According to Richard Clarke: "The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."

On September 15, Wolfowitz presented the argument, at Camp David, that the U.S. should attack not Afghanistan, but rather Saddam Hussein. James Woolsey said Iraq should be the target, ""no matter who should be responsible" for 9/11. This wasn't police work.

Really, I'm astounded that people still deny that the administration oversold their case. All administrations do this when going to war. Powell's UN presentation was an embarrassment, but no more so than, say, the State Department White Paper on Vietnam issued in 1964 when Johnson was planning to go to war.

Bush is the president who took us to war. The buck stops with him. The Dems who gave him the go-ahead are also disgusting. I'm not a Democratic partisan, I haven't supported or voted for one in quite some time. I've posted here about Kennedy's Chappaquidick lies, Kerry's horrible campaign, what a poor choice Edwards was for VP because he's an empty suit, what a horrible leader Harry Reid is, what disgusting peoples John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were, on Bill Clinton's pathological lies, etc.

Re: Questions and Answers
 

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In all fairness to Sen. Kerry, given the climate at the time, he really had absolutely no choice but to vote for military action in Iraq. I agree that it was wrong of him not to do his own check of the intelligence which lead to the vote for military action in Iraq, but even if he had, he really had no choice but to vote in favor of it.

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No Choice??? Seriously, you must not have seen that a few people actually did vote against it. He had the choice, and chose yes. If you say it was politically advantageous for him to vote for it, you have a point. And you showed why most people voted against him, because he has no spine, will do whatever it takes to get elected, even if it sacrafices his principles.

Re: Powell and Rice
 

Powell did indeed say Iraq had "some stockpiles of some sorts of these weapons still under their control." But, as you correctly point out, it's much weaker than it was before the sanctions, and Powell further states that they have no capacity to deliver the weapons, that they have not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq is not a threat to its neighbors.

But when we wanted to go to war against him, that all changed.

Re: Disgusting Comment by President Bush
 

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But it was his own false charges that are responsible for the deaths of over 2,000 Americans. Shame on him.

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Plus causing a rate of dead Iraqi's that puts Saddam's tenure to shame.

Re: Disgusting Comment by President Bush
 

Plus causing a rate of dead Iraqi's that puts Saddam's tenure to shame.
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Care to back this up or do you want to concede your dislike of Bush has clouded your judgement. I believe Saddam's number is at 800,000 (this may include Iranians that were killed in the 1980s).

Re: Disgusting Comment by President Bush
 

In sheer numbers, Bush hasn't reached Saddam's numbers yet (although the number I've heard thrown around is 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed, but don't ask me to quote it, I've been drinking and getting ready to go out), but of course, Saddam had almost 10x the amount of time.

Re: Disgusting Comment by President Bush
 

100k lol.

Re: Disgusting Comment by President Bush
 

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although the number I've heard thrown around is 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed, but don't ask me to quote it

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Well that's good, because it's absurd.