Ron Garrett

I'm never shocked when chickenhawks "amen" fascist sloganeering, or that they beat their breasts and howl at the moon like the fearsome predators they be while someone else is doing the killing or being killed. I do admit to being a bit puzzled that even now they still don't get it, even when it would be clear to a lobomized half-wit that Bush has the moral compass of an Enron director and that whatever reason he had for invading Iraq, it wasn't because of any threat to the United States.

John Hancock

Right!

John Hancock
__________________
"Fascism,should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini

Ron Garrett

Just for reference:

"The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons."
� George Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati.

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment need for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." � President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.

BTW, we now know the tubes were for rocket launchers, not centrifuges.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." � President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.

VP Cheney's office had investigated and determined this was a fraud in May the previous year.

"We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." � Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the Press."

"[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." � CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening's speech by President Bush.

This was based on stories told by Iraqi dissidents in exile that US intelligence deemed not credible sources.

"We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." � President Bush, Oct. 7.

Turns out the supposed camp was in a US controlled no fly zone area.

"We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." � President Bush, Oct. 7.

Two of my colleagues from the Assn. of Former Intel. Officers published a c=olumn in the NY Times stating indications were that only three of the Czech drones remained operational, none capable of carrying a payload. After the invasion we discovered in fact only one was still in one piece after 1996, and it required work to get it airworthy.

"We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." � President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.

Where are they?

"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." � Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.

Where are they?

"We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." � Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press.

Oh that's where they are. Not!!!

"Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited." � President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.

For making hydrogen for artillery baloons. Oh horrors.

Loren Pechtel

I figured we should go in because Saddam kept giving us the finger. Whether he actually had WMD or was merely trying to build them isn't that big an issue to me. He certainly was trying and wasn't complying with the terms of the end of Desert Storm. Breaking the terms of a peace agreement is tantamount to a declaration of war.
By continuing to ignore this we were showing ourselves to be someone to ignore.

NZAmoeba

Because, as we all know, the USA has a divine right to say who can and can not do anything. Everything must go the the USA for pre-approval, ignoring this means you're a commie dictatorship and must be destroyed

VIVE LA DEMOCRACY!

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Actually, Loren's stated reasons are indeed quite sound for going to war. However, I am not in agreement with our action, given that the stated reasons by the government were not entirely honest.

Jat

Saddam was not a direct threat to the USA at all. If he doesn't have the WMD than how was he defying the USA or the UN?

BTW, many countries give the USA the finger all of the time. Are you going to demand that they all be "liberated"? Or are you just interested in the ones which have something you want like oil?

Jat

"not entirely honest"? They were outright lies.


Has anyone else noticed that all of the apologists on here irrationaly continue to support every country which invades other weaker nations? It makes one think about what their real motives and beliefs are. That they are somewhat further right than a certain historical figure.

Godless Dave

So the WMDs are east, west, south, and north of Baghdad. That's a lot of area to cover.

Ron Garrett

Consider that on the day of the 9/11 attacks, five hours after a hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon, retired Gen. Wesley Clark received a call from the White House: "I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein,'" Clark told Meet the Press anchor Tim Russert. "I said, 'But � I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence.'"

This game was rigged. WMDs or not, we were going to invade.

Whatever Bush's motives, he didn't believe anyone would accept them as sufficient cause to invade Iraq, so he made up every possible cause. He treated us like the ignorant lemmings he believes us all to be and got his way. He figured out that if you just put enough flags up on the podium the average American will shove their own head up their ass, remarking all the while on the lovely bouquet.

It's not about W.M.D. It's not even about O-I-L. It's about yet another group of lying motherfuckers in the White House who have an agenda they know the people won't support and aren't above making it up as they go. It's about the people who have died, including our own countrymen, and are continuing to die every day. This is a republic, not an imperium. That smirking son-of-a-bitch Bush deliberately took us to war on falsehoods and innuendos, and it's a betrayal of every one of us for which he should be impeached and imprisoned.