[Vision2020] Bush, et al. before a Grand Jury

[Andreas Schou]

On 11/30/06, Tony <tonytime at clearwire.net> wrote:
> Precisely Pat.  The left conveniently ignores the inconvenient truth that
> they were just as convinced as anyone regarding the question of WMDs.  I
> watched a documentary last night that quoted Hillary, Kerry and Ted Kennedy
> ALL saying Hussein's-WMDs were a grave threat and something needed to be
> done to stop him.  Now they are clammoring for his head as punishment for
> doing what THEY SAID he should do.

Tony --

Everybody believed that Iraq had chemical weapons, which they had used
against Iran during the Iran/Iraq war. Chemical weapons are, frankly,
no more destructive than, say, a fertilizser bomb. Some people
believed that Iraq had biological weapons. These can kill a lot of
people, but end up often killing the wrong people. Nobody believed
that Iraq had, or was anywhere near having, a nuclear weapon. Oh, and
no one believed that they had links to al-Qaida, either -- Zarqawi was
in the Kurdish autonomous zone with Ansar al-Islam, not anywhere where
Saddam had access to him.

This includes the Bush administration. They knew the information they
were spreading about Iraq's nuclear weapons program was cooked, and
they chose to tell everyone anyway. Saying that "everyone believed
they had WMDs" is obfuscation, because everyone, including me,
actually believed that they did. The question of whether they had WMDs
which were an imminent danger to the United States had a clear answer:
no, they didn't. The question of whether sanctions worked to end an
active WMD program is clear: yes, they did. And the question of
whether they would let inspectors back in when pressure was applied is
clear: yes, they would.

Given those conditions, Tony, there's no reason we should've gone to
war. Except that Bush wanted a war, so he pressured the intelligence
community to make shit up so he could have one. That's the problem we
have.

-- ACS