Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
There's also no evidence that the tons of weapons were destroyed. So something happened for which no evidence exists.
Rather than acknowledging this, the act here is to cite to an article like Ty does as if it is proof. This act is either stupid or intellectually dishonest.
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I could be wrong, but I thought that the US/UN destroyed tons of chemical and biological weapons in 1991, and that the existing known weapon sites were under inspection from then until 1998 (?), when the inspectors were kicked out.
I think that it was assumed that Hussein was trying to rebuild his program after he lost the first Gulf War, but I don't think that it was established that he did and that he therefore had tons of weapons in 2002.
FWIW, I don't think that Bush lied about WMD. As noted by lots of people here, everyone from Clinton to Kofi Annan to my friend Big Ed at the Fina station next door thought that Hussein was trying to get back into the WMD business. I do think that Bush and his admin exaggerated what evidence there was because they were convinced that they would find the proof after the invasion. I also think that they wanted to take him out so badly that they misled the country by linking him to 9/11 to get support for the war. I do agree that the world is a better place with him in jail, but I'm not sure that it is worth the price we paid and continue to pay, and there are lots of worse people running around that are more of a direct threat to us that we don't have the time or resources to deal with because our entire army is tied up in Iraq.
I also think that Powell was right, that we can't leave a country after breaking it. But I have a real problem with that being simply the end of the debate -- not one single person has been held accountable for all of the mistakes and goofs and errors in judgment. And these are not things or problems that were not predicted; instead, they were blithely dismissed when raised.
And we still are having problems getting our troops the equipment that they need -- did those of you who dismissed my Liberty Ship analogy last week see the stories about the production problems with the kevlar/ceramic vests for the troops? Why aren't those of you who are so outaged that a mother of a dead soldier dare question the president raising a ruckus over the continuing incompetence of a defense secretary who allows these problems to continue?
