David S @ 32. Please provide me with the proof that Bush&Co, as you put it, was planning the invasion before the intelligence was doctored or provided.
I will however provide you with some facts of my own about Iraq that you can easily look up if you pull your head out of your rear.
1) Every single intelligence organization in the world, every single one bar none, believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs and the capability of quickly reconstituting any and all WMD programs. He had the scientists, the infrastructure, the willing enablers like France, Germany, China, and Russia that would sell him whatever he needed to restart them, and the track record of not only using them but using them on his own people. How far of a stretch is it to conclude that someone willing to gas his own people would use WMDs on others?
2) Not a single democrat disagreed with the intelligence because that intelligence was generated during the Clinton years. Bill Clinton made it a monthly thing of reminding us how dangerous Iraq was because Saddam refused to comply with the umpteenth UN sanction or mandate.
3) The entire “the intelligence was faked or fabricated” meme is an after the fact lie itself that the left propagated in the hopes of making the Iraq war they did not like already unpopular with the American people. If anyone had a plan to undermine or stop the war it was the left, and this lie about the fabricated intelligence was what it spawned. Not the other way around.
And if the only legitimate wars are ones that require a Congressional declaration, something that has not happened since the Korea war BTW, then you better demand Clinton be hauled into court for Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia ASAP. And the same applies to Obama since he intends to continue fighting the GWoT. Then again, when Clinton was engaging into, what according to you where illegitimate and illegal wars, I do not recall any leftists demanding he be impeached, tired and hung like they do about Bush. And I have a feeling the same will now be the case with Obama. In fact my bet is idiots like you will be spinning to rationalize why suddenly whatever Obama does is OK. Do not try to say otherwise. I know how your type thinks. The real and original opposition to Iraq had nothing to do with intelligence or morality: it had to do with the 2004 elections and the democrat machine’s need to put one of their own in the WH. It was supposed to carry over into the 2008 election except for the fact that the surge made Iraq a non-issue.
You might have had a credible argument about Saddam being well contained on 9-10-01. I disagree completely with that but that’s not the point. On 9-11 everyone but idiots like you realized that nobody could make the claim that Saddam was contained and be believed. You may also not wish to remember this but before 9-11 Russia and France where a few months away from convincing the UN to drop the sanctions against him. And they where doing this for the same reason they tried hard to block Bush’s UN request: they had exclusive oil contracts with Saddam worth trillions of dollars that would go up in smoke if Saddam was removed. With Bush being assaulted by the liars claiming he stole the elections and so forth both of these countries thought they would get the US to finch and let Saddam go. And then you could bet they would be the first to line up to sell Saddam whatever he needed to reconstitute WMD programs in a matter of weeks. You do remember the thousands of tons of chemicals that you leftists labeled as non-WMDs because they could also be used to pesticides (enough to clean out all insects in the Middle East mind you)? What about the 500 tons of yellow cake? Nah, you don’t of course. Saddam was paying terrorist to bomb people in Israel and had already tried to assassinate a US president. After 9-11 you will pardon smart people for figuring out Saddam was one heck of a danger and that fighting in Afghanistan was logistically unsustainable and that just maybe Iraq needed to be fixed. Besides, Saddam was given every opportunity in the world to comply and prove his compliance. And yet people like you side with him and make excuses for him. Say a lot about your motives and character.
As for our troops not having proper gear you can thank Bill Clinton for that. He was the one that cut both the defense and the intelligence budgets as well as deciding to have our people treat terrorism as a crime to be solved after these bastards killed our people. I will remind you that the troops won the fight in a matter of weeks with minimal loses. We won that conflict and that is what Bush declared. You are a damned liar if you try to pretend it was anything other than that. But you do have a point that what followed that lightning fast invasion and defeat of the Iraqi military could have been handled a lot better. However one needs to remember that by then Bush was already constantly being harassed by the media and people like you with the sole purpose of finding fault in anything and everything that was done or not done. Everything was reported as a failure or mistake while any and all successes where simply ignored. I am sure having to fight the massive anti-war propaganda campaign from the democrats and the MSM contributed to our president not making the though decisions needed in Iraq for fear of having that too used as negative propaganda. No war or post war occupation in the history of the planet has been without problems. That the left demanded perfection and then took active steps to undermine the war was proof that from the start they intended to screw over the president and the troops. The fact is that president Bush eventually did correct his mistakes and ordered the surge. Yeah, the same surge people like declared failed even before it was implemented, and which Obama recently credited as having succeeded. You see the repeated pattern here right? We are at war, our troops are in harms way, and treasonous leftists are undermining the effort at every opportunity. And then for simple political gain!
Spare me the drivel about caring for the country and troops please. Especially when you then quantify that with drivel about how this new emperor without clothes that in 2 weeks in office has managed to make more idiotic blunders than Bush did (and the only reason again the American people do not hear about it 24/7 is that he has a (D) next to his name) is going to make things better. Let me give you a prediction: Obama will have to go even farther than Bush did to stop the terrorists, because contrary to the bull about how his election would suddenly make people love us and stop wanting to kill us, the terrorists will up the ante. They see a weak and in experienced nobody in the WH and figure they have been given a golden opportunity.
Get ready for the next attack. Obama now is getting the real intel on what is going on, and all he has done is pay lip service to make it look like he is following up on his campaign promises, but he knows that he will not only have to keep what Bush had, he will have to do more. President Obama knows that what bush did prevented another attack for 7 years. If he changes things and we get hit he will be blamed. So he will keep what we have at a minimum, and more likely than not expand what on these things that make people like you claim Bush was evil for doing them. I am sure you will be here making excuses for Obama doing the same stuff, or even more, than Bush did when that time comes too.
