Lumpy –
There is so much inanity in this post that I must address that which I can address in a point-by-point fashion.
“The President LIED. Was he the origin of the lie? No, but he repeated a lie. That makes him a liar. He can try to pass it off on bad intelligence, but he said it. This is a speach that is worked on for months in advance, not something he throws together the night before. The CIA advised them to lose that Africa claim, and someone in the White House weasled it back in.”
– OK, so do you even know what Bush said in his speech? Let me provide the direct quote: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Now, Lumpy and Restless, riddle me this: Precisely which part of that statement isn’t true? The British government did say that it believed Saddam had sought African uranium. Is it possible that the British government was mistaken? Sure. Is it possible that Her Majesty’s government came by that belief based on an erroneous American intelligence report about a transaction between Iraq and Niger? Yes ? but British Prime Minister Tony Blair and members of his Cabinet say that’s not what happened.
Now, Lumpy, lets look at your other list o’ lies.
-Donald Rumsefeld claimed on Meet the Press that HE KNEW exactly where to find the WMDs a few days before the invasion.
–I actually don’t know the exact claim to which you’re referring, and I would have to see it in order to comment, but I didn’t want you to think I was avoiding anything you posted. If you care, provide a link to what you’re talking about and I’ll be happy to figure out if your claim has any merit.
-Condoleeza Rice claimed that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were specifically intended for creating WMDs, which is false. They can’t be used for creating WMDs.
–This one I do know about. You have the claim wrong. The claim was that the aluminum tubes could very well be used as a distribution system for WMD (some sort of cannon as I recall). And they could have been, but our intelligence seemingly overestimated Iraqi capabilities, just as it did Soviet capabilities back in the Cold War. Ms. Rice, however, was basing her assertion on intelligence, and was not lying.
-The two trailers which supposedly are bio-weapons labs. False.
–Firstly, the claim was that the trailers could have been bio-weapons labs. That’s why they were investigating the claims: to determine whether they had been. This has not been proved false actually. The latest reports I had read had not discounted the fact that those trailers had been used at some point for bioweapon production or transport.
-The staged rescue of Private Lynch was phoney.
–You’re right, it was phony. And it was perpetrated by the army, not the administration. No one has ever claimed the administration had anything at all to do with any of that.
-The toppling of the Saddam statue by “throngs of Iraqis” was staged for US television, and only a few dozen Iraqi misfits were there, not even a couple of hundred.
–Once again, how was the administration involved in this? Sounds more like something for the networks to me. Are there allegations the administration had this staged? I think not.
-That the post-attack costs would be 2 billion per month… they are DOUBLE that.
–Gee, an economic estimate is incorrect and something is more expensive than planned? That NEVER happens in the government… Ever hear of the Big Dig in Boston? Ever heard of the projected medicare and social security expenditures? I guess we’re just being constantly lied to by every facet of the government. It couldn’ t possibly be that, one, estimates are inherently guesses, and two, they had to add things when it came down to actually doing the operations that hadn’t been thought of in planning stages.
-That the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms.
–Many have. We’re encountering resistance that actually should have been predicted. Firstly, we didn’t kill the Republican Guard and Feyadeen (sp?) – instead we let them run away or surrender and then let them go. So we have a bunch of disaffected people out there. Now, add to that the Iranian and Syrian imports that are causing trouble.
Secondly, it’s quite common for occupying troops to face hostile reaction from a segment of society. U.S. troops in post-WWII were attacked in Germany and Japan for years after the end of the war. These small number of attacks (percentage-wise) do not indicate anything about whether the majority of the population was glad to have us overthrow Saddam.
-That Saddam has some of the “most lethal WMDs” known to man, according to Bush. The most lethal WMDs are nukes, and nobody claims that Saddam had nukes now that we are in Iraq. The idea that Iraq might have actually had a nuke is laughable now.
–Now Lumpy, lets look at that construction, shall we. “Some of the most lethal WMDs” – that can also be read as some of the group of the most lethal WMDs, which obviously could include biological and chemical weapons. He didn’t claim Saddam had nukes – only that he was trying to attain them. Which, of course, he was.
Now, Restless, Lumpy, and M.Quebec, let’s recall that we did not pin the entire invasion on Saddam’s possession of nuclear weapons, which in fact was never claimed. Besides the human rights and geopolitical implications, we did make an important part of the equation ridding the world and ourselves of Saddam’s WMDs.
Everyone who is serious about national security ? British intelligence, U.S. intelligence, even Dominique de Villepin ? recognizes that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He used chemical WMDs against his own people; he admitted to having biological WMDs; and he intended to reconstitute his nuclear WMD program. To do that, uranium was required. Where does a rogue dictator shop for uranium? Impoverished African countries are recommended. The British believe that’s why Saddam sent a “trade delegation” to Niger in 1999. That may even explain the forged documents: Apparently, an African official understood that there were Europeans and Americans who would pay good money for documentary evidence that Saddam’s trade delegation had successfully completed its mission.
Suffice it to say that even if the claims weren’t perfect, the intelligence was there, and, together with the other considerations for going in, we were justified in making a preemptive military move to defend our national interests.