Some simple logic for you on Iraq:
You stated: "THESE GUYS AREN'T HIDING IN IRAQ!
Your implied argument seems to be:
Osama Bin Laden and his aid aren't in Iraq, therefore, the war in Iraq has no relation to the war on terror.
The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. This isn't a war merely against Bin Laden or merely against Al Qaeda. It is a war against terrorists, and there are many terrorist organizations. Many of these terrorists organizations--including Al Qaeda--were being given safe harbor and support by Hussein's Iraq. This is a fact which no one knowledgable of the facts will refute.
The "Bush Doctrine" states that the US will make no distinctions between terrorist organizations and the nations that harbor them. Since Iraq harbored terrorists, that includes Iraq. The fact that Iraq's brutal dictator used WMD's against his own people--slaughtering thousands upon thousands of them (another fact which no person knowlegable of the situation will refute)--made Iraq an even higher priority than they would have been otherwise.
The fact that the expected stockpiles of WMDs have not been found is a red herring. It's true that based on the intelligence at the time of the invasion, the US (both Republicans and Democrats) and the UN believed Saddam had stockpiles of WMDs. [And, by the way, the Democrats are plainly disengenous when they say Bush lied about WMDs, since this belief was prevalent before Bush even came to office.] If you turn the clock back to that time (an exercise the Democrats would prefer the public not do), here's what our intelligence suggested:
1) Hussein had WMDs which he had already used against his own people in mass genocide (e.g. when he gassed the Kurds)
2) Hussein had indicated intentions to develop even more potent WMDs including nuclear and biological weapons
3) Hussein appeared to have already developed large stockpiles of some of these weapons.
4) Iraq acted like they had WMD. (They threw out inspectors for years, letting them back in only when war appeared imminent and, even then, not being very cooperative. They engaged in suspicious activities, moving things around from site-to-site ahead of inspectors, etc.)
5) Iraq provided safe harbor to a number of terrorist groups, which they could have supplied with WMDs.
Iraq very clearly had both the means and the intention to develop WMDs and supply them to terrorist groups. That, in itself, was justification for going to war. The only alternative was to take a calculated risk by waiting, but the stakes for taking that risk were too high. If we lost the bet, we might learn that we lost it by waking up one morning and finding out we'd been attacked by terrorists using an Iraq-supplied WMD which would have killed many, many times the number of people who've died invading Iraq.
Bush's decisions must be judged based on the intelligence he had at the time, not on what we've discovered afterward.
BTW, it's still not certain Hussein didn't have stockpiles of WMD. I still wouldn't be surprised to learn that a lot of things got shuttled across the border. If he didn't have any but merely acted like he did, he has proven himself not only to be a most brutal dictator but also a crazy idiot. |
