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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quote 007 who wrote (532175)	1/29/2004 3:20:54 PM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 769667

I'm not claiming I knew anything about Iraq's WMD during the Clinton Administration. I was just like anybody else, not looking into it extensively at all. Sometimes a headline about a confrontation would buzz by, but that's about it. To me, then, it seemed obvious that Saddam was contained and little fuss about it. Actually, the concern then was that the sanctions should be dropped due to so many Iraqi innocents suffering from them. Although I'm sure Clinton angered the Arab world to some extent, I don't think he did as much as both Bushes did. I think rank and file Arabs have always hated the US not just for supporting Israel, but also for taking oil from Arab lands and only rewarding the monarchies for it. Very little of the oil for money exchange ever trickled down to the Arab small fry. And the word on the Bushies was that they were fingered as oilmen. And then the younger Bush threatens to boycott--actually did parts of the planning--the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophopia and and Related Intolerance. There were some issues critical to Israel that the US didn't wish to address. This drew lots of hatred toward the US. So when September 2001 rolled around there were some pretty strong Arab sentiments against the US and, yes, against Bush. Then came the tragedy of 9/11. After this, the war in Afghanistan. After declaring victory in Afghanistan, with democracy installed only in Kabul but nowhere else (the respective warlords got their influence back in most of the country), rather than continuing to finish off OBL and the scattered elements of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Bush set his sights on Iraq. It was at this period that I began researching what was actually going on with respect to Iraq. I learned that most UN weapons inspectors--not ones like Kay who were tied to the Bush Administration--believed the inspectors had done a good job in ridding Iraq of its WMD. I learned that between 1991 and 1998, the evidence provided by UNSCOM wasn't about Iraqi development of WMD, rather it was about the destruction of such weapons. I noted the comments of former UN chief weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus who gave a May 2000 speech at Harvard University where he stated "in all areas we have eliminated Iraq’s [WMD] capabilities fundamentally." I also observed former chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter's comments about Iraq's potential for WMD. Ritter previously had been a very strong hardliner against Iraq. Now, however way Ritter's credibility got smeared on a matter non-related to Iraq's WMD, this credibility attack did not deter from my ability to understand that Ritter went from being very hard on Iraq to actually questioning what the US began saying when Bush took office. That there had to be a substnative reason for Ritter's change. Anyway, Bush's war buildup went on. I began a thread on SI called DON'T START THE WAR. Daily I researched international media--not just US media--for information regarding whether a war was needed. From this thread I learned so much. I observed how every time Bush's poll numbers slipped a new revelation would come out, almost always a relevalation that would later be proved false. I learned how Saddam's son-in-law, Kamel, provided western intelligence lots of information, including the fact that Iraq had destroyed and buried its WMD. But the Administration chose to only publicize what Kamel stated about Iraq's nuclear program in the late-80s, ignoring the rest. Quote007 this is a true fact: I knew there was no WMD. And you're telling me Bush knew there was WMD. How could I, mere SI PartyTime, be right on the mark on such an important issue; and Bush, the president of the United States and son of a president and sone of a CIA director, be wrong? Were I president instead of Bush, we wouldn't today be creating Gold Star Mothers!