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Politics : Proof that John Kerry is Unfit for Command -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DOUG H who wrote (16933)	10/8/2004 2:29:23 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27181

Most importantly the vast majority of voters don't care one way or the other about WMDs. When asked if they agree with Pres Bush's Iraq policies they answered Yes! That's the crucial fact. Only the mainstream media and political junkies are slicing & dicing every detail of the issue. Most voters don't have time to participate in the rehash.

To: DOUG H who wrote (16933)	10/8/2004 4:13:20 PM
From: cirrus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27181

Excellent points. I do believe If George Bush, one year after the invasion, told the American people something like this: "I acted on the best information available to me to protect America. The information was wrong. We spend $30 billion on intelligence and for such critical information to be wrong is inexcusable. First, we had the 9/11 intelligence failure and now this. I'm firing the people responsible for this screw up...... and establishing a blue ribbon commission to tear apart our intelligence function and build one that works..." If the President said something like that I might give him the benefit of the doubt. There were huge errors made and I don't see any anger on his part. As it is, not one person was fired for the two biggest intelligence failures in our history. That leads me to believe the opinions of Richard Clarke, former Treasury Sec Miller and others that Bush was focused on Saddam from the start, before 9/11 and was looking for an excuse... cherry picked the intelligence that supported his case for immediate war to the exclusion of all other opinions. The exiled IRC was feeding all sorts of dubious information to the US... many in the intelligence felt Chalabi was a fraud - yet he was considered a hero by the war hawks. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in early 2001, said Saddam was in a box and not a threat - he was forced into retirement. There were those in govt who believe GB Sr erred in not taking out Saddam in 1991 and were eager to "finish the job"... Richard Pearle and Dick Cheney, to name two. These individuals were after Saddam regardless of what the UN inspectors found or didn't find. With a thousand inspectors on the ground, what was the rush to war anyway? The President has left a lot of room to legitimately question his judgement, and it's not Monday morning quarterbacking, and it's no ones fault but his. ---------------------- The threat you mentioned, a sarin laced nuke, is a scare tactic... possible, of course. but so remote as to be not worth considering. Suitcase nukes are incredibly hard to make, especially if you don't have a nuclear bomb in the first place. No intelligence said Saddam had nuclear weapons. The VX/Sarin... those are hard to work with also. Remember the Sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway? You would think a subway station would be the perfect place to release Sarin and kill hundreds. Didn't happen. Saddam used it to horrible effect in Iraq, but he dumped huge amounts of it on small areas. How would he get huge quantities to America? There are many ways terrorists can strike America to devastating effect, but we shouldn't manufacture exotic threats that distract us from the real work.