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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (148476)	10/21/2004 8:30:54 AM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The decision to go to war was not arbitrary. It was a reasonable calculation, given that Saddam had only cooperated when confronted with threats Diplomacy backed by force was working. Had the Bush administration really tried, even more control over Iraq and the region could have been achieved in this manner. and with the fact that we were fully mobilized, and could only degrade our troop moral by waiting to roll The timeline and history and revelations since suggests Bush was rarin' to roll into Iraq on September 12, 2001. The question - why were troops already mobilized when solid proof did not exist - itself provides background support for those of us who have rationalized that Bush was going to go there, no matter what. whether the Administration had a good faith conviction that Iraq constituted a threat My answer is no. Yours is yes. My answer is based on all the evidence available now, and on the testimony of people who were either a) directly involved in the provision of intelligence and analysis to the administration or b) have since been made aware of core elements of that intel and analysis or c) were involved in the inspections and verification process pre-war.