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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (791521)	6/23/2014 11:23:19 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578891

>> I personally think that Bush and Cheney WANTED to go after Saddam and they would have found some other way to do it if the WMD thing hadn't worked. There is no doubt that they had determined Saddam needed to go. And there were plenty of reasons they could have used. I believe Saddam should have been removed during the 90s after violating the terms of the cease fire and with further violations of the UN resolutions. That was sufficient for our leadership to have concluded that he should be removed. I just think they believed the WMD was a slam dunk based on the intelligence they had and decided it was easier to sell to the public than anything else. The public will not tolerate long-winded, boring explanations; they needed the sharpest, most apparent reason for his removal and based on Tenet's analysis WMDs were it. Still, Bush, commenting on the "slam dunk" reference, said the following: "I believed him. I had been receiving intelligence briefings on Iraq for nearly two years. The conclusion that Saddam had WMD was nearly a universal consensus. My predecessor believed it. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill believed it. Intelligence agencies in Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, China, and Egypt believed it. As the German ambassador to the United States, not a supporter of war, later put it, “I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they still have … weapons of mass destruction.” If anything, we worried that the CIA was underestimating Saddam, as it had before the Gulf War." AFAIK, no serious person has disagreed with this account. Given Bush's reliance on history for his "legacy" and knowing that some day, all these facts will be out, I think it unlikely he was just making it up. (This is from his book, which one would presume was a thoughtful reflection of the events.) Hans Blix, himself, says in his own book (written near-contemporaneously) that HE believed Saddam had WMDs. So, it wasn't an off-the-wall consideration. >> Then Bush's thing with the mission accomplished sign seemed a bit "highschool". In retrospect, yes. But it is one of those things that, in the moment, looked harmless. It was a blunder by Bush's staff and he has said as much. A pretty minor thing in the overall scheme of things, but the left-wing media had (still has, actually) a field day with it. I'm sorry for all the people who lost their lives there and there were a few pretty difficult times while my son was there. But I still believe we did what needed to be done even though it turned to crap afterward. While the country is in a mess today until we see how it is ultimately sorted out I won't call it failure (whether you & I are around long enough to see it sorted out is another matter). I think Obama has definitely made the situation worse than Bush left it.