It is those of your ilk that practice taqiyya and kitman between our two cultures. Most truthfully, my brother, ours is the true faith of peace, taught on the point of our spears. To those who submit : peace. To those who do not : death or dhimmitude, as in the Sudan. Your use of taqiyya is better than mine, but do not call me a despised Christian again. Certainly my “rabid spewing” cannot be an example of a Christian, since I was taught at the Dar Al-Hijra Islamic Center in Virginia. We must ostracize and disallow the infidel dogs together; or are you a “moderate” abomination to Islam?

Moderate or taqiyya, which is it for you?

It is those of your ilk that foster hatred and mistrust between our two cultures. Who then is the true faith of peace? Certianly not yours if your rabid spewing is any example. I call on your Christian brothers to ostracize and disallow you. You are an abomination to my faith. Christians, go in peace. Please take your dog, “Ali” with you.

You’re so gung-ho to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”

Well, dudes, nobody’s stopping you from SIGNING UP!

If you haven’t noticed, the Army hasn’t met recruiting quotas for several months running . . .

Notice how there aren’t any now?

Slowly, the American people wake from the dream world of the Bushistas . . .

They wake and they aren’t happy with what they see.

“Your gene pool comment has considerable merit. They banished everyone with gonads to America and Australia 250 years ago.” (God, I wish I’d thought that one up)

As far as I’m concerned, Britian has always been our lap dog. When we say jump, they ask how high on the way up. Personal experience with the British, I find them snotty, snobbish, boorish, and pretty much full fo themselves.

Happy 4th, you and yours enjoy the holiday.

Again, you are right about much of the vote authorizing action against Iraq being political. Many democrat yea votes were mostly intended to give the UN a message of US solidarity.

I remember listening to the way Bush talked about the cruise missiles and WMD. Bush didn’t say Iraq had missiles that could reach the USA. Can’t remember the exact words, but they have been regularly misrepresented. About WMD, rather than say Saddam was buying uranium, he said that the British had information that Saddam tried to buy some — quite an obvious difference; and it immediately struck me that, by making such a weak statement, he was admitting to considerable CIA uncertainty on the point. Then he made it clear that the threat was NOT imminent, but that waiting for it to become imminent was not a good plan. Granted, some later administration words were less guarded, and I always thought those would come home to bite him if substantial WMD were not found. I also listened to Powell’s addresses to the UN. He didn’t have much concrete evidence, and it struck me as weak. So I guess my continued support for Bush comes from never having been sucked very far into the WMD thing in the first place.

OK, I won’t quote the Eagle to you. Bad form!

For being a poodle, Blair sure took a lot of heat that cost him a bunch of political capital. Are you sure about that?

Your gene pool comment has considerable merit. They banished everyone with gonads to America and Australia 250 years ago.

We seem to have gotten closer to the crux of our differences, and I respect your viewpoints and those of several others who post on these blogs. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to back off a bit and get some work done.

Enjoyed it.

Bush was pretty clear from the start that fighting terrorists would take a long time. They are scattered, well funded, and not-so-secretly supported by most Islamic countries. Expecting quick results is not realistic, even if you know what you’re up against. Part of what has extended the timetable is the lousy intelligence up front, the continuing lousy intelligence due to a lack of proper spies, and the infighting at the CIA, State Department, and DOD. Expecting a President to root out obstructive career professionals who thwart him from the bowels of bloated bureaucracies is unrealistic, too. Sure, he’s “in charge”, but all Presidents have noted the massive inertia of the government they “direct.”

Probably the best thing we could do for the country is to reduce the Federal Government until someone (the people, for example) can control it.

A final thought — There might be two good strategic reasons for entering and staying in Iraq — 1. Syria and 2. Iran. But it would be unwise for Bush to ever say so. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on what looks like mission creep, and you aren’t. History will have to sort that out, I guess.

I’m not convinced about access to information about Saddam’s weapons, but I don’t have that info at my fingertips right now, so I’ll have to concede the point. Congress asked tough questions? I question that. Democratic lawmakers did what politicians do. They ducked for cover. At that point in our history, to have voted against the authorization of force would have been political suicide. I really have no respect for people who don’t stand on their principals. I think there’s a lot of that on both sides of the aisle.
As far as mushroom clouds and toy planes go, if I misrepresented and overstated it, I have a lot of company in the current administration. I do recall that those were some of the scare tactics used and they have since proven false.

The Downing Street Memo. You know, I really don’t know what to make of that. I’ve read it, and I’ve read a lot about it. Being fiercely anti-Bush, I hope it blows up in his face. But I personally wouldn’t stake my credibility on a thing like that. You have an excellent argument that it’s an opinion. I think under the right circumstances, it could be made to look pretty bad, but it would be a major stretch. As for what Blair says about it, come on, man, he’s Bush’s poodle. Blair runs a country whose gene pool needs a serious cleaning. And seriously with all due respect, please don’t quote the Eagle. Everything you’ve said in this post I find reasonable until you quote The Eagle.

As far as Saddam’s thumbing his nose at the UN, heck, we thumb our nose at the UN. Bolton is an excellent example. The only reason anybody wants him to go to the UN is to kick ass and take names (not that I think it’s a bad idea, I just oppose him for philosophical reasons..anti Bush). Irregardless, I’m opposed to the war in Iraq not because I oppose war; I just think we attacked the wrong country.

My complements on your post….I don’t agree with parts of it, but it’s well done and presents some excellent points. Entirely reasonable.

Key congressmen and senators, including Hillary, had open access to information about Saddam’s weapons. Certainly Hillary had 8 years of second-hand access before that. The Congress was looking at the same information the President had, asked tough questions, and voted to authorize force.

You need to go back and find the President’s exact words about what you call “mushroom clouds” and “toy airplanes.” You are badly misrepresenting and overstating what he said.

Some people — well, one anyway — seems inordinately convinced that the Downing Street memo means something. In fact, it appears to be just one man’s opinion — a man who had his own axe to grind against the war. Tony Blair totally rejected the contents of the Downing Street memo. In fact, the lead article on page 5A of yesterday’s Eagle is headlined “Blair says Bush didn’t prejudge Iraq.” The Downing Street memo was buried because it was merely a piece of partisan opinion, not fact.

Anyway, as Matthews pointed out, democrat leaders still support the President. Naturally, they also have complaints about the details. All of us do.

Bio weapons and nuclear weapons and chemical weapons are all part of WMD and always were lumped together as WMD.

The entire legal argument from the first was Saddam’s thumbing his nose at 17 UN resolutions (not just one or another). Hillary even acknowledged when she voted to authorize force that efforts to get the UN to live up to its obligations would likely be thwarted by France and Russia. She was right again. When the UN scandalously and repeatedly failed to uphold its own legal high ground, as defined by those 17 resolutions against Saddam that it had already passed, there was nothing left to say what the law was. If the Iraq war is illegal, then it’s the fault of the UN for abandoning the law.

So, was Hillary Clinton operating under the assumption that Bush was telling the truth about the presence of WMD? Yes.

Was this her reason for supporting the authorization for the President to use force? Yes.

Do the Downing Street Memos reveal that our closest ally in the war thought we had already decided to go to war and that ‘the facts were being fixed to support the policy?’ Yes.

Does this discrediting of the WMD perogative lead us to ask the question of why Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq? Yes.

The answer, obvious to anyone who hasn’t drunk the Wingnut-flavored Kool Aid: oil.

Let’s hear it for American energy independence!

If Iraq’s secret police/intelligence bureau didn’t try to kill Bush #1, why did Clinton retaliate by sending a cruise missile to destroy Iraq’s intelligence building? Why are Clinton and Bush #1 so tight now?

How easily you ignore what Chris Matthews pointed out when he bored into Howard Dean last night on “Hardball.” Matthews asks:

“If the war in Iraq was a blunder, why don’t the top democrats join you in saying so?….Bill Clinton still stands with the president. Hillary Clinton stands with the president. Joe Lieberman stands with the president. They all do. Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat, stands with the president. You’re out there alone still saying it’s a blunder.”

Matthews acknowledged that these people differ with Bush on the details, but not on the need to remove Saddam, but continued to press Dean on why they still stand with the President.

Dean’s answer: Sputter, mumble, dissemble, …”Well, I don’t know…”

The Congress overwhelmingly approved the resolution to authorize force against Iraq. Even most of the democrat senators voted for it. In supporting it, Hillary said:

“…I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people, even his own family members, to maintain his iron grip on power. He used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians, killing over 20 thousand people….”

“In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait, losing the support of the United States. The first President Bush assembled a global coalition, including many Arab states, and threw Saddam out after forty-three days of bombing and a hundred hours of ground operations. The U.S.-led coalition then withdrew, leaving the Kurds and the Shiites, who had risen against Saddam Hussein at our urging, to Saddam’s revenge….” (just like we did to the South Vietnamese when leftists forced our pullout and the democrat congress refused to give further funding or equipment to help them defend themselves. No wonder the world mistrusts us.)”

Hillary continues: “As a condition for ending the conflict, the United Nations imposed a number of requirements on Iraq, among them disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction, stocks used to make such weapons, and laboratories necessary to do the work. Saddam Hussein agreed, and an inspection system was set up to ensure compliance. And though he repeatedly lied, delayed, and obstructed the inspections work, the inspectors found and destroyed far more weapons of mass destruction capability than were destroyed in the Gulf War, including thousands of chemical weapons, large volumes of chemical and biological stocks, a number of missiles and warheads, a major lab equipped to produce anthrax and other bio-weapons, as well as substantial nuclear facilities.”

In 1998, Saddam Hussein pressured the United Nations to lift the sanctions by threatening to stop all cooperation with the inspectors. In an attempt to resolve the situation, the UN, unwisely in my view, agreed to put limits on inspections of designated “sovereign sites” including the so-called presidential palaces, which in reality were huge compounds well suited to hold weapons labs, stocks, and records which Saddam Hussein was required by UN resolution to turn over. When Saddam blocked the inspection process, the inspectors left. As a result, President Clinton, with the British and others, ordered an intensive four-day air assault, Operation Desert Fox, on known and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites and other military targets.”

Now here’s the most important thing she said:
“In 1998, (WHEN BILL CLINTON WAS PRESIDENT!)the United States also changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change…”

She goes on to say that we should give the UN one more chance to vote before acting on the war authorization, which Bush did. And then she waffles at some length for political cover, as might be expected of a good politician.

Nevertheless, she ends with the statement that her vote “is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein – this is your last chance – disarm or be disarmed.”

So much for the loony left notion that the Iraq war was all about oil, for Bush lies, or for a vendetta.

But then there was Iraq; Iraq which had been a thorn in our side since “Poppy” Bush failed to finish the job a decade earlier. Iraq was also alledged to have plotted “Poppy’s assassination. And it is now known that key members of the bush 2 administration had been looking for and excuse to invade Iraq since day 1 of bush 2.
Well nothing unifies like war now does it. Give the people a big scary enemy. Play on the desire for revenge for 911 (easier than explaining why Osama had not been caught). So create a war. Make up the reasons for it and keep changing them. We went because Saddam was an imminent threat. Only he wasn’t. A bad man yes. A threat to the U.S. justifying war? No.
So……..we…. we FREED PEOPLE! Yeah that sells! Unless of course you stop to wonder how many other people in the world could use such help. Of course they might not be oil rich or strategically located.
It’s better to fight them in Baghdad than Boston, or Belle Plaine or Beloit! Hmmm…….. Well there certainly is no shortage of people that hate the United States. How many more so since bush took over? But do we really need to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to keep the enemy “over there”? With the investment of a few million, couldn’t we create security that would keep the enemy over there….. over there? Oh but then we would have to close the Southern border too; and that would make the bush base that loves cheap labor unhappy.
So where are we headed? Well it’s the perfect war folks. We kill an enemy and 3 more pop up. Halliburton repairs a pipeline and the insurgents blow it up. Halliburton fixes it again and you and I pay the bill! Hell, why should the terrorists come here? If you are a frustrated angry person driven to kill Americans, how much easier it is to kill them in your own land? You don’t have to worry about security or travel. Why cross an ocean when you can cross a border? They will keep coming and dying….to kill Americans…….who keep coming and dying
Long story short, it will never be over. That is what makes the perfect war. The enemy can never hurt us in any serious way. Our very actions replentish the enemy. The “threat” can be held in perpetuity! Those who profit from war get a steady cash flow. And if you are not for us you are against us! So dissent on any level is sedition!
That folks is the recipe for facism.
An aside here; my posts tend to repeat. I do not know why. I am on webtv (though I have been accused of using an etch-a-sketch) The repeats are not intentional and if they are annoying I will stop posting. If anyone knows how I can address this please sing out. For now, only a few right wingers have complained. And I live to annoy right wingers!

I fail to see how this pertains to the discussion at hand.