"Dan White" wrote in
:

"Nate Perkins" wrote in message
. 125.201...
"Dan White" wrote in
:

"Rick Cook" wrote in message
...

There's simply no point arguing with him. He can't teach, he won't
learn and he just wastes your time.


I know, I said the same thing myself a week ago. Your post on
terrorist activity in Iraq was good, and provided everything a
reasonable observer would want to see. Couple this with the 12
year cease fire, violation of every resolution, and it is plain we
had to act. People also forget that it also became necessary to
force the UN's hand. Bush was right when he said that the UN will
become irrelevant if it cannot enforce its own resolutions. Funny
as it sounds, Bush probably helped save the UN by following through
on its "threats."

"Plain we had to act" ... "violation of every resolution" ... "had to
force
the UN's hand". Yeah, sure. You conveniently forget that all of
those claims for urgency of action, violation of resolutions, and
need to force the UN hand were all because Iraq didn't disclose its
WMD programs to our satisfaction.

Of course the tragic joke is that we now know that it had no WMD
programs to disclose.

Frankly, and I've said this in the past, I never cared whether they
had WMD's locked and loaded or not -- as far as justifying action is
concerned. WMD's were never stated to be an imminent threat -- that
was something the dems like to ascribe to Bush. He said they were a
"gathering threat" and they certainly were. I'm sure even you
wouldn't disagree with the scientists who attest to the fact that
Saddam had the intent to restart his nuclear program as soon as he
could. There was plenty of justification of taking out this loose
cannon, but I'm not going to 'splain it again!

Right, you and about 25% of the country would have gone along with the
plan had it been known there were no WMDs.

"Imminent threat." "Gathering threat." "Mushroom cloud." In my
opinion, that's hairsplitting. In the wake of 9/11, when the President
was talking mushroom clouds, the implication to a scared population was
pretty obvious. Without that implication, the country would not have
committed troops to Iraq. Certainly, we would not have committed them
if the purpose was only to embark on a vague mission to "spread
democracy and freedom."

As for Saddam's hypothesized intent, nobody can say for sure. Certainly
he was a bad apple. Equally certainly, he destroyed and dismantled his
WMD efforts after the first Gulf War and did not restart them. (Duelfer
report). He was economically and militarily contained by most any
measure.

I also don't believe we can say there were no WMD's so confidently.
The evidence showed they were hiding something, and God knows we
telegraphed our punch for months and months.

This is surprising to me. Given the preponderance of evidence on the
WMD question, why would you continue to doubt the conclusion of every
group that has reported on it? Why would the President's own handpicked
lead inspectors (both of them) report the conclusion that there were no
significant WMD programs?

Of course nothing can ever be 100.00% certain, but there reaches a point
at which alternatives become exceedingly unlikely.