Conservatives not sure what to do about good news on Iran

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

He didn't break the law. Congress gave him the athority to go in. The war was lawful.

Under US law maybe.

As to why they voted for it, perhaps this offers some explanation.

I, along with nearly every Senator in this Chamber, in that secure

room of this Capitol complex, was not only told there were weapons of

mass destruction--specifically chemical and biological--but I was

looked at straight in the face and told that Saddam Hussein had the

means of delivering those biological and chemical weapons of mass

destruction by unmanned drones, called UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles.

Further, I was looked at straight in the face and told that UAVs could

be launched from ships off the Atlantic coast to attack eastern

seaboard cities of the United States.

Is it any wonder that I concluded there was an imminent peril to the

United States? The first public disclosure of that information occurred

perhaps a couple of weeks later, when the information was told to us.

It was prior to the vote on the resolution and it was in a highly

classified setting in a secure room. But the first public disclosure of

that information was when the President addressed the Nation on TV. He

said that Saddam Hussein possessed UAVs.

Later, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his presentation to

the United Nations, in a very dramatic and effective presentation,

expanded that and suggested the possibility that UAVs could be launched

against the homeland, having been transported out of Iraq. The

information was made public, but it was made public after we had

already voted on the resolution, and at the time there was nothing to

contradict that.

We now know, after the fact and on the basis of Dr. Kay's testimony

today in the Senate Armed Services Committee, that the information was

false; and not only that there were not weapons of mass destruction--

chemical and biological--but there was no fleet of UAVs, unmanned

aerial vehicles, nor was there any capability of putting UAVs on ships

and transporting them to the Atlantic coast and launching them at U.S.

cities on the eastern seaboard.

I am upset that the degree of specificity I was given a year and a

half ago, prior to my vote, was not only inaccurate; it was patently

false. I want some further explanations.

Thats just cowardly butt covering by backsliding senators. The world thought Saddam had WMD's and Saddam did nothing to make us think differently.

1) You might get some benefit reading through the debate that was held in the Senate when the resolution was about to be voted on. This sentiment was a pretty common theme prior to voting on it. The Bush administration left no chance unused to spread fear and panic in the country and went so far as to knowingly proliferate false claims of a link between AQ and Saddam that the intelligence community had already rebutted.

2) The world is larger than the US. The world was in the process of ascertaining whether Saddam was in compliance with UN resolutions and Saddam was cooperating - due to the threat against his regime that had been sufficiently established - when Bush called the UN and told the organization that he ain't gonna wait for the inspections to wrap up. He inhibited the inspectors to do their job and advised the UN to pull them out since he had decided that we were going in.

Keep the facts straight, Gary.

Saddam was not cooperating.

The report of the chief inspector proves you wrong:

Inspection process:

Inspections in Iraq resumed on 27 November 2002. In matters

relating to process, notably prompt access to sites, we have

faced relatively few difficulties and certainly much less than

those that were faced by UNSCOM in the period 1991 to 1998. This

may well be due to the strong outside pressure.

Some practical matters, which were not settled by the talks Dr

ElBaradei and I had with the Iraqi side in Vienna prior to

inspections or in resolution 1441 (2002), have been resolved at

meetings, which we have had in Baghdad.

Initial difficulties raised by the Iraqi side about helicopters

and aerial surveillance planes operating in the no-fly zones were

overcome.

This is not to say that the operation of inspections is free from

frictions, but at this juncture we are able to perform

professional no-notice inspections all over Iraq and to increase

aerial surveillance.

Transcript of Blix's U.N. presentation

The inspectors and other UN staff were withdrawn from Iraq not for a lack of cooperation from Saddam but because, as the Secretary General explained: "Yesterday UNMOVIC, the [international] Atomic [Energy] Agency and myself got information from the United States authorities that it would be prudent not to leave our staff in the region."

UN News Centre

Again, read the primary sources.

It proves nothing. Saddam kicked out the inspectors and moved everything around. So what if he let them inspect an empty facility. He wasn't cooperating at all. You just believe what you want despite the evidence in your face. Like I said, lets just drop it. I am not going to change your mind and your not going to change mine. Bush is a hero for taking out Saddam whether you want to see it or not.

It proves that the person in charge of the inspections disagrees with your opinion. I think that he knows a tad more about it that you and I combined. His report to the UN has weight in determining whether or not Saddam was cooperating. Blix said that he was. That means he was whether that's convenient to your argument or not.

And the fact that Bush asked the UN to pull the staff out of Iraq rather than Saddam kicking them out is something not even the Bush administration disputes. You can find it on the White House's web-sie. It's not a state secret and no liberal propaganda. It's an undisputed, documented historical fact that the Bush administration advised the UN on 16 March 2003 to withdraw it's staff from Iraq just as the Secretary General stated in the above quote.

Edited December 5, 2007 by Mr. Big Dog

[Marc and Olga 0]

Funny, Gary said something a few pages back and I feel like I would like to speculate...

IF Gore had been President at the time, perhaps we would have gone after the person/people responsible for the 9/11 attacks instead of being side-tracked into a war which at the time had nothing to do with terrorism.

IF Gore was president, perhaps we would have gotten OBL...

JMHO

Shudder on that

EDIT: added perhaps in my first line of speculation....don't want anyone saying I KNOW for fact what would happen.

Edited December 5, 2007 by Marc and Olga