A Usenet persona calling itself riverman wrote:


"Scott Weiser" wrote in message
...
A Usenet persona calling itself riverman wrote:


Hindsight is always 20/20, but the fact remains that at the time the
decision to go to war was made, the available evidence supported the
president's decision.



Foresight not being 20-20 does not forgive errors discovered in hindsight.

Of course it does. If we were required to have 100% accurate information
before acting, nothing would ever get done.

If our intelligence was wrong, it was our intelligence's fault.

Or, it was just a matter of not being able to get more conclusive evidence
and having to operate on what we knew at the time.

And you
might be the only voice crying out that you still think our intelligence was
right.

I didn't say it was right, I said the president made a decision based on the
best available intelligence. It's his authority to make such decisions.


Do you still believe that we invaded Iraq because we believed that he had
WMDs??

No, we KNEW he had used them in the past, and therefore he necessarily HAD
them, and we KNEW that he was refusing UN inspections to confirm that he had
properly disposed of them, and we had EVIDENCE that he still had both WMD's
and production facilities. We invaded for those and numerous other reasons.

Even Bush has stopped singing that song, you might as well also. The
new reason is because he was a despot and impediment to Freedom and had to
go for the benefit of his people.

It's not a "new" reason, it was one of the reasons all along.

If we claim we invaded because we thought
he had WMDs, and discovered that he did not, then it makes it our error,

Not necessarily.

not his crime.

One of his crimes was developing, stockpiling and deploying WMD's. The other
crime was failing to cooperate fully with the UN in proving to our
satisfaction that he had disposed of those stockpiles.

Absent his full and unfettered cooperation, and in the face of massive
evidence of cover-ups and shell-game movements of suspected WMD's during the
12 years he was supposed to be cooperating, the president concluded that he
was concealing WMD's and that the circumstances constituted violation of the
terms of the cease fire and were one more brick on the load justifying our
invasion.

If we invaded because he was a despot and had to go, then
we were justified.

We did.


So Bush is being very careful to NO LONGER say that he invaded because he
thought SH had WMDs, but that SDs refusal to demonstrate that he had
destroyed his WMDs was in violation of the UN resolutions, and that left him
exposed to severe consequences.

Indeed.

Those are not the same statements, as one
points to SHs culpability, the other to our fallability.

No, in both cases it points to his culpability. What Bush says now is
consistent with what he said before the war. He said that our best
intelligence estimates indicated that Saddam had, and was concealing WMD's.
The fact that he failed to comply with UN inspections was part of the
evidence upon which Bush reached this conclusion. An innocent national
leader would not deliberately obstruct UN inspections that would prove his
innocence. "Guilty knowledge" and acts that conceal the truth are compelling
evidence of harmful intent.

The problem is that
nowhere does it say 'having your country invaded, your government overthrown
and your cities hammered is the punishment for violating a UN resolution'.

Excuse me? Saddam was warned many, many times that EXACTLY that would happen
if he failed to comply with the UN mandates. He was warned too many times,
in fact. He should have gotten one warning: "Comply with the UN inspections
or face destruction." Ten minutes after he obstructed any UN inspector, the
cruise missiles should have been launched.

Especially as, while it was happening, we were acting IN LIEU of the UN,
without its support or its blessing.

Screw the UN. We don't need its support or its blessing, much less its
permission. The incompetence of the UN in enforcing the cease fire agreement
is what caused the necessity for the US to act unilaterally. We waited
twelve years for the UN to do its job, and it refused. So we did it.


--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser