Is there a legitimate case that the blood is on Saddam's hands?

mookie blaylock 10 · July 2007

sponger wrote:

It's obviously stupid to think that Saddam had WMD's, but it's equally stupid to think that he didn't. There's just no way of knowing, and it's hard not to say that the circumstantial evidence wasn't strong. And regardless of how he may have gotten the means and the materials, he had a history of non-compliance and he had proven his willingness to use them.

Everyone knows about the truckloads of secret goods that went streaming up to Syria just before the 2003 invasion. How can anyone say for sure that those weren't his WMD's being shipped north for safe keeping?

And who is to say that they aren't buried somewhere in the middle of the desert somewhere? Anything is possible. Of any country in the middle east, Iraq is obviously the most likely to have possessed WMD's at that time no matter what inspectors or the White House Enquirer has to say.

Of course, whether he did or didn't have WMD's really doesn't matter when considering that removal of those WMDs was never really the true agenda of the Bush administration to begin with.

But that isn't to say that a Gore administration would have done any different. Other than the oil that lay beneath Iraq, I have no doubt there was another motive behind the invasion, and I believe that motive was the immortality that comes with being a war president.

After all, it was what the country wanted at that time, and approval ratings are music to any politician's ears. To this day, I think most people in the US still cannot differentiate between a fanatical shiite fascist and a secular dictator.

And let's face it....Bush never implicated Saddam in 9/11. He never implied that Saddam had anything to do with Al Qaeda. He never even suggested that Saddam was linked to terrorism. It was Cheney who made those misleading connections, and his choice of words when making those statements were vague and indirect.

People in the US made that inference on their own. They dreamed up the Saddam 9/11 connection, and Bush merely capitalized on it to expand the fossil fuel empire and to transform himself from a Vietnam draft dodger to the emperor of a victorious army. I have no reason to believe Gore or any other president wouldn't have done the same. Well, maybe Nader wouldn't, but that's because Nader is a hippie.

On March 21, two days after announcing the invasion, Bush wrote a letter to congressional leaders in which he said: "The use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001."

Bu2 · July 2007

they didn't resort to THIS.

RolandTD20Kdrummer · July 2007

Is someone going to make me say yellow cake? .....do not drop that shit!!

Black Bush really isn't entirely a joke (or at all) you know

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTZp1qwWdoA

Bu2 · July 2007

...once you've seen one Bush, haven't you seen them all?

Cosmo · July 2007

sponger wrote:

It's obviously stupid to think that Saddam had WMD's, but it's equally stupid to think that he didn't. There's just no way of knowing, and it's hard not to say that the circumstantial evidence wasn't strong. And regardless of how he may have gotten the means and the materials, he had a history of non-compliance and he had proven his willingness to use them.

Everyone knows about the truckloads of secret goods that went streaming up to Syria just before the 2003 invasion. How can anyone say for sure that those weren't his WMD's being shipped north for safe keeping?

And who is to say that they aren't buried somewhere in the middle of the desert somewhere? Anything is possible. Of any country in the middle east, Iraq is obviously the most likely to have possessed WMD's at that time no matter what inspectors or the White House Enquirer has to say.

Of course, whether he did or didn't have WMD's really doesn't matter when considering that removal of those WMDs was never really the true agenda of the Bush administration to begin with.

But that isn't to say that a Gore administration would have done any different. Other than the oil that lay beneath Iraq, I have no doubt there was another motive behind the invasion, and I believe that motive was the immortality that comes with being a war president.

After all, it was what the country wanted at that time, and approval ratings are music to any politician's ears. To this day, I think most people in the US still cannot differentiate between a fanatical shiite fascist and a secular dictator.

And let's face it....Bush never implicated Saddam in 9/11. He never implied that Saddam had anything to do with Al Qaeda. He never even suggested that Saddam was linked to terrorism. It was Cheney who made those misleading connections, and his choice of words when making those statements were vague and indirect.

People in the US made that inference on their own. They dreamed up the Saddam 9/11 connection, and Bush merely capitalized on it to expand the fossil fuel empire and to transform himself from a Vietnam draft dodger to the emperor of a victorious army. I have no reason to believe Gore or any other president wouldn't have done the same. Well, maybe Nader wouldn't, but that's because Nader is a hippie.

...
You know we're talking about the United states and the Iraq on this planet, right?
IF there were truckloads of secret goods that poured into Syria... that EVERYONE knew or knows about... it isn't so secret, is it? And I didn't know about these... and why hasn't the White House brought this iformation forward to solidify their case? And if they DID know about these shipments... WHY wasn't anything done to stop them or AT LEAST... TRACK them when they reached their destination to VERIFY their claims??? You are basically making the claim that our military and intelligence agencies are a bunch of idiots that were out smarted by the buffons that lead the Iraqi military. I just don't see it that way.
...
As for Weapons Of Mass Destruction... yeah, we knew he had them because:
A. We sold them to him... and
B. We destroyed them from 1991 to 1994.
W.M.D.s may not have been the base agenda, but they were surely sold to the American people as the justification.
...
Regarding Gore... I believe he would have gone after Bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan... that was a no-brainer. Hell... even President Vedder probably would have done that. It was the detour into Iraq that has screwed us up. Gore would have had no reason to go for Iraq, with Afghanistan as a work in progress. And IF Gore would have won the 2000 election and the same thing that have happened... happened on his watch... would you be defending President Gore from my attacks on him? Because I would certainly still be unleashing my rage against any President that took my country down this road.
...
And I cannot speak for the rest of America, but me... personally. I was against this war from the beginning. I wanted us to 'Stay The Course'... in Afghanistan. To 'Finish The Job' that was there... to bring Usama Bin Laden to justice or give him a ride on a 2,000 lb. bomb to afterlife. I didn't want another Viet Nam/politician managed war for my country.
Oh... and I can tell the difference between a Secular Dictator and a Shi'ite Religious Fanatic. The secular Dictator kept the flow of Iran from it's borders... the Shi'ite Religious Fanatic who holds Ayatollah Khomeini as it's Patron Saint opens the flood gates.
...
And what kind of President allows his Vice President to call the shots for him?
Answer: A weak President. And one who should not be Commander In Chief of our military.
..
Finally, the American people did not make those inferences by themselves. We were sold this action with speeches of 'Mushroom Clouds' (by the way, made by the President in an address to the Nation, not Vice president Cheney) and constant reminders of September 11th when speaking of Iraq and Hussein. Don't place the blame of this action on the people of this nation... we were sold a bill of goods based on slanted information and half-truth and blatant lies. That is saying the person who is lied to is at fault... not the person who told the lie.
I disagree with you in your assumption that "Any other President" would have taken this route. Maybe a President Cheney... or a President Rumsfeld or a President Wolfowitz... But, most other possible presidents would have more than likely kept the heat on the Taliban and their co-horts, al Qaeda and Pakistan... and kept the sanctions and no-fly zones with deadly response authorized in place over the contained Iraq... because they were working. I will even go so far as to say that President George H.W. Bush would have not gone this route. He would have used his previous successful model and applied it here.
...
I don't know where you get the information to base you opinions on... but, you might want to go back and re-validate your sources.

Bu2 · July 2007

That's my first question.

What do you propose we do now?

That's my second.

Cosmo · July 2007

Bu2 wrote:

That's my first question.

What do you propose we do now?

That's my second.

...
George H.W. Bush's previous successful model?
Answer: Gulf ar of 1991. A coalition of NATO allies and Arab neighbors.
...
What to do now?
If you ask me...
A. You either get serious and put the required manpower and resources in the country to create a secure environment for rebuilding efforts to kick off into full bore mode... a total of 350,000 to 400,000 quality boots on the ground should do the trick... at roughly double the cost it is today...
...
OR
...
B. Get the fuck out and let the Civil War that needs to take place in Iraq due to the collapse of their power base... take it's course and do whatever it takes to keep the fighting from expanding into surrounding countries.
...
Either way.. it is shit.

Bu2 · July 2007

and put them back in Afghantistan, I suppose.....

But maybe it's too late, in this nasty little chess game that Bush has started.

Cosmo · July 2007

Bu2 wrote:

and put them back in Afghantistan, I suppose.....

But maybe it's too late, in this nasty little chess game that Bush has started.

...
Either way... we're screwed.
And it is our MILITARY people who are shouldering the entire weight. The American people are not feeling anything regarding this war... no rationing... no taxes... no nothing. Our military people and their families are doing ALL of the work. Waving flags and putting magnets on our tailgates and saying, "I Support The Troops" isn't doing shit.

Bu2 · July 2007

the draft, luv.

Or, do you want to wait that long?

Cosmo · July 2007

Bu2 wrote:

the draft, luv.

Or, do you want to wait that long?

..
I don't know.
But, I DO know that when a Captain or Sargeant or Specialist that has served in that battle zone leaves the military... he takes leadership and battlefield experience with him. Those are intangibles that cannot be immediaely replaced.
And I don't blame them for leaving. I cannot imagine being away from family and friends... in a hostile environment... and placing the stress of my welfare on my loved ones at home every day I'm gone. I do not expect them to continue to make sacrifices when the rest of us are just sitting on our asses at... in the comfort of our own living rooms.

sponger · July 2007

Cosmo wrote:

...
You know we're talking about the United states and the Iraq on this planet, right?
IF there were truckloads of secret goods that poured into Syria... that EVERYONE knew or knows about... it isn't so secret, is it? And I didn't know about these... and why hasn't the White House brought this iformation forward to solidify their case? And if they DID know about these shipments... WHY wasn't anything done to stop them or AT LEAST... TRACK them when they reached their destination to VERIFY their claims??? You are basically making the claim that our military and intelligence agencies are a bunch of idiots that were out smarted by the buffons that lead the Iraqi military. I just don't see it that way.

Here is a copy/paste of the washington times article. Viewing the archives at that site requires an account, so I can provide a copy/paste

washington times wrote:

October 29, 2004

Photos point to removal of weapons
Show truck convoys in Iraq before U.S. invasion

Author: Bill Gertz, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Section: PAGE ONE
Page: A01

Article Text:

U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained satellite photographs of truck convoys that were at several weapons sites in Iraq in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched, defense officials said yesterday.

The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."

The official said the convoys are believed to include shipments of sensitive armaments, including equipment used in making plastic explosives and nuclear weapons.

About 380 tons of RDX and HMX, used in making such arms, were reported missing from the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility, though the Pentagon and an embedded NBC News correspondent said the facility appeared to have been emptied by the time U.S. forces got there.

The photographs bolster the claims of Pentagon official John A. Shaw, who told The Washington Times on Wednesday that recent intelligence reports indicate Russian special forces units took part in a sophisticated dispersal operation from January 2003 to March 2003 to move key weapons out of Iraq.

In Moscow, the Russian government denied that its forces were involved in removing weapons from Iraq, dismissing the claims as "far-fetched and ridiculous."

"I can state officially that the Russian Defense Ministry and its structural divisions could not have been involved in the disappearance of the explosives, because Russian servicemen were not in Iraq long before the beginning of the American-British operation in that country," Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Vyacheslav Sedov told Interfax news agency.

Bush administration officials reacted cautiously to information provided by Mr. Shaw, who said details of the Russian "spetsnaz" forces' involvement in a program of document-shredding and weapons dispersal came from two European intelligence services.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was unaware of the information in The Times report.

"I know that there is some new information that has come to light in the last couple of days," Mr. McClellan said, noting that another news report said the amount of high-explosive materials may have been less than 377 tons, as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claims.

Asked about foreign intelligence reports of Russian troops moving Iraq's weapons to Syria, Mr. McClellan said, "I have no information that points in that direction."

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a interview on the Laura Ingraham radio show that she also was not aware of the information about Russian troops relocating Saddam's weapons to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran.

Defense officials said the information has been closely held within the Pentagon because Mr. Shaw, a deputy undersecretary of defense of international technology security, has been working with the Pentagon inspector general in investigating the Russian role in the weapons transfers.

Information in the inspector general office is not widely shared within the policy and intelligence communities.

The Pentagon is still investigating the fate of the explosives and possible Russian involvement.

Officials said numerous intelligence reports in the past two years indicate Saddam used trucks and aircraft to withdraw weapons from Iraq before March 2003. However, the new information indicates that Russian troops were directly involved in assisting the Iraqi military and intelligence services to secure and move the arms.

Documents reviewed by one defense official include specific Russian military unit itineraries for the truck convoys.

The arms that were taken out of the country included missile parts, nuclear-related equipment, tank and aircraft parts, and chemicals used in making poison gas weapons, the official said.

Regarding the satellite photographs, defense officials said the photographs bolster the information obtained from the European intelligence services on the Russian arms-removal program.

The Russian special forces troops were housed at a computer center near the Russian Embassy in Baghdad and left the country shortly before the U.S. invasion was launched March 20, 2003.

Harold Hough, a satellite photographic specialist, said commercial satellite images taken shortly before U.S. forces reached Baghdad revealed Russian transport aircraft at Baghdad's international airport near a warehouse.

"My thought was that the Russians were eager to get something out of Iraq quickly," Mr. Hough said. "But it is quite possible that the aircraft was used to transport the Russian forces."

Also yesterday, the IAEA said it warned the United States about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa after Iraq's Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted.

"After we heard reports of looting at the Tuwaitha site in April 2003, the agency's chief Iraq inspectors alerted American officials that we were concerned about the security of the high explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told the Associated Press.

She did not say which officials were notified or exactly when.

also, there's this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/25/ixnewstop.html

...

cosmo wrote:

As for Weapons Of Mass Destruction... yeah, we knew he had them because:
A. We sold them to him... and
B. We destroyed them from 1991 to 1994.
W.M.D.s may not have been the base agenda, but they were surely sold to the American people as the justification.

except for B, I have not said anything in disagreement with that.
...

cosmo wrote:

Regarding Gore... I believe he would have gone after Bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan... that was a no-brainer. Hell... even President Vedder probably would have done that. It was the detour into Iraq that has screwed us up. Gore would have had no reason to go for Iraq, with Afghanistan as a work in progress. And IF Gore would have won the 2000 election and the same thing that have happened... happened on his watch... would you be defending President Gore from my attacks on him? Because I would certainly still be unleashing my rage against any President that took my country down this road.

Here is a quote from Clinton in 1998:

slick willy wrote:

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.

It just goes to show that the lust for war crosses all political boundaries. Would I be defending Gore? That question is only appropriate if I was defending Bush. I'm not defending Bush. I'm only saying that is he being unfairly singled out when he is just another politician.

...

And I cannot speak for the rest of America, but me... personally. I was against this war from the beginning. I wanted us to 'Stay The Course'... in Afghanistan. To 'Finish The Job' that was there... to bring Usama Bin Laden to justice or give him a ride on a 2,000 lb. bomb to afterlife. I didn't want another Viet Nam/politician managed war for my country.
Oh... and I can tell the difference between a Secular Dictator and a Shi'ite Religious Fanatic. The secular Dictator kept the flow of Iran from it's borders... the Shi'ite Religious Fanatic who holds Ayatollah Khomeini as it's Patron Saint opens the flood gates.

You say you were against the war from the beginning....well that just goes to show that it was possible to see through the bullshit....it's just that most people did not want to see through the bullshit. And that is why Bush's "lies" are not to blame as much as America's eagerness to wage war and live in fear.

And what kind of President allows his Vice President to call the shots for him?
Answer: A weak President. And one who should not be Commander In Chief of our military.

That has nothing to do with what I posted. I didn't say he was a strong president.
..

Finally, the American people did not make those inferences by themselves. We were sold this action with speeches of 'Mushroom Clouds' (by the way, made by the President in an address to the Nation, not Vice president Cheney) and constant reminders of September 11th when speaking of Iraq and Hussein. Don't place the blame of this action on the people of this nation... we were sold a bill of goods based on slanted information and half-truth and blatant lies. That is saying the person who is lied to is at fault... not the person who told the lie.
I disagree with you in your assumption that "Any other President" would have taken this route. Maybe a President Cheney... or a President Rumsfeld or a President Wolfowitz... But, most other possible presidents would have more than likely kept the heat on the Taliban and their co-horts, al Qaeda and Pakistan... and kept the sanctions and no-fly zones with deadly response authorized in place over the contained Iraq... because they were working. I will even go so far as to say that President George H.W. Bush would have not gone this route. He would have used his previous successful model and applied it here.
...
I don't know where you get the information to base you opinions on... but, you might want to go back and re-validate your sources.

When you refer to the less-severe actions by former presidents, you refer to presidents who acted under different circumstances. None of those presidents had the opportunity to address a nation that had just been attacked on its own soil, thus being under an elevated level of fear.

Clinton launched airstrikes against Iraq and Eastern Europe just to draw attention away from his own domestic political scandals. Imagine what he could've gotten away with if all he had to do was put the words 9/11 and Saddam Hussein in the same sentence?

Why am I having to explain obvious points to people? I think the answer is that people have such a raging hard-on to slag bush and blame him for everything that has gone wrong, that they think anyone else who isn't doing the exact same thing must be defending him. Defending him is not what I'm doing. I'm merely saying that the anti-Bush rhetoric has a tendency to be just a tad be partisan and one-sided.

sponger · July 2007

Bu2 wrote:

Valerie Plame's husband was sent to Africa, as our US Ambassador, to see if Saddam had, in fact, been purchasing uraniam there.

Valerie's husband realized the answer was no.

Valerie's husband then turned around and tried to say so, to anyone who would listen.

Valerie Plame, herself, then, was outed.

Oh, and I guess that means Saddam definitely did not have WMDs. If you read my post carefully, you see that I saying it's impossible to say whether he did or didn't, but that circumtanstial evidence would say that it's probable that he did. I am well aware of what happened with Plame, but proving that he didn't purchase a certain thing from a certain country doesn't mean he doesn't have anything at all.

even flow? · July 2007

NCfan wrote:

While it is accepted these days to blame the death and destruction in Iraq on the Americans and especially BushCo, isn't there a case to be made that Saddam is the one who is responsible? And at the very least, isn't this worth talking about? I never hear anything about this in political discourse.

- It's pretty clear that Saddam was condemed by the UN and nearly every major country on Earth.

- Saddam refused to come clean about his weapons programs; stalling, lying and playing games with inspectors and the international community for over 15 years.

- Be it right or wrong, the United States decided to act with the purpose of removing him from power. This was cleary stated several times, and Bush even gave Saddam and his sons a 48 hour ultimatum to leave the country or face invasion.

Somebody please give me a legitimate reason why Saddam did not leave or come clean? His military was almost non-existant. He knew he and his sons would face certain death if invaded. Why is it that nobody blames fucking Saddam for this bullshit??????????? It is his ego, not Bush's that is to blame...

I bet you remember when Saddam was democratically elected back in the day, eh?

Funny how long the line of bullshit is, it always seems to come back to that one country who needs to have it all.

NCfan · July 2007

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

They knew very well what would happen. They've had their hands in this for years. Watch the clip Roland posted.

Funny, the same could be said for Saddam and his cronies. I just think that when the writing was on the wall that the US was gonna invade, Saddam should have realized that his time was up, his days were over as president of Iraq. He should have stepped down and sought asylum in Cuba or some other country that would have him. He had the money and the resources to just leave. Instead, he called on his country to fight the Americans. Eventually he was caught in hole not too far away from Baghdad and hung for war crimes, while his two kids didn't last but a few months before they were cornered in a house and killed. No doubt Bush made a mistake or two in this war, but it was Saddam that made the biggest mistake of all, and it was his mistake that has lead to so much bloodshed.

RainDog · July 2007

NCfan wrote:

Funny, the same could be said for Saddam and his cronies. I just think that when the writing was on the wall that the US was gonna invade, Saddam should have realized that his time was up, his days were over as president of Iraq. He should have stepped down and sought asylum in Cuba or some other country that would have him. He had the money and the resources to just leave. Instead, he called on his country to fight the Americans. Eventually he was caught in hole not too far away from Baghdad and hung for war crimes, while his two kids didn't last but a few months before they were cornered in a house and killed. No doubt Bush made a mistake or two in this war, but it was Saddam that made the biggest mistake of all, and it was his mistake that has lead to so much bloodshed.

You could say that Ronald Reagan made the biggest mistake of all when he empowered Saddam as a means of keeping down Islamic Fundamentalism.

Unless your goal is to keep Islamic Fundamentalism down (and, boy, if there's anything you get all frothy about, it's keeping Islamic Fundamentalism down), then he did a good thing and the Bushes made the biggest mistake of all when they made Saddam our enemy.

Throughout all of this, though, Saddam has always been Saddam. You go on and on about how Islamic Fundamentalists need to be wiped out. That Sharia law is the greatest enemy the west has ever known. You know who was great at keeping fundamentalism suppressed? You know who was absolutely fan-fucking-tastic at keeping Sharia law out of his country? Saddam.

FredFlintstone · July 2007

sponger wrote:

It's obviously stupid to think that Saddam had WMD's, but it's equally stupid to think that he didn't. There's just no way of knowing, and it's hard not to say that the circumstantial evidence wasn't strong. And regardless of how he may have gotten the means and the materials, he had a history of non-compliance and he had proven his willingness to use them.

Everyone knows about the truckloads of secret goods that went streaming up to Syria just before the 2003 invasion. How can anyone say for sure that those weren't his WMD's being shipped north for safe keeping?

And who is to say that they aren't buried somewhere in the middle of the desert somewhere? Anything is possible. Of any country in the middle east, Iraq is obviously the most likely to have possessed WMD's at that time no matter what inspectors or the White House Enquirer has to say.

Of course, whether he did or didn't have WMD's really doesn't matter when considering that removal of those WMDs was never really the true agenda of the Bush administration to begin with.

But that isn't to say that a Gore administration would have done any different. Other than the oil that lay beneath Iraq, I have no doubt there was another motive behind the invasion, and I believe that motive was the immortality that comes with being a war president.

After all, it was what the country wanted at that time, and approval ratings are music to any politician's ears. To this day, I think most people in the US still cannot differentiate between a fanatical shiite fascist and a secular dictator.

And let's face it....Bush never implicated Saddam in 9/11. He never implied that Saddam had anything to do with Al Qaeda. He never even suggested that Saddam was linked to terrorism. It was Cheney who made those misleading connections, and his choice of words when making those statements were vague and indirect.

People in the US made that inference on their own. They dreamed up the Saddam 9/11 connection, and Bush merely capitalized on it to expand the fossil fuel empire and to transform himself from a Vietnam draft dodger to the emperor of a victorious army. I have no reason to believe Gore or any other president wouldn't have done the same. Well, maybe Nader wouldn't, but that's because Nader is a hippie.

And why do you think ppl linked Iraq to 9/11? Do you even remember half the sh*t this administration said prior to invading Iraq?
"I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. "

Bush never said Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda????????????????????????
Bush never said Saddam was linked to Terrorism????????????????????????

I mean come on - just read these quotes:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_oet&address=358x1293

Al Gore was against the war and spoke out about it BEFORE Bush launched an invasion.

Dont play loosely with the facts. This revisionist history is pure crap.

FredFlintstone · July 2007

NCfan wrote:

Funny, the same could be said for Saddam and his cronies. I just think that when the writing was on the wall that the US was gonna invade, Saddam should have realized that his time was up, his days were over as president of Iraq. He should have stepped down and sought asylum in Cuba or some other country that would have him. He had the money and the resources to just leave. Instead, he called on his country to fight the Americans. Eventually he was caught in hole not too far away from Baghdad and hung for war crimes, while his two kids didn't last but a few months before they were cornered in a house and killed. No doubt Bush made a mistake or two in this war, but it was Saddam that made the biggest mistake of all, and it was his mistake that has lead to so much bloodshed.

War was happening either way. The Bush administration wanted war both logistically and politically. Giving some phone ultamatum wasn't going to change anything.
The bigger mistake was kicking the UN inspectors out of Iraq in 2002/03. Of course they hasdn't found shit. That was going to be a problem since WMD was the only logical war rationale that would simultaneously scare the shit out of idiot America and provide political cover at the UN and Congress.

Kann · July 2007

FredFlintstone wrote:

War was happening either way. The Bush administration wanted war both logistically and politically. Giving some phone ultamatum wasn't going to change anything.
The bigger mistake was kicking the UN inspectors out of Iraq in 2002/03. Of course they hasdn't found shit. That was going to be a problem since WMD was the only logical war rationale that would simultaneously scare the shit out of idiot America and provide political cover at the UN and Congress.

That didn't work well though. If I remember well, the "irrefutable proofs" that Powell presented at the UN were laughed at by all the other countries as they completely lacked true intelligence and left so much room for interpretation each country was free to see them as they wished. That's the problem with Irak, communication around the war was done in such an unintelligent manner that everyone can see "irrefutable truths" where the want.
Going to war with interpretation but no intelligence was the biggest mistake in all of this. Because Bush did not wait a little to have a clear strategy most of the blame is on him.

callen · July 2007

sponger wrote:

Defending him is not what I'm doing. I'm merely saying that the anti-Bush rhetoric has a tendency to be just a tad be partisan and one-sided.

think its beyond partisan and one-sided....it was so very clear for a very large percentage of Americans that we should not have gone into Iraq and knew it would be the worst move in a long time for this great country. When I critisize Bush and his henchmen......I frequently include all those that voted for him and those that in anyway support this guy now. He isn't an ordinary politition...not even an ordinary president...as you say...he's not very intelligent, surrounded himself with the worst people....and needs to be called out...along with all those that got suckered.....maybe in 12 years when another douchbag uses god, fays and abortion to get into power the simpleminded ones that support that doctrine will remember how they were suckered in the past.

Is there a legitimate case that the blood is on Saddam's hands?

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