since there have been several news stories about the "case" for war in iraq and president bush used the veterans day speech to address his pov i'd like to get feedback from the conservative base here at CEG on why these claims are "baseless".
let's look at the most recent dispute of evidence from the january 2003 CIA report that put into question evidence that al qaeda was working with iraq to obtain wmds and train iraqi terrorists - later reported in march as undisputed evidence of a link between al qaeda, wmds, and saddamn by colin powell and even later by bush himself. the dispute over the validity of this evidence is supported by recently declassified docs from both the DIA and CIA which reported before powell's speech that the evidence was most likely wrong. this is information the rest of the world and democrats likely didn't have, yet the bush admin still used this to support their case that a pre-emptive attack was necessary.
i don't think there was any doubt from the international community that saddam maintained some degree of chemical weapons, that he was a "bad man", and he didn't like the US. however i didn't see or recall an international consensus that saddam was a major threat to the US, or was planning to provide his coveted weapons to a group that he didn't support aka al qaeda.
why did they (the bush admin) use this questionable "evidence" as a key point in the case for war in iraq, knowing before hand based on reports from the DIA and CIA that it was most likely erroneous? does this not raise reasonable cause to question the rest of the "evidence" used by the bush admin?
if the intelligence agencies warned the bush admin before hand that the evidence was likely erroneous, why should they (the intelligence agencies) take the blame?
