Originally posted by BP:
Originally posted by TourDeForce:
1. Iraq regularly shooting at coallition planes patroling the no fly zone. That alone is grounds for military action according to the post Gulf War I agreements, IIRC.



i'll try to respond to these more specifically later, but suffice it to say for now that the above reasons by themselves would not have gained approval from congress for a pre-emptive attack on iraq.



See reason #1

Originally posted by BP:
the main issues that i've mentioned before and i'm talking about now is the information linking iraq to al qaeda and 9/11 (which was used so many times together and even in the same sentence during state of the union addresses that most people probably believed saddam collaborated on 9/11), mobile biological weapons labs, nuclear weapons development program, wmd stock piles, terrorist training camps.



MY point was that YOUR point is MOOT.

The declarations showed WMDs already missing before any action was taken against Iraq. Those discrepancies had to be accounted for or we could surmise it was possible they were falling into the hands of terrorists, or people who could/would sell them to terrorists. This was post 9/11 remember?

Don't you guys get it???

That crap was missing long before 1441 passed in the UN. In a post 9/11 world we can't wait around for the UN while the likes of the french stuff their pockets with oil for food money and block any meaningful action against proliferation of WMDs.

You're playing political roulette with the lives of innocent people all over the world. What will you tell the survivors of a chemical attack, who watched their loved ones die a painful death??

"We didn't have sufficient cooperation from the UN. Sorry. Yeah, ya see, some of the detailed stuff was a little sketchy so we had to ignore all the obvious stuff to satisfy our political requirements." Gawd I'm glad the adults are back in the White House.

Much of the world looks to the US for leadership in situations like this. We then traditionally would seek the cooperation of the UN. Once upon a time, the powers in europe could be counted on for their leadership role too. But now it has been demonstrated that they can be bought.

Must be that jumbly-wumbly thing happening again.