Originally posted by BP:
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. if those reasons alone were the litmus test for pre-emptive attack we'd be bombing half the globe right now.

Wrong; half the globe hasn't engaged in sparring with the UN and the US in the way that Iraq did for over a 10-year period. It's a unique situation that does NOT deserve to be painted with the same brush as any other conflict in our recent past. Why? 9/11 and the atmosphere surrounding the aftermath of that day is why...

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.



The Al-Qaeda link is the only card you have to play; it was weak to begin with. The rest were based off of intel estimates (some dated, yes and some that were based off of shody information provided by defectors and apparently questionable "insiders") that came from the various intelligence agencies in the US. Yes, most turned out to be proven wrong or at best inconclusive (not good either), but the UN and US estimates on Iraqi WMD capability before we factually found out otherwise still speak for themselves; to this day there are TONS of missing materials on the official tallies, which was one of the major factors that the invasion was predicated on.

Originally posted by BP:
all of which were disputed by our intelligence agencies.

Yes, but WHEN? Some small pieces of contrary material were ignored or apparently deemed insufficient to counter a decade worth of BS that the Iraqi regime made the UN and the US wade through right before the invasion.

So, are you saying Tenet was on the Bush payroll or "bribe" list when he made the "slam dunk" statement?

Please point out how many US Presidents have ignored their Intelligence Director when language that strong was used?

Originally posted by BP:
but this disputed evidence wasn't available to the masses at the time congress and the american public were asked to give their support. even powell himself later on admitted "I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaida." yet they were constantly mentioned in the same sentence. this was said time and time again based on unreliable/false information, that was noted as such before it was even mentioned. why? why didn't congress and everyone else have access to this information?

That's because NOBODY had the entire picture until well after the war had already been executed. Much of what we know know about Iraq today came DIRECTLY from waltzing into Baghdad and digging around ourselves. Intelligence estimates both for and against some of the positions that were held on Iraq were FINALLY solidified; they were no longer "estimates" but FACTS.

Originally posted by BP:
personally i don't believe that the bush admin would have gotten the green light for pre-emptive attack based on your 4 points alone. they needed to make a link to al qaeda, 9/11, nuclear weapons, wmd stock piles, terror camps, mobile weapons labs, etc in order to beef up their case for war and get congressional approval to use force.

And those links were made from using intelligence estimates that came from the CIA and other intel sources, though of course it seems that with a couple of the finer points, there was some consternation between the State Dept., Energy Dept., CIA, DIA, the UN and a couple of other parties involved.

My private pilot instructor once told me about a flight crew that so fixated on one warning light in the cockpit of a cargo plane that they ended up taking the plane straight into elevated terrain; I think the adage would apply here and that at the time, the US, it's intelligence agencies and the Bush administration had their eye on what appeared to be the larger ball at the time.

2 years later, that warning light now seems to be the topic of fixation since the mountain that the "early warning system" hollered about was apparently mis-calibrated...

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