A very interesting question, on the surface.

You might remember a little incident that took place a little over 3
years ago, in New York, Washington D.C. and Shanksville, PA.
Islamo-fascists hijacked 4 planes and crashed them killing over 3,000
people.  In fact, they have been bombing and killing Americans and
others for over a decade.  This was only the first time we actually
responded and did something to prevent further attacks.

Now, if you look at the record, Saddam Hussein has used WMDs, a lot.
Against his own people and against Iranians.  After the Gulf War, we
found and destroyed multiple tons of WMDs in Iraq.  When the inspectors
were thrown out in 1998, Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, bombed
for a few days and that was it.

We now know that Saddam Hussein had ties with Al Qaeda and other
terrorist organizations.  Heck, he paid $25,000 to the family of any
Palestinian suicide bomber that blew up in Israel and this during the
time there was an "embargo" against him.  The present al Qaeda leader in
Iraq, Al Zarkawi, the one causing all the problems, got to Iraq way
before Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Given that 9/11 had occurred, given that France, Germany and Russia were
working to get the sanctions lifted from Iraq and given the hatred that
Saddam Hussein had for America and finally, given the history of WMD
usage and the firm and unequivocal reports from the CIA and British
Intelligence and any other intelligence service in the world to the
certainty of the existence of WMDs in Iraq, what would the president of
the United States do.  Also remember that his predecessor had talked
tough about WMDs in Iraq.  And remember that the Senate Intelligence
committee had ALL the same intelligence and concurred with the
assessment, I ask again, what is the president of the United States to
do?

If GWB had done nothing, the sanctions would have been lifted, probably
in 2003.  As I said, the French, Germans and Russians were pushing hard.
They needed to sell some stuff to Iraq.  Once the sanctions were lifted,
we now know that Saddam Hussein had the infrastructure to quickly
recreate his WMDs that had been destroyed.  Then he would have either
used them or given them to surrogates to use against us.

Then again, he would not have shipped his existing stockpiles elsewhere
or hidden them in the desert and he would have had them right away.

Do remember that the current challenger for the White House was
adamantly for attacking Saddam Hussein, without UN approval way back in
1998.  It's in the record.  He only changed his tune recently.

BTW, an added bonus of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was the revelation by
Libya that it had a WMD program.  It was much farther along than anyone
ever thought and that would have surprised a lot of people, in the very
worst way.

Now, in comparison, we now find out that Dan Rather had been warned by
his "experts" that they could not verify his memos.  Actually, these
memos are so amateurish, it's disgraceful and anyone who even thought
they were real (outside of diehard partisans) as since backtracked or
amended their findings.

Dan Rather WANTED these memos to be real and he threw out any objective
reasoning, and his reputation.

I seriously doubt that GWB WANTED to go to war with Iraq.  I refuse to
believe that ANY president of the United States would take us to war
just on a whim or for self-aggrandizement. There are those who say he
did it so that he could win the elections.  Poppycock, after
Afghanistan, GWB could have rested right there and phoned in the
elections, that would have been the easy and safe thing to do,
politically.  And please get off the Halliburton and oil buddies stuff.
GWB did it because he saw a very real threat to the United States and
the world from Iraq and that's that.  You may disagree as to whether the
threat is/was imagined or real and that is certainly valid but let's not
ascribe all manners of nefarious motivations to the deed.

BTW, I would urge you to read the book American Soldier by General Tommy
Franks, which details the run up to the war and the decisions taken.
Inform yourself.


Denys


-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Bill Shanks
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 2:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] OT: Rathergate, the conclusion?

Something ironic here ...

GWB gets us into a war of choice based on the threat of WMD.  After none
of any significance are found, he blames bad intelligence.
Conservatives want us to believe "it's not HIS fault".

CBS relies on a source to put out a story.  Later it is found that the
source is phoney, or very much appears to be.  Conservatives call
it "Rathergate", and jump up and down about how CBS should have checked
its facts first.

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