I made the statement as general one not specific to you.
I'm not at all trying to get you to see my point of view. I'm simply pointing out how poor your debating skills are and that the argument style you use is weaksauce.

You got me. You win.

And the winner, by TKO, is...............

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/c...hael-Caine.jpg

Not a fact.

For all you guys who seem to have lost your civil liberties- could you tell me precisely which ones you lost? I ask because all mine seem to be intact.

Of course had you been in Iraq and b*tched about Saddam the way you b*tch about Bush on a public board you would be dead by now. And Uday and Usay would have had a lovely time with your wives, daughters and sons. Who would probably also be dead by now. And I know all you empathetic, save the planet liberals care about the civil liberties of the less fortunate and persecuted, don't you? Or does that only apply to certain ethnic groups? Or countries?

Kichard if you state that it is a "fact" that Bush "pushed us" into war under false allegations I would ask that you prove it. I don't think that's an unreasonable request- but I don't think you can or will.

Finally I must agree that if the fruit of Bush's efforts is a lasting democratic Iraqi government I bet his stature will go way up- as it should. And the fact is- we're almost there. Unless our next President snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

I think Colin Powell would disagree with you.

I don't think that he would agree with your statement at all.

Krichard, I am sorry for your loss. That is bigger than politics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18890-2004Sep13.html

Sorry, she's not gone gone as in dead. She's on a business trip. I was just screwing with Red Barron. Didn't mean to bring everyone down.

From the linked article:

"Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Congress yesterday that creating a new national intelligence director could guard against the type of faulty intelligence that led him to tell the United Nations in February 2003 that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction."

Faulty is not a synonym for falsified.

Also, it was not Bush who pushed for Iraq, rather he was led by the Neo-cons. Fieth, Cheyney, Rumsfeld, MacGregor, Wolfowitz, et al.

I have read several books on the subject, all of which are highly critical of the administration, all of which agree that everyone involved genuinely believed Iraq had WMD. The Neo-cons most of all. Of course the Dems also beat the drum of war quite loudly themselves....but that's inconvenient to the "Bush Lied" crowd.

I can buy that they truely believed at the time that Iraq had or was looking for WMD. I even believed them when it was all taking place. I feel duped though.

Aww, man! You can't just play around like that....too much death discussed on this board recently.

Painfully, I have to agree with you here. I'd say that 50% of the people on the Hill were SURE of WMD, and another 30-40% had some bad feeling that they existed. I also think that those numbers reflected the general populous.

Sorry, you're right it was over the line.

I can no longer carry my pocket knife on a plane.
I can no longer go to Mexico without a passport...and it takes me 5 times as long to get a passport.

We were all duped. I was convinced too. I think all of us felt kind of stupid afterwards, but then, making us look/feel stupid is what Saddam did best, isn't it? ;)

Are you saying that illegal immigration is a myth and that it has been next to impossible to cross our borders over the last 8 years?

or

Are you saying the folks who planned and executed the first 3-4 years of the invasion in Iraq did so brilliantly?

or

Are you saying that George Tenet really earned his Medal of Freedom and that all intelligence agencies have been operating at peak, GE-like efficiency before and after 9/11 until present?

or

Are you saying that the invasion of Afghanistan eradicated all Taliban and AQ forces in the first year or 2 of execution?

or

Are you saying that the bombing of the USS Cole was not an AQ act of war on the U.S. and therefore the incoming Bush Admin did not consider it important in investigating and tracking AQ in the first 3 quarters of 2001?

or

Are you saying that the Department of Homeland Security, a department that created the acclaimed Security Advisory Color Advisory System has been and is a model of government efficiency?

or

Are you saying that the various terror suspects in the U.S. that were rounded up and highly publicized really were terrorists and not either hoaxes or low-level criminal wannabes?




I'm having trouble reconciling a history of proven failure and incompetence with keeping us safe.

If you read Feith's book, he claims that there was some skepticism to the CIA's claims about Saddam still possessing all the stockpiles (the Defense Dept battled constantly with State and CIA). What they didn't doubt, and what was true in hindsight, was that Iraq's WMD programs were dormant and could quickly be reconstituted.

Why, for example, does it matter if Saddam possessed a "stockpile" of chemical weapons when those chemical weapons could be manufactured in 2-6 weeks using Iraq's dual-use precursors and dual-use insecticide/herbicide facilities? The fear was that Saddam would furnish WMD to terrorists. It doesn't matter if the chemicals were produced a few years ago or next month.