[stevepaa]

Originally posted by Jeff Higgins
Steve, I agree wholeheartedly except for one point. "Credible evidence". You pretty much nail everything else right on the head. We will probably forever dissagree on what constitutes that credible evidence and how much we need before we make a decision. There was intelligence that virtually the entire world agreed was valid. While we question it now, not many did then. The papers recently released support that intelligence.

Not so. The supposed centrifuge tubes were not agreed to by any consensus, the yellow cake was questionable at best.

In other words, I believe the decision was made on the best, most credible information available at the time. And that it was not made lightly, or with glee as some seem to believe.

There was no preponderance of information to pursuade a reasonable person with the rightly held vison of war being a last resort. Pres Bush has the trait of making decisons for the sake of making decisons and then standing pat by them until overwhelmed. Is this case he used fear and the implied threat of being on the wrong side of the American people's safety and security to quell opposition voices.

As more of this kind of information trickles out (if it in fact ever does), I think it will continue to add to the case against Iraq. There will always be folks that would accept nothing less than a mushroom cloud over Jerusalem, or New York, or wherever as "credible evidence". These are the same folks that would then cry out that we should have acted sooner.

Not so. Send a team into Iraq to capture documents and physical evidence or bribe a scientist to defect. All things never done, because it didn't meet his limited timetable for making a decision and going for it.