Just to explore a few of these nuggets of liberal spin:

Quote:


"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," the memo said.



I certainly expect the Bush administration, or the Clinton administration before it, or the Bush Sr. administration before that, to have a plan to deal with a situation in any potential flash-point region of the world.
Particularly a region ( Saddam Hussein's Iraq) where we had a Northern and Southern no-fly zone set up at a cost of 1.2 billion a year, to prevent Saddam from slaughtering his own citizens, where American pilots were flying missions over Iraq every day, as they had from 1991 until the U.S. invasion on March 20, 2003.

Which was a very expensive stalemate.

And especially since that prolonged indefinite U.S. military stalemate in Iraq was the justification used by al Qaida for the terror on 9-11-2001, and as rationalization for ongoing terrorism.

I'm equally sure there are plans to invade China, North Korea, Libya, Russia, or any other nation that poses a threat to the United States. And I'm not shocked ( oooohhhh, shocked, SHOCKED !! ) that there was such preparation made beforehand.

Quite the contrary, I'm sure similar pre-war preparations were made (some which occurred as real wars, many of which did not) under every Presidency before G.W. Bush's .

And this liberal-partisan argument again bypasses that the call for regime change in Iraq began under Bill Clinton in January 1998, and that the congressional record is filled with Democrat statements of Iraq's danger to global peace, to the Arab region, and to the U.S. in particular, quoted from the likes of John Kerry, Hilary Clinton, Al Gore, and virtually every other Democrat in Washington.


Quote:


"But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."



The case was not thin. There was plenty of legal justification for the war.
  • Ten prior U.N. resolutions, calling on Saddam Hussein to disarm.
    .
  • The last U.N. resolution signed in September 2002 --just 6 months prior to the Iraq invasion!-- warning Iraq to comply with inspections or face "severe consequences".
    .
  • Saddam's non-compliance with the 1991 cease-fire agreement.
    .
  • Whether or not Saddam had a complete WMD weapons program, Saddam's "material breach" of his post-1991 U.N. peace/disarmament agreement, where Saddam was pursuing WMD's, and ready to go into WMD production the moment U.N. sanctions might have been lifted.
    .
  • and most importantly, the slaughter of roughly one million of the 25 million residents of Iraq during his 25-year reign. Being unearthed in mass graves all over Iraq.


But dream on, there was no justification, sure.



The case was only thin for selling a war to the public. But I would rather have a government that does what's right rather than simply what's popular.




And the slipping of Libya into that list of other "greater nuclear threats" nations is laughable.

It was not even revealed that Libya had a nuclear weapons program, until Libya itself revealed it, after the Iraq war officially ended. Until then, no one, particularly liberals in the media, had a clue that Libya had a nuclear weapons program.

Which, by the way, Libya gave up to nuclear inspectors specifically because of U.S./U.K. willingness to invade Iraq to prevent nuclear proliferation.





Quote:


The British officials determined to push for an ultimatum for Saddam to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq to "help with the legal justification for the use of force ... despite U.S. resistance."

Britain's attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, advised the group that "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action" and two of three possible legal bases -- self-defense and humanitarian intervention -- could not be used.

The third was a U.N. Security Council resolution, which Goldsmith said "would be difficult."

Blair thought that "it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors."

"If the political context were right, people would support regime change," the memo said.

Later, the memo said, Blair would work to convince Bush that they should pursue the ultimatum with Saddam even though "many in the U.S. did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route."




I see nothing wrong with this, by either the U.S. or the U.K.

The status quo with the no-fly zones was not working.

Liberals worldwide and Islamic fanatics as well were using the U.N. sanctions against Iraq and no-fly zones as a rationalization for hostility toward the U.S.
And the U.S. and U.K. sought a more effective military solution, and (being elected governments) the U.S. and U.K. sought the political justification to sell what needed to be done to their voters, and to other nations of the world, in the necessary legal/diplomatic channels.






Quote:

( from the above L.A. Times article, posted by unrestrained id : )

In a letter to Bush last week, 89 House Democrats expressed shock over the documents. They asked if the papers were authentic and, if so, whether they proved that the White House had agreed to invade Iraq months before seeking Congress' OK.



Gee, what a surprise !
I mean hey, these liberals in Congress (John Conyers, Barney Frank, Alcee Hastings, Charles Rangel, Robert Wexler... ) have always had such nice things to say about the Bush/Cheney administration in the past, haven't they ?

Quite the contrary, they've made every half-truth, opportunistic partisan attack they could over the last four years.

I hardly expected any of these hardcore liberal/Democrat partisans to suddenly break tradition and tell the President what a great job he's doing.

  • from Do Racists have lower IQ's...

    Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.

    EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.