Wow. I must have been drunk.
I thought she had bad breath and sat on a pack of Chicklets.
Turns out, i must have had her upside down...

Can't answer that one. We went to war under false pretenses with one hell of a sell job. There were a group of hawks 9wolfawitz, rummy, cheney, ultimately cornwallace) that wanted that to occur and found a ripe environment to do so. Its basic policy theory.... nothing is new, just a bunch of packages waiting to be thrown through the right window when it opens.

As for oil, daddy etc... I've never understood their reason why. But it was always pretty clear to me it was bogus (and I said so repeatedly in here). It sucked because I voted for him and couldn't point at the other side to blame them.

gotta fly.

gnight

The comments and rantings on here are kinda funny. However, here are a few facts:

1) Curveball wasn't *the* source for the intel on mobile biological weapons labs. There were four different sources, two of whom still remain confidential sources today.

2) Curveball wasn't even a US asset. He was a German asset.

3) Up until Powell's speech, only a single US agent / operative was allowed access to Curveball. His or her reports on the man were, how shall we say, less than "glowing."

4) There had always been grave concerns over the validity of Curveball's information.

5) It had been widely assumed by the US intelligence agencies since about 1995 that small, possibly mobile bio facilities were the trend.

6) There was other documentation indicating that Saddam was actively investigating mobile BW facilites / production units.

7) A bigger source of concern was the Iraqi rebuilding of their castor oil production facilities in 1999 and 2000. The spent bean pulp could be used to produce ricin.

8) As WikiLeaks revelations have pointed out, chemical weapons were discovered in Iraq post-invasion.

This whole thing is either a last, desperate gasp by liberal media types to somehow discredit the toppling of a ruthless dictator who had deep ties with terrorism since the 1970s, or as a means to deflect how much of a whiny little man-b*tch poor little Idi Amin Jr. has become since his coronation.

By the way - on a related topic - I highly recommend that you watch the three-part miniseries called Carlos, which details the career of Carlos the Jackal. It's really rather good, though very long.

And if you want a real, genuine reason why Iraq was so much of a concern, consider the following from the 9/11 report:

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides’ hatred of the United States.

and

Though intelligence gave no clear indication of what might be afoot, some intelligence reports mentioned chemical weapons pointing towards work at a camp in southern Afghanistan called Derunta. On November 4th, the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment of Bin Laden charging him with conspiracy to attack U.S. installations. The indictment also charged that al Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hezbollah. The original sealed indictment had added that al Qaeda had “reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq.” This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on the Iraqi- Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was “probably a direct result of the Iraq-al Qaeda agreement.” Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the “exact formula used by Iraq.”

Clarke, in this case, is Richard Clarke (I believe).

Of course, the teedubbya types out there are only happy when they can blame Winky McFlightsuit with something. if it isn't "rushing" to war, than it isn't "connecting the dots." Just so long as he can blame a Republican for something, he's good...

Ladies and gentlemen, that was j "tax refund" potts dropping by for some comic relief.

Give him a big hand, everyone!!!!!!!

=d> ....for pointing out in post 84 key information you want to bury or forget. Lying by omission is a bit strong, so we'll just go with the the whole maybe you "couldn't recall" tapdance.

I read something a while back about Sadam's last few days... he told someone he purposly led us to believe he had WMDs... and being the man he was he couldn't back down once the threat of war was there... he had time. we gave him a month or so notice we were coming in... he could have stopped the war..

I do believe that is entirely correct. Had the truth gotten out about Iraq's weakness, part of the country could have become Iran. Peace through strength.

SAdddam was a WMD if you think that's bs ask the Kurds and Kuwaiti's he massacred. WMD's were not the main reason Bush attacked Iraq they were what Colin Powell used used propaganda to get the cry baby Liberals over the hump. Think all those troops in Iraq were there to just fight a war? Look what's happening there now that we no longer have a stabilizing force in the middle East..

What's happening there now? I thought we were still in Iraq?

Egypt would be some cool property to have... 😟

It is too bad that Obama pulled our troops out of Egypt.

ya... you'd think we would get along with them better... Obama being a muslim and stuff.... 😟

which brings up another question... would Obama have gone into Iraq..?? 😕

I don't think so. Mecca is in Saudi Arabia.

HD the force in Iraq is down from 150,000to about 26,00 with no combat troops. Before , we had enough numbers to dispatch troops in a few hours notice to other countries if needed. This is no longer possible and so Rabble rousers have no worries except a few 2nd rate local forces..

This was the Plan all along by AL-Quaeda, that is to divert us to Afghanistan . This of course opens up the All the countries in the Oil rich regions which if affected could bring us to our Economically challenged knees..

Wait a minute....

You wanted Iraq to be some kind of advanced forward base so we could send troops all over the Middle East and invade more nations?

And just how much can I raise your taxes by to pay for this Middle East/World police role?

If your numbers are right, there are still 26,000 US troops too many in Iraq.


Them AlQuaedas must be pretty smart to have put all this over on us.

I thought Bush put all this over on us..?? 😕

If it helps any of yalls arguments Iraq did have at least one chemical weapon. I was there when it was 'found.' Thank god nothing works as intended in this desert.

Aren't these arguments old yet? Why can't we just analyze how it all went down and learn from it without blaming people?