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The weapons inspectors found nothing which means that there is no proof that weapons existed.

Not true as of Jan 27th, 2003. From the link:

Iraq has declared that it only produced VX on a pilot scale, just a few tonnes and that the quality was poor and the product unstable.

Indeed, even one of the documents provided by Iraq indicates that the purity of the agent, at least in laboratory production, was higher than declared.

There are also indications that the agent was weaponised.

And later on regarding chemical bombs:

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for.

The discovery of a number of 122 mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized.

Since then it [Iraq] has reported that it has found a further 4 chemical rockets at a storage depot in Al Taji.

There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared, and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It might still exist. Either it should be found and be destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision or else convincing evidence should be produced to show that it was, indeed, destroyed in 1991.

This report indicates (by my reading at least) that yes, the inspectors did find weapons of mass destruction and believed there were most likely more in Iraq's possession. I have been unable to find any indication that Blix changed his opinions between that report and the war, in all seriousness please let me know if you can find any. I much prefer being corrected when wrong.

Other than the documented inventories following the first war that were unaccounted for, there was no conclusive evidence of new weapons. Apparently, there was enough evidence to convince a lot of people they (new weapons or at least the programs to develop/build them) existed though, including John Kerry, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Pelosi, Albright, Sandy Berger, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, and Tony Blair.

I am still waiting for someone to show me anyone who said Iraq did not have these weapons before the invasion. I am beginning to believe it will never occur because approximately zero people believed it prior to the invasion.

"Regardless, we (the US) currently has a terrible disaster on our hands."

No the Iraqi people have the disaster on their hands, the US just has an inconvenient and expensive problem by comparison. It will soon be forgotten about.

While I see your point, I don't agree. Personally (that's all I can speak for) I feel we (the US) have a responsibility to help them (the Iraqis) out of the mess. I feel we are responsible for it (with which I am sure you agree) and must not "abandon" them unless they request it.

It was apparently much harder to say "if they tell us they don't want us, we won't go".

Weren't the UN supposed to have a say in whether

"the reason for the reactivation of conflict (failure to comply with the terms of the original cease fire)"

this was the right course of action.

Not sure I agree with that one. My recollection of the first war was that the UN said it was OK, then the US declared war (along with the "coalition"). The cease fire was not signed with the UN, it was signed with the US (and the coalition). I may not have a correct memory there, but because of that, in my mind's eye, it is p

Perhaps that is because you only see the suggestions as complaining. "Don't start a war with someone that isn't a threat based on lies" isn't a complaint. It is a factual statement of where the Democrats would have saved money that Jr. didn't.

Wrong. Back in 2002, the Democrats were just as gung-ho about going to war in Iraq as the Republicans. You can even go back to 1998 and hear Bill Clinton explain how great of a threat Saddam Hussein was and why he needed to be removed. Other major Democratic leaders like Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy and even John Kerry also explained why Saddam had to be removed from power. Now most people in the USA understand that support was just pre-election poo-pooing so that the swing voters would not think the Democrats were a bunch of peacenik wimps (with their losses in the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections, that did not work), but these statements are on the record, and the Democrats will not get away with a post-war rewrite of history.

Why do you need to see some concrete plan to notice that the Democrats are the only surplus generator in recent histroy

Clintons' surpluses only started after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1995. The U.S. was still coming out of a recession from 1993 to 1995, and Bill Clinton also signed into law a very hefty tax hike, both of which accounted for the shrinking deficit, but during the time the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House (1993-1995) there was no focus on controlling spending at all. Repealing that tax hike is what helped to bring us out of the 2000-2002 recession.

When the debt is gone, taxes will be 25% less than they are now, and the budget will be balanced. If you want a 25% cut in taxes, you have to take the small tax increase now.

Heh. The problem with that idea is that any extra revenue realized from tax hikes (prior to their killing the economy) is going to be wasted on more useless BS like TV subsidies. The government needs less money, not more, but there needs to be a legal cap on how much money the government can spend before it can borrow more money.

Flamebait???

yes, I'm the same AC.

Stem Cell Research :

Kerry will lift Bush's Federal restrictions on stem cell funding, puting science before ideology.

Bush has imposed federal restictions on stem cell research hindering efforts that could lead to miraculous medical breakthroughs.

http://www.independentsforkerry.org/uploads/media/ bush-vs-kerry.html

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/kathleenparker/ kp20040410.shtml
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040618/D839DV0O1 .html
http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9902/13/afghan. binladen/ (note date)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,36 04,314700,00.html (also note date)
http://www.kultursmog.com/Life-Page01.htm
http://www.kultursmog.com/Life-Page02.htm
http://www.independentsforkerry.org/uploads/media/ kerry-iraq.html
http://clinton.senate.gov/speeches/iraq_101002.htm l
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FD03Aa02.h tml on on the "worldwide support we have squandered"

A survey found "nearly half of school principals and superintendents view the federal legislation as either politically motivated or aimed at undermining public schools".

"Nearly" half? What's your source on this (seriously, I'd like to know)? Of course it's politically motivated. Everything in D.C. is politically motivated. I like the way the "or" makes it sound worse. How about 'a survey found nearly half of school principals and superintendents view the federal legislation as either politically motivated or aimed at the direct murder and rape of school chilren'?

And for a supposed "funding" bill, half of it is about de-funding schools.

Since when is the federal government funding schools? The federal government funds the school lunch program (whose funds are not threatened through NCLB), through e-rate (again, not threatened through NCLB), and through block grants to states.

IMHO, the federal government shouldn't be funding any public schools. Leave it to the states, or better yet, to the local communities.

If the bill went any farther it would yank money away from any school that taught evolution.

Give me a break. (see above)

It is documented that ...

Yeah, documented by the CIA in a CYA report. Any refutations that both Clinton and Kerry thought there were WMD's pre-invasion?

And it was total BULL when Bush tried to paint a link between Iraq and 9/11 or even between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

No, it's total bull that you try to put words in his mouth. Find me a URL where he (not news media, but I'll accept upper-level administration) draws a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He draws a link between Iraq and terrorism.

Having read your link, and more specifically the PIPA report you linked to, I'll agree with you that most bush supporters don't understand his positions. I'd also posit that we don't care who other countries want to be in charge.

...but drop the "former allies" crap. They may be "more wary" allies, but allies nonetheless.

Again IN RETROSPECT, I wish we hadn't invaded Iraq. (And though I didn't have any posts modded high enough to make it into the archives, if you could look back to pre-invasion, you'd notice I was hesitant about the invasion.)

You realize without the "blue" areas you're nothing but a handful of rural farmers that couldn't afford an army to invade cuba?

And most of us like it that way. Money != happiness. (Or, as I'm fond of saying, money can't buy everything, but poverty can't buy anything.) We pride ourselves on common sense and self reliance more than money and government interference.

...since you hold the exact same positions that a Bush supporter of 12 months ago would. But I might as well respond, so you don't feel lonely so far down the page :)

That being said, the most pertinant issue is Iraq. The war was totally justified. We knew Saddam had WMD's at one point in time. There's no question about it. We also knew that, when he kicked out the weapons inspectors in 1998, they said that their work wasn't done. We also had intelligence indicating that Saddam still had WMD. What evidence did we have that Saddam had gotten rid of his WMD? His word. Nothing more. UN Resolution 1441, passed in November (IIRC) of 2002 gave Saddam one last chance to document fully his weapons programs. He failed miserably. There was a ton of stuff that was just plain unaccounted for. Saddam had the burden of proof to prove that he had gotten rid of the WMD's, in the treaties ending the first Gulf War. He failed. He gave no proof whatsoever. It would be irresponsible to put the the security of the US in Saddam's hands.

You offer a revisionist view of the relevent events. Everyone, even george bush, agreed that new, thorough weapons inspections were the correct course of action to ensure that Iraq had actually complied with disarming requirements. Suddenly, before the inspections were even completed, Bush declaired that they weren't working and went ahead to war anyway. Why did he initially support the inspections if the war was so "justified" from the get-go? Why did he cut the inspections off if he initially supported them? These are questions that have never been answered.

Also, let's not forget that John Kerry looked at the very same intelligence as the Bush administration and came to the very same conclusions, namely that Saddam posed an iminent threat.

Entirely, 100%, completely, and shamefully false. Kerry NEVER said that Iraq posed an imminent threat. NEVER. Do I have to repeat it again?

Kerry also voted for the war.

This is an oversimplification of what the war authorization entailed. See here for basically the same argument that I'd make about this: http://www.kerryoniraqwar.com/authforce.html

He also stated, a couple months ago, that, knowing what he knows now, he'd still vote for authorization to use the troops.

He believes that it's the right authority for the president to have in that situation. But he thinks the president used it wrongly. He's been consistent about this.

Well, that was a couple of months ago. I don't know if it's still true today.

It is still true. He hasn't flip-flopped. The flip-flop accusations have turned into this big whisper campaign. It's really disingenuous.

However, Kerry tried to attach a caveat to that, namely that he voted for the authorization so that Bush could back up his threats of military power, but Kerry didn't want Bush to actually use it. In a nutshell, he said that he wanted the threat of military force to be a bluff. What kind of respect will that get on the world stage, now that our enemies know that Kerry won't actually use the military?

No, you're still misrepresenting his viewpoint. Please read the speech he gave before voting on said resolution. The war powers were there as a LAST RESORT, in case diplomatic means to ensure Iraq's disarming didn't work. "Last Resort" and "Bluff" are entirely different concepts.

How can you be so sure that you dislike someone whose viewpoint you don't even understand accurately?

Speaking of world respect, the Economist has no respect for Kerry either. To use their word, they recognize that his vacillations lose a lot of respect.

The Economist has their own opinion. Besides, most of the accusations of his "vacillations" are fallacious.

Furthermore, his whole promise to bring American troops

I agree with you that Bush didn't want to change his mind on this subject, but this is a dishonest description of what his decision was according to every account I've read by both Republicans and Democrats in the know. He made the decision when he came into office to take Saddam out. I'm not going to give you any of this left wing baloney about invading Iraq for oil - this has always been a pretty silly argument, and just look at the price of oil now. His motivators were probably something like A) Saddam is bad - this point I can agree with him on B) Saddam tried to kill his father C) Saddam is the thorn in the legacy of his father's Presidency, D) his advisors support a strongly neoconservative agenda and told him this was an opportunity to create a "domino effect" and restructure the Middle East in a more democratic fashion (again, this motivator I think is an admirable one, but it's a bit of exitus acta probat, or the ends justify the means).

September 11th provided a convenient way to make this invasion plan actually happen. And the nuclear inspection stuff, well, that was the icing on the cake. But we were effectively mobilizing for war behind the scenes before the whole nuclear inspection access issue was was even there.

Saddam had to know an invasion was coming. I will admit that I am as mystified as the next guy as to why he didn't just let the inspectors back in at that point, so he'd have the rest of the world on his side when it did. I think in part it was radical overconfidence in his military that years of purging anybody who wasn't a yes-man from his upper echelons had given him. But this was never about inspections - how many inspectors are in Iran and North Korea, and how unfettered is their access again? And are we even discussing invasion over that?

I too wish that our candididates would be more straightforward about things they change their minds on. Unfortunately, there is an election going on, and the two leading candidates are playing to win, and thus neither can be fully honest about their mistakes or changes of heart in the past. Sure, the Naders and Badnariks of the campaign can speak their mind till the cows come home, because it doesn't matter, they are running to make a statement, not to win.

The substantive "flip-flop" that people keep bringing up is the Iraq war issue. You can see what Kerry said on the Senate floor before the vote on the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. He seemed to strongly back the idea of forcing UN inspections back, and if that failed, to use force together with the international community. He emphasized throughout that speech how important it was to act with the support of other countries in the Middle East and throughout the world, because if we went to war, it would be a long and hard process to rebuild Iraq.

This isn't really that different from what he has said recently. The only issue he has changed his mind on was that he thought at the time, based on the intelligence reports he had been given, that the thread of Saddam developing WMDs was much more imminent than it was. But I think everybody, including Bush, admits this mistake now.

I don't think Kerry has "flip-flopped" in the sense of saying that knowing what we knew then, going to war was a fundamentally bad idea, though perhaps he might not make the same vote knowing what he knows now (I'm not sure if he ever answered that hypothetical question explicitly). He has said that we rushed to war by failing to obtain the backing of a real coalition including strong commitments of troops and pledges for reconstruction aid from neighbors in the Middle East and the rest of the world (not a "Don't forget Poland" coalition). I think this is pretty consistent with his position from 2 years ago as expressed in the above speech.

I could look you in the eye and tell you that you're full of crap.

Kerry did not vote for the war. There was never any vote for the war. There was a congressional vote to permit the President to use force with the UN in order to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq. You can read Kerry's full speech from the Senate floor here: http://www.independentsforkerry.org/uploads/media/ kerry-iraq.html.

The resolution succeeded, getting weapons inspectors back into Iraq. They never found WMDs, so Bush invaded, without a congressional vote and without UN authorization--a violation of the US consitution and the UN charter.

There were two votes, as you know, on the $87billion "body armor" vote. The first, which Kerry voted FOR, would have repealed those portions of the $1.3trillion tax cut that went to the richest Americans, so that the $87billion could actually be paid. Kerry voted FOR that. Congressional Republicans voted AGAINST that. The President threatened that he would VETO such a bill. Who's playing politics? The President would have vetoed a bill to actually pay for that equipment if it resulted in his cronies losing part of that tax cut. The President thinks it is better to borrow money than to actually pay for things. When it was clear that the next version of the $87billion funding bill would pass, since congressional Republicans could pass it themselves, Kerry gave a protest vote against the bill. There was never any chance that our troops would go without supplies as a result of Kerry's voting. Bush was the one who threatened to veto the bill outright if he didn't get his way.

Your 90-second response? :)

1. In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution

That's a distortion of Kerry's position. He voted to give the president the authority to use force but only on the condition that (1) we went in with global support (2) it was honestly the only option left, and (3) they posed an immediate threat. Kerry opposed the war because, well, we went in unilaterally, we didn't exhaust diplomatic means, and Iraq posed no immediate threat. Disagree all you want with his position (I know I do) but don't distort it.

You can read his justification here

Which Kerry are you thinking of, exactly?

I know this is the number one attack, Kerry is flip-flopping, but can you actually give me an example? I say this because I know of several examples of Bush flip-flopping.

H.J. Res 114: To authorize the use of force in Iraq. Kerry (D-MA), Yea Edwards (D-NC), Yea

The problem for Kerry and many less ideology driven (may I say single minded) politicians are that today even the most complex policy is supposed to be summarized in a few words, preferably in a slogan to be repeated in a TV commercial. Why not see for yourself what Kerry said at the Senate floor, October 9, 2002, when Kerry cast that vote? Some quotes that I found relevant:

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.

If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent--and I emphasize "imminent"--threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.

In voting to grant the President the authority, I am not giving him carte blanche to run roughshod over every country that poses or may pose some kind of potential threat to the United States. Every nation has the right to act preemptively, if it faces an imminent and grave threat, for its self-defense under the standards of law. The threat we face today with Iraq does not meet that test yet. I emphasize "yet." Yes, it is grave because of the deadliness of Saddam Hussein's arsenal and the very high probability that he might use these weapons one day if not disarmed. But it is not imminent, and no one in the CIA, no intelligence briefing we have had suggests it is imminent. None of our intelligence reports suggest that he is about to launch an attack.

But you are right, it all ends up into one "yea" that is supposed to say it all...

You may see a lot at stake, but there is NO benefit to voting for Kerry over Bush. There is no substantial difference in their policies.

Read the quotes I gave above once more and ask yourself if Bush would ever be caught saying something similar. Then ask once more if there is any difference between Kerry and Bush.

If the war in Iraq was truly about liberation, then any number of other sovereign states should've had priority.

Like...? I don't recall this ever being the sole purpose in going to Iraq.

If the war in Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction", then we would've found some by now.

(1) There is a lot of sand in Iraq, which means a lot of hiding places. If you have ever lost anything in something as small as a beach, imagine the scale involved with a "beach" that is 167,924 square miles. (2) Saddam was not above "hiding" weapons (of any sort) in cemetaries and hospitals, so the number of places that one could expect to find anything pretty-much jumped to every square inch of the region. (3) Fox News and an ABC affiliate report on the fact that the United Nations found missile engines and other parts that were suited for the purpose of making WMDs in a scrap heap in Jordan. The source of all this metal? IRAQ.

If the war in Iraq was about "ties to al-qaeda", then we should've hit the Saudis first, 15 of the 19 highjackers on 9-11 were Saudis.

That's flawed reasoning. One should not condemn a nation based on the nationality of a criminal. Acting on a nation based on the actions of its Head of State is something quite different.

If the war was waged simply to procure cheap oil, then companies such as Haliburton would be clocking obscene profits in Iraq right now...

No, we'd be doing something to shut the mouths of people against drilling in the protected lands within the US. I agree that we should protect the land, so that environmental damage is minimized as much as possible, so don't think for a second that I'm in favor of drilling. By the same token, when the entire world is quite capable of watching the corporate goings-on (especially with regard to oil), I would hope that companies (like Haliburton) have the smarts to avoid doing something so blatently stupid. We all know, however, that not everyone thinks things through before acting...

Having said all this, I think that Moore has every right to think what he wants to think, and to make films based on these if that's how he wants to spend his time, even if it means people paying him for his extremist views. HOWEVER, for a pompous self-rightous man like him to put something like "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the same realm as a documentary when it offers absolutely no counter point is foolish and irrisponsible.

At least one person who should know agrees(*). If Moore was really so anxious about telling the truth (as he wants us to believe), I would like to see his take on the military prowress of Kerry, especially as it relates to Iraq.

* Link to http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/ doesn't seem to work through the preview...

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.