Never ceases to amaze me how people ignore the realities just because its not front page news.
Weapons of mass destruction didn't exist, huh?
Declassified docs as of 2006:
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/...classified.pdf
enough Sarin and Mustard gas to kill about 7 Million. In a degraded state, figure about half that. 3.5 Million dead isn't mass destruction? What is then?
Don't like that example? Fair enough - how about the love of the left - wikileaks? Would you rather them tell you? Turns out that one recent dump discussed this very thing....
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010...ising-results/
Not the quantity that was sold to the public by Bush, but thats an intelligence apparatus failure. The reality is they existed.
But wait - there is more... Everyone knows that Saddam wasn't after nukes, right? He had given up on all that, right? Of course, the 550 metric tons of yellow cake uranium he had - that even MSNBC calls " seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment " doesn't mean he actually had a nuclear program, right? I am sure he was just trying to figure out how to power the palace lights with the stuff so he could, uhm - you know - get off the grid.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334...east/n_africa/
Of course - this material was located at the Tuwaitha Special Weapons research / nuclear complex. The name might ring a bell, since it was the location of the Iraqi nuclear research programme when Israel bombed it. The IAEA wanted to inspect the material - but Saddam would not allow them to do so, in violation of treaty. In fact, this refusal to allow the IAEA to inspect the uranium was a major cause of war, since whether or not the uranium was being used to enrich fuel for a weapon or not, it created the APPEARANCE that it was.
Add in the 2004 actions of removing material sufficiently enriched as to be useful in the making of "dirty bombs", as reported by USA Today.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/i...-uranium_x.htm
1.6 tons of enriched uranium, 6.6 lbs of "low enriched" uranium and about 1000 "highly radioactive" items - where "highly radioactive" is defined as suitable for weapon use (but not weapons grade)- aka enriched to 20%.
@ Armistead - Bush lied? About what? Every intelligence report at the time, not only from the US but from multiple allies, indicated that WMD existed on a large scale under Saddam. Is a man a liar if he works from the best information he has?
As far as a criminal, I can only assume you are talking about Bush starting a "war of aggression". To that I can only state that there was nothing illegal about the war. Take WMD's entirely out of the equation - even without them, the war itself was legal due to the violation of the ceasefire by Iraq. Iraq, on multiple occasions, fired upon US and Allied aircraft and violated the ceasefire they agreed to. These acts were not precipitated by them being fired upon, but rather were acts of war by a belligerant in violation of the agreement in place. As such, the moment they fired the first time, any invasion by any signatory of the cease fire became legal.
I don't like Bush much. Its ok for you to not like him too. Did he mismanage the war? You bet he did. However, to call him a liar or a criminal over the war is untrue. WMD's existed that violated the notification and destruction clauses. A clandestine nuclear program MAY have existed (we will likely never know for certain to what extent it may or may not have). Intelligence from almost every source said major programs of NBC warfare existed. The government refused to allow inspections of materials that would support part of those programs - violating treaty. They violated a ceasefire by firing on forces engaged in legitimate, legally defined (and agreed to) patrols without provocation, throwing the cease fire in the trash.
The wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been horribly carried out. No argument here. But that was because we had no idea what to do after the regime's fell.
To be correct, we really should stop calling them wars - for they are not. They are conflict and construction zones. We got into nation building while we get shot at, because the people there don't want to do the heavy lifting.
Liberty and freedom come with a cost, and the biggest error that Bush made was that we cannot free a country. Liberty and freedom are bought with the blood of patriots - not foreigners. Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other places in the world will never have true reform until they pay the price for it themselves.
If only every leader of nations understood that.........