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ORIGINAL: SpinnerofTales

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I am not sure what this has to do with the OP, but if it is going to be discussed, at least facts should be used.
ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf

Even if one accepts your reasoning, Orion, at the time war was begun, the UN investigators on the ground in Iraq had said that they did not believe that there were WMD present at the moment. The Bush administration claimed it had concrete proof that it did. Among other negative results of the decision to attack (a decision that has benefited Iran greatly, by the way) was the loss of credibility on  the world stage. It seems unarguable that either the Bush administrations lied to get us into a war they desired or were so grossly incompetent that a lie would almost have been preferable.

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ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda
How can you just "set aside the lie" when the lie was the entire justification for the invasion?

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How can you just "set aside the lie" when the lie was the entire justification for the invasion?
ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda

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ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda

But the problem is, that link is from October 2002. In February 2003, a month before the invasion, Blix stated very clearly that Iraq was making sincere attempts to comply and that the inspectors could find no evidence of WMD or an active WMD program. The report from 4 months earlier was no longer relevant, and any pretext for invasion that was based on that outdated report was no longer valid. Invading because Iraq had a history of non-compliance was not a justifiable action, and  Bush knew it. He claimed that his justification was that Iraq was currently not in compliance, and that intelligence showed they currently had WMD and active WMD programs. Which, according to information that Hans Blix was making available at that time, was not true. How can you just "set aside the lie" when the lie was the entire justification for the invasion?

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ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf

Do I need to start putting things in BOLD and upper case so that some of you do not miss things?

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ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf

The link shows the timeline of events that led up to things. It is the source I provided that showed that Saddam had a very long history of not cooperating with the investigators, and lied multiple times. Kind of like when you know someone that repeatedly lies, you use their history to ascertain whether they are currently being truthful, see my sig line.

How can I set aside the lie? It is easy because if you had read my entire initial post, I am not speaking about the justification of the invasion, as much as the series of events that led up before it. Looking at the entire series of events, is what led to many intelligence communities rating a high probability that Iraq either had WMD's or the capability to create them. Saddam's strategy of creating that mystique that they still had them was necessary for him to bluff his neighbors. That is how I can set aside the lie, because I am not speaking about a justification for the war. How many times does that have to be stated?

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Set aside the lie or faulty intelligence that was presented, and you are still left with many facts. That lie is a red herring when looking at the entire scope of the issue of the weapons inspections.

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ORIGINAL: MarsBonfire

"The Proof" being of course, a few aireal photos of some semi trailer trucks that he claimed were some kind of mobile chemical weapons factories. I believe those were the ones they gave to Powell so they could make the case for the invasion.

Then of course, we had all the rhetoric about how "the next smoking gun of terrorisim would come as a mushroom cloud."

In the meantime, the yellowcake purchase from Nigeria lie was re-inserted into the State of the Union speech, (maybe Bush got his info about it from an email set to him by a woamn wanting to come over to the US to be his sex slave?) Even as his own intel experts were telling him that it was total bullshit! Remember when one of his advisors, three weeks before the actual invasion, went on the Daily Show, and told us ALL what a crock of bubbling shit Bush's case was?
But... the GOP had it's mind set on attacking Iraq. They weren't going to let mere facts get in the way of their dream of building up a middle east that looked like "Leave it to Beaver" in the 1950's. And they had right wing radio and TV backing them up every step of the way.

4,500+ American dead.
38,000 wounded
possibly up to 250,000 Iraqi civilians dead...
and as many as 6,000,000 people forced from their homes and who had to flee to neighboring countries.   

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ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf


Now back to the OP:

I spent some time chatting with several people in country cafes, another barber shop, and a small retail store. I mentioned about a possible coup against Obama. I was not surprised that most seemed to either support or were apathetic to it. The reason I am not surprised is the amount of sheeple in this country. This occurred with some Dems during the last admin, and now it is kind of flipped around. I was proud that several good ole boys said they may not like him, but he was the President, and then discovered 3 of the 4 of them were ex-military and the other is a police officer.

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You've made the ultimate mistake here. They smell conservatism in the water.
Mistress Scarlet ORIGINAL: MstrssScarlet

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Kind of funny how that yellowcake "that was never there", got transported to Canada with help from the US and IAEA last year at the request of the Iraqui government... maybe they were really smuggling back tons of poppies?
ORIGINAL: Thadius

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ORIGINAL: SpinnerofTales

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Kind of funny how that yellowcake "that was never there", got transported to Canada with help from the US and IAEA last year at the request of the Iraqui government... maybe they were really smuggling back tons of poppies?
ORIGINAL: Thadius

If you'll check your own citation, you'll find the following:

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.

The claim was made by the bush administration that this yellowcake was an impending or very recently completed transaction with Nigeria. There has been no corroboration of this claim. It seems to have been a flat out lie.

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ORIGINAL: MstrssScarlet

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ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf

Do I need to start putting things in BOLD and upper case so that some of you do not miss things?

You've made the ultimate mistake here. They smell conservatism in the water.
Mistress Scarlet