- The intelligence services of every major country on the planet (France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Israel among others) believed Saddam had WMDs.
- President Clinton and Secretary Albright repeatedly made the case, in 1998, that Saddam had refused to disarm and that he continued to develop his WMD capability. There was no evidence that he had abandoned his attempts or dismantled his capabilities between 1998 and 2oo2.
- The Democrats in the Senate (Jay Rockefeller, John Kerry, John Edwards et al) who are now denouncing the president for having misled us into war, had access to substantially the same intelligence as the President. Their remarks in support of the war resolution were anything but ambiguous.
- The vote authorizing war in 2002 was plainly a vote contemplating, and approving of, military action in Iraq. It was not, as some Democrats now claim, merely a vote to strengthen the President's diplomatic hand by raising the possibility of war.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
W on the offensive
The President has finally started defending his decision to go to war in Iraq, and more importantly, attempting to correct the record (here and here) on his and others' use of pre-war intelligence. The Democrats current "Bush lied us into war" meme is irresponsible and more than a little dishonest. It is important, for the sake of his administration's credibility, the validity of the war effort, and the continued effectiveness of US foreign policy that the President squelch this attempt on the part of the Democrats to rewrite history:
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1 comment:
Ranjit beat me to this one. One addition:
The Deulfer report said that while the stockpiles weren't found, what WERE found were the latent factories (including centerfuge equipment and reference strains of bio-weapons that would only have taken days do reconstitute in mass quantities, all found hidden in the homes of scientists) that were waiting only France, Germany, and Russia's success in getting the sanctions lifted. Oil for food was the first stage of the weakening of those sanctions, and the same people protesting the war now were protesting to get those sanctions lifted.
The only way to now say we shouldn't have went, knowing that information, is to say with a straight face that it would have been better to face a Saddam who actually WAS armed with WMDs. And that's a morally bankrupt position if ever there was one.
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