George Bush has nothing to be sorry or ashamed about. He doesn't owe anybody an apology either. Taking out Saddam was the right thing to do period. The MSM and the democratic party are the ones who should be apologizing to the world for covering for Saddam.

ACE - The problem is the last of the true WMD believers kept the issue alive.

The Neocons went on with their "Iraq is as big as California" so vast stockpiles were assuredly there because some buried jets were found - as an article of Neocon faith. The true believers who thought every word from a Neo's mouth was Gospel truth parrotted them and their ideological line.

The Administration did not want to admit the obvious over a year ago, so they said the WMD issue would "wait on the the Deulfer Report" before they talked about the lack of WMDs.

So now, 3 weeks before the election, the press is concentrating on the WMD final proof, just as the Administration begged them to do a year ago.

Had the Bushies been smarter, they would have fessed up, admitted error, disposed of the controversy long ago. But that would have required admission of error - something the Administration and it's ideologues are loath to do.

If they had, the press might be all over the proof that the Axis of Weasels WERE bribed to block any war at the UN Security Council - so Kerry's claim he would have just waited until the French permission slip was written was nonsense -and that Saddam was on the verge of collapsing all sanctions and back in business - with France, Germany, China (our favorite American de-industrialization destination), and Russia's connivance.
The Neocons were smarter. They went for shelter long ago, by changing the subject - now it is nothing to do with WMD, the botched postwar -according to the new Neo line - but is all about "bringing Democracy to Arabs hungry for it" so they can "live in peace with their neighbors (particularly Israel, as the neocons see it).

If Kerry is elected, watch the neos begin their cautious romancing of Kerry....as true palace courtiers do after a new King takes the throne.

So ... does this report absolutely rule out the possibility that things were snuck into Syria or some such country? What about the old WMDs he had? Their complete disposal was never proven, was it?

I get really irritated, though, with how the loonies control the conversation ... turning it into a "BUSH LIED" debate. Really, I guess nuance is too sophisticated for them?

I'm really starting to love the Professor's subtle, effective, and increasingly frequent smackdown's of good ol' Sully, too.

Carin,

I'm not sure if it's absolute on that score, but the report says more than simply no stockpiles have been/will be found. The report concludes they haven't been actively producing WMD's since 1991 (although I think there was some mention of some weapons-development activity in 1995).

I'm really starting to love the Professor's subtle, effective, and increasingly frequent smackdown's of good ol' Sully, too.

Ahem.

I'm sitting right here, you know.

Subtlety! Subtlety! That's French-talk for pussy-shit, that's all that is.

Yep. If your ideology forces you to belittle someone who, at great personal risk, stands and fights beside your country....there is something wrong with your ideology (or it ain't really your country).

How did my last comment get posted above my first one? weird

I saw some of the testimony on Fox, where it was said that Saddam retained his capability to produce weapons, if not the weapons themselves.

So like...he had beet seeds and borscht recipes, but no one can say he had any borscht hidden anywhere. Just the absolute ability to ramp up his illegal borscht production at a later date.

Later I heard on the radio that Duelfer confirmed that Iraq had no WMD's.

They never. Ever. Stop. With the bullshit.

Lauraw,

The whole system is buggy right now. I couldn't post my Star Wars thing for a while, and then I had three of them, and then posted something new, and yet that appears before the star wars post.

Loose shit with the software or servers at the moment.

And that comment just posted earlier than The E's post, who actually commented earlier than me.

I think the time-stamp part of the system just went kaflooey. Seems to be forty minutes off at the moment.

It must suck to be Bush right now. I'm sure he would love to use that report against Kerry to highlight how retarded his "plan" to bring in more allies is. However he cant because he's the president and cant afford to alienate foreign leaders that we need to help us with the overall war on terror. Of course John Kerry has shown no such reluctance to criticize foreign leaders (and the ones he's criticized are actually our allies).

Ace, you know I love ya, bud. Think of it this way - in my mind, you're the iron fist in the Prof's velvet glove when it comes to Sully takedowns. Both great to read individually, but even more devastating read in combo.

Ugh. I can't believe I just typed "fist" and "Sully" in the same sentence. Excuse me while I go scrub my brain.

What I can't believe is that the Administration has allowed the left to insinuate that the war was about finding stockpiles of WMDs. The war was about enforcing a U.N. resolution and about stopping Saddam *before* he became a significant threat. I remember that the State of the Union speech dealt with the fact that Iraq was not an immediate threat but that he needed to be removed anyway.

Bush never said that we had to seize the WMDs or that Saddam was behind 9-11. Yet that is what they've allowed the Left to insinuate. Lousy, lousy communication from the Administration.

I guess I'm just a partisan hack then, 'cause I will never believe "there were no WMDs".

I don't "cling" to nothin', either: the Kurds weren't gassed with baked beans, and the 35-50 shells they did find could kill thousands if used effectively. The rest are in Syria or Iran, and the CIA has some convoluted rationale for keeping us in the dark.

That's just the way it is, and no amount of nonsense from politicians and bureaucrats will convince me otherwise.

P-hole's logic
Teddy - My eyes look like two piss holes in the snow - Kennedy noted a couple of things yesterday during the hearings covering the release of the Iraqi Survey Group's report:

First was a good point - that the ISG had just received a new batch of Saddam's documents equal to what they had reviewed so far.

Second, despite the fact that every intelligence source in the world said he had weapons, he said we had spent 900 million looking for weapons - and couldn't we use that money more wisely by not looking anymore.

To me that is the strangest and most dangerous logic I have heard in years! Oh sure we haven't found stock piles yet - but for things like anthrax a stock pile the size of a suitcase can kill thousands of people and Saddam refused to provide the evidence that he destroyed his weapons.

Is that the kind of smarter more sensitive war John Kerry is planning for us? What if these weapons are in Syria and ONE of that stack of thousands of documents references that - wouldn't you like to know?
DKK

Oddly enough, the headline in my local paper was (in big black font)

"REPORT: IRAQ DID NOT HAVE WEAPONS"

Kinda misleading, huh?

Lifetrek - Oh sure we haven't found stock piles yet - but for things like anthrax a stock pile the size of a suitcase can kill thousands of people and Saddam refused to provide the evidence that he destroyed his weapons...

Give it up, Lifetrek, it's embarassing to hear you talk so!

By May of 2003, we had completed interviewing 70% of the military, high-ranking Ba'athists, and WMD scientists. Based on the interviews, the American military concluded that no threat existed and issued "stand-down" orders for Chem-Bio gear donning.

BY Nov of 2003, the Neocons were smart enough to stop talking about the fact they fed to the conservative masses that Iraq was as big as Clifornia - as being logical proof that WMDs were obviously hidden, just over the next sandy hill, and would surely be found as the snipes. And move on to talking about "Arab democracy" being the real deal.

I point out the Bushies made a tactical error in summer of 2003 by not admitting that there were no weapons after the US Army chucked the Chem-bio suits away. "Wait till the final report!!" So the press has the final report and has ignored major pro-Bush discoveries to focus on just what the Bushies said should be the focus a year ago.

No WMD! OK, the press then says the final report is what the American Public waited 2 years for - the Smoking Gun....the smoking gun being proof no WMD stockpiles existed

I am really down on the press these days, but you can't blame them for not going after the greatest deferred issue of 2003 - Bush refusing to own up to the issue of WMD until the "Final Report" was ready.

Naturally, that old obvious truth leads while news that France was bought out along with fellow Security Council member Russia, that Saddam was definitely intending on gearing up ASAP.

All that is missed because Bush, encouraged by the Neocons and other hardliners - has delayed 1 year on admitting WMD mistakes and thus failing to manage the pre-election news cycle.

So

Does anyone have a list of companies that participated in Sadam's money for oil/let the children die of malnutrition fundraiser?

I for one would be VERY happy to boycott these companies and would send emails like the recent and ongoing memogate campaign.

jbmeisterswife

Is it too much to hope that none of them were American companies?

Cedarford,

Go read the State of the Union. Bush makes his points very clearly and the "he sold us on the war for WMDs" bullshit takes a flying leap out the window. That is, if you're capable of reading. Apparently, most people in the media aren't.

"it turns out Saddam didn't have stockpiles of WMD's, and I think that it's time I actually wrapped my head around that."

This meme slipped into a lot of people's heads, and I've been surprised that the administration hadn't taken the distortion head-on over the last 18 months.

The case for the Iraq campaign was clearly based on removing the support environment for anonymous, deniable attacks. The Bush administration has finally started emphasizing Saddam's self-acknowledged payments to families of death-cultists in Palestine, which was (for me) enough reason to conduct our defense in his territory.

But the press has claimed "WMD", which fits into a headline. When you try to figure their meaning behind the label, it has seemed to be large stockpiles of chemcial or biologicial weapons, or a live nuclear program.

But there's no reason to maintain stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons. Biological weapons lose viability quickly. Chemical weapons can be stored longer, but first require extra work for purity and storage mechanisms. When they're so easy to build, you're smarter to store your processes, seed stock, precursors, equipment and knowledge than the final weapon. These have all been found, of course.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/cw/produce.htm
http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/eng/miscdocs/200005_e.html
http://www.slic2.wsu.edu:82/hurlbert/micro101/pages/101biologicalweapons.html
http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/05/11/World/Investigative.Reportsaddams.Wmd.Have.Been.Found-670120.shtml

When the fifth column phrases it as "you must find large stockpiles of ready-to-go weapons or be a liar" then they've forged a very strong position for themselves, because it would be quite odd to actually find such things, particularly after the long lead time Saddam had for preparation.

The flaw in my theory? I don't know why the administration hasn't pointed out these observable realities.

Some years back a deputy I worked with got a call, an asshole in his sector finally did the big crime, shot a couple of people and ran, leaving a couple of living witnesses. Well, we ran the asshole down, my bud was out front I was about forty feet back, still in the cruiser, pinning the asshole with the spotlight and calling the cavalry on the radio. My bud told the asshole not to move, the asshole moved and got two loads of double ought buckshot. We later discoved the asshole's gun in a yard about a block back. The review board called it a good shoot. There was plenty of evidence that the asshole HAD been armed, if my bud had waited around and been wrong he would have got himself one of those fancy funerals with police agencies from five states, a hundred or more county cruisers and police cars in the procession and a neatly folded flag for his family.
You don't make life and death decisions on hope, you go with the best information you have.
We knew Hussein had Gas, he used it. We knew he supported terrorists, he publicly paid bounties to the families of suicide bombers. Just as that one deputy did the right thing, even if it turned out that the asshole had thrown away his gun, Bush did the right thing.
All that asshole had to do to live out his life sentence was to not move. All Hussein had to do to avoid getting invaded was to come completely clean. One case was suicide by police, Hussein was a slower form of the same.

Excellently put, Peter.

Since the invasion of Iraq began, the media has constantly implied that justification of the war rested on finding large caches of WMD. However, that is a subtle but significant distortion of the real reason. We invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein because he was a danger to the civilized world as well as his own people.

He was a danger because he had invaded other countries, used chemical and biological weapons on foreign enemies as well as his own people, openly, even gleefully encouraged and supported terrorism against other nations, and constantly failed to live up to the agreed terms of his surrender in the first Gulf War including regularly firing at the peacekeeping aircraft patrolling his country. He was also a sick evil bastard, having his henchmen abuse the daughters of those who caught his ire, having dissenters slowly shredded alive, and intentionally letting the children of his nation go without needed food and medicine while he used the UN “Oil for Food” program to line his own pockets, build extravagant palaces, and secretly import banned items such as missile parts, in preparation for the day when he could begin rebuilding his stockpiles of weapons. Every indication was that no matter how he behaved while under supervision, given the chance he would rebuild his forces and “do it all over again.”

As I’ve considered the report and tried to figure out what it all means I feel it has become clear. There was no better time to invade than when we did, and we made the right choice. It is clear that left to his own means Saddam would eventually have restarted his production of chemical and biological weapons, started building the longest range missiles he could manage and intensely pursued the ability to build nuclear weapons. He would have to some degree supported terrorism and would eventually in some fashion have contributed money, weapons, and/or planning that would be used in an attack on the US or at least on our interests abroad. If we had waited until we had absolute proof he had WMD before we attacked he quite likely would have used them on us and others within range