Looks like the terrorists may have one of our soldiers, Drudge has the picture up.

Wow. I thought I'd never see this.

Yes, I will admit Bush's 4th of 5th reason for going to war in Iraq was right.
I don't think anybody disagreed with the whole "Saddam is bad, we want to give the people democracy."
But that was not the reason we went to war in the first place.

Ryan, that's just carping.

The case for going into Iraq was all right, and I accepted the reasons. But Bush left out a few, and they get ignored all the time while people grudgingly admit there might have been cause.

Saddam Hussein had repeatedly and flagrantly flouted the terms of the cease-fire. That was enough, by itself. Whether or not there were WMDs (and everyone thought there were, deny it though some people do), whether or not the cynics on the left would have believed Bush if he preached the removal of a monstrous dictatorship, or any of the rest of it, doesn't matter. The first reason was more than sufficient, and a grudging, "Well, all right, so the Iraqis seem to be getting a fair shake" isn't good enough.

My personal view, that after Bush 41 encouraged the Iraqis to rise in '91 and they died in their thousands, and after Clinton did exactly the same thing, with exactly the same disastrous results, is that we owed them.

I mourn the loss of every American life. I still think it's bloody well about time we did what we promised the first time.

Humble Pie, served fresh daily!

Actually we'll probably find the WMDs in those trucks that went to Syria right before the war. The fact that he had them, they're relatively easy to make, and he used them, and now they're all gone is what should be raising questions. I bet a determined investigative reporter, like umm Mary Mapes could get to the bottom of this.

Having one election is easy. Its the second election that's a bitch.

"What If Bush Was Right All Along?"

You mean we found the operational link between
Iraq and al-Qaeda, as well as all of Saddam's WMDs (including nuclear weapons)? You mean we captured bin Laden and Zawahiri?

No? Then what the hell is this guy talking about?

Ryan,

I can be cynical too. Say we really just wanted to address the fact that terrorists were coming into this country and killing thousands of innocent civilians. Strategy: Kick some terrorist-aiding scambag's a$$, give oppressed people (liberals like them, right?) the chance to have a say in their own destiny, and maybe eliminate one more area from which said terrorists operate and/or originate.

I think a good place to start (aftr Afghanistan) would be in a country that was violating the terms of a cease-fire and ignoring warning after warning from the UN. Maybe even a country whose 'elected' leader tried to assassinate the President of the United States - the same 'leader' who recently claimed that he 'couldn't find' 200 tons of mustard gas, and was writing checks to suicide bombers with "Keep up the excellent work" in the notes.

BTW, I have a hard time making the jump from "Let's see, where the hell did I put those 200 tons of mustard gas?" to "WMDs? What WMDs?"

Giving the people of Iraq a chance to take part in free and fair elections and having troops on two sides of Iran are't bad things either, but that's just my opinion.

This is eerily reminiscent of columnists writing about Clinton and his ultra-sleazy pardons just before he left office. I think Rich Cohen had one that said "My god, what if the Republicans were right about Clinton? Is this the kind of man I went to bat for and defended so passionately?"

It will only be a matter of time before some "brilliant" lefty can figure out a spin so that it's obvious the facts are not "The Facts", and the libs can gleefully go on their merry way hugging trees, kissing frogs and generally demonizing GW. They have an uncanny ability to be able to fit the "facts" to their own agenda. In the meantime, they are still causing more deaths worldwide because they are giving false hope to the jihadists, who thrive on hope.

captured soldier looks like a hoax.

too many things wrong with images - uniform, "injuries", banner does not match group claiming hostage, etc.

http://ak.imgfarm.com/images/ap/IRAQ_SOLDIER.sff_LON128_20050201125054.jpg

drudge has picture that suggests the image is that of a toy soldier -

http://www.drudgereport.com/toy.jpg

Nothing new - I pointed it out about Chris Matthews before, and Ace had a post about it. For these people the biggest problem in the world is that Chimpy McHitler just might be right.

Which of course makes them wrong.

On his post-election show Stewart also made noises about reconsidering his views. He said it didn't feel very good being on the receiving end of someone else's cultural policy, and he was beginning to know what the red states have been complaining about ever since Roe. I don't know how much of that stuck.

I was actually pretty impressed with Jon Stewart's performance last night. He still went for some jokes but it was obvious that he avoided any cheap laughs that would've been discordant with the pictures of joyous Iraqis.

If he'd stick with that style every night he might be on to something. You know, like humor.

NBC reporter David Gregory, at least, is still hoping for a quagmire in Iraq -- possibly because Bush mocked him at a press conference three years ago: Pride and Prejudice

I think you'll find Jon Stewart is a comedian? On Comedy Central.

Some of you seem to be intimately familiar with his work despite claiming to be of the oppinion he is a hack journalist/unfunny commedian.

As for 'what if Bush was right' - even a broken clock is right - twice a day!

Speaking strictly for myself, I'm familiar with Stewart from his "funny" period, which came to an abrupt end when he decided to take sides in the presidential election. I would welcome a return to form, but I won't miss him all that much if he decides not to climb back onto the fence.

20 years ago Ronald Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld as his special envoy to meet Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in order to help the dictator defeat the rising tide of political Shiism. To that end, the U.S. sent war supplies and offered intelligence to Saddam to keep the Iranians from beating Iraq in the war then raging between the two countries… Ironically, 20 years later, with the outcome of Sunday’s elections in Iraq, we are at the threshold of enthusiastically achieving just what Rumsfeld was sent out to prevent—Shia rule in a broad crescent across the Middle East and atop the region’s most prized oil reserves. Shia government will stretch from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, and into Lebanon

RYAN: "that was not the reason we went to war in the first place." True enough. The real reason we went to war was to protect the oil supplies in the ME from disruption and hopefully turn on the Iraqi oil to lower prices. It had worked once before in the Gulf war and no one knew how disruptive terrorist could be - including the terrorists.

As to our former support of Saddam, we were in the middle of a Cold War, one in which the Soviet Union would have taken possession of the oil if allowed to. We needed all the friends we could get. Yes it is ironic, but history is full of examples of shifting alliances. Taking action always involves taking risks, and sometimes things don't go how they're expected to go. But to keep the Soviet Union from grabbing the oil fields was a risk well worth taking, and thank God, one in which we succeeded at.