RevMike's Journal: Common Sense in re: Anybody but Bush

The "anybody but Bush" (hence the abB)crowd makes about as much sense as the "Clinton murdered Vince Foster" crowd.

For instance, abB frequently attribute a degree of cunning, subterfuge, and underhandedness to Bush that would impress Stalin. However, they also complain that we did not find the promised WMDs in Iraq. Bush used Iraq's WMD programs and Iraq; failure to comply with UN rules designed to prevent the development of WMD programs as part of the justification for war. Now we know that Iraq's WMD programs were just a tiny fraction of what Bush led us to believe. The abB crowd tells us that Bush lied about Iraq's WMD programs.

These two ideas just don't mesh. The outcome that we've actually seen does not support the thesis that 1) Bush lied or 2) that Bush is a cloak and dagger operator.

First, why would Bush lie about WMDs. He could have avoided most of the WMD argument and focued in other things, such as human rights, flaunting the UN, attempting to murder a US president, and connections to terrorism, of which Saddam plenty. (I know that Saddam did not sit down and plan 9/11 with Osama over tea. He still offered plenty of support to terrorism.) He could have had jsut as many Americans convinced of the neccessity to go to war with just these points. The WMD argument would never have been made if it was a lie, because it was a lie that would be exposed.

Second, if Bush is such a smooth operator, why wouldn't he have planted some WMDs. We've got plenty of them. A few barrels here and there and no one would be arguing about this now.

The only argument that fits the facts is that Bush, based on the information he had, in good faith believed that there were WMDs in Iraq. The fact that the information was faulty, or at least exagerated by orders of magnitude, is not evidence of the evilness of Bush.

You are free to argue apects of Bush's policies. The fact that he is not omniscient is not a reasonable grudge to hold against him.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Human Rights and other things

[buffer-overflowed]

Human rights has never been the sole reason we've invaded a country. Ever. Wish the opposite was true, it's not. There are a lot of places we could go and make them better. Hell, the really far left wanted us to do something about the taliban for how badly they treated women way prior to 9/11.

Beyond this, Human rights is largely a liberal/left issue. A Republican/Conservative laying claim to it is like a Democrat claiming to be fiscally conservative. You have to prove it. Bush didn't, he used this j

About "right now"

[TheConfusedOne]

I really have to disagree strongly with this point.

"Right now" was actually a year in the making after 10+ years of ignored UN resolutions and 4 years of no weapons inspections.

Remember tha Iraq only let the inspectors back in because there were 100,000+ troops massed on their borders. How long do you think we could have maintained that? How long do you think Hussein would have continued to cooperate after those troops left? He threw the inspectors out once he'd throw them out again.

Also, look at the

Well, I'm not sure...

[loucura!]

While I agree that it is absurd to believe the administration willfully misled the public as to the existence of WMDs, they did say prior to invading that they were going to release their smoking-gun evidence of Saddam's WMD programs. They never released that evidence, and we now know that there wasn't any smoking-gun evidence. So, they might not have been willfully misleading people, but it appears that they were willfully overhyping their evidence.

Which in my opinion counts for the same thing - if you ge

Re:Well, I'm not sure...

[On Lawn]

They never released that evidence, and we now know that there wasn't any smoking-gun evidence.

Actually, there was a senate intelligence hearing over the matter where they reviewed the 'smoking gun evidence'. Their conclusion was that the intelligence was bad, real bad. The CIA marked good intelligence bad (Iraq wanting to buy Uranium from Africa) and bad intelligence good (The Iraqi National Congress). Its one of the reasons Tenet is out of a job.