[plschwartz]

Below is an attack by Bush. But it got me to wonder....and?
So what if Saddam was in power?
So I will poll about this would you with current knowledge of WMD and Iraqi nationalism still support the invasion?

Article Last Updated: 9/11/2004 07:51 AM
Bush: If Kerry had his way, Saddam would be in power
Challenger says: "Dick Cheney crossed the line earlier this week, so it's no shock that George Bush is following his lead today"
By Pete Yost
The Associated Press

Salt Lake Tribune
President Bush, center, rallies the crowd with Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., left, and Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, during an impromptu campaign stop in Ironton, Ohio, Friday, Sept. 10, 2004. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
PORTSMOUTH, Ohio - In a harsh new attack on rival John Kerry, President Bush said Friday that if the Democratic presidential candidate ''had his way,'' Saddam Hussein would be running Iraq and threatening the safety of other nations.
Campaigning with Democratic Sen. Zell Miller, who praised Bush for ''never wavering, never waffling,'' the president urged thousands of cheering supporters in Huntington, W.Va., to get new voters on the rolls before Election Day. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 in West Virginia.
Miller's keynote address at the Republican convention galvanized delegates and left Democrats fuming over what they called an angry, inaccurate rant by the Georgia Democrat.
Bush was campaigning in blue-collar areas hit hard by the economic slowdown in West Virginia and Ohio. As his motorcade trundled down West Main Street in Chillicothe, Ohio, a woman held up a sign that read, ''My husband's paycheck moved to China.''
At the start of the daylong bus tour, Bush stepped up his criticism of Kerry on Iraq.
''The newest wrinkle is that Senator Kerry has now decided we are spending too much money in Iraq even though he criticized us earlier for not spending enough,'' Bush said. ''One thing about Senator Kerry's position is clear. . . . If he had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and would still be a threat to our security.''
Kerry has not chided Bush for spending too much money on the war but has criticized the president for engaging in ''a war of choice'' without obtaining more financial support from allies. The war has cost nearly $200 billion that, according to Kerry, could have been used for domestic programs.
At a question-and-answer event in Portsmouth, Ohio, where the unemployment rate this year has hit double digits, a Bush supporter told the president that Kerry attended ''the school of flip flop.'' Bush said Kerry and running mate John Edwards were among only four senators who voted "yes" to ''use force but 'no' when it comes to funding the troops.''
Kerry has said he voted for the $87 billion appropriation for the war when it was to be paid with revenues from rollbacks on some of Bush's tax cuts.
When the Republican-controlled Senate rejected that version, Kerry and Edwards voted against it.
In response to what it described as ''George Bush's distortions,'' the Kerry campaign said, ''Dick Cheney crossed the line earlier this week, so it's no shock that George Bush is following his lead today.'' Cheney had remarked that ''the wrong choice'' by voters could lead to another attack by terrorists.
Other Appalachian counties in southern Ohio have fared worse than the Portsmouth area, with jobless rates ranging from 16 to 22 percent.On Friday, a company with 600 employees in Huntington announced in a full-page newspaper ad that it is pulling out of West Virginia.

[Rep]

Your poll did not show up....but I will answer anyway.

No, the attack upon Irag and the occupation of that country had nothing to do with the terrorist that attacked us. We needed a thoughtful response and got none from the Bush administration.

We are now bogged down in an entanglement that the President has no way of getting us out.

With this administration, we can only expect to continue to drain our armed forces, our treasury and the good will of the world.

We need a change in occupancy at the White House.

[iltos]

Originally Posted by Rep

We need a change in occupancy at the White House.

oh, no.... .....not another occupation force!

[plschwartz]

Colin Powell in four-letter neo-con 'crazies' row

Martin Bright
Sunday September 12, 2004
The Observer

A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as 'f***ing crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq.

Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The two became close friends during the intense negotiations in the summer of 2002 to build an international coalition for intervention via the United Nations. The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

Last week, the offices of Powell and Straw contacted Public Affairs, the US publishers of Naughtie's book, to say they would vigorously deny the claims if publication went ahead. But as no legal action was threatened, the US launch of the book, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, will proceed as planned this week.

Naughtie stands by his claims and is said to be privately delighted that Powell and Straw have reacted so violently to the suggestion that the former US general had fallen out with the 'neo-cons'.

Provocatively, the phrase 'f***ing crazies' will be quoted on the jacket of the book, according to a source at the publisher. 'We were surprised to receive calls from the offices of Jack Straw and Colin Powell within 24 hours of each other,' the source said.

Naughtie claims that Powell and Straw spoke on an almost daily basis. Powell's concerns were said to have chimed with Straw's and those of Blair himself - that if America acted without UN sanction, allies would be lost.



Cheney and his allies were preparing for a spring war and did not wish to be deflected by the UN inspection process. Powell is thought to have been terrified that the strategy of the 'crazies' would alienate the Blair government, which believed it needed UN backing to win over Parliament and the British public.

John Kampfner, political editor of the New Statesman and author of Blair's Wars, said Naughtie's characterisation of the feverish political atmosphere of the summer of 2002 was entirely accurate. 'The British government saw Powell as the most significant voice of sanity in the US administration. At different times during this very difficult period, the Brits used Powell to get across their point of view to the White House. But, bizarrely, Powell sometimes also used Blair to pass messages to Bush.'

Kampfner's book, which covers the Blair government's military adventures in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, reported that in July 2002 Blair sent his foreign policy adviser David Manning on a secret mission to Washington to deliver a letter hinting that, without a second UN resolution, Britain would not be able to join a war in Iraq.

[Fidelista]

No! asolutely not!. I was one of the "traitors" that never supported the invasion or occupation of Iraq My opinion was based on what information was available at the time. I never believed many of the BUSH adminstrations claims, and in the end---they were in fact, false.>f

[Wino]

Originally Posted by Fidelista

No! asolutely not!. I was one of the "traitors" that never supported the invasion or occupation of Iraq My opinion was based on what information was available at the time. I never believed many of the BUSH adminstrations claims, and in the end---they were in fact, false.>f

Well, Fielista, you certainly took the wind from my sails and words from my mouth! DITTO your exact statement!

[Wino]

Why hold up the complete report? Can you say Nov. 2, 2004! Bolding and color by Wino:

9/18/2004, 12:50 p.m. ET
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
The Associated Press

(AP) — In Washington, in the tense months before war in Iraq, Charles Duelfer was confident. "Of course he is developing his weapons of mass destruction," the American arms expert wrote of Saddam Hussein.

In Baghdad, however, Hans Blix was much less convinced. The U.N. weapons inspector, on the eve of the conflict, remarked sadly on the likelihood that armies would be "waging the war at a tremendous cost, and in the end find there was very little."

In the end, as a hurricane distracted Americans, as terrorist car bombings and U.S. air strikes bloodied Iraq, the findings of a Duelfer-led investigation were quietly leaked in Washington. And after 16 months of trying, what his teams have found is less than little.

In fact, the only unconventional weapon turned up in Iraq wasn't turned up by the Americans at all, but by the other side, Iraq's shadowy resistance. In May, in an incident causing no serious injuries, insurgent fighters in Baghdad rigged an old artillery shell as a roadside bomb, apparently unaware it was loaded with sarin nerve agent.

Otherwise, two or three stray shells have been discovered with traces of degraded agent — far short of the 100-500 tons of usable chemical weapons that Colin Powell warned of on Feb. 5, 2003, as he sought a U.N. blessing for the U.S.-British invasion.

"Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option," the U.S. secretary of state declared that day to the U.N. Security Council.

President Bush's rationale for war — that Iraq's alleged doomsday arms posed an imminent threat — faded steadily in the months after the March 2003 invasion, as official U.S. rhetoric switched from "stockpiles" of weapons to "programs" to make them.

By Thursday, as Duelfer's upcoming report was broadly outlined to reporters in Washington, the focus had switched again, to Iraqi "intent" before the invasion — to what were described as hopes among Iraqi leaders during the Saddam regime of someday reviving Iraqi weapons-making.

Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, some 1,200 military and intelligence specialists and support staff, had focused much of its effort on Iraq's "dual-use" chemical and biological industries — factories and laboratories whose equipment and products might be converted quickly to making weapons.

In March, in an interim report to U.S. senators, Duelfer gave an example: An agricultural center south of Baghdad that was researching bacteria potentially useful in developing anthrax weapons. But he offered no evidence of plans to use the material for anything but its standard commercial purpose, as a pesticide.

As for chemical weapons, every industrial nation, rich or developing, has plants producing chlorine, phenol and other compounds with myriad commercial uses that also could help make sulfur mustard, sarin or other poison gases.

An international watchdog agency, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, counts 4,000-5,000 such dual-use plants in scores of countries. Again, no evidence has emerged that the Iraqis planned to make weapons in theirs.

Even if they did, it would not have been easy.

Since 2002, official U.S. statements have consistently obscured the fact that the Iraqis would have remained under close, on-scene monitoring for years to come, if Blix's U.N. inspection regime had not been short-circuited by the American invasion.

Once U.N. inspectors certified that Baghdad's weapons work had ceased, U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq would have been lifted. But then the Security Council would have imposed an open-ended verification regime, whose free-ranging inspectors would have kept watch on Iraq's military-industrial complex, aided by air and water sampling technology, satellite and aerial surveillance, and monitoring of imports.

But war did intervene, and now it is Duelfer's work that looks open-ended.

The U.S. group's final report originally had been expected last March. On Thursday, reporters were told that even this new 1,500-word document may not be final, and there is no guarantee it will be released in much detail before the Nov. 2 presidential election.

In 700 inspections across Iraq, beginning in November 2002, Blix's U.N. experts also had turned up nothing. He hoped their work might stave off a costly war. In the end, in official American eyes, it counted for little.

"There was a very consistent creation of a virtual reality," he now says of the U.S. attitude. "And eventually it collided with our old-fashioned, ordinary reality."

•__

EDITOR'S NOTE — Charles J. Hanley has covered the hunt for weapons and the Iraq crisis since 2002

[linskyjack]

No--I don't know how any rational human being could say otherwise. Imagine if our men and materials were focused on Afghanistan, the border betweeen Afghanistan and Pakistan---we would be much more productive in the war against terror.

[Wet Chicken]

Not only would I not, but I'm sure that the 1000+ families and loved ones of our dead soldiers wished that we never went in there I don't see anything wrong with removing saddam, but that is NOT why we went there.

We were lied to by bush, plain and simple. He said that saddam was a threat to us. We know now that he was NOT

We were lied to by bush, plain and simple. He said that they had weapons of mass destruction. We know now that he did NOT

We were lied to by bush, plain and simple. He said that this attach was connected to the 9/11 terrorist. We know now that it was NOT

We had no plan when we went in there. Now ask yourself what kind of a president starts a deadly war, without a plan to win it or bring our troops home?

A bad president like bush does that.

A MIS-leader like bush does that.

The kind we don't need to disgrace our White House. Come Nov. 2nd, 2004 I will be casting my vote for Kerry! He may not be perfect, BUT at least he has enough common sense to not start a war without a plan.

At least Kerry had the courage to JOIN our military, at a time when he could have pulled a 'bush' and run.

At least Kerry is not connected to all of the scandals from Halliburton!

The point is that Kerry might not be perfect, BUT he is light-years better than the corrupt loser that is in the White House now like bush and cheney, and wolfowitz and rummy and.... are

I supported bush when he was first elected... er... I mean Selected, but after I have seen how he has taken this great country of ours that was admired before he was in office, and how he has turned our country into a target of hate all around the word, all I can say is that anyone who supports bush either is ignorant about him, or doesn't care about our great country. Let's put our country back on track! Get rid of bush. Get rid of all his corrupt cronies. Get rid of the war

[Wino]

Bush plays David Copperfield - keep your eye on the wrong thing and miss the magic slight of hand.

[linskyjack]

It would be nice if some of the conservatives in this forum would respond to this thread???

[Wet Chicken]

Originally Posted by Wino

Bush plays David Copperfield - keep your eye on the wrong thing and miss the magic slight of hand.