>>It is the responsibility of the CinC to decide when and where to fight. It is only your opinion that
>>he "didn't really want to know". In my opinion, he made the right decision, as I believed that
>>Saddam was hiding WMD's as well as a potential threat to the US.

Well, your opinion on the WMD's is not based on facts.

I've heard all the arguments that Iraq might have moved the weapons Syria, or burried them in the desert.
This argument makes no sense and is frought with holes:

1) The Iraq Survey Group - the CIA's "Find the WMD's" team sent to Iraq after the US had taken over
- found nothing. Know why? Because they're were no WMD's to be found.

2) The US and it's allies flew round the clock overflights of both the northern and southers no-fly
zones in Iraq for 12 years. No one on any patrol ever saw convoys of Iraqi equiopment being sent to
Syria, or large scale bury projects in the desert.

3) WMD construction is not something you do a one small, indescrete building. Look at the satellite
photos from Iran and North Korea. These are sprawling compounds. We have been flying recon flights
over Iraq for 15 years, or more, and there are NO photos of WMD compounds.

4) Iraq has been in financial disarray since before the 1990 war. Their military equipment is WWII
era stuff. The Coalition defeated them in 1990 because they did not have the capacity to withstand
the might of the US military. That was when the had a military. The second time around they
had little or no military left. We plowed right through them

Bottom line? No evidence of WMD's has ever been found.

The Republicans keep going on about how Iraq had these WMD's, yet they show no proof. These 20 year
old, rusted artillery shells filled with Sarin gas where there before the 1990 war. This is not the
reason Bush gave to justify this war.

So, to the GOP leaders I say again - Show the proof or admit your wrong. The American people have a
right to know on what evidence the President put us at war.



>>'Finished' is when the Iraqi government can handle their own internal security and defend themselves
>> from an outside aggressor (like Iran). Yes, it may take a while. We didn't get out of Germany until
>>the 1990's.

The US and its allies didn't stay in Germany because it was in disarray. We stayed there because we needed
frontline bases to counter Soviet expansion. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, bases in Germany and
other European countries were not needed.


>>We certainly are in it for the long hual now. Problem is, Bush went into this with no end-game plan, and
>>he still has not end-game.
>
>>Again, that's your opinion.

Yes it is. But you say this like I'm wrong. Maybe I am, but again I say - show the plan. The American
people have a right to know when their sons and daughters will be out of Iraq.

Any way you slice it, there is no end-game plan. Having a plan for exiting a conflict is central to
itelligent military design. In other words, you don't go to war without clearly defined goals.

Bush's goal was to take out Saddam, but he did not have then, and still does not have a plan
to deal with the insurgency that his own advisors told him would take over.