>There was no credible evidence of WMD in Iraq. None. Zero. The UN task force looked for close to a year and didn't find a firecracker. But the guys with itchy trigger fingers who have been bungling (apt word) this country for 6 1/2 years were determined to start a war anyway and they did.
Completely agree that one way or another Cheney and Bush were intent on overthrowing Saddam. But this NONE, ZERO stuff just isn't true. We didn't know what the hell was going on inside Iraq and people like Chalabi had their own agendas. But there was a "One Percent Doctrine" in effect - i.e. if there was a one percent chance of a doomsday threat it was to be treated as a certainty. One can question the wisdom of that ( though in other cases it prevented disasters ) but the Iraq WAR went very well. It was the Iraq "Peace" that was ill-planned and stupidly executed. We don't seem to be able to grasp the self-destructive mentality that has been so pervasive in that region for so long. ( see Arafat's favorite fable of the frog and the scorpion )
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.