[alpowolf]

Do you concede that the tales of tongues and limbs being hacked off before crowds has been thoroughly documented via videotape that has been shown on tv?

Yes. I never said otherwise.

If the machine story turns out to be a hyperbolic invention from desperate people in order to get us in to help them from atrocities that were beyond any doubt occurring, do you then say we went in under false pretenses because one form of torture on the list of many documented did not exist?

We went in under false pretense because a govt torturing its citizens is not a legitimate casus belli. We went in under the pretense of a threat to United States security. I seem to remember a politician saying that we are not the world's 9-1-1. Who was that....hmmm...I think his name was Bush.

[cyncooper]

Then your concern about the machines is moot.

I see you've moved your goal posts.

[Dilbert56]

There were multiple reasons given for removing Saddam.

• Genocide is a causus belli and codefied as such. That's why the Rwandan genocides were never described using that word - it would have forced action. Saddam conducted genocidal attacks against the Kurds and the Marsh People
• Saddam's innumnerable violations of UNSC resolutions were the "official" reason. They are also beyond dispute. Nobody pretended he was complying.
• The WMD threat was how it was sold to the American people.
• Strategically, this Administration wants to liberate the people of the Middle East. Their governments deny them basic freedoms of speech, religion, representation in government, etc. They also squander their countries' resources on palaces instead of infrastructure, education, medicine, etc. When people have freedom, they don't go blowing themselves and everyone else up.
• The fact that he violated the cease-fire agreements from GWI, shooting at our planes more than once a day was enough for me