"Nor was there any connection between Germany and Pearl Harbor, yet U.S. Marines landed in North Africa several months after 12/7/41 to fight the German Army. Yet there was no carping in the media about 'fighting an enemy that didn't attack us' when we took on Rommel's divisions."
To compare the threat of the well-organized Wehrmacht to that of Saddam's almost-completely destroyed, useless Republican Guard is laughable.
The Iraqi military posed ZERO threat to the USA, due to the actions of our Desert Storm vets who took care of business in 1991. We now know that the WMD crap was based on bogus, cooked intelligence, yet Bush rewarded Tenet for this screwup with a Medal of Freedom.
Read some history:
On the morning of Dec. 11 the Government of Germany, pursuing its course of world conquest, declared war against the United States. The long-known and the long-expected has thus taken place. The forces endeavoring to enslave the entire world now are moving toward this hemisphere. Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization. Delay invites great danger. Rapid and united effort by all of the peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will insure a world victory of the forces of justice and of righteousness over the forces of savagery and of barbarism. Italy also has declared war against the United States.
I therefore request the Congress to recognize a state of war between the United States and Germany, and between the United States and Italy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I can't believe that you're mouthing this tired old leftist talking point on FR. What did Saddam attack the Iranian army and defenseless Kurdish villages with back in the 1980's - spitballs?
Look - carping Democrats in Congress, State Department weenies, and Tony Blair attempting to appease his party delayed the inevitable start of the war long enough for Saddam to hide or disperse whatever chem/bio he most assuredly possessed. We have found remnants of the chem/bio arsenal all over Iraq; just no "smoking gun" stockpile. Common sense dictates that the stuff was not just simply "thrown away": genocidal dictators don't generally get rid of their weapons when politely asked. If Tenet (or the head of every other major intelligence service in the world, for that matter) is guilty of anything, it's underestimating just how desperate Saddam was embarrass the U.S. and not "lose face", even if it meant living at the bottom of a hole.
The question that people should be asking now is "where the hell did Saddam hide his arsenal?" I would venture to say that Syria is a damned good guess.