Replies

With respect, Agape, MY premise in posting this thread was and remains this:

In overthrowing Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush implemented long-standing U.S. policy.
That policy was established by the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
The 1998 Act was in response to the fact that Saddam Hussein had been obstructing UN weapons inspectors for years, culminating in his throwing them out of Iraq in 1998.
In December 1998, Clinton acted on the law he had signed that October, and took aggressive military action against Iraq. However, his actions were brief and he failed to follow through.
In the post-9/11 (and post anthrax attacks) world, President Bush correctly decided that the games the UN, U.S., and Britain had been playing with Hussein for 12 long years were just too dangerous to continue. So he did what Clinton failed to do — follow through on the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act.
ALL of the above actions were taken because the many and varied decision-makers involved believed that Hussein had WMD and that he might someday use them for terroristic purposes. They not only had solid intelligence from defectors, but they had Hussein's own actions and declarations to base their beliefs on.
In the four years (1998-2002) after Hussein threw out the inspectors and before they returned late last year, did he disarm on his own? His own actions argue against that being the case. If he had nothing to hide in the 14-month run-up to his overthrow in April, why did he act like he did?

I posted Clinton's 1998 address to the nation because, in it, he makes exactly the same arguments that President Bush did later. I posted it because the fools in the United States Senate (most of whom voted for the 1998 Act) are now huffing and puffing about investigating whether or not we were "misled" about Iraq having WMD. I posted it because the Left is gleefully sharpening their political swords in anticipation of bringing this great President down over the "failure" to find WMD.