Durran Korr wrote:That doesn't take into account the other things that could have been used to gain popularity for the war, like the fact that Hussein has been shooting at our jets for the last decade, and his human rights violations. He could have just used these to gain support, but he started with WMD instead. There's no reason why he would start with WMD when other, less shaky justifications could have been used if there hadn't been some substance to the WMD justification.
Sure there is. Since 9/11, terrorism has been a golden buzzword, and they figured that people are scared enough about another attack that people would get behind them if they tried and scare people into thinking that if they didn't attack right now, there would be another 9/11.
People don't care much about the Iraqis incompetant air defense, because it never managed hit anything and it's not like they were shooting at jets over
our airspace. Citing human rights violations opens a whole other can of worms, which, by the way, I know for a fact that you've stated that you didn't want opened, meaning that if we justify the war based on human rights violations, that they'd have to justify
not doing the same thing in places that are every bit as bad, some of which are our allies. Naturally, people will take the administrations unwillingness to follow their own precident as meaning that they weren't serious about human rights in the first place and there was an ulterior motive.
What's odd is that you'd be playing the human rights card, Durran, since I know that from before you've commented that human rights wasn't the primary motive and than you didn't want it to be anyway, since it continues an uncomfortable precident which would be very expensive to follow up on.
Admittedly, it was based on doubtful intelligence, but that doesn't make it an outright lie.
Yes it does, in fact, make it an outright lie, since they had to know full well that their intelligence was bogus and they pushed it like it was gospel truth.
I hate to bring Clinton up, but this is hardly the first time this has been done. The Kosovo war was also justified using doubtful intelligence, as was the bombing of the aspirin factory in Sudan. But this doesn't make Bill Clinton a liar anymore than it makes Bush a liar.
Enter the standard knee-jerk conservative
modus operandi. Whenever someone is critizing Bush, bring up Clinton, even though he's got nothing to do with the topic at hand, and go "Well... well... he was bad too!". C'mon, Durran, do you honestly think that flies?
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