--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "do.rflex" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip] > ~~~BUSH: I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has > to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put > their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction > is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my > administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in > Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of > nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. > And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had > been different, I guess. > > Of course, Bush made the decision to overlook all the *good* intel - - > not to mention the claims of those poor forgotten inspectors -- saying > that Saddam wasn't really a threat at all, or certainly not one > requiring the response Bush himself ordered. [snip] I don't think he did overlook all the "good" intel. If he did, he would have made a surprise attack, not the long, drawn out attack in which he gave Saddam every possible opportunity to let inspectors in, according to his prior agreements, and allow them, unfettered, to inspect every crook and nanny of Iraq that they wanted to but that Saddam for 12 years had thwarted (and which 17 resolutions of the U.N. said he thwarted). Saddam's incalcitrance only encouraged the attack that eventually happened. But let's not pretend that Bush went into Iraq all gung- ho. That simply didn't happen...it WOULD have happened and it SHOULD have happened if Bush had 100% convincing intel that there were in fact weapons of mass destruction. Here's another point: In our never-ending discussions on global warming on this forum, it is inevitably brought up by those who believe in catastrophic man- made global warming that "it is better to be safe than sorry"; that we may not be 100% sure that global warming is going to cause the destruction in the future that people like Al Gore are predicting but when so much is at stake it's better to err on the side of safety. Well, is that not what Bush did with Iraq? No one could say with 100% certainty that Iraq had WMD but why not err on the side of safety? What we DID know was that Saddam had used them before, had attempted to build a nuclear facility -- which the Israelis bombed in '81 (and which I flew over on the very same day on return from my Kashmir TM course) -- and was an all-out nasty character...and if he wasn't letting people in and he did NOT have WMD, isn't Saddam to shoulder SOME of the blame? So why is it okay to be safe than sorry with global warming but not with Saddam Hussein?
