"I take full responsibility and apologize for any information given in good faith that has subsequently turned out to be wrong," Blair told the House of Commons, in a stormy session dominated by the war.
"What I do not in any way accept is that there was any deception of anyone. I will not apologize for removing Saddam Hussein. I will not apologize for the conflict. I believe it was right then, is right now and essential for the wider security of that region and world."
This is a much more elloquent and consise way of putting Bush's position on the subject. George, put this one in your speech book.
This is what I buy, and I've bought all along. If you go back to the beginning days of my blog in the leadup to the Iraq war, I've been pretty consistent on this. I do not believe the conspiracy theories about the war largely because they don't make sense.
- Blood for Oil? Bull hockey. We were getting plenty of oil before the war and there was no reason to believe the war would improve the situation any.
- Corporate interests? Right. I think any objective analyis of George Bush, the man -- will tell you that he wouldn't send a thousand Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis to their deaths to give Halliburton a boost in profits.
- Revenge for Dad? Hey, there are all kinds of motives for doing things, and I'm sure the assassination attempt on his father didn't detract from the argument any.
- Imperialism/Empire Building? -- that's the shrill Left shrieking out one of its many conspiracy theories.
- Knew Saddam didn't have WMD? Right. Perhaps you weren't paying attention to the UN between 1991 and 2002.
I remember what was going on leading up to the war. Saddam was playing the UN like a marrionette show and succeeding. The longer we waited, the better the chance that there would not be enough support at home, let alone the world, to take the man out.
Saddam wasn't a direct threat to the US mainland -- and I think everyone knew that. -- However, the world knew he had Chem/Bio weapons, was willing to use them and demonstrated that willingness by using them, and thought nothing of annexing a neighboring soveriegn country. It now appears that he had indeed gotten rid of the Chem/Bio stocks and his nuclear program (though that may have been outsourced), but he seemed to go out of his way to look like he had something to hide. What was the world to assume after 9/11?
It wasn't like he was going to fire a missile at Miami or Washington DC. More likely, he would take a cue from Al-Queda or even perhaps enlist their help by passing chem/bio to them for use here and elsewhere.
A sworn enemy of the United States and a proven unscrupulous man, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and keeping the whole country clutched in fear, who cheered the 9/11 "bombing" of Civillian America and provided safe haven for terrorists such as Al-Zarkawi, who sponsored suicide bombings in Israel at one time had weapons of mass destruction, used them, and tried very hard to cover his trail even when he disposed of them, who refused to prove he disposed of them, who routinely shot at our planes as we tried to enforce some of the 17 UN resolutions and sanctions -- dude, I just don't feel bad that we didn't find any WMD.
Does that mean we invade Iran or North Korea?
No, it doesn't. As Bush has said, they're entirely different situations. That question is based on the assumption that we went in to Iraq for one reason and one reason only, WMD. That was just a part of the argument.
Kerry, who voted against the 1991 war AFTER George Senior got UN approval for it and the much touted "good" Coallition, said himself right before the war (and after voting to authorize it)
"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous
dictator, leading an oppressive regime. He presents a particularly grievous
threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation."
and went on to say that the threat of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is not new, but that "it had been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War."
It's a little disingenuous to attack the President for "lying" and "rushing to war" with those two statements under your belt.
I have no doubts that if John Kerry and the UN got what they wanted, Saddam would still be in power, eroding the effectiveness of UN Resolutions and sanctions at the expense of the US and UK (as we were pretty much the only ones with our necks on the line enforcing them) until he re-established his chem/bio programs, all the while killing & torturing more Iraqis, sponsoring terrorism in Israel and encouraging and supporting it elsewhere, shooting at our planes, and possibly passing out Anthrax to terrorist agents regargless of their Al-Queda affilliations.
Bush, Blair, and Anzar did the right thing.
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