Alphecca

Here here! I share very similar feelings. The Republicans lost my vote when they stopped being "conservatives" in a small-government, fiscal-conservative sense. I'm voting for Nader only because Badnarik is some kind of nut... even worse than what the LP usually comes up with.

The MSM doesn't seem to want to talk about the rest of the report which says that SH was prepared to get his WMD programs back up in full swing with short lead-time as soon as sanctions were lifted, and he was essentially bribing France, Russia, and China to work toward getting those sanctions lifted.

He also focused on France, Russia, and China so they could veto any war in the UN Security Council. If not for SH misjudging GWB and his willingness to go to war without the UN, today sanctions might be lifted, with Iraq producing WMD.

Nice spin Jetapron, which repub site did you pull that one from.

Here's a good question. We haven't found any WMD. If SH allowed the weapon inspectors to finish the job, they would have certified him as having no WMD. Then sanctions would have been lifted. Which is what he wanted. So why didn't he let the UN inspectors finish their job? The group that put together the report being discussed here said SH's WMD has been in decline since 91. So it's not like he was delaying the inspectors in order to hide his WMD. It seems that SH's actions with the weapons inspectors were counterproductive to achieving the goal JETapron states above.

I had forgotten, the weapons inspectors were in Iraq at the time we invaded. Maybe that's why Bush was in such a hurry. If he let the inspectors finish their job, the world would have known there were no WMD in Iraq and the US would not have had a legit reason for going into Iraq. Pre-emptive my a$$, the only thing pre-emptive about our invasion was so Bush could prevent the UN from declaring SH clean of WMD.

The "repub web site" I pulled that from is the the key findings document of the Duelfer Report. Here's a URL. Granted, I got the copy of the document off of the CBS News website, so it may be a forgery.
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/wmdfinalreport.pdf

Everybody thought that Iraq had WMD. Everybody. The US, Britain, France, Russia, even members of SH's own regime. The idea that Bush went to war in order to keep the world from knowing that there were no WMD is ludicrous.

I've been researching the timeline for the war on Iraq. Funy thing. I don't see Bush mention anything about terrorists being in Iraq. All I see is about the Iraqi regime will disarm itself or it will be disarmed by force. That's why we were going in. No mention of 9/11 No mention of Al Qaedi. Leading up to the war, the IAEA, International Atomic Energy Assoc, warns the White house twice that they had to date not found any evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq. Our own CIA warned at the end of Feb 2003 that the intelligence community has no direct evidence that Iraq has succeeded in reconstructing its biological, chemical, nuclear or long range missle programs in the 2 years since weapons inspectors left and US planes bombed Iraqi facilities. Remember this intel that is coming out after the vote to give Bush the authorization to go to war so you can't say Kerry knew about it when he voted to give Dubya the power. So Bush ignored the warnings. He set an unreasonable timeline for the inspectors to get their job done. Why? We know now that everything he said leading up to the war was wrong. It's a good thing that there isn't a "global test" Kerry spoke about in the first debate. Because if there was, Bush would have gotten a zero on it. The only thing they can say now is that the world is a better place with SH out of power. Funny thing is, the world thinks it would be a better place if George Bush was out of power.

I was wrong. I didn't do my research fully. Dubya does on several occasions talk about terrorists being in Iraq. And he does try to link SH to al qaeda and 9/11. Which we know is not true.

You want evidence of WMDs within Iraq? The mass graves, into which were piled countless bodies, some of which have been exhumed and examined, showing evidence of materials defined as WMDs.

Jeff, I am surprised that people never mention Salman Pak, the terrorist training camp 26 miles southeast of Bagdad. The Iraqi officer who worked there and defected prior to the war claimed that 9/11 hijackers trained there on the Russian airliner that is a part of the school there. His pencil drawing of the grounds was almost a perfect overlay for the satellite photo once we tasked our satellite to surveil the area. They also never mention the foreign intel agencies that document meetings between Iraqi agents and Al Qaeda agents in many foreign capitals. Also, the mastermind of the first WTC bombing was an Iraqi agent. I, for one, am convinced that if Sadaam wasn't directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, he helped in some way materially.
I personally don't believe that Bush tweaked any intel on WMDs to "rush" us into war. We were already in a technical state of war interrupted by a cease fire contingent on Sadaam's obedience to UN mandates. He was anything but obedient, so the cease fire was off. I think he was delusional in much the same way that Hitler was towards the end when he ordered non-existent units into the fray. Sadaam may have thought he had wmds. Who knows? In any case, we now have a huge footprint right smack dab in the middle of the Arab world and we're about to be holding elections in the two countries that border either side of Iran. I've heard it said that Iran is the real big Kahuna of terror sponsorship. I wonder if the mullahs are having some thoughts similar to those that occurred to Kaddafi after Sadaam was hauled unceremoniously out of his spider hole. In short, going into Iraq was, to me, crucial in the WOT for many reasons. No WMD? That's too bad. Perhaps we should resurrect those satellite photos that showed convoys heading across the Syrian border into the Bekaa valley just before the war. The Iraqi military reported that the usual border guards would be pulled off the line and secret police would take their places as the military convoy passed through. Everyone conveniently forgets all this stuff and bashes Bush.
If you really value the 2d amendment, then not voting for Bush is only helping elect the anti 2d amendment scum Kerry and helping him pack the Supreme Court with like minded anti-2d amendment judicial scum. Go ahead, Jeff. I've heard the "the candidate isn't perfect" argument many times before. Which candidate was ever perfect? Bush happens to be somewhat inarticulate about defending himself and his decisions. There's so much he'd have to say to counter the blatherstorm of lies coming out of Kerry that any defense would sound like a history seminar that would turn off the audience immediately because it wasn't a sound bite.
I think that if you don't vote for Bush, you're dooming a lot of very vital constitutional principles that Kerry has absolutely no respect for. Bush may not be perfect, but at the moment he's the best of the choices. Jerry

Thanks for all your comments. It is all weighing on me heavily. I listened to Mike Badnarik the other night on Coast To Coast. I'm listening to everyone. *Sigh* As has been pointed out, it's really sad that in a nation of 300 million people, these candidates are the best we could come up with.

I have other gripes with Bush besides Iraq, including his inaccessibility to the press, his (probably symbolic) throwing a "bone" to the far right with the Constitutional Amendment to "protect marriage" although that isn't a biggie to me personally. His failure to fund the very good No Child Left Behind Program, and his sudden weakness on pro-gun issues. He used absolutely NO political muscle to try to get his judicial nominees past the abstructionist Democrats.

Both the Republicans and the Democrats have failed to work together and have contributed to the extreme partisanship not just in Congress but in the American people in general. No one has made an effort to work in an inclusive way.

I'm beginning to sour on politics in general.

If a criminal comes at me, do I have to wait until he draws blood before I can respond to defend myself? Maybe the conditions are different between on the street and in international politics.

In which case, why did we ever go to war with Germany? It was Japan who attacked us.