If you can point to somewhere where I actually did a strawman, be my guest.
The below is not an example, as I explained...


You still don't know what the word means.
The only way that would be a strawman is if there was something in my argument I attributed to you, falsely.
The ONLY thing I attributed to you was the fact that you claimed al Qaeda IN Iraq was the important thing, as you repeatedly try to dismiss the fact that it was actually Bush's claim of Saddam collaborating with al Qaeda.

For you to prove strawman, you have to prove some semblance of the above sentence false.
Instead, I think you'll opt for parrotting "strawman! strawman!" over and over again...


You have avoided the point of my argument, attempting to neuter it by falsely claiming "strawman".
But the point is simple. Simply saying "al Qaeda was *IN* Iraq" is meaningless.

al Qaeda is in a lot of places we do not attack.
What was TRULY important and outraging about Bush's claims was the claim that al Qaeda was being HARBORED in Iraq.

And now you're trying to pretend that we should have attacked Iraq just because al Qaeda could have been present?
Considering we overthrew Saddam, that hardly seems like a rational response for just al Qaeda IN Iraq. A truly unique response that I dare say we would never apply to another country...

You are trying to lower the bar and ignore what is really significant.


You're actually going to waste my time on such stupidity?
I'll quote what I can easily find, but for you to pretend that your lowering the bar is not really lowering the bar is mind-bogglingly transparent. I'm not going to waste much time on what should be an uncontested point.

As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, President Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with Zarqawi."

USATODAY.com - Senate Intelligence report finds no Saddam-al-Qaeda link

On Thursday in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cheney described Saddam as a "man who provided safe harbor and sanctuary to terrorists for years" and who "provided safe harbor and sanctuary as well for al Qaeda."

CNN.com - Kerry challenges Bush on Iraq-9/11 connection - Sep 12, 2004

I got lucky and found it on the second link.
Don't waste my time with stupid requests.


No. It was not "one of the salient points".
In this country after Iraq has already been invaded on FALSE pretenses which the president has now been exposed as that he should have at least known they were false, ...
... there are a variety of conservatives running forward to re-invent reasons for invading Iraq.

Obviously, WMDs are out of the question.
The link from Saddam to al Qaeda is destroyed by anybody in the ACTUAL intelligence line of work.

So faithful conservatives have to try and invent "new" reasons that were supposedly satisfied for why we invaded.
Unfortunately for you, the majority of the country just plain ain't buying it...

It's not a "dismissal" as much as an acknowledgement of fact.
Over and over again, the Bush administration did NOT try to JUST claim "al Qaeda IN Iraq".
They tried to claim a collaborative connection between the two.

THAT is the lie.
And boringly enough, you have no interest in trying to defend that lie.
Probably because you can't...


What you cited EXPLICITLY said that al Qaeda was JUST "in" Iraq, and the intelligence community could not actually confirm that Iraq KNEW it.
The statement was that the intelligence community ASSUMED that Iraq must have known it.
That's hardly collaborative.


When you feel capable of stepping up to actually discuss what I have put forward, let me know...



I leave it to the viewing audience to see how false that is.
I was simply using YOUR evidence at the start to show how false your claim was. YOUR OWN EVIDENCE wasn't saying what you claimed...


This discussion actually has two layers.
1) Whether or not the claims of the Bush administration were actually true.
2) Whether or not the claims of the Bush administration were true based on evidence available AT THAT TIME...

You are implicitly giving me the field on the second issue by having to resort to the "latest evidence".
The evidence Bush and his crew had AT THAT TIME did not support their claims...


Thanks for admitting that there was no collaboration.
As I just pointed to the statement from the Bush crew, you have just admitted their duplicity.

In your efforts to lower the bar, you lost sight of the fact that you were showing how Bush and Cheney failed to clear the ORIGINAL bar...

YAWN

Post the quote where he state the were collaborating on something.

The position was we could not allow them to work together or for Saddam to provide support to them.

All quite true.

Yawn


Yawn

They were being HARORED, go read the cites provided.


yes

No collaboration on any speicific attacks.

You do need to get up to speed though and read the reports I have linked you to as to what we have found and continue to find documenting thier contacts, the training and support Saddam provided and their plans for the future.

[quote]

On Thursday in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cheney described Saddam as a "man who provided safe harbor and sanctuary to terrorists for years" and who "provided safe harbor and sanctuary as well for al Qaeda."

[url=http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/12[/quote]

Yep and it was true.


yes it was you are factully incorrect

Ture and very dangerous pretenesses

Since 90% was correct........

Actually it is you and your side which is trying to deny and reinvent the reasons.

Hardly and as the report from the ISG and Dr. Kay stated he was even more dangerous than we had thought.

Already refuted that claim, we know for a fact the ties that already existed and their mutual aim to increase those ties in order to attack the west.

Why do you keep repeating long refuted claims?



Why do you keep framiing them as new, are you that ignorant of the reasons we went to war, why the ILA was passed, why the ATUMF was passed?

No it is your trying to avoid the facts and your blaring inability to refute the facts I have posted.

DUH, we know it was more than "just in Iraq" we knew there were high level contacts between alQaeda and Saddam secret police and intelligence services for the purpose of working out deals between them for mutual support and assistance.



1. They were
2. It was and we now have more evidence proving the relationship was deeper than we had known.

What they knew at the time is only further reinforced with the new findings.


No one ever claimed they had gotten that far, strawman again.


The fact remains there was a relationship between Saddam and not only alQeada but other terrorist groups.

When you can refute those claims let me know, we you can refute the latest study of the captured documents let me know.

I'm lumping all your meaningless responses at the start.
Each and every one a one-liner response, that is little better than you trying to reduce this to a mindless "Yes it is", "No it isn't", "Yes it is", "No it isn't" type debate.
And part of the really boring part of your menial attempts at replies is that often you cut up my sentences to avoid the whole point...

Why do you bother when all you can muster is blind contradiction?


collaborate: 1 : to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor 2 : to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one's country and especially an occupying force 3 : to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected

"Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner." - President Bush: "World Can Rise to This Moment", White House (2/6/2003) - Whitehouse.gov

Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraq intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in aquiring poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner." - President's Radio Address, White House (2/8/2003) - BushOnIraq.com

Claims of direct cooperation.
Claims of direct training.
I don't know how you can make the claims you made...


As I pointed out, the resource showed that an al Qaeda operative was PRESENT in Iraq, and it was ASSUMED that Iraqi intelligence must have known.
That's not the same thing as harboring.


Once again, you're trying to obfuscate by strawman.
I never specified "on any speicific [sic] attacks".
I said COLLABORATING.


The sad part of this is that people CAN REMEMBER for themselves what the reasons were.
They can remember the claims, now proven false, of Iraq / al Qaeda link.
They can remember the false claims of WMD, with Powell pointing to things in Iraq he claimed were WMDs.
There is no need to "reinvent" anything, cause the quotes are all there!


Considering no WMDs were found, that claim is laughable.
It points to a denial of the real reasons why he was CLAIMED as "dangerous" in the first place.


"refuting" a claim takes more than just nay-saying with people who agree with you.
Repeatedly pointed out, the claims of "harboring" turned out to be, in reality, a statement of operative PRESENCE in Iraq, with an ASSUMPTION that Iraqi intelligence had to have known he was there.

By that logic, we could say the U.S. government "harbored" 9/11 hijackers, just cause we refuse to acknowledge a possibility that the government didn't know.
Just cause we refuse to acknowledge a possibility that while the government knew, they didn't actively pursue due to other issues, which is a far cry from "harboring".


I can smell your attempts to jump to strawman assumptions a mile away.
What SPECIFIC "them" are you referring to in the above quote.

Quit assuming my position and LISTEN for a change. People waste more time trying to correct your false assumptions of our positions...


So the claims go.
But in looking at the ACTUAL EVIDENCE, it's a far cry from that.


I have to repeat how false this is, cause you keep trying to ignore the facts with claims of "new findings".
This goes MUCH deeper than just proving, with CURRENT claimed evidence, what Iraq was doing.

One of the problems people have is that Bush made claims with the PAST evidence he had which were unsupported with the evidence he had AT THAT TIME.
To disprove this, you have to show the evidence we had BEFORE we invaded Iraq as being sufficient for Bush's claims.
But over and over again, you quote CURRENT misinformation that didn't exist when Bush ORIGINALLY made his claims.

And one of the biggest problems with your pretense that it was substantiated with evidence THAT WAS PREVIOUSLY AVAILABLE is the BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S OWN WORDS...

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no ''smoking gun'' proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda.
''I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection,'' Mr. Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. ''But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.''

Mr. Powell's remarks on Thursday were a stark admission that there is no definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, the acknowledged authors of the Sept. 11 attacks. Although President Bush finally acknowledged in September that there was no known connection between Mr. Hussein and the attacks, the impression of a link in the public mind has become widely accepted -- and something administration officials have done little to discourage.

THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: DIPLOMACY; Powell Admits No Hard Proof In Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda - New York Times

Now, look, I -- part of the reason we went into Iraq: was -- the main reason we went into Iraq: at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.

Bush Admits WMD "Main Reason" for Iraq; Press Ignores Admission
(So I don't need to "reinvent" what Bush has EXPRESSLY ADMITTED, although I roll my eyes at the continuous "capacity to make" claim...)


1) I'm only talking about al Qaeda, so don't try to change the subject.
2) There you go again with basing your claims on "latest studies"...

ABC News has requested and obtained a copy of the Pentagon study which shows Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaeda.

It's government report the White House didn't want you to read: yesterday the Pentagon canceled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's availability and didn't make the report available via email or online.

Based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion and thousands of hours of interrogations of former officials in Saddam's government now in US custody, the government report is the first official acknowledgment from the US military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to al Qaeda.

The Bush administration apparently didn't want the study to get any attention. The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website yesterday, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report was made available to those who asked for it, and was sent via overnight mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

Asked yesterday why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed, the spokesman for Joint Forces Command said: "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."

Another Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive."

Rapid Report: Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda

Not sure how much more direct you can get than this...
All the other crap that you try to float around is people taking FACTUAL tidbits, like "individual al Qaeda operative observed in Iraq", and deriving UNFOUNDED CONCLUSIONS from them.

But the government's own reports show no link.

Except they got it wrong


Saddam's Dangerous Friends

"As I said, this ought to be big news. And, in a way, it was. A headline in the New York Times, a cursory item in the Washington Post, and stories on NPR and ABC News reported that the study showed no links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

"How can a study offering an unprecedented look into the closed regime of a brutal dictator, with over 1,600 pages of "strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism," in the words of its authors, receive a wave-of-the-hand dismissal from America's most prestigious news outlets? All it took was a leak to a gullible reporter, one misleading line in the study's executive summary, a boneheaded Pentagon press office, an incompetent White House, and widespread journalistic negligence.

On Monday, March 10, 2008, Warren P. Strobel, a reporter from the McClatchy News Service first reported that the new Pentagon study was coming. "An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network." McClatchy is a newspaper chain that serves
many of America's largest cities. The national security reporters in its Washington bureau have earned a reputation as reliable outlets for anti-Bush administration spin on intelligence. Strobel quoted a "U.S. official familiar with the report" who told him that the search of Iraqi documents yielded no evidence of a "direct operational link" between Iraq and al Qaeda. Strobel used the rest of the article to attempt to demonstrate that this undermined the Bush administration's prewar claims with regard to Iraq and terrorism.

With the study not scheduled for release for two more days, this article shaped subsequent coverage, which was no doubt the leaker's purpose. Stories from other media outlets tracked McClatchy very closely but began to incorporate a highly misleading phrase taken from the executive summary: "This study found no 'smoking gun' (i.e. direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda."



Me again..and remember it wasn't just alQaeda Saddam was dealing with. When the news of the study got out lots of the MSM tried to head it off at the pass, but here is what the report actually says.

back to the article now and here from the abstract to the study:


"Because Saddam's security organizations and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance
of and, in some way, a 'de facto' link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam's use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

Among the study's other notable findings:

In 1993, as Osama bin Laden's fighters battled Americans in Somalia, Saddam Hussein personally ordered the formation of an Iraqi terrorist group to join the battle there.

For more than two decades, the Iraqi regime trained non-Iraqi jihadists in training camps throughout Iraq.

According to a 1993 internal Iraqi intelligence memo, the regime was supporting a secret Islamic Palestinian organization dedicated to "armed jihad against the Americans and Western interests."

In the 1990s, Iraq's military intelligence directorate trained and equipped "Sudanese fighters."

In 1998, the Iraqi regime offered "financial and moral support" to a new group of jihadists in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

In 2002, the year before the war began, the Iraqi regime hosted in Iraq a series of 13 conferences for non-Iraqi jihadist groups.

That same year, a branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) issued hundreds of Iraqi passports for known terrorists.

There is much, much more. Documents reveal that the regime stockpiled bombmaking materials in Iraqi embassies around the world and targeted Western journalists for assassination. In July 2001, an Iraqi Intelligence agent described an al Qaeda affiliate in Bahrain, the Army of Muhammad, as "under the wings of bin Laden." Although the organization "is an offshoot of bin Laden," the fact that it has a different name "can be a way of camouflaging the organization." The agent is told to deal with the al Qaeda group according to "priorities previously established."


In describing the relations between the Army of Muhammad and the Iraqi regime, the authors of the Pentagon study come to this conclusion: "Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda--as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision."


It is beyond debate that Saddam had contacts with MANY terrorist groups and was working with them to devise ways to attack the west. Just as the Clinton administration stated, just as the Bush administration stated.

Why not try doing it with yours or just not post them in the first place?

Linking in what way? See the evidence above.

And?

Why when his links to other terrorist groups were just as dangerous.

See above and get better sources.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stinger
Hardly and as the report from the ISG and Dr. Kay stated he was even more dangerous than we had thought.


No ready to go WMD......so what? Can you tell me specifically what happened to the WMD UNSCOM had documented he had? No because we never found them.

Now are you asserting that Saddam had given up ALL desire and plans to rebuild his WMD stockpiles? Are you asserting he was in complete compliance with the UN resolutions and in compete compliance and cooperation with the inspections. That he had NO percursor chemical caches, no reference strains and biological agents, and had declared all the proscribed items as he was suppose to?

Ahh yes.
The PENTAGON, the people actually fighting this war, got it wrong about what is going on over there.
Breeds INCREDIBLE trust in the government, doesn't it?
< end sarcasm >

I've already pointed out the flaws in the "approach" that is done by people who conclude "WMDs" and "links to al Qaeda".
They make unfounded conclusions based on the REAL evidence at hand.
And you've ignored that...

I'm sorry, but no.
Bush deceived us, and repeatedly you FAIL to show what evidence "he" supposedly had that justified his statements.


The fact that you can't understand this CLEARLY means that there was NO collaboration.
NO harboring...

That is just astounding.
You are saying that they were "linked" because they had "shared goals"?
That is the BEST you can offer?


You are welcome to try.
You like to pretend that you tossing out one-liners to legitimate arguments is somehow something I am guilty of...


I did.
It "links" them in saying they had "common goals".
That's like linking Catholics and Baptists in that they have a "common goal" to believe in Jesus.

That doesn't show "collaboration".
It doesn't show "harboring".

Powell's statement DID NOT NEED elaboration, because "no link" is accurate as is.



I already explained this.
You were pulling a knee-jerk reaction to me pointing out that some neo-cons were trying to reinvent the reasons for going to war.
Your reaction was to claim it was the liberals who did that.
I obliterated your argument by asking you for specifics (which of course you couldn't give) and also by pointing to the horse's mouth for proof on the real reasons.

And then you got lost looking at something shiny...


Name me any "other terrorist group" which has attacked the U.S. with as much damage as al Qaeda.
Can't do it, can you.


A PENTAGON study itself is not sufficient for you...
WHERE do you think they got the "evidence" that your "studies" misrepresent?


It does not matter.
Are you telling me now that we invaded Iraq because Saddam DID NOT have WMDs???

Funny. I thought Bush and Powell were telling us that we should invade Iraq because he HAD WMDs...


I am not playing your stupid strawman games.
Quit trying to put words in my mouth.

Didn't read the cite did you...........

No you ignore the facts which clearly show Saddam's ties to terrorist groups, his support of terrorist groups and the danger those relationships both sides wanted to further.

Sorry but no, there was no deception.


The fact that you refuse to listen to what was said and what has been proven. We couldn't wait until they collaborated on an attack on a western nation could we.


go read the cites, it was more than shared goals and YES just having shared goals and meeting together to further those goals is "linked" and could not be allowed.


Facts no in evidence, nothing needed to be invented.


Note how you now try requalify the argument. So "little" attacks are OK? Where do you get the idea that the war on the Islamist Jihad's is solely limited to alQaeda?



go read the report

Did he or did he not use WMD he posessed?

Yep, did UNSCOM ever declare they had accounted for all the WMD they had documented he had? Please tell me what happened to them and proved the evidence which backs it up.

But where did you get the idea that as long as he had no ready to go WMD everything was fine and he was in compliance?

Let me know when you can refute the facts about Saddam and his relations with terrorist groups and not just your assertions, post the evidence which refutes the following

"Because Saddam's security organizations and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network operated with similar aims (at least in the short term), considerable overlap was inevitable when monitoring, contacting, financing, and training the same outside groups. This created both the appearance
of and, in some way, a 'de facto' link between the organizations. At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust. Though the execution of Iraqi terror plots was not always successful, evidence shows that Saddam's use of terrorist tactics and his support for terrorist groups remained strong up until the collapse of the regime.

Among the study's other notable findings:

In 1993, as Osama bin Laden's fighters battled Americans in Somalia, Saddam Hussein personally ordered the formation of an Iraqi terrorist group to join the battle there.

For more than two decades, the Iraqi regime trained non-Iraqi jihadists in training camps throughout Iraq.

According to a 1993 internal Iraqi intelligence memo, the regime was supporting a secret Islamic Palestinian organization dedicated to "armed jihad against the Americans and Western interests."

In the 1990s, Iraq's military intelligence directorate trained and equipped "Sudanese fighters."

In 1998, the Iraqi regime offered "financial and moral support" to a new group of jihadists in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

In 2002, the year before the war began, the Iraqi regime hosted in Iraq a series of 13 conferences for non-Iraqi jihadist groups.

That same year, a branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) issued hundreds of Iraqi passports for known terrorists.

There is much, much more. Documents reveal that the regime stockpiled bombmaking materials in Iraqi embassies around the world and targeted Western journalists for assassination. In July 2001, an Iraqi Intelligence agent described an al Qaeda affiliate in Bahrain, the Army of Muhammad, as "under the wings of bin Laden." Although the organization "is an offshoot of bin Laden," the fact that it has a different name "can be a way of camouflaging the organization." The agent is told to deal with the al Qaeda group according to "priorities previously established."


In describing the relations between the Army of Muhammad and the Iraqi regime, the authors of the Pentagon study come to this conclusion: "Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda--as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision."

1) I read it.
2) Your non-sequitur innuendo isn't a response to the issue.
If you have something to point out, that you CAN point, then do it.
Otherwise, you're just giving non-responses...


1) I have been talking about AL QAEDA.
I have no doubts that he had relations with other MINOR "terrorist groups".

2) The fact that you are now shifting to just talking about vague "terrorist groups" speaks volumes of the weakness of your position.


Again, blind contradiction with no attempt at refutation.
REPEATEDLY I challenge you to show the intelligence Bush HAD BEFORE the war to prove his claims.
REPEATEDLY you fail to show it.


ROFLMAO!
1) You're proving my point with this back-pedalling.
Bush CLAIMED collaborative efforts.
Thank you for admitting there were none.

2) The whole mentality of attacking a nation BEFORE they do something worthy of attack is rather repulsive.
There was NO EVIDENCE that Saddam was going to attack the west.
I see NO EVIDENCE STILL that Saddam had any plans to attack the west.
The whole pretense that he was a threat to the U.S. was part of Bush's deception.


I have, and I've been talking about what ACTUAL FACTS they have, and what INACCURATE CONCLUSIONS they have drawn.
I have also given the PENTAGON'S CONCLUSIONS on the issues, which you still fail to address.
Rapid Report: Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda


Once again, you pull this really lame crap where you allege something I never hinted at.
Tell me. WHO is the U.S. attacking right now in the lines of "terrorist groups"?
al Qaeda, right?

WHO ELSE?
Are we doing anything with ANY of these "terrorist groups" that Saddam was associated with?
When you refuse to answer the obvious "no", the conclusion becomes obvious. These terrorist groups WERE NOT SIGNIFICANT, but rather just an excuse to go after Saddam.


Bush explicitly states that there were no WMDs.
Are you calling him a liar?


Irrelevant.
He DID NOT HAVE THEM.


There you go again. Changing the rational for the invasion.
Bush already admitted that the main REASON we went to war was the claim that he had WMDs.
This "compliance" crap IS NOT WORTH a couple trillion dollars in U.S. tax dollars.
This "compliance" crap IS NOT WORTH 4,000+ dead soldiers.
This "compliance" crap IS NOT WORTH everything the U.S. has had to do for Iraq, which was WELL above and beyond the lies that the Bush administration peddled regarding *over in a few months* and *pays for itself*, etc, etc...

Quit trying to reinvent WHY we went to war.

And furthermore, I'm not address the false crap you keep reposting that I have already addressed, considering you have repeatedly refused to address the Pentagon study that PROVES MY POINT.

foundit, I assume that you're a liberal and as such support the classic liberal cause of defending the rights of the world's oppressed. Why is it that the rights of millions of Iraqi citizens who were being horribly oppressed (Iraq: Systematic torture of political prisoneres | Amnesty International, Life Under Saddam Hussein, BBC News, http://www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hrdossier.pdf, etc., etc., etc.....) aren't important enough to you to sacrifice for them? Is your commitment to the freeing of teh oppressed people of the world limited to walking in circles carrying signs or does it extend to actaully doing something to free them? You want to argue about WMDs and terrorists, yet those were only part of the picture (one that was exaggerated, but had it's roots in fact). Why aren't you and the rest of the liberals celebrating the freeing from oppression of MILLIONS of Iraqis, the establishment of a Constitutional Republic in place of an oppressive dictatorship and the removal of a gov't that was responsible for approx. 1 million deaths in it's quest for power and to maintain that power? I would think that according to the classic liberal ideologies, all of these things are good things and should be celebrated and supported.

Could you explain why it is that liberals seem to have forgotten this core value that has defined them for decades??