Drumwaster: They were against the war even though they had voted in favor of every single one of the vaguely shaking finger of warnings that the ineffective UN put out over the dozen years of lies, yet not vote for actually enforcing any of those 17 Resolutions (in fact, to threaten to veto any such resolution – sight unseen – is proof enough that they weren’t interested in actually punishing someone for breaking laws that they themselves wrote.

Perhaps they felt he could have something deadly, but that he had no power to threaten his neighbors. Ever consider that? If his status was viewed as that of a neutered dog, which he was, then how could it be an automatic justification for the sacrifice of their peoples’ lives?

Drumwaster: But you say you were against the war “from the beginning”, which means that WMD (or the alleged lack thereof) cannot have been the reason you had that opinion.

Why is it so difficult for you to understand that the world doesn’t begin and end with the WMD issue? You honestly can’t wrap your head around the argument that it’s none of our business? All of those European nations have been around for hundreds of years longer than us, and saw what the end result of ‘empire’ was for the UK and France. If the United States wanted support, yet demanded control over the operation, what incentive is there to contribute? The people of these countries that did send troops (UK and Spain are perfect examples) spoke up and the numbers have dropped or vanished completely since the invasion.

Political climates internationally do not mirror what we toss around here in the US. That’s the fact we fail to acknowledge. The question of ‘why should we invade?’ can be rationalized, as every war in the history of makind has been in one way or another – but the results serve as proof of whether or not the rationalization justified the cost. We need that money here, in this country. And like I said, it’s none of our business. If the facts were as rock solid as you insist they are, then the international community would have agreed and contributed.

I’m sure you have a cynical view of that statement and view the rest of the world as cowardly, but here we are in 2005 and it wasn’t worth it. The human and monetary costs have outgrown the flawed ideology that brought us there.

Drumwaster: I still want to know whether you have the intellectual honesty to admit to yourself – and both of your regulars – exactly why you hate so thoroughly a man you have almost certainly never met…

I think Bush is a rich kid who made mistakes, but never had to clean up his own messes. I don’t think he’s a leader. Bush is a politician, and that classification alone doesn’t qualify him as a ‘leader’ as I see it. His debates versus Gore clearly showed that he wasn’t the smartest guy in the room by a long shot, and that’s a serious disqualification for me.

Clearly, the man only says or does what he’s told, and now that the effects of his poor choices are becoming obvious to even those who voted for him, he’s looking around for someone to feed him the right thing to say. He’s a politician – a damned good one – but a President…we can do a lot better in my opinion. The country would better off had McCain won the nomination and Presidency.

But we elected the pampered rich kid instead of the leader who actually survived hardship and entered politics without his most vital asset being his name! I don’t have to like him. If he were born to a poor family, you and I would have never even heard of him.

Drum, they didn’t buy our justification, which was proven to be wrong.

Despite the fact that their intel services were saying EXACTLY the same things, you still think they knew ahead of time that this ONE issue would turn out false. The fact that they would have had to disbelieve EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET in order to “not buy our justification”, just so that they could be retroactively proven “right”.

Once again, you poor pathetic sap, you’re mis aligning the timeline of facts.

They were against the war even though they had voted in favor of every single one of the vaguely shaking finger of warnings that the ineffective UN put out over the dozen years of lies, yet not vote for actually enforcing any of those 17 Resolutions (in fact, to threaten to veto any such resolution – sight unseen – is proof enough that they weren’t interested in actually punishing someone for breaking laws that they themselves wrote.

Pay attention, dimwit: You cannot use “after the fact” knowledge to justify an opinion you already have. You cannot use knowledge that “there were no WMD” (even though there ARE, and you aren’t smart enough to understand those facts) to justify your anti-war status, because those facts were not “known” until well after the war was already over. In point of fact, as I have already shown (more than once, though you deleted them all), the “Bush lied” meme was being propagated long before it was even arguably supported by the final report of the Iraqi Survey Group.

Which was less than a year ago.

But you say you were against the war “from the beginning”, which means that WMD (or the alleged lack thereof) cannot have been the reason you had that opinion.

COMPLETELY SEPARATE from all of the other reasons he gave for invading Iraq being ABSOLUTELY VERIFIED beyond our worst nightmares (of which reasons you never speak, and I wonder why that is), your opinion of Bush quite probably dates back to that first Tuesday in November, 2000, when your fair-haired boy got waxed.

I still want to know whether you have the intellectual honesty to admit to yourself – and both of your regulars – exactly why you hate so thoroughly a man you have almost certainly never met…

There are medical professionals and prescriptions to help you, but you have to want to change.

There was that little matter of the attempted assassination of GHW Bush.

DI-Because it wasn’t necessary.

DW: Opinion.

Really? So if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, we’d have suffered an attack from Saddam by now?

DI-Because Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorists who blew up the towers.

DW: 1) No one in the Bush Administration ever said that it did. But that was irrelevant to the global conflict, just like North Africa had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.

2) A Clinton-appointed Federal Judge disagrees with you.

Drum, Bush has been giving Iraq speeches for the past year…from Fort Bragg to his trip to Idaho last week, and he draws on the tragedy of 9/11 every single time.

And this coorelation with WW2 is ridiculous. Japan attacked us and Germany declared war on us. Iraq did neither of these things.

DI: -Because we hadn’t apprehended Osama yet.

DW: So what? He’s out of commission, out of touch, and hasn’t been heard from in nearly a year. He has lost 90% of his funding, 80% of his troops, 95% of his senior leaders, and the moment he pops up anywhere he’s a dead man, even if he weren’t already a grease stain on a cave wall somewhere. But this is no more about him than the Second World War was about capturing Rommel.

I think the comparison here would be Osama to Hitler, and for the sake of the thousands of murder victims in NYC, a shrug of the shoulders like you’ve provided here is sadly political and nothing more than that. It’s a political rationalization for basically not caring about aprehending the criminal who murdered thousands of our people.

DI: -Because the players who disagreed with Bush Sr. and Powell about invading in the first Gulf War – Cheney and Rumsfeld mainly – were the ones beating the drum loudest.

DW: They did not disagree with Bush Sr. about the first Gulf War. And they are the VPOTUS and SECDEF during wartime. Of COURSE they are going to be supporting the President. That’s their JOB.

From the day that war ended, the neocon think tank/insider opinion was that we should have taken out Saddam then and there. Their beliefs contradicted what both Bush Sr. and Powell wrote at the time about what would happen were we to invade Iraq. The insurgency and our military ending up bogged down is what they warned of, and what the neo-cons didn’t believe would happen. Who was right? Powell and Bush Sr – or – Cheney and Rumsfeld?

DI-Because the rest of the world didn’t buy our justification for invasion, meaning we would have to shoulder most of the burden ourselves.

DW: The parts of the world who stood against our efforts at trying to enforce the UN Resolutions – France and Germany and Russia – all had massive oil development contracts contigent upon the lifting of the sanctions. That financial dealing had more to do with not allowing military force (since both France and Russia used their troops against civilians while Iraqi negotiations were going on. France was feeding Saddam intelligence and selling them advanced weapons systems (in violation of UN sanctions). Germany was selling them precursor chemicals for Chemical weapons. Russia was selling Iraq GPS jammers.

Drum, they didn’t buy our justification, which was proven to be wrong. If they had joined us in Iraq, the officials who were responsible for that decision would have had to pay for the mistake. Don’t you think it’s odd that Brittan’s troop numbers have been less and less as the war has gone on? It’s an exact play on what I just described above. You chalk it all up to business interests, but if that were the case then countries like the UK, Spain and others wouldn’t be pulling their soldiers out as they have.

We’ve had to go this alone for many reasons. The business deals did not equal why every country who has let us go it mostly on our own, decided to do so.

DI: we won the battle, but we lost the war.

DW: How can you say we’ve lost something that isn’t over yet?

To use a sports metaphor, we are up 147-0 as halftime is approaching. The other side has not managed to maintain possession longer than a down or two, and people like you are chanting that we’re losing.

Drum, who are we at war against? Radical Islam, right? What’s the governing power in Iraq based on the constitution they’re voting on? THE KORAN!

You call that victory?

DW: Those claims are doing nothing but encouraging the terror groups, because they are hoping that we will give up and walk away, just like we did in Vietnam. (That is the ONLY way this approaches anything even remotely approaching Vietnam, in that those on the Left are doing everything you can to get us to just give up and quit. We never lost a battle in Vietnam, and the estimated ratio was 20 VC killed for every one of our soldiers, but it was all about losing. Today, it’s closer to fifty per COTW soldier, but you never hear that reported, because that might give the impression that things are going worse for the terrorists than is presently being described.)

Drum, body counts are not a way of determining victory or defeat. You’re not counting Iraqi civilians in that 50-1 ratio. I’ve never even heard that body count cited in anything I’ve read, but even if it were something that could be accurately tracked, it doesn’t take into account the civilian deaths.

DW: You want to quit because it’s “too tough”. No one is asking you to fight. We’re asking you to let our soldiers win. Too much, I know, since that would make Bush “right”…

Too tough? The enemy has gained strength since the start of the war! We’ve lost strength and can’t keep up with recruiting needs. America is a democracy – the President works for the people. He’s not a king for four years because he won an election. Public support of the war is declining and it’s time for our policy in Iraq to reflect that. He’s had plenty of time to try this neo-con experiment…everything they said would happen hasn’t. American industry isn’t thriving in Iraq, the Iraqi oil revenues aren’t paying for the cost of the war, and Saddam did not pose a threat to American national security. Our gas prices are going through the roof and we’re occupying the 2nd largest known cache of oil in the entire world!

DI: A policy of ‘Remove Saddam’ did not mean that we had to do it at the earliest moment.

DW: How much time should we waste, waiting for Saddam to learn restraint? Everyone in the world agreed that saddam was dangerous. Everyone in the world acknowledged that Saddam had WMD (using them twice against Iran, and once against his own citizens). How much more time should we have waited? How many more children should have died because of the UN sanctions? or are you arguing that we should have let saddam free, despite the fact that he had never cooperated with the Inspectors, and subsequent information all says that it would have been a matter of months, not years, before he would have had those proscribed programs up and running full tilt. He was obviously supporting international terrorism. But you were okay with all that, I see.

Saddam used WMDs on Iran during their war in the 70s-80s, and curiously the USA was supplying both sides with arms during that conflict. His use of chemical weapons on the Kurds was horrible, but Reagan didn’t seem to care about it in the least when it happened, so all this righteousness over what Saddam has done to the poor Kurds and Iranians is at least a decade late!

You concede that he didn’t have the capability to construct WMDs at the time…well how did we prevent him from achieving that? UN weapons inspectors and sanctions. As I said before, even when he wasn’t under sanctions, he couldn’t manage to build a nuke. The warheads wouldn’t connect to the missiles he had on hand. His own scientists worked to sabotage his work towards achieving nuclear capabilities.

Pretending that he was even a year away from having a nuke is ridiculous! The guy tried as hard as he could, and couldn’t put it together at any point…with or without the inspectors and sanctions. So removing him immediately was not critical to our national interests.

DI: When Clinton went into Kosovo, Fox News and pretty much everyone on the right was frothing at the mouth

DW: That was because he had neither American national security, Congressional approval, nor UN permission on his side. (Bush had all three.) He also went in while undergoing Congressional investigation into Impeachment, and the “wag the dog” argument was clear.

We’re still in Kosovo, I might add.

So while you’re completely comfortable with the rationale that Bush provides where we invaded Iraq for the sake of his people who he had been oppressing for decades – - – invading Kosovo to stop the genocide and get Milosovich into custody is a misuse of our military? The righties have a clear double standard when they accept it as a reason to go into Iraq, but not Kosovo. You guys level the importance of ‘those poor foreigners’ based on political necessity here at home. Because, by Bush’s standard of ‘we invaded to free the Iraqi people’, we should be in Darfur right now.

And I never defended Clinton’s use of military force in Kosovo. My unit was the first to go on alert for that conflict, and while we waited they bombed the hell out of that area…hospitals, schools…they didn’t know what the hell they were dropping bombs on, just like the satelite photos Powell brought to the UN were not of what the analysts said.

DW: So we should have waited until he actually had a nuclear weapon aimed at one of our cities before we start talking about taking him down? We can no longer afford to stand there, dumb and helpless, while threats gather against us. These people don’t mind dying, as long as they can kill lots of us.

That is not a threat you can afford to ignore. But that’s what yoiu want us to do.

Drum, he couldn’t manage to do it in over two decades in power – how can you assume he could do it now? That’s naive – and also not a good reason to sacrifice 1900+ military lives.

DW: Lemme ask you another question: Was Afghanistan considered an “imminent threat” on September 10th?

Oh, and “honesty rating”? That would not be a reason you were against the war “from the beginning”. It couldn’t be.

Still waiting for you to understand that your excuses are nothing but reasons you are looking for to justify an opinion you already had.

Not holding my breath, though. I haven’t seen that much intellectual acuity from you. Why were you against the war before the war was even declared? Why can’t you just admit that if Bush were a Democrat you would be supporting him like he had just been hand-crafted by George Soros himself?

Drum, that’s what you’d like so much to be true, because it would validate your world-view of ‘everyone who disagrees with me is brainwashed by millionaire liberals’. George Soros doesn’t own every publication I subscribe to, nor does he own the publishing house of every book I read. The flip rationale of calling your debating opponent a drone is really a reflection of your own frustration over my arguments holding water.

Your positions require faith – that Saddam COULD have built a nuke. First hand accounts from his own people dating back to the first Gulf War contradict this idea you seem to have so much faith in.

A foreign war shouldn’t be a ‘faith based initiative’ Drum.

-Because it wasn’t necessary.

Opinion.

-Because Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorists who blew up the towers.

1) No one in the Bush Administration ever said that it did. But that was irrelevant to the global conflict, just like North Africa had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.

2) A Clinton-appointed Federal Judge disagrees with you.

-Because we hadn’t apprehended Osama yet.

So what? He’s out of commission, out of touch, and hasn’t been heard from in nearly a year. He has lost 90% of his funding, 80% of his troops, 95% of his senior leaders, and the moment he pops up anywhere he’s a dead man, even if he weren’t already a grease stain on a cave wall somewhere. But this is no more about him than the Second World War was about capturing Rommel.

-Because the players who disagreed with Bush Sr. and Powell about invading in the first Gulf War – Cheney and Rumsfeld mainly – were the ones beating the drum loudest.

They did not disagree with Bush Sr. about the first Gulf War. And they are the VPOTUS and SECDEF during wartime. Of COURSE they are going to be supporting the President. That’s their JOB.

-Because the rest of the world didn’t buy our justification for invasion, meaning we would have to shoulder most of the burden ourselves.

The parts of the world who stood against our efforts at trying to enforce the UN Resolutions – France and Germany and Russia – all had massive oil development contracts contigent upon the lifting of the sanctions. That financial dealing had more to do with not allowing military force (since both France and Russia used their troops against civilians while Iraqi negotiations were going on. France was feeding Saddam intelligence and selling them advanced weapons systems (in violation of UN sanctions). Germany was selling them precursor chemicals for Chemical weapons. Russia was selling Iraq GPS jammers.

Are those enough reasons for you Drum?

No, because none of them are actually connected with reality. I have the same suspicions about you, but for you to come to that realization would require an intellectual honesty you have not shown yourself capable.

An Army civilian who criticized Halliburton was demoted recently.

“Army civilian”? The term for that is “oxymoron”.

Disagreeing with the invasion from the start exposes me as a political hack?

Yes, because you were judging the efforts based on your preconceived notions of the individual. The war had not happened yet, so you cannot claim that you were against it “from the beginning” because of any alleged mistakes that were made. You cannot claim that it was a result of the poor planning resulting in lots of little attacks, because those had not started to happen yet.

These aren’t reasons. They are excuses to justify an opinion you were already holding. THAT is why you are a hack.

we won the battle, but we lost the war.

How can you say we’ve lost something that isn’t over yet?

To use a sports metaphor, we are up 147-0 as halftime is approaching. The other side has not managed to maintain possession longer than a down or two, and people like you are chanting that we’re losing.

Those claims are doing nothing but encouraging the terror groups, because they are hoping that we will give up and walk away, just like we did in Vietnam. (That is the ONLY way this approaches anything even remotely approaching Vietnam, in that those on the Left are doing everything you can to get us to just give up and quit. We never lost a battle in Vietnam, and the estimated ratio was 20 VC killed for every one of our soldiers, but it was all about losing. Today, it’s closer to fifty per COTW soldier, but you never hear that reported, because that might give the impression that things are going worse for the terrorists than is presently being described.)

You want to quit because it’s “too tough”. No one is asking you to fight. We’re asking you to let our soldiers win. Too much, I know, since that would make Bush “right”…

A policy of ‘Remove Saddam’ did not mean that we had to do it at the earliest moment.

How much time should we waste, waiting for Saddam to learn restraint? Everyone in the world agreed that saddam was dangerous. Everyone in the world acknowledged that Saddam had WMD (using them twice against Iran, and once against his own citizens). How much more time should we have waited? How many more children should have died because of the UN sanctions? or are you arguing that we should have let saddam free, despite the fact that he had never cooperated with the Inspectors, and subsequent information all says that it would have been a matter of months, not years, before he would have had those proscribed programs up and running full tilt. He was obviously supporting international terrorism. But you were okay with all that, I see.

When Clinton went into Kosovo, Fox News and pretty much everyone on the right was frothing at the mouth

That was because he had neither American national security, Congressional approval, nor UN permission on his side. (Bush had all three.) He also went in while undergoing Congressional investigation into Impeachment, and the “wag the dog” argument was clear.

We’re still in Kosovo, I might add.

So we should have waited until he actually had a nuclear weapon aimed at one of our cities before we start talking about taking him down? We can no longer afford to stand there, dumb and helpless, while threats gather against us. These people don’t mind dying, as long as they can kill lots of us.

That is not a threat you can afford to ignore. But that’s what yoiu want us to do.

Lemme ask you another question: Was Afghanistan considered an “imminent threat” on September 10th?

Oh, and “honesty rating”? That would not be a reason you were against the war “from the beginning”. It couldn’t be.

Still waiting for you to understand that your excuses are nothing but reasons you are looking for to justify an opinion you already had.

Not holding my breath, though. I haven’t seen that much intellectual acuity from you. Why were you against the war before the war was even declared? Why can’t you just admit that if Bush were a Democrat you would be supporting him like he had just been hand-crafted by George Soros himself?

Austin Say’s says:
It is not semantics it’s that you can not recognize that you are a pathological lier.

I believe the word is ‘liar’, and to say that without proof is about par for the course from my experience at RTFTLC.

DW: Still waiting for WHY you were against the war “from the beginning”. Is honesty that anathema to your nature?

-Because it wasn’t necessary.
-Because Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorists who blew up the towers.
-Because we hadn’t apprehended Osama yet.
-Because the players who disagreed with Bush Sr. and Powell about invading in the first Gulf War – Cheney and Rumsfeld mainly – were the ones beating the drum loudest.
-Because the rest of the world didn’t buy our justification for invasion, meaning we would have to shoulder most of the burden ourselves.

Are those enough reasons for you Drum?

DW: That does nothing but expose you as a political hack for whom NOTHING would be acceptable so long as a Republican were in charge. Which means that your opinion is not related to the facts, but your personal opinions and biases, which contribute nothing.

Disagreeing with the invasion from the start exposes me as a political hack? That sure is convenient reasoning for you isn’t it? Basically your argument is…if you disagree with Bush, you’re automatically a partisan hack. Grade school reasoning amidst a college course – not going to cut it Drum.

DI: The operation we launched in Iraq would only have been acceptable to me if there was a coalition of nations with substantial numbers of troops and an air-tight battle plan.

DW: It was, and we did. We beat the fourth largest army in the world in less time than it took janet Reno to take the Koresh compound in Waco. That was with the able assistance of the largest coalition in all of recorded history. So that isn’t a valid reason, either. An excuse, but excuses are worthless, doing nothing but justifying a hatred you can’t get past.

As Gorilla Monsoon (WWF Wrestling) used to say, we won the battle, but we lost the war. You’re satisfied with the initial clobering of the Iraqi military and leaving it at that? Regardless of what happened afterwards? Again, grade school reasoning. Pitch this line to a veteran missing his legs and see whether or not it flies Drum!

“A 1994 Congressional Quarterly study of contributions to the 1991 coalition found that other nations provided about 31 percent of the forces, though that percentage grew to 45 percent when Syrian and Turkish troops along Iraq’s border are included.” Drum, we’re not even close to that number and you know it. Even the number of Brittish troops has been reduced steadily since the invasion. Pretending the amount of international support from the first Gulf War can be rightly compared with the war we’re mostly fighting alone now is extremely dishonest.

DI: By going in half-cocked, we missed an opportunity to do it right

DW: Y’know, it’s a shame that you aren’t on the military planning group at the Pentagon, because EVERY SINGLE OFFICER ON THE GROUND IN IRAQ disagrees with you. It has been made clear, time and again, that if the commanders on the ground think they need more troops to do their job, all they have to do is ask, and they will be given the troops they need.

An Army civilian who criticized Halliburton was demoted recently. General Eric Shinsecki provided an accurate assessment of the number of troops that would be needed (he ended up being exactally right) and was retired.

Being that you were in the military, I’d expect you to understand the concept of ‘yes men’ a lot better Drum!

DW: So, on one hand, we have your opinion, based on personal opinion and no practical experience as a military planner. On the other, we have the leaders on the ground who are actually doing the job. Whose opinion carries more weight?

In the first Gulf War, Bush Sr. and Powell both predicted what Shinsecki said would happen, and they were all correct as the situation has grown worse by the month since we invaded. Do you honestly think that if a commander on the ground complained about having too few troops, they’d be dealt with kindly? How about Lieutenant General Riggs? 38 years in the Army, demoted and retired for stating that the forces were stretched too thin. They made an example of him.

DI: Your assessment of it being all or nothing (never take down Saddam or do what we did) is false.

DW: Except that that “assessment” is official United States policy: Remove Saddam. (Signed into law by Clinton, who then did nothing to actually enforce it. But he’s a Democrat, so you’ll give him a pass.)

A policy of ‘Remove Saddam’ did not mean that we had to do it at the earliest moment. If so, then Bush would have attacked Iraq before 9/11. Obviously it wasn’t going to happen unless they had the opportunity to leverage public fear and present trumped up ‘evidence’ to slip it past the public.

When Clinton went into Kosovo, Fox News and pretty much everyone on the right was frothing at the mouth about not having an ‘exit strategy’ – amidst chants of ‘No War For Monica!’ Or don’t you remember any of that? You honestly think Clinton could have attacked Iraq at any point during his presidency?

DW: Yeah, either perfectly, or not at all. That about it?

I think our armed forces deserve that much. Saddam wasn’t an imminent threat, so we didn’t need to go in half-cocked.

Drum, it’s the results up until now that’s determining what way public opinion sways regarding this war. Bush’s honesty rating is below 40% based on every bit of nonsense he’s tried to sell about Iraq. He’s dug his own hole here.

I was against the Iraq War from the getgo

I didn’t ask that. I already knew that. I want to know WHY. Is that too tough a concept? The only – and I do mean ONLY – reason you have ever given was that “Bush lied”, but that would imply a direct contradiction, since you were against the war long before it could possibly have been known that “Bush lied”. I have also shown innumerable examples where Democratic politicos said EXACTLY the same thing, yet you are not castigating them for lying, demanding their impeachment and/or resignation.

That does nothing but expose you as a political hack for whom NOTHING would be acceptable so long as a Republican were in charge. Which means that your opinion is not related to the facts, but your personal opinions and biases, which contribute nothing.

The operation we launched in Iraq would only have been acceptable to me if there was a coalition of nations with substantial numbers of troops and an air-tight battle plan.

It was, and we did. We beat the fourth largest army in the world in less time than it took janet Reno to take the Koresh compound in Waco. That was with the able assistance of the largest coalition in all of recorded history. So that isn’t a valid reason, either. An excuse, but excuses are worthless, doing nothing but justifying a hatred you can’t get past.

By going in half-cocked, we missed an opportunity to do it right

Y’know, it’s a shame that you aren’t on the military planning group at the Pentagon, because EVERY SINGLE OFFICER ON THE GROUND IN IRAQ disagrees with you. It has been made clear, time and again, that if the commanders on the ground think they need more troops to do their job, all they have to do is ask, and they will be given the troops they need.

So, on one hand, we have your opinion, based on personal opinion and no practical experience as a military planner. On the other, we have the leaders on the ground who are actually doing the job. Whose opinion carries more weight?

Your assessment of it being all or nothing (never take down Saddam or do what we did) is false.

Except that that “assessment” is official United States policy: Remove Saddam. (Signed into law by Clinton, who then did nothing to actually enforce it. But he’s a Democrat, so you’ll give him a pass.)

Refer to my previous answers in terms of how we should have gone about taking him down.

Yeah, either perfectly, or not at all. That about it?

Still waiting for WHY you were against the war “from the beginning”. Is honesty that anathema to your nature?

DI: “To say I was against the war ONLY because Bush lied would be inaccurate.”

DW: So your claims of being so upset about “finding out that Bush lied” was nothing but lies?

It’s not very confusing of a concept here Drum. I was against the Iraq War from the getgo, and when I found out that the “evidence” used to get us there was known to be false when it was presented to the country (alluminum tubes), it pissed me off. So I’m upset about the fact that we’re there in the first place, and even more upset upon finding out that we were sold a series of lies to make it happen.

DW: Since you were against the war from the beginning, I can only assume that you would have preferred that Saddam still be in power, with all of the mass murders, bribing of EUro-peon and UN officials, and support of international terrorism that came with that regime?

Absolutely. The operation we launched in Iraq would only have been acceptable to me if there was a coalition of nations with substantial numbers of troops and an air-tight battle plan. Bush Jr. had to do it like his father did it to achieve victory, but he came miles short from the standard his father set for him.

Given the choice of Saddam still being in power and going into the conflict half-cocked, I’d take Saddam still in power any day of the week.

DW: If not, then perhaps you could explain the contradiction. You were either against removing Saddam under any circumstances whatsoever (since the other reasons Bush gave were proven TRUE), or you are lying now. Which is it?

That’s false. There is a lot of room in between either wanting Saddam out under any circumstances whatsoever and what we chose to do. I mentioned in my answer above the first Gulf War and how Bush Jr. strayed extremely far from the example his father had set for him. Given a bonafide coalition convinced to fight based on solid evidence and an overwhelming number of troops that would have been able to secure the country following the invasion, Saddam could have been ’safely’ removed. By going in half-cocked, we missed an opportunity to do it right, and our troops and the Iraqis themselves are the ones forced to pick up the check.

Your assessment of it being all or nothing (never take down Saddam or do what we did) is false.

DI: “I believe that we helped to create the monster that Saddam was”

DW: Even if that were true (just for the sake of the argument), doesn’t that make it incumbent upon us to take him down again? Or should we just have wrung our hands and waited until he put together a WMD powerful enough that even you wouldn’t be able to ignore it?

Refer to my previous answers in terms of how we should have gone about taking him down. In terms of his WMD program, it was nonexistant. Even without the sanctions, prior and during the first Gulf War he couldn’t get a nuke built. The myth that he ‘could have’ is one of those notorious lies we were told that has been roundly debunked.

Saddam was a neutered dog who could only hurt his own people by the time we decided to invade.

Going out to dinner – I’ll be back online in a few hours.