Anyone who seriously believes the good of Iraq ever crossed anyone’s mind in Washington is terminally deluding themselves. ‘Liberation’? I can hear Orwell rolling over somewhere. Anyone who was paying any attention knew at the time that the WMD excuse was a fraud. Any pol who uses the “I was misled” excuse is lying through their teeth.

Saddam and Al-Qaeda (aka ‘The Toilet’ for short) were always enemies.

“A destabilizing force”? Saddam was the only one holding Iraq together and keeping the religious factions from… well, doing what they’re doing now.

The invasion of Iran? That was at the US’s bidding and with the US’s full support; a million dead, and the blood is on Washington’s hands. Saddam wouldn’t have been able to spray cash on anyone (or fill up those mass graves) were it not for weapons and money continually coming his way from, you guessed it, the good ol’ White House.

Edwards is full of it. Those aircraft wouldn’t have been shot at if they hadn’t been violating Iraqi airspace in the first place. And those bombers? Resisting a brutal occupation. Regional peace was impossible, yes, but it was because of constant Israeli terrorism, not Palestinian resistance.

It does bear pointing out that the Dems are just as guilty of complicity, but the rest? A load of BS almost worthy of a SotU address.

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They won’t question the two complete falsehoods.

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1) Hussein’s general store for Islamofascist terrorists now is kaput…

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There was no “general store” for Islamofascist terrorists in Iraq while Saddam ruled. That was Afghanistan. That’s why we invaded them after 9-11. Despite a public relations effort to come across as a devout Muslim, Saddam was a secular leader who feared the influence of radical Islamists.

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Only since Saddam’s ouster has Iraq become a haven (a WalMart rather than a general store) for Islamofascist terrorists. And by the way, lest anyone want to draw the inference from the above spin-line, Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11.

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2)… and still possessed weapons of mass death, though in smaller quantities than we expected. While we never found warehouses full of WMDs, we did discover a vial of live botulinum, a seven-pound block of cyanide salt, 500 artillery shells filled with mustard gas and sarin nerve agent, and 1.77 metric tons (3,894 pounds) of low-enriched uranium.

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WMD stands for weapons of mass destruction, not death. The “weapons” desribed are hardly WMD. Except for the artillery shells, they aren’t even weapons.

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a vial of live botulinum: if this was enough to poison a city water supply I am sure we would have been told. This could have been for the various medical uses this extremely toxic bacterium is used for.

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7 pounds of cyanide salt: first there are different kinds of cyanide, second there are many conventional uses including rat poison, mining, electroplating, metallurgy and photography.

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mustard gas artillery shells: as I recall these were old and probably useless

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sarin gas shells: how many shells and how active? If there were many of them I think Bush would have made a huge deal out of this “find”. All I recall reading about was an unsuccessful attempt by insurrgents to explode “an old binary-typ” shell in which two chemicals held in separate sections are mixed after firing to produce sarin.” (from Fox News 2004)

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low enriched uranium: this is not even close to being a weapon

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark was just interviewed on Democracy Now (uh oh, the Limbots are ready to hurl bile on me just for that). He said that back in the early days of the Bu$h administration, when he was walking through the Pentagon, a friend in the service pulled him aside into his office. He said (my interpretation) “there is a classified plan (from the Rumsfield chain) to invade and change regimes in 7 countries in 5 years. The countries are Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Iran” (I can’t remember the other one).

If you read Paul O’Neil’s book “The Price Of Loyalty”, he confirmed that about Iraq early on.

That said, yes, most of our elected representatives from BOTH parties were complicit, but they did NOT formulate the plan. With no plan, there wouldn’t have been anything to go along with.

So, to me, the article does attempt to bring up the Dems complicity, but my argument is yes, but all they did was follow the pre-existing plan from BU$HCO.

Interestingly, when asked if the gulag at Guantanamo Bay should be closed, Wesley Clark said “absolutely”, and that it’s very existence jeopardizes our relations with our allies and the rest of the world.

Clark also said that Congress should IMMEDIATELY REPEAL THE MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT. He said this does not represent the America that he grew up with.

Clark also said instead of spending all the time investigating Scooter Libby, we should have spent all that time investigating the Bu$h administration for the run-up to the Iraq war, and the falsification of intelligence. He mentioned that Pat Roberts (not by name but that’s who he was talking about), the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was supposed to thoroughly investigate the “bad intelligence” but has not done so. (Kansas voters, do you hear that?)

Anyway, that is support for my argument the PLAN was what got all of this started. Sure Congress rubber-stamped it but many (but not all) were mis-led about the whole thing, and the secret plan to invade and cause regime change was classified & most likely not very well known at the time.

The funniest part about this piece is that republicans back in the 1990′s were crying foul about going to war with Iraq or even launching a rocket at Saddam! Funny, how’ve they changed and still blame the democrats for something that many of us are saying today. I’m considered a traitor for not supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq, but oh! Back in the 1990′s the republicans of today were saying the same thing as I am.

So Orwellian, don’t you think? The republicans have this way of changing everyday to make themselves feel better and to allow them to blame others.

I may be mistaken, but I believe my Senator, Diane Feinstein, was on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and she did in fact vote for the war. In fact, I remember clearly when she said that despite 80,000+ phone calls, emails and faxes from constituents pleading with her to vote against it, she was privy to information that would could not allow her to vote no on the resolution.

Although I wholeheartedly disagree with the intent of of the author (to further politicize an act of war), I do believe Democrats need to own up to their culpability in this mess. It is not enough to simply say “I regret” or “I’m sorry”. A genuine act of remorse can be nothing short of a concerted and strong effort to end this war and redirect the countries attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan. I can accept if they fail, I cannot, however, accept their cowardice in not trying because it is not politically expedient.

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They need to stop funding or whatever it takes to bring our boys and girls home from their nightmares.

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They need to repeal PATRIOT Acts I & II and they need to repeal the Military Commissions Act! And they need to do it all now!!

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I think they also need to do a criminal investigation in to the events surrounding 911, to see who was really behind it. And they need to investigate the intelligence that was used to start this bastion of a war!

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Until they start moving on the items I listed, I will continue to believe that they were almost all complicit in all of it. They need to show the world that they are going to make these changes and find the people that are accountable for 911 and the war in Iraq!

(her husband is a bigwig at a defense contractor)