[Preechr]

...which brings us back to "Doh!"

One of my original points was that BOTH sides of Congress voted for military action against Iraq to enforce the UN resolutions BEFORE the SOTU address. Yes, I know this has turned into a wider discussion at this point, but I'm just redirecting traffic a bit here.

The original issue was taken with the DNC push to claim those 16 words from W constituted a LIE. They did not. The British Government is still standing behind the intelligence reports he referenced, and Coalition forces are still searching for WMD evidence, and there's a political commercial being tested in small markets (soon to be appearing on your own TV, presumably) that conveniently omits "The British Government has learned..." from that SOTU quote to further the accusation that HE LIED, HE LIED!!!

Saddam has a long histoy of actively seeking WMD technology and of using whatever he could manage to produce on civilians as well as enemy army forces. He mocked the intent and enforcement of UN resolutions designed to show the world he'd disarmed himself of the WMDs stockpiled in Iraq, and scoffed at the international guidelines for the minimally "humane" use and non-proliferation of those types of weapons. He has purchased equipment and supplies necessary for the production of many types of WMDs and some of that equipment has been discovered in Iraq in perfectly usable order.

The amount of risk to our own troops is no higher now than it was to those patrolling the UN required no fly zones over the last 12 years. Saddam's loyalists were shooting at us then, and they still are... we have just taken some additional initiative toward stopping them from doing that anymore. Now, we go to their houses at night and ask them nicely to stop before we shoot them.

Bush never said that the war in Iraq was over. He said that the main fighting effort was complete, and it was. We took control of Iraq. Now that it is under Coalition control, our troops are sifting through millions of people and tons of dirt and paperwork in order to find insurgents and WMD evidence while simultaneously getting the structure of the country back online and in control of it's citizens.

More than half of those 50 most dangerous regime leaders have been found and either killed or imprisoned. Hundreds of suspected enemy fighters are processed every day and those that are found to be dangerous are detained. The prisoners we take and the rewards we have offered are used in the search for the rest of the Ba'ath loyalists, and that process yeilded Uday and Qbert just yesterday.

Once a basic and secure Iraqi run government is in place and in charge, Coalition troops will be free to divert more attention to combing the countryside of Iraq for hidden WMD evidence. By then, there will be more good news coming out of Iraq (and most likely the middle east in general) than bad, and EVEN IF (unlikely) absolutely NO WMD evidence is found, the entire effort, misguided or not, will have proven to be a massive success.

By then, W will probably have won another election because those that oppose him focused all of their efforts to defeat him on Iraq, his bright, shining star.

I just don't get that!

Oh... and I didn't say I don't vote. I said I don't vote (R)

(L), BTW....