Brad, you wouldn’t be alluding to the fact that George H.W. Bush brought Gulf War I to an inconclusive end, would you?

Let’s see, in early March 1991, we and the Iraqis were parties to a ceasefire agreement, the terms of which left Saddam in power and committed the Iraqi government to numerous other conditions, none of which they ever honored.

Are you saying that the current President would have had electoral difficulties if he had signed up for another round of this game?

And are you really sure you want the opposite of this?

In fact, let’s get away from this debate and ask one basic question about going to Iraq: If George W Bush had backtracked on his own rhetoric, opted not to go to Iraq, and said Hans Blix and crew were doing the job right, would George W Bush even be in office right now? Think of what his father (and lets not forget, SECDEF Dick Cheney) did around, oh, early March 1991 for the proper answer.

Fair enough and agreed: this field has been plowed over many times. I do have more to say about this, but don’t want to wear out my welcome.

I really really really don’t want to go over all this again. It’s been battled for years, and it’s tiring.

The problem then, belloscm, was that the public, the MSM, our leadership… everybody went along for the ride. I’m not interested at the moment in whether the bus driver lied to get us there or not. The end result is that we were proven to be a gullible bunch. And all these years later, we still dance on the end of the string. Politicians know this, and they use it against us.

Please read what I actually said.

I still stand by what I originally asserted: “The Al Qaeda connection was there, although Saddam appeared to exercise no “operational” control and had no provable connection to 9/11. The evidence of meetings between members of Al Qaeda and members of the Iraqi Govt is there, as well. ” Despite my inaccurate language, please take note that I do not assert the connections to be within the context of 9/11. I believe that the Report of the 9/11 Commission said something similar. The report said:

“… that there had been contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, but no cooperation” (WaPo, 16 June 2004).

Can there be contact without a connection? Let’s just say that any such “contact” probably qualifies as a “connection” due to the operational security and logistical complexities inherent to such a meeting. This was a big deal and not a chance encounter at Starbucks. Lots of due diligence would be exercised prior to a meeting between AQ and an agent of the Mukhabarat.

“It is now known that the main source for the CIA’s claim that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases included the now recanted claims of captured al-Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The CIA has since recalled and reissued all its intelligence reporting about al-Libi’s recanted claims.[16] Likewise, the DIA communicated to President Bush in February 2002 its stance that al-Libi “was intentionally misleading his debriefers.”

It appears that you are aggressively presenting evidence in an attempt to discredit a claim that I never made.

“In addition, Bush received on 21 September 2001 a classified Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), indicating the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11th attacks and that “there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.”

Once again, you’re pushing against an open door here, buddy; I never stated otherwise. What else have you read into what I have said?

‘Bottom line is prior to the office of the Vice President setting up his own intel shop, US intelligence was fairly united in the view that the Iraq/Al Qaeda connection was total BS.”

Not exactly. I think that the official, non-conjecture driven, opinion of the Intelligence Community was that too much, if not most, of the intel on Al Qaeda /Iraq was believed to be of a non-determinative nature. This was mostly due to the lack of real time humint assets and the corroboration that such assets would provide. But there had been contact . Only the level of coordination, if any, is in dispute.

Polimom you said:

BUT — to defend the initiation of a war because “there is no conclusive evidence that they did not engage in collusive acts” is bizarre logic to me.”
My comments were offered in response to:
“As I said in the post (and supported with a link to a prior) — I don’t know who was duped and who was the “duper”… However, I firmly believe that the information at hand included plenty of reasonable questions, not only about the WMD’s, but also about the al-Qaeda “connection”.

I responded to your post and the linked article. I did so, primarily because I am always on point to respond to any mention of the two following Iraqi War myths: No AQ/Iraq relationship and Gen Shinseki was fired for telling the truth. I didn’t “…defend the initiation of a war” because “there is no conclusive evidence that they did not engage in collusive acts.” In the same paragraph from which you quote, I had previously written: “Did they (AQ/Iraq) effectively conspire against us? There is no credible evidence to suggest that they did.” This was my main point, don’t you agree? Context, please.

The links I often provide at the bottom of my posts are there to provide a range of alternative opinion and/or more information. Sometimes those links will be to supportive views, and sometimes they’re to opposing. In political discourse, especially, I think the wider the input the better.

Also — I almost never link someone that I think is totally off their rocker. Generally speaking, the sites linked are rational (or at least calm) in their presentation, even when I don’t agree.

No, I can’t prove conclusively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Vice President or President intentionally manipulated intelligence to lead us to war.

Nor can I prove that the theory of evolution is correct.

But over the past 5 years a staggering amount of evidence has supported the idea that one or both of them did.

Add to that the also staggering amount of evidence that has been “lost” such as roughly 5 million email messages, and I’d be happy to wager that they did.

I’m not going to re-battle the same arguments. They’ve been thrashed and hashed mightily, many times. And you’re preaching to the choir about the MSM here. BUT — to defend the initiation of a war because “there is no conclusive evidence that they did not engage in collusive acts” is bizarre logic to me. We aren’t talking about whether we should have ratified a trade treaty, for goodness’ sake!

Goldenrod’s comment included this:

Who, then, bears that final burden of responsibility? There’s only one person, and he has taken that burden & borne it in a responsible fashion, in my opinion.

I presume the reference there is to George Bush, and whether one is uncertain (as I am) about whether he had full knowledge of the intel or not, that certainly hits right at the heart of why many folks are raging-mad at him.

Davebo — hey! Nice to see you here again, it’s been awhile! You said:

Bottom line is prior to the office of the Vice President setting up his own intel shop, US intelligence was fairly united in the view that the Iraq/Al Qaeda connection was total BS.

Now we’re much closer to where I suspect the root of this problem to lie…