[QUOTE=tomndebb]
We have been subjected to this bit of bait-and-switch polemic from Bush apologists since the summer of 2003. Unfortunately, those claims, (probably deliberately) conflate two separate situations. It is quite unfortunate that you are repeating things that have been debunked numerous times over the last five years.
In the 1980s, Hussein used chemical weapons, first against the Iranians and later against his own people.
Following the First Gulf War, he was ordered to destroy his stockpiles and to dismantle his production of those weapons.
This he apparently did, although he hindered the UN inspection teams in ways that made it appear that he had continued to hold and produce such weapons. (Speculation: By making it appear that he still had the weapons, he felt that he had a useful bluff to prevent his neighbors from rising against him.)
When it was discovered that the U.S. had planted spies within the ranks of the UN inspectors, the UN pulled those inspectors out of Iraq in embarrassment, further making it appear that Hussein still had such weapons.
Up until the summer of 2002, it was the general opinion of the various intelligence agencies and world leaders that Hussein still had WMD.
In the Fall of 2002, with the U.S. administration hell-bent on having a war, Hussein permitted the inspection teams to re-enter Iraq in the hopes of staving off a war. The UN teams found increasing evidence that Hussein had gotten rid of his WMD by around 1992. However, the Bush administration began seizing on the most flimsy bits of evidence to deny what the UN inspectors and their own intelligence groups had already discovered–that there were no longer any WMD in Iraq.
They even went so far as to set up a special “intelligence” group in the Department of Defense, the Office of Special Plans, manned by analysts untrained in genuine intelligence, to recast all intelligence reports in a way that favored the administration opinion, regardless of actual evidence.
By the time of the March, 2003 invasion, every intelligence agency in the world–including the consensus opinion of U.S. agencies–recognized that Hussein no longer had WMD capability. There were limited departments within different agencies who still suspected that there might be WMD in Iraq, but they were minority groups (who, in retrospect, were clearly mistaken or were propaganda groups who were not interested in the accuracy of their statements).
The Bush administration demonstrated that they were aware that Hussein had no WMD when they ordered Army and Marine units moving through Iraq to bypass the purported locations of WMD storge or production. If they believed that those sites posed a risk, they were criminally negligent in ordering them to not be secured. If they knew that those sites presented no risk, they demonstrated that they were aware that their casus belli was a lie.
[/QUOTE]
Good post, and your last paragraph is a hell of a good point. But do you recall the weeks before we went into Iraq, do you recall the caravan of trucks leaving Iraq… it’s like they were given fair warning to clean out before we went in. That’s the impression I got. All those trucks filled with government stuff heading toward Syria; and right before we went into Iraq, I recall the media interviewing local Iraqi’s who claimed the WMD’s left the country and others were buried near where they were located.
And I’m no one’s apologist, I’m just trying to know the truth like everyone else here.
What are you basing that on? Media Matters has a definite political orientation, but I’ve never heard it accused of favoring HRC in particular; that’s not even mentioned in the 
