Clinton said he had them, Kerry said he had them, plus many international figures. Why do you only accuse Bush?
Well, if he was so sure there were WMD in Iraq, why did he give up?
And as for why I only go after Bush, well, he was the one who gave the orders to my brothers in arms to hop on C-130s and go to Baghdad. Also, I’d like a cite for Clinton.
There are plenty, and I have posted some here on other occasions, but I didn’t place this in GD because I don’t have the bandwidth to search. A simple answer that you were not aware of Clinton claiming WMD’s were in Iraq is a good enough answer for me.
(Anyone wanna guess how quick this thread will end up in GD?)
To summarize…
Everyone else: Saddam might have some WMDs, but not enough to be a major menace.
George W. Bush: Saddam definitely has them, and if we don’t invade now, he’s going to destroy everything we stand for.
And before we postulate that Bush was misled with bad intelligence, let’s remember the Office of Special Plans and their efforts to slant the intelligence to fit the Administration’s desired results.
I don’t think it was a lie to say that Saddam Had’em, but I do think it’s a lie to say that’s why we went over there.
Unless our intel folks were on to a delivery platform that was more plausible than the transatlantic Cox model airplane VX delivery toy from hell, he posed no greater threat to our national security than the Shining Path folks in Japan. There’s bad goo out there, and it’s easy to make (Ricin is bad, bad and made from castor beans), singling out Iraq for an asswhuppin’ from a dozen other countries that would like to see us squirm requires more explanation. The haste with which we attacked, and the feverish quest to asassina…I mean, neutralize the military leadership of a sovrei…I mean, brutal dictatorship belies a different motive than world security from Iraq’s aging arsenal of WMD. Had he just come out and said, “I hate that MoFo and his hyena sons and I want 'em to die so we can install a more obedient puppet to stabilize this economically vital region of the world, even if it means temporarily upsetting the world’s oil supply which might incidentally benefit me as an oil man, but them’s the breaks and the Iraqi people will be better off in the long run.” I could probably have gotten behind him just because he would have been up front about the whole affair.
That’s my humble one.
Again no need for GD, I can assect your answer rjung. To me it has been a mystry why only Bush gets blaimed and I wanted to understand people’s reasoning.
Another reason: at the time of the invasion, the UN inspectors had been to many of the sites identified by the CIA (or the Iranian spy, actually) as being WMD repositories, and had found nothing. At this point it was becoming increasingly clear to the UN inspectors that their existence was problematic. If Bush had stopped there, I’m sure everyone would have accepted that he was mistaken for perhaps good cause (not so good as it turns out), but instead he said the invasion was even more urgent. That was where it went from possibly a mistake to a downright lie.
It’s a good point that Bush wasn’t the only one who was wrong about Iraq WMD’s. But of all the people who believed Iraq had WMD’s, who actually went and started a war based on this information? That would be Bush.
It’s one thing to have a theory or conjecture that turns out to be wrong… totally something else to get American soldiers killed over it.
Why isn’t this ridiculously easy to figure out? Only Bush attacked! Only Bush was over there! I’m honestly not trying to be snarky, I am just as confused as to why this is difficult to understand.
You can say all you want about what other people recommended. About their motives. About what they believed. But the wars were started by the Bushes, not by Clinton. And sometimes, dead soldiers’ bodies are hard to see past. 
Some might say that Bush was the only responsible one for confronting S.H. on his WMD. Also it is commonly said that if both parties tell you something then the truth is in the middle. D’s - SH has WMD’s and R’s SH has WMD’s, so the truth from this method is SH has WMD’s.
I don’t want to debate who’s right, just to understand, and have posted this to help you understand my POV which seems equally confusing to some of you .
I think it might have to do with that whole war thing. I’m sure other people thought there might be weapons, or he might be building them, or he might want to get some, none of them pushed to start a stupid war though.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
’
But…he didn’t have any. So what was the point of confronting him? Ok, I’m not getting involved in this debate, though. He was re-elected against all my better judgement but now we have to pull together for a few more years. :mad: 
Because Bush started a war because of the WMD claim–which most of his people knew was problematic. (One hesitates to state what HE actually knew.)
Result: Dead bodies. Lots of them. And more every day.
Simple enough?
Here is the cite for what Voyager said, probably the most under-reported piece of news before the start of the war, Inspectors Call U.S. Tips ‘Garbage’:
You can also hear Hans Blix in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air discuss how the evolution of his thinking on WMD went (from believing Saddam must have them because the U.S. seemed so sure to slowly realizing that the U.S. “intelligence” was anything but).
There are other issues too. It is not just a matter of whether or not Saddam had WMD. It is the whole issue of telling only part of the story about the aluminum tubes…i.e., leaving out the assessment of the government folks who were in the best position to know and concluded that they were not for centrifuges. It is the whole issue of making claims for a strong connection between Iraq and al Qaeda when there is no evidence that one existed. It is the whole issue of talking about how Saddam might give WMD to terrorists when the CIA was saying that this was a highly improbable scenario. (And, judging from how they failed to secure possible WMD sites, it appears that either this administration didn’t really believe their own concerns about the dangers of WMD falling into the hands of terrorists OR they were so incredibly, grossly incompetent that we should toss them out for that.)
Could you remind us how much money it cost and how many American lives were lost in those strikes, which I think very few people would say constituted a “war”.
Saddam had 100’s of thousands of tonnes. Some 90% of which was either detroyed or accounted for after Gulfwar I. The UN thought he had hidden the rest- so did everyone else. Nearly everyone though Saddam had built more- in fact, he gave every outward sign of doing so.
It is still a definate possibilty that some few 10’s of tonnes were shipped off to Syria after GWB’s ultimatum- but before the shooting started. Many trucks were tracked by satelites going across the border during that period. On the other hand, they also could have been full of loot for the Hussain family also- we just don’t know.
However, after the UN Inspectors got back into Iran- before the shooting- it started to seem more and more likely that the “missing 10%” was just that- missing, lost, destroyed, or just shoddy recordkeeping of it’s destruction. Now, after the Invasion it is very clear that the “missing 10” isn’t there- and could have been destroyed after the UN inspectors left for the 1st time, or maybe was not even there- again- lost, destroyed or shoddy recordkeeping (which is scary in itself- thousands of Tonnes of WMD’s were definately “gone missing”- even if it’s just poor recordkeeping, that’s scary).
It’s clear now that the “missing 10%” never was a threat- if it ever was really there. And the “new stuff” may have also never been there either, in fact it seems like it.
Personally, my Opinion is that those trucks carried off some of the “creme” of the most incriminating evidence of WMD’s (mostly records)- along with a bunch of loot & stuff. But even so- Iran’s WMD were NOT a threat to the USA or Britain in any significant shape or form- except maybe in a few “penny packets” given secretly to a terrorist group- which more than anything else would have been used against Isreal, not us.
I’d like to see citations that Kerry said Iraq was definitely armed. To my knowledge, he supported invasion if inspections proved that Iraq posed the threat Bush claimed it did. As for Clinton, well, when the time for invading Iraq rolled around he was presumably being subjected to the same (mis)information everyone else was. Maybe he was right about Iraq in 1998, but the invasion wasn’t based on five year old intelligence.
As for why I think Bush was lying as opposed to just incompetent - and I know you’re all awaiting my point of view with bated breath - it’s because he’s not acting like a man whose intelligence network failed causing thousands to be killed, a government not guilty of the charges leveled against it to be overthrown, billions of dollars to be needlessly spent, and the reputation of the nation he leads to be so thoroughly soiled. If I’d made the mistake Mr. Bush made, I would be visibly put out. Mr. Bush is not acting like he made a mistake.
Also, it’s my impression that the U.S. Government knew the aforementioned aluminum tubes were not suitable for centrifuges and that Iraq had failed to acquire Nigerian Uranium when both statements regarding both events were made public. Saying the aluminum tubes were meant for developing nuclear weapons was a lie, and failing to mention that Iraq has not actually succeeded in acquiring the Uranium was a lie of omission; he was intentionally deceptive in his silence on the matter in the 2003 State of the Union Address.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Mr. Bush wasn’t lying. Maybe he was just incompetent after all. Is this somehow better?
That story came up here in GD a few times before the war, but rather than wallow in past bullshit we need to look at whether the administration has learned its lesson, and changed its tune. Reports of this past week suggest that it has not, and that its willingness to play fast and loose with WMD ‘facts’ is continuing to impede our foreign policies and degrade our reputation with other nations:
US misleads allies on DPRK’s nuclear export
Controversy over North Korean Nuclear Sales to Libya