Yes, Robot, all of which reasons were completely made up to manipulate the American People into supporting a war of conquest.

Considering that the only people suggesting this are people who dislike Bush with an irrational passion, I can't take this conspiracy theory seriously.

Pertaining to your alternate justifications: 1) There were no WMDs. The UN weapons inspectors seemed to know that, funny that the CIA couldn't figure it out. 2) How was Saddam a threat to America? Did he support Al-Qaeda (no). Was he in a position to invade America or one of our regional allies (no). 3) Other reasons? Those seem to keep changing.

Well, we did find some WMDs. Not much... I think only two shells, but if they're as easy to find as the anti-war people would have me believe, the UN weapons inspectors should have found them long ago, so there were WMDs. The only explanation there is is that the UN weapons inspectors were bribed by Saddam.

Let's say that doesn't matter. How does going to war based on reliable information that turns out to be false mean that the real reason was oil?

Also, I have a question. If I go to a war with somebody who has been known to want me dead and was doing all he could to develop WMDs, and I had reliable information that he had those WMDs, and once I defeated him, I find out he didn't, does that mean that even though I believed that he was an actual threat, that I didn't believe he was an actual threat but was using that as an excuse to take over the world?

Also, I have a question.

 

     It is wasting your breath on these folks. They are driven purely by an irrational hate not just of George bush but also of their own country. These are the gents who never recovered from the first time they realized in junior high history class that the US is not perfect. Unable to reconcile that their own immaculateness was being *forced* to live in an imperfect nation they simply lash out at it hoping that perhaps those luscious Europeans will adopt them as long lost children of the pseudo-intelligentsia. Of course they won't leave on their own... a shame really...

I suppose the fact that any of us are bothering to rail over political arguments on an online game site is rather pathetic, and I suspect we're all wasting our keystrokes. Regardless, I'll continue to wallow with the rest of you...

1. Two unmarked twenty year old shells, that we sold to Saddam in the first place? Give me a break.

2. We told the world that this situation was so dire and unique that we were willing to overstep the fundamental law governing relationships between nations, that the attacker is always wrong. Turns out that nothing was different. That seems important to me, and is certainly important to the rest of the world.

3. No nation is perfect, but America has a tradition of striving to do the right thing, not just the most practical.

So we sold WMDs to Hussein and people are denying that there were WMDs in Iraq?

I see that we wrong, but I don't see how that means that those reasons we went to war weren't the real reasons, and that it was all about oil.

Just answer 'bot's question greywar, if you conduct an entire campaign without evidence, doesn't that seem accsatory?

Supposedly, the U.S. gave Hussein WMDs, but then they say that Hussein never had WMDs and we made the whole thing up for the oil. I guess anti-war people think logic is evil.

So we sold WMDs to Hussein and people are denying that there were WMDs in Iraq

Most, in my opinion almost all, of the WMDs we sold him were destroyed. Some by Hussein, some by inspectors, some by the passage of time.

To my ear, the arguments that there's still a stockpile "somewhere" are even loonier than the "war for oil" arguments. *Someone* would have spoken up by now.

So even if they weren't all accounted for, people should simply assume that they were all destroyed? Well, I guess that's a good policy. "Show us that you've dismantled all your weapons, and if you don't, we'll simply assume you did."

Look, the evidence is:

No one has spoken up about WMD. We've interviewed most of Iraq's top scientists, military and poltiical officials, offered rewards, etc. No one has led us to any sort of stockpile, even though there are large incentives to do so. No paperwork has been found. Why?

Either there really are no weapons stockpiles, or there is a mindbogglingly vast conspiracy of silence encompassing at least hundreds, probably thousands, of people who have no incentive to be silent. The first seems reasonable, the second seems unlikely.

The funny thing is that the assumption that there really are weapons is based on the assumed competence of the prewar CIA and other intelligence agencies. If the CIA was so brilliant before the war in figuring out that these weapons really did exist, why have they suddenly turned incompetent? The more realistic explanation is that they always have been bunglers. And this is consistent with the other evidence, such as CIA failures like 9/11 and other Al Qaeda attacks, the asprin factory bombing in Sudan, the Chinese Embassy bombing in Belgrade, the "uranium" fiasco in Bush's state of the union address, et cetera ad nauseum.

Oh, I'm sure there might not be any stockpiles, but that doesn't mean that the U.S. should have assumed that there weren't any simply because Hussein said there wasn't, especially after we knew he had them and he didn't account for them all.
And in the end, it was about the WMDs and not the oil.

Certainly. I was a rather vocal hawk on Iraq, partly for that reason.

I guess the real question now is what ought to be done now about the awesome incompetence of the CIA--either their prewar incompetence in predicting these vast stockpiles, or their postwar incompetence in being unable to find them.

Actually my bet was that the lions share of proscribed weapons and subsances went over the border with Syria in the numerous convoys seen doing just that immediately before the war. Additionally I did write an article earlier regarding the failing of the HUMINT community leading up to the war you can find this here.

 

bennyd- This is not a game site. I am a little baffled as to how you thought it was.

bennyd- This is not a game site. I am a little baffled as to how you thought it was.

Whew! I was starting to think I had somehow mistaken a game site for a blog site. Glad you cleared that up. I was really starting to worry there.

You can post here through politicalmachine.com, which is a game site...

Really? I had no idea that was possible. Thanks for the info Vincible. I assure you that the vast majority of posters are not doing so through that website though. www.joeuser.com is the primary site and it has little if anything to do with games.

Whaddya mean "Steal Oil"??? We won it fair and square in combat.