"Fred Stone" <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote in message
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jrosenbluth@att.com (Josh Rosenbluth) wrote in
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Fred Stone <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote in message
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Douglas Berry <penguin_boy@mindOBVIOUSspring.com> wrote in
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The Senate Intel report clearly states that they had conclusive
evidence of cooperative projects and direct links between Iraqi
intelligence and al Queda. But no evidence of collaboration on
9/11.

Citation?

Senate Intelligence Report, Conclusions, conclusions numbers 92-95.

http://intelligence.senate.gov/conclusions.pdf

Thanks. But, "several instances of contact" (93), "reports of
training" (94), and "al-Qaida and associated operatives were present
in Baghdad" (95) are laughably far from "conclusive evidence of
cooperative projects and direct links."

Let's assume for the moment that you are correct. That would mean
Sadaam and al Qaeda were collaborative allies with the likelihood
(at that time) of Sadaam transfering WMD technology to al Qaeda.
Now, imagine you are President. What do you do knowing this
information? Piddle around for over a year doing a dance with the
UN while Sadaam transfers WMD technology to al Qaeda? Or do you
declare war on Iraq citing that they are in alliance with al Qaeda
in a similar manner as the Taliban?

I would hope it be the latter. If President Bush had required
anything from, or wasted any time dealing with, the UN for
Afghanistan, he would be unfit as Commander as Chief.

Of course we *did* spend some time dealing with the UN and
negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan before invading them.
Just as we had spent over ten years dealing with the UN and
negotiating with them and with Saddam over sanctions and other UN
resolutions before invading Iraq.

We did not neogtiate with the Taliban. We gave them an ultimatum. We
did not waste any time dealing with the UN. We struck one month after
9/11. Our run-up to Iraq was completely different and not consistent
with what we should have done if there was "conclusive evidence of
cooperative projects and direct links" with al-Qaida.

And therefore,
if he knew of "conculsive evidence of cooperative projects and
direct links" between Sadaam and al Qaeda, he is unfit as Commander
as Chief for doing the UN dance.

My, what an *interesting* conclusion. Sophistry at its finest. If we
take this line of reasoning to its conclusion the unfit one would be
Bill Clinton; since *his* intelligence services had the same
information about "conculsive evidence of cooperative projects and
direct links".

You are correct. If there were "conclusive evidence of cooperative
projects and direct links," both Clinton and Bush are unfit to be
Commander in Chief. Makes you realize that that premise is wrong.
This war wasn't about Iraq/Al-Qaida links. It was about preemption as
you correctly noted below.

But that begs the question, "when is preemption justified
and when is it not?" Something the President never bothered to
answer.

Yes, in fact he did, at length, discussing the difference between
"imminent threat" and what in fact justified the attack.

He did say that Sadaam was not an imminent threat, but provide a
citation where Bush said why preemption was justified in this case and
why it would not be in another case.

As far as I know, Bush policy is preemption is justified
whenever the hell he says it is.

Of course you've presented a strawman of the Bush policy of
preemption, but I'm sure you're aware of that yourself. It was never
meant to be a justification for attacking anybody any time for no
reason at all. We had a considerable history of provocation from
Saddam's Iraq before going to the UN to demand their authorization
for the use of force *to enforce UN resolutions*. Only when that
failed did Bush decide to take direct preemptive action against Iraq.

If in fact that is Bush policy (and it just might be de facto), we
could have had the honest and open debate about it before we went to
war. For example, unless regime change by force was a mandated
consequence of failure to abide by the resolutions, under what
principle does Bush conclude that the USA should execute regime change
by force when the UN doesn't want to?

You are correct that Bush mentioned preemption and some of the
justifications, he didn't clearly state that this was a policy of
preemption. Instead, he chose the scatter-gun approach and came up
with many different rationales (even different justifications for
preemption), intentionally muddying the waters by hinting at the
Iraq/al-Qaida alliance (with Cheney going as far as advancing the
Mohammed Atta in Eastern Europe connection), and (while being very
careful never to characterize the WMD threat as imminent) overstating
the WMD threat ("Sadaam Hussein *HAS* weapons of mass destruction"
said Bush confidently in a very alarming tone). All because he knew
the case built solely on preemption was not popular.

In the end, his alarmist talk helped build a consensus amongst the
people that Sadaam played a part in 9/11.

Bush of course knew that
not to be case and even explicitly said so, all the while knowing his
tough talk was nonetheless convincing the public of that falsehood.

All to prevent an honest and open debate on preemptive war. A debate
he was too afraid he would lose. A debate we still have not had (and
won't have because Kerry is no better on this issue) And a debate
Bush is even more likely to lose thanks to no WMDs.