RickD wrote:It's a flat out lie if someone says George Bush lied.
From the information he was given, the evidence pointed to WMD's.
Unless someone is suggesting a conspiracy involving the president.
Haha, I took that at first as tongue in cheek.
A politician that lies!!
Who would have thunk it!!
Presidents that have conspiracies attached to their presidential reign, how preposterous!!
Unfortunately from the quite mundane to the more serious accusations have always hampered Presidents and Prime Ministers time in power, across history. These assaults often come years after they have been stood down. History has a habit of doing that.
Exposing over generations a time in history when actions may not have been for the greater good, but at the time they were spun effectively to be so.
Whether Iraq had WMD's, actually isn't the issue.
Or rather if Bush had legitmate reason to believe they had.
I actually believe it's reasonable to assume he did,
As it's reasonable to assume that is what was genuinely thought at the time, by Bush and by intelligence organisations although I question whether that was the catalyst or rather the contingency.
Iraq was not alone in suspicion of harbouring such weapons, Iran to this day is very questionable. To the point of the duh factor. As are many other States, India, Pakistan, North Korea. The latter not in question, they have them.
So the issue is not merely based on rouge nations harbouring WMD's, it becomes a question of when the US reigns down on it.
That is when the politics gets very messy.
And foreign policy becomes very ambigious.
That is when other factors are weighed into the decision to invade countries.
There is an aspect of the wider global community having an opinion.
That opinion is by far it was not justified.
To be justified, isn't dependant on the one argument of whether it was possible that Iraq could harbour such weapons but based on a larger scale that transcends US foreign policy of whether it was justified.
This is not a simplistic argument, that boils down to simplistic questions. War always has a myriad of political and military aspirations.
And tragic implications.
Which has been the case... You topple one regime which leads to the rise of another more ferocious.
Insurgents and fundamentalists.
Every action has a resulting consequence.
This is not the world according to the US.
America is not the Big Brother of democracy. Trying to topple Al Assad in Syria proves such. It did not help arming insurgents to further an agenda of democracy that split the country against the parliamentary power.
While I ate my vegemite toast and Americans munched down on Cheerios an entire nation was in bloodshed.
Then when they fled a war torn country we got all serious against terrorists. A real concern but on the back of every genuine refugee that we helped create.
The question was never if the information was correct, but was the resulting actions called for?
We are asking the wrong questions,
It wasn't if Iraq had WMD's but rather did that info justify an invasion and did it help or hinder the effort to secure peace?
