Old subject....Saddam and WMD.

[wendybeth]

Originally Posted by sleepyjeff

Talking and doing are two different things.

Rather difficult to do when Congress was under Republican control, and they were a tad bit obsessed about other matters. I personally am just happy that that finally all the crap about Dems not wanting to go after the bad guys has been disproved, even if it is only being mentioned in an affort to deflect attention away from the errors made by the current administration. For nearly four years I've been listening to Sean Hannity and his ilk spout on and on about how stupid and blind and trusting the Dems are. How we left the country unprepared. How unpatriotic we are. Blah blah blah. Now everyone is running around like little tattletale children, saying "But he said it too!"

We'll clean up the mess yet again when he's gone, but it's a doozy this time. Hoover had nothing on Bush.

[Gemini Cricket]

Clinton Clinton Clinton. I'm in an echo chamber.

The Democrats may have said this in the past, however who is the person that lied and got us into this current mess? Bush. He's trying to blame the Democrats for this. This shows an incredible lack of integrity and his polls are proving that without a doubt. Lowest polls ever. Okay, let's compare him to Bubba: Bush's polls are lower than Clinton's during the whole Lewinsky thing.

[scaeagles]

It is completely relevant. "Bush lied, Bush lied, Bush lied." I'm in an echo chamber.

One cannot say Bush lied without admitting that everyone in office or an appointed position that was in office prior to Bush lied as well.

AS far as lying and getting us into war? I don't think Bush was lying any more than I think Clinton or Albright or anyone else was lying.

What I do think, though, was that Bush had the political will and balls to do what was right. I think it was right. You do not. That's fine.

The Bush bashers want to avoid the reality of what was said and believed prior to when he was in office. Sorry, Iraq and Saddam is a problem that goes back at least to the Gulf War I. International relations go back farther than 5-6 years.

So accuse me of trying to blame everything on Clinton. The thing is, I'm not blaming anyone. I'm glad we're in Iraq and Saddam is gone. So I'm not blaming anyone, I'm merely stating what the facts were. I'm pointing out the utter hypocrisy of those that want to stand on their pulpits and call Bush a liar when the people they suuprt politically said the same or even more damning things about Saddam.

[Alex]

My view is that it is much easier now to pick out the contrarian voices that always exist and say "why didn't you listen to Bob?" Hindsight is 20/20 and clarifies a lot, and in any organization large enough you can always find people on any side of an issue.

I do think that there was selection bias in that once it was believed that Saddam Hussein had or was seriously persuing WMD it was more difficult for contrary evidence to be taken seriously. The same selection bias is now taking place in the opposite direction. Now that we know he either didn't have them, wasn't persuing them, or successfully hid them, it is increasingly difficult to give credence to any valid evidence that existed beforehand to the contrary. Obviously report X shouldn't have been given weight since it was wrong.

Personally, I think the war was justified in the face of any doubt about Saddam's nuclear ambitions and is only unjustified if it was known with certainty that Saddam did not have them and would not have them anytime soon.

Selection bias is a powerful force of self-deception, but it isn't often a sign of intentional fraud.

[wendybeth]

As usual, Alex's post is right on. Both sides are guilty of revisionism, and I agree that the real issue is whether the Bush administration knew there were no WMD at the time we went to war. I'm not going to listen to any more of the rhetoric, except as it pertains to that point. Anything else is just more of the same back and forth political sniping, which serves no purpose and detracts from the real issue.