TWO Bushes...TWO Gulf Wars...and counting

Does anyone really believe that the pathetic ol' guy who crawled out of a hole was intent on attacking his neighbors, let alone the U.S.?

But hey, forget about facts even when squarely faced with the truth and focus on what MAY have been going on in the mind of Saddam, an egomaniac whose primary goal was...SELF-preservation.

"In the wake of the report, President Bush has reframed the way he characterizes his rationale for the launching the war. A review of his public statements before the war and this week shows how broadly his public argument has shifted, away from warnings that Hussein actually possessed horrible weapons in favor of talking almost exclusively about the dictator's intent."

Saddam was NOT a religious NUT a'la Osama. He had, however, become a major threat in the region with full participation of Reagan and Poppy who supported the dictator until...he invaded a nation, Kuwait, that was not on their "to do" list.

Without giving Saddam a strong warning before he invaded Kuwait that such an incursion would mean war with the U.S., the man misinterpreted signals coming from Washington and launched his invasion.

Once he realized that Poppy was determined to drag him into war, Saddam offered to withdraw peacefully from Kuwait IF given a face-saving-device. But, that was not to be. Then as now, Britain and Israel rooted for war and...the first Bush launched the first Gulf War that would eventually be followed by another Bush launching another Gulf War against the same individual.

That the American people allowed this family to drag their nation into two wars against the same individual is, in and by itself, truly mindboggling.

Presently, in the heat of the presidential campaign, Bush II is flip-flopping daily as to the reasons for rushing into an UNprovoked war:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20562-2004Oct9.html

Washington Post Staff Writer - Sunday, October 10, 2004

Analysis
Bush Recasts Rationale For War After Report By Glenn Kessler

In announcing 19 months ago that the United States was poised to invade Iraq, President Bush told the nation: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. . . . The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."

Bush's decision to attack Iraq came after urgent warnings by the president and his top aides about the challenge posed by Iraq -- what Bush called "a serious and mounting threat to our country" in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address before Congress. Few lawmakers questioned these warnings -- Sen. John F. Kerry, now the Democratic presidential nominee, did not -- and many frequently echoed them.

But the argument that the United States faced a moment of maximum peril in early 2003 from Iraq has been greatly weakened by the release last week of the comprehensive report of chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer. The report found that the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability, leaving it without any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein hoped to someday resume his weapons efforts, the report said, but for the most part there had been no serious effort to rebuild the programs.

In the wake of the report, President Bush has reframed the way he characterizes his rationale for the launching the war. A review of his public statements before the war and this week shows how broadly his public argument has shifted, away from warnings that Hussein actually possessed horrible weapons in favor of talking almost exclusively about the dictator's intent.

This week, Bush said Iraq had been a "unique threat" and the United States was justified in attacking, largely because Hussein "retained the knowledge, the materials, the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction."

"And he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies," the president told reporters.

In the months leading up to the war, however, Bush and other administration officials made serious and specific allegations about Iraqi capabilities in biological, chemical and nuclear warfare:

• "Saddam Hussein [has] biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax -- enough doses to kill several million people," Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address. He also cited reports that Iraq had "materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin -- enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure."

• "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent; in such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands," Bush continued. He also said Hussein had "upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents," and "several mobile biological weapons labs."

• Bush asserted that if Hussein obtained key nuclear material, he could produce a bomb within a year.

• A CIA report released by the administration in October 2002 said: "Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and invested more heavily in biological weapons; most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

• The CIA also said Iraq "has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX." It said "all key aspects" of Iraq's biological weapons program "are active and most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War." The report said Iraq was developing drones likely "intended to deliver biological warfare agents."

Kerry, while raising questions about the administration's approach, said in an Oct. 9, 2002, Senate floor speech -- when he voted to give Bush authorization to conduct a war -- that it was clear that Hussein had "continued his quest for weapons of mass destruction" in the past four years.

"We will not be blackmailed or extorted by these weapons, and we will not permit the United Nations -- an institution we have worked hard to nurture and create -- to simply be ignored by this dictator," Kerry said.

All these assertions were disproved or rejected by the Duelfer report. Not only did Duelfer say Iraq had no weapons, but he said Hussein was interested in acquiring weapons because Iran, Iraq's longtime enemy, had its own weapons programs -- not because it wished to attack the United States.

Duelfer said that before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the sanctions on Iraq were eroding and that Hussein hoped to rebuild his programs if those sanctions were ever lifted. But the appetite for lifting the sanctions evaporated in the U.N. Security Council after Sept. 11, 2001, and Duelfer said Hussein had no formal written strategy or plan for restarting his programs.

White House officials said not attacking would have only delayed the inevitable. "The Duelfer report shows a clear choice: either remove Saddam when we did or fight him in the very near future, when he bribed enough others to bring down the sanctions and restart his WMD," Jim Wilkinson, deputy national security adviser, said.

The United States is still suffering from the diplomatic consequences of launching a war without explicit support from the U.N. Security Council. France had threatened a veto, but many smaller countries on the council also rejected a resolution authorizing force after the Bush administration refused to consider waiting a few more months -- or even weeks -- to give U.N. inspectors more time to assess whether Iraq still possessed banned weapons.

"This is a matter of weeks, not months," Bush had insisted six weeks before the attack was launched.

The result is that many countries that provided troops in the first Gulf War -- such as Canada, France, Germany, Pakistan and Syria -- refused to provide help either during this war or in its troublesome aftermath. A book published in France last week said France had been willing to commit as many as 15,000 troops, though a French official said the offer was contingent on the Security Council approving a resolution authorizing war after determining that Iraq had committed a "material breach" during the inspection process.

While the Duelfer report said that the prospect of Iraq escaping the sanctions faded after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush took the opposite lesson.

Before Sept. 11 , "we were trying to fashion a sanction regime that would make it more likely to be able to contain somebody like Saddam Hussein," Bush told reporters on Jan. 31, 2003. "After September the 11th, the doctrine of containment just doesn't hold any water, as far as I'm concerned. . . . The strategic vision of our country shifted dramatically, and it shifted dramatically because we now recognize that oceans no longer protect us, that we're vulnerable to attack."