Originally Posted by roachboy

i do not know what you are talking about, onetime.

one more time through the facts of the matter:

the un inspections team was verifying that hussein had in fact dismantled the wmd systems. the failure to dismantle was one of the central arguments on which the case for war rested.

i do not know what you are talking about with the waiting business. one of the major arguments against bushwar was, at the time, that bush might have provided a rationale for going to war, but not for doing so at any particular time--which meant that the administration did not refute the contentions that the same objectives were being implemented via the un regime and therefore did not make a compelling case for going outside the sanctions regime.
that is why other countries did not vote with the administration. the other claims about france, germany, russia, etc, are simple rightwing bullshit. nothing more.

one other argument was the link to terrorism--which alone was able to support the self-defense claims---which would have perhaps made the war legitimate internationally (all facts aside)--but even this contention has proven to be false. rumsfeld is only the most recent conservative to admit as much--though not without a subsequent burst of spin from the bush campaign, which knows enough about its business to see a political catastrophe when it sees one. too much dissonance is bad for conservative morale. might even wake up the constituency. cant have that.

so that claim does not hold water either.

what you are left with is hussein was a bad guy--which no-one doubts----but given the history of american foreign policy and its support of despots worse than hussein ever was around the world, that holds no water either. and is certainly not a justification for war either in general or in this particular case.

the last shred of legitimation seems to be repeat the wolfowitz doctrine. that was not persuasive when i read it on the project for a new american century website before the war, and it is not now as an argument in itself.
as a tactic in the present political environment, this same doctrine has the effect of a wholesale transposing of the logic of the situation into irrelevant territory. that is functions in conservativeland only serves to show that what might not be relevant for much of the planet can be made to appear relevant in that space. which seems a pretty damning critique of that political space itself.

so far as i can tell then support for the war rests on nothing.

but lets say the democracy argument were to hold--you might counter that if the americans think democracy is so great, they could start to show it by instituting one in america.

but in this climate, maybe that would count as a cheap shot...

but whatever--nothing personal, onetime--i enjoy the debates with you in general--however this particular debate is getting old because it amounts to the same thing every time. at this point, the usual defense is "i have a different view than you" which seems to be nothing more than a way to set up a denial of the situation you face. so fine.