host

No....Lebell, as I've already documented, multiple times, Feb., 2001, Powell stated publicly that Saddam was contained and not a threat to his neighbors, and Rice said the same thing in a July 29, 2001 CNN interview. (The links are in my posts on this thread.) On May 5, 2005, Time reported that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Perle, <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,235395,00.html">"strongly believe that after years of American sanctions and periodic air assaults, the Iraqi leader is weaker than most people believe."</a>

What you now cite about what "Republicans AND Democrats believed", is the foundation of your justification for the invasion of Iraq. You cannot or will not examine when and why the propaganda coming from the Bush admin. changed from what I provide compelling documentation of, above. How do you counter the documented fact that, 44 days before 9/11, the NSA director, Rice, was publicly declaring ? <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0107/29/le.00.html">
But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.

This has been a successful period, but obviously we would like to increase pressure on him, and we're going to go about doing that.</a>

Rice's comments were consistant with what Powell had stated five months before, <a href="http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2001/933.htm">but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.</a>

Lebell, the consensus about the threat of WMD from Iraq was what officials like Powell and Rice, and news reports like the above cited. May 5, 2002 Time report, was what those sources told us it was. The premise that there was some independent "consensus" on the part of "Republicans AND Democrats", is the result of a disinformation campaign, not unlike the Bush/Cheny 2004 and the SSI "blitzes" conducted by these same strategists, more recently.

9/11 softened up the sheeple, and just five hours after the attack on the Pentagon, this "op" kicked in: <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml</a>
(CBS) CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.

These thugs "took you in", Lebell...they did it so seamlessly that you are now in the positioin of basing your whole argument of "a just war", on the false premise, that "everybody Knew" that Saddam had WMD, so Bush and Cheney are no more to blame than anyone else who was misled and "let down" by the fiction of an intelligence failure. These folks destroyed the analytical assets in the CIA and in our other intelligence infrastucture to get this done, Lebell.

What you defend, I believe is treason and an executed conspiracy to commit our troops to an illegal invasion and occupation. The Downing Street Memo reinforces what I have cited. How can anyone square the award of the "Medal of Freedom" by Bush, to the director of Central Intelligence, a man left holding the "bag", who is allegedly a central figure in the "intelligence failure" excuse, with the magnitude of the failure that he is painted with presiding over? How do you justify the promotion of NSA director Rice?

It's not a "just war" Lebell, and 9/11 was used as an excuse for a turnaboout in the 12 year policy of containment of Saddam's Iraq that was so lacking in justification, easily seen by the now historical record, that the "facts" has to be "shaped" around the policy.

Bush knows his job, <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050524-3.html">I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)</a>
is he really good enough at it to make voters forget to do theirs?
UNDETERMINED, at best. There have been no direct admissions that I can find, from the U.S. DOD, that counter the idea that this internal Iraqi resistance is anything other than the result of the U.S. occupation's own making. The idea that Bush's claim, that we fight them over there, so we won't have to fight them here.....is the same line of crap that results from a desperate hunt to find a new justification for this mess. There ain't one!

<a href="http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/2005/tr20050505-2683.html"> Q Going -- going back to that end, is there any sense of -- you were over in Fallujah for a while. Is there any sense what -- what's coming across the Syrian border? Is there -- is there an influx of foreign fighters coming in now, or is there just a pool of foreign fighters that have been in Iraq for a while, sleepers or whatever, that we're seeing?

GEN. CONWAY: I don't think we know the answer to that for sure. We have tried to gauge the percent of the insurgency that is represented by foreign fighters. We do know that some of the insurgent websites have called this the jihad superbowl, if you will, and now is the time to come fight and try to kick the Americans out of the region. How much people are responding to that we're just not certain at this point, but we continue to seek that answer.</a>
The trend about the amount of information that must be "overlooked", "ignored", or not fully faced, in order to preserve the "Just War" argument, IMO, seems to grow in volume and persuasiveness, and the polls show it.

As far as the "polls" being used exclusively by members of one party, rangerrick, I recall Ukraine exit poll results being the excuse that was heavily utilized by the Bush admin., late last fall, to publicly challenge the legitimacy of Ukraine election results, just weeks after the same officials downplayed a similar exit poll result disparity, versus the U.S. election results.