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My argument hasn't changed. Bush did not mislead us into war, he did nothing illegal, hence there will be no impeachment.
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RangerDick, Mr. Clown, et al... The accepted talking point that "Well, we didn't know, they lied to us too so we can't be responsible" is ludicrous. It seems that nobody remembers only two years a huge rift developed between the White House and the CIA because the CIA wouldn't confirm information being shuffled by Wolfowitcz out of the Pentagon's DIA and the crack intelligence gathering team of the Iraqi National Council and Ahmed Chalabi. Remember how the CIA quit getting invited to the briefings?
Since anyone who worked at the CIA 2 years ago is either pumping gas now or working on a 10th rewrite of a book that Rumsfeld keeps drawing a black pen through, I thought it might be fun to see what was being admitted to when they still believed in WMD's.
I went back just over two years ago to when the White House was nervous, but still convinced enough they were right that they didn't shy away from the press like today. If you give the article a read, I think you will be surprised how fair the New Yorker was being to the White House, especially given what we know now. It was the White House's choice to trust exiled Shiites (who are all in power today) over our own intelligence.
I was worried about Chalabi when he was cut off from the $120k/month (yeah, a month) consulting fees. Thought it might be tough for him to find work once it came out that he had lied for almost 2 years to us about underground "Dr. Evil" lairs and factories in Iraq. At least Powell had to be pissed that all of his documentation he put in front of the UN was simply blueprints from the 1980's that UN security inspectors had possessed since after the first Gulf War in 1991. Eh, I am sure Ahmed was as surprised as any of us that we loaded up the tanks and called him on it. He's fine - they call him Mr. Deputy Prime Minister nowadays.
I know nobody will change their mind, we all believe what we believe. But, too many people have died over this - 40 more this week. We owe them accountability at the very least.
We think Iraqis want to be our friends - that the people who we are putting in power are fair and good. Remember that we killed a lot fathers and sons only 10 years ago... blew up the roads, mosques, power plants and left Saddam and Uday in the castles. The chance to be heroes over there may be gone in this lifetime.
Anyhow, dated May 5, 2003...
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content?030512fa_fact