host

Thank you for reading my post and devoting the time to responding in detail.

If you are correct about the UN resolution for the use of force if Saddam did not cooperate with weapons inspectors, and Saddam's bounty payments to families of suicide bombers, and 12 years of Iraqi attempts to shoot down coalition "no fly zone" enforcement aircraft (No aircraft was ever shot down, and the coalition responded to the attempts with proportional force, bombing and firing missles at the Iraqi radar and air defense weaponry sites.), why did Cheney continue to link pre-invasion Iraq and al Qaeda, and a Kermal (Khurmal) "poison camp", I exposed as an untruth:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...24#post2120124 ,
on Tim Russert's NBC broadcast, just this past sunday?

To me, this easily refuted justification by Cheney, exposes the "depth" of what is left "standing" in this administration's justification for pre-emptive war. Cheney told us there was an al-Qaeda "connection", and backed it up with "Zarqawi was in Baghdad in 2002" and backed that up with "Kermal".
Show me any "death of Zarqawi", or post "death" reporting, that even bothers to mention if Zarqawi's body was missing the leg, or showed signs of prior injury, that would back the oft trotted out, and tired...claim by the US that Zarqawi was in Baghdad for "medical treatment", and that Saddam knew of his presence.

There is much evidence....I've cited it....in my other posts on this thread, and at the post at the preceding link, to support that the Bush administration knew that the "no fly zone" was effective from a cost and a strategic standpoint. Wolfowitz spoke to a congressional committee, shortly before the invasion, and asked if it wanted to spend another $30 billion, over the next 12 years, to continue the air enforcement of the "no fly zone"? He admitted that it worked to contain Saddam, but offered invasion as a cost "saving" solution.

Zinni talked to Tim Russert, in april, and described the consensus that I have documented on this thread. A post 1991 gulf war plan, was still effective, for the reasons it was intended to be. Other coalition allies paid part of the cost of keeping that "no fly zone" enforcement and observation, in place.

Powell, well into 2001, said first that the UN sanctions against Iraq needed "repair", and then said that they had been "fixed". As France's Villepin, pointed out, 10 days before the invasion, the WMD inspections were finally working, for at least the past month, and "why destroy the tools" finally in place to disarm and confirm disarmament of Iraq.

The pre-invasion plan had left Iraq as the stabalizing presence in it's region that blocked what we see emerging now. You probably aren't aware that Kurds seriously intend to pursue an attempt to create an independent state that includes 25 percent of Turkey....a vast area north of Kurdish northern Iraq....any Turk who you ask, will confirm that.

The invasion destroyed the "planning", as Zinni described it, that kept Iranian shiite and secular strategic, regional ambitions, in check, for the 12 years before the invasion. A really ingenious "balance", sustainable for years to come, that was bloodless....for the US and for most Iraqi civilians, had proved a reasonable financial cost, had prevented reconstituting, and even serious planning for initiating renewed Iraqi WMD programs, and kept Saddam's Iraq strong enough to check Iraq, and discourage the Kurds in the north from risking fighting a war on two fronts....against Turkey, and against Saddam if he saw an opportunity to engage the Kurds if war with Turkey broke out....was the plan that the Bush-41 administration had devised and time demonstrated....achieved almost all of it's objectives.

The missing element...weapons inspection, seemed to be back in place on March 7, 2003, as Villepin spoke. Villepin pleaded for time to see if the inspections would continue to work, and warned that a unilateral US/UK invasion would provoke avoidable division....and it did.

Powell had failed to persuade France, and the rest of the world, except for Britain and inconsequential, mostly bribed "allies", a month before, in his UN "presentation", of urgency or justification, for invasion of Iraq. We know why, now....Powell concentrated his documentation, and much of his visual presentation, on bio weapons "trailer" that didn't exist, and Zaraqawi's "Kermal", "poion camp", that other governments, who could read the reports that I presented here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...24#post2120124
US news media re-reported that fact, two days after Powell's presentation:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...61575#continue

Powell's own aid of 16 years, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, later called that day, "the lowest point in my professional life".
aceventura3, your stance undermines the risks that patriots like Wilkerson have taken.....in favor of your continued support for liars and their anit-US, anti-international treaty....against aggressive war....policies. Is it "worth it"?

....could easily discern.....was not in an area of Iraq that Saddam had control over, and was reported to be left "intact", deliberately by the US, to be used in propaganda....like Powell presented....to justify invasion of Iraq on grounds of phony "al Qaeda" ties to Saddam.

It's not that I just "don't agree with the justification given", aceventura3, it's because I know enough to tell you that justification, based on lies like Cheney told us as recently as sunday, are disheartening and embarassing, and coming from the VP of the US, more alarming, because either they are criminal rants, or he believes them and that puts him in an observable state of incompetent to continue to "serve" in office. Shitty choices....but that's all they have left us with, in Iraq, too!