WMD Revisited

Before going to war with Iraq, American intelligence sources made the assessment that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. They also concluded that they were developing nuclear weapons capability. This assessment was made using data gathered before and after 9/11. Based on that assessment, Bush appealed to the UN to enforce 17 UN resolutions, one being the conditional peace agreement between Iraq and the UN. The UN passed another US sponsored resolution. Iraq failed to comply. The US desired to use force to make Iraq abide by the UN resolutions. The security council (specifically France, Russia, and Germany) voted against the use-of-force resolution.

The US congress backed the president and passed a joint resolution to use force. The US went to war with Iraq and defeated the Iraqi army.

Since then, Bush opponents claimed that he pressured intelligence officials to come to his 'conclusion' to support the war. They created the 9/11 commission to investigate US intelligence problems. Also, it was discovered that there was a major money laundering scandal within the UN in the Iraqi oil for food program where certain countries (namely those same that were against enforcing the UN resolutions France, Russia and Germany).

The 9/11 bipartisan commission exonerated Bush determining that he did not pressure the intelligence community. Bush opponents claimed he had lied to them using the terminology 'impending threat' when Bush said actually said 'building threat'. Bush opponents want to say that he had lied to the American public. We have found small numbers of chemical weapons (WMD) and equipment and raw materials used to manufacture them. Foreign intelligence sources have found that Iraq shipped out of the country (right under the noses of the UN weapons inspectors) WMDs.

Bush entered the presidency with an intelligence network gutted by the previous administration. He used intelligence data to justify the use of force.

The attempt by Bush opponents to say he 'lied' is analogous to viewers wanting to blame the meteorologist for forecasting rain when it doesn't. The meteorologist bases his forecast on available data. The forecast is not perfect but gives the public a heads-up as to what to expect.

I personally hate war. Solomon in the Bible says there are times for war and times for peace. War however is necessary at times to prevent innocents from being murdered as what happened at 9/11. In my opinion, we did not start this war. As a country we have not realized this until recently, that there are some organizations that have declared war on us.