What impression did you get from the whole Tony Blair thing yesterday? To me, the White House said, "we need to bring in a guy who speaks well to tell our side of the story". Voila, Tony! When you listen to these two guys talk about the problems with the evidence, they keep saying "I believe" all the time, not "the intelligence showed". Blair:

But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive. (from Tony's speech to Congress)

Here is what your pResident had to say at the Bush, Blair press conference. (Scroll down to the middle of the page to find the question and answer part.)

I say that because he possessed chemical weapons and biological weapons. I strongly believe he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. And I will remind the skeptics that in 1991, it became clear that Saddam Hussein was much closer to developing a nuclear weapon than anybody ever imagined. He was a threat. I take responsibility for dealing with that threat.

These guys both "believe" but they have no evidence, as of yet, to back it up their beliefs. The above quote from Bush implies that we were justified in attacking Iraq because of what they had 12 years ago. We keep hearing about what they had in '91, what they had in '98. They will no longer say what the current intelligence told them they had.

Try looking at it from this perspective: He didn't have weapons. He was contained. He was not a threat. He was not working with Al Qaeda.

What did we do? We invaded a country crippled by 12 years of sanctions. We killed thousands of people.

For what? Well, there are many theories about that: Oil. To remake the Middle East. A show of force. To stop terrorism.

Will history forgive you and your leadership when it becomes clear that you attacked a defensless country for the wrong reasons? When you read the above quote from Blair, he is saying, "Even if everything we told you before the war is wrong, I still believe we did the right thing".

If, before the war, Bush and Blair would have made the case on humanitarian grounds, this would be understandable. The main push for justifying the war was to play on our fears: all the death that Saddam could (read "potentially") cause us. The only time they talked about the bad things Saddam did in his own country was to say, "he gassed his own people". Only after Iraq was conquered, when they started drilling dry holes on the weapons thing, did they start pumping (no pun intended) the humanitarian angle.

So, we just have to trust these guys? They have already lied to us. So we're supposed to be assured that as long as they believe this stuff to be true, everything is OK?

A MUST READ This sums it all up. Cake Walk.

Remember how the (mis)administration said the adults are back in charge? Bush won't take responsibility for own words.

This looks interesting: CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS. Maybe we did do it for the oil.

Read what Nixon's counsel, John Dean, has to say about Bush's SOTU speech: Why A Special Prosecutor's Investigation Is Needed To Sort Out the Niger Uranium And Related WMDs Mess.

Paul Krugman is back: Passing It Along.

And it continues: U.S. soldier killed in Iraq blast.

This is an interesting story about a Bush judge up for confirmation, that involves our former AG now Senator John Cornyn: GOP Attorneys General Asked For Corporate Contributions.

This looks fishy, Body 'Matches' Iraq Expert.

Remember the scientist that had the stuff buried in his garden? Iraqi scientist counters U.S. claims on tubes, bomb project.<
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 8:29 AM