It is a wonder why we allow our - sm

A couple of questions. - Just curious.

Once again the war is totally Bush's fault, huh? - sm

Yawn. In a word, YES. - Lets call a spade a spade....

The tired argument that - sm

Still can't quite grasp that cause and effect thing yet? - this coming from the

Actually, Obama is much more of a divider than Bush. - CA

Could you please explain - sm

Brainwashed people never do understand. - LA

So I take it this means you cant explain - how it relates to

No, YOU dont get it. All you know to do in order to defend - Obamas tremendous failures is to go back

BTDT. This has been asked and answered a number of times - in several recent posts.

True. Asked a number of times without a good answer.nm - GoodDay

Plenty of good answers. - Just not any you could comprehend.

A question for you. - Backwards Typist

You said "Gitmo. January 22, 2009, prosecutions were suspended and all pending cases subjected to review. File "mismanagement" (I am so sure) from the previous administration prolonged this process. December 15, 2009, the detention center was formally closed and the detainees ordered transferred to the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois. "

Since when? The detainees weren't transferred to Thomson. In fact, last I knew, they were debating about even buying it because of the cost to renovate it. I know all the prosecutions were suspended but didn't know the detainees were in our country. Where did you read/see this?

I also didn't hear about the Afghan pull out in 2011 and I read and hear the news all day long when I'm not working.  I know they are to be gone completely from Iraq in August 2011.

As for the war in Iraq, I will say it again. When Colin Powell was at the UN asking for sanctions against SH for booting out the UN inspectors, there WERE photos of WMDs shown then. I watched that hearing on TV. By the time the US went into Iraq, they were gone. Why and where? Iraq knew, because of the UN conference, that the US might step in and the UN dragged their feet long enough for Sadam to move the weapons to his closest ally. Speculation is they mostly went to Syria but no proof.

Say what you want, but I still believe Sadam did have WMDs and they were moved.  You want to blame someone, blame the UN and blame the CIA for not following up on it to give proof where the WMDs went.

I never said they were transferred - just ordered to be...

The war for oil thing is ridiculous. WHERE IS YOUR - PROOF?? You are the one

Here are a couple of clues - sm

I love that you are taking up the argument, but - these people are NOT

I agree entirely with this post but will never shy away from - sm

That is certainly true! Guess I just get tired of - trying to talk reason to

Dems have the same profit/dividends/portfolios as republicans. - nm

It is obvious that - sm

Have you seen any high profile dems bankrupted ... - nm

Bucks in exchange for body bags? - No sale. sm

that's the problem - it's both sides of the aisle. - nm

Some interesting reading. - Backwards Typist

Here’s an article I think you’ll really find interesting:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/Reagan_WMD_Saddam.html

Now, if you have time, read this report.  It is very extensive.  The addendum itself is 92 pages.  I did not get into the rest of the report yet because of the hundreds of pages presented. I only read the 92 pages so far.

 http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/DuelferRpt/Addendums.pdf

And finally, the below was an interview on 60 minutes with the man who spent months with Saddam after his capture. The interview in type is 6 pages long, but I am only posting the WMD info.

 The subject of weapons of mass destruction was the most important mystery Piro was trying to answer. It would take him five months to bring up the question.

Piro debriefed Saddam for the Iraq Survey Group, the people President Bush sent to figure out what had happened to the weapons of mass destruction. Piro's goal was to sit with Saddam month after month to tease out the truth over time and it dawned on Piro that Saddam fancied himself quite a writer: he wrote poetry every day, and in Saddam’s pride of authorship Piro found an opening.

"What did you think of the poetry?" Pelley asks.

"Most of them [the poems] were actually terrible," Piro says, laughing. "Some days I thought I didn't get paid enough to listen to them."

But Piro didn't tell Saddam his real opinion. "I told him they were great," he says.

And with that flattery, Saddam began to boast that he wrote all his own speeches too. That was Piro's chance.

"And I said, absolutely. I saw that. Except there was a couple of speeches that I really didn't see the same writing style. That same passion, emotion that I had seen in his poetry. So I figured those speeches must have been written by someone else. By a speechwriter. And he was kind of surprised. And he asked me what speeches. And I said, 'Well, funny you should ask. And in June 2000 you gave a speech in where you said Iraq would not disarm until others in the region did. A rifle for a rifle, a stick for a stick, a stone for a stone,'" Piro recalls.

That June 2000 speech was about weapons of mass destruction. In talking casually about that speech, Saddam began to tell the story of his weapons. It was a breakthrough that had taken five months.

"Oh, you couldn't imagine the excitement that I was feeling at that point," Piro remembers.

"And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?" Pelley asks.

"He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s. And those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq," Piro says.

"So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?" Pelley asks.

"It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq," Piro says.

Before his wars with America, Saddam had fought a ruinous eight year war with Iran and it was Iran he still feared the most.

"He believed that he couldn't survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?" Pelley asks.

"Absolutely," Piro says.

"As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn't he stop it then? And say, 'Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction.' I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?" Pelley asks.

"He didn't. But he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush's intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So you expected that initially," Piro says.

Piro says Saddam expected some kind of an air campaign and that he could he survive that. "He survived that once. And then he was willing to accept that type of attack. That type of damage," he says.

"Saddam didn't believe that the United States would invade," Pelley remarks.

"Not initially, no," Piro says.

"Once it was clear to him that there was going to be an invasion of the country. I mean, did he actually believe that his armies could win?" Pelley asks.

"No," Piro says. "What he had asked of his military leaders and senior government officials was to give him two weeks. And at that point it would go into what he called the secret war."

"The secret war. What did he mean?" Pelley asks.

"Going from a conventional to an unconventional war," Piro says.

"So the insurgency was part of his plan from the very beginning," Pelley remarks.

The Piro interviews with Saddam turned up other revelations about one of the most notorious war crimes of his regime: the use of chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians in 1988. Iraq gassed its own people in something called the Anfal campaign to counter Iranian incursions and Kurdish resistance to his rule.

Piro says Saddam told him he himself gave the orders to use chemical weapons against the Kurds in the North. When shown the graphic pictures of the aftermath, Piro says Saddam reacted by saying, "Necessary."

In fact, Piro says Saddam intended to produce weapons of mass destruction again, some day. "The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there," Piro says.

"And that was his intention?" Pelley asks.

"Yes," Piro says.

"What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?" Pelley asks.

"He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program," says Piro.

"Chemical, biological, even nuclear," Pelley asks.

"Yes," Piro says.

In the summer of 2004, legal custody of Saddam transferred from the U.S. to Iraq. And Saddam had no illusions about what that meant. "Prosecution and execution," Piro says.

Piro says Saddam expected to die and that it didn't bother him.

Why not?

"Well, his answer was is he was 67 at the time. He had lived longer than the average Arab male lived in the Middle East. He had a wonderful life. Got to be the leader of the cradle of civilization. And in his opinion, of course, had a significant impact on that country. The region. The world. So he was not bothered by having to face death," Piro says.

"No remorse? No concern for the kinds of things that he had ordered and done?" Pelley asks.

"No. No remorse," Piro says. "No regret."

Both articles are very interesting, but - sm