Monday, September 20, 2004

Iraq war debate: Kerry vs. Bush

More sparring from the presidential candidates today on the war in Iraq.

Salient points from the article:

"Kerry said Monday, 'Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq? My answer is no because a commander in chief’s first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.'"

Yet a bit further down, even MSNBC (which I consider to be a slightly left-leaning source) concedes that "Kerry, a fourth-term Massachusetts senator, voted to give Bush authority to wage the war and he said in August he still would have voted that way had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

What really gets me are the accusations that Bush lied to or mislead the American public into believing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. In my mind, the proof is conclusive that he was relying on the best intelligence available to him...intelligence that came from American, British, and Israeli agencies, and intelligence that was reliable enough to persuade numerous other nations (Great Britain chief among them) to join in our efforts. The information available now indicates that Saddam Hussein himself believed that he had or was developing weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence was wrong, but Bush was neither misleading nor lying when he trusted in it and used it to make the decision to invade Iraq.

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