WHY ARE WE AT WAR?

Today, a bipartisan Senate committee released the first part of a report on the intelligence information used to build the case for the War in Iraq. The report says that "The key U.S. assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq - that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons - were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses". The committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said: "Tragically, the intelligence failures set forth in this report will affect our national security for generations to come. Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."

In reaction to the report, President Bush, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania acknowledged that the Senate report on U.S. intelligence on Iraq before the war "is quite critical" but stuck to his central point that toppling Saddam Hussein was still the right thing to do. Bush conceded the fundamental conclusion of the report but indicated he was misled by the intelligence agencies as were others. "I will remind you there have been some failures" in the intelligence agencies", Bush told a gathering of supporters. When President Bush was asked about the report in question and answer session at a rally, he replied by saying, "Listen, we thought there would be stockpiles of weapons. I thought so, the congress thought so, the U.N. thought so,".
The president's comments fly in the face of remarks made just a few days ago by White House spokesman Scott McClellan who said such stockpiles could still be found.
Despite the fact the report said Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Bush insisted that invading Iraq was still the right thing to do.
"I'll tell you what we do know, Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons. He had the ability to make them, he had the intent. We knew he hated America," Bush said. "The world is better off without Saddam Hussein."
Bush said he plans to use the conclusions of the report as a basis for implementing reforms of the U.S. intelligence agencies.
"One of the key ingredients to winning the war on terror is to make sure the intelligence agencies provide the best possible intelligence to the executive branch as well as to the legislative branch," Bush said.
"We need to know. I want to know how to make the agencies better to make sure we are better able to gather the information necessary to protect the American people," he added.

Clearly, The Bush Administrations response to the report was to restate their "new and improved" reasons for the War in Iraq, "to free the Iraqi people and democratize the Middle East". Which, now that they haven't found WMD's and there is no link to Al-Qaida, and the scare tactics used to march the country to war have been proven to be deceptions based on false information, seems as good a reason as any, and hard to argue with if you are a good and moral person. Pretty reasonable to want to spread democracy and hard to argue that Saddam was a bad guy, so, lets go with it.

Whatever your political persuasion, you cannot be happy or proud that the government of your country manipulated bad information to justify an invasion of a sovereign nation halfway around the world putting our soldiers, domestic security, and financial stability in severe jeopardy. Patriotism aside, the War in Iraq is a fraud against the American people. We were convinced by the Bush Administration that the War was necessary and just. We were told that if we didn't invade Iraq and dethrown Saddam Hussien, our country would be in jeopardy of another 9/11 type attack on our homeland. We were pounded relentlessly by the President and all his cabinet secretaries, that without a full fledged War in Iraq, we would not be doing our moral duty to protect our citizens and the rest of the world.

In hindsight, that was all a bunch of blather used to justify the covert goals of President Bush and his team in the White House. Maybe one day we will know the "real" reasons that they wanted to invade Iraq. Some reasons seem sort of obvious. Maybe to secure the 2nd largest oil reserve in the world. Maybe to spur the economy with an expensive war and reconstruction project that would help all his constituents. Maybe to secure a foothold in the most strategically important region in the world. Maybe to revenge his daddy's assassination attempt. Maybe to just plain make himself relevant. Maybe one day we will know?