Exhaustive review sponsored by the Pentagon finds NO link between Saddam, al Qaida

dapperdan said
Based on everything I've read, you are quite correct about the immediacy of Saddam's threat, but it's an incomplete picture, we can agrue about the degree to which it's a distortion of the situation at the time.

As best I can piece together, and just reading through whatever public materials I can find when I've got the time for such matters, it's seems pretty clear that the U.N. sanctions against Saddam were falling apart. It also appears to me that Saddam had directly violated numerous U.N. sanctions.

It also appears that Saddam had the intentions of reconstituting his WMD programs, at least if you can believe the words coming from George Piro on the 60 Minutes interview. It is also apparently that Saddam had significant ties to various terrorist organizations, including Islamic Jihad, now known as al Qaeda, as well as Hamas.

So when you begin to paint a picture of Saddam, it's not a picture of a benign threat, but a picture of a potentially lethal threat. I'll concede that we've got to use the word "potential"; but it's not an unreasonable projection by any means.

It goes back to the absolute fallacy and spin I think your buying into to paint Hussein as truly a threat to American national security.

If the administration looked at all the evidence available at the time, they would have found that he did not have WMDs.
Hussein had no navy
Hussein had no army to speak of
No nuclear program
No real substantive ties to terrorist organizations

So your argument is based on a bunch of could-have-beens and counterfactual analysis. Further, it's also based on the doctrine of a pre-emptive war, which is even more troublesome and problematic.

So the invasion can be justified based on a possible threat? Really, do you realize how much this rationale just reeks of absolute spin?

The United States military had Hussein under control, as BA indicated with the no fly zones, sanctions, and constant monotoring there was no rational, credible, military reason to invade in occupy in lieu of what we had been doing.