Ok, theres good arguments on both sides.
Heres the problem:
Georgie Bush hasn't presented any tangible evidence.
The inspectors that he choose haven't found anything. I'm sorry, but a few shells don't count.
Bush and many members of his administration stand to profit financially from a Pro-US Iraq. The desire for war is less about how -evil- Iraq is, and more about the financial benifits to those running the US. North Vietnam can have nukes within 30 days, yet he says nothing. The columbian drug cartels are still going strong flooding the US with poison, yet he does nothing. The Chinese are doing worse to their own people yet he coddles them. He has almost totally ignored a domestic policy other than a non-stop assault on our freedoms since 9/11.
I do not debate the ineffectualness of the UN, however the 'Do what we want or we will do it anyway' attitude of Georgie does nothing to improve the US's reputation worldwide as a big bully.
The sadest part of this is that he himself is at no risk, but he and his supporters will freely spend the lives of our military personel so that they and their corporate masters will make a few bucks more.
Without tangible evidence found by an unbiased agency, I am hard pressed to just 'take his word for it', especially when a large number of his own recently announced domestic plans have confused even his own party in their lack of understanding.
The simple truth is this: The US military machine works to further the desires of corporate America at the cost of our soliders lives. If a crisis isn't in existance, one will be invented.
George W. Bush has yet to answer many questions posed as early as September 2001.
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0928-11.htm
Big Oil and the Bush administration go way back. Both the Bush family and US Vice President Dick Cheney got rich in the petroleum biz. Fossil-fuel companies contributed $1.8 million to George Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. Bush Sr. is an advisor to the Carlyle Group, which observers say secured lucrative Saudi Arabian investments as payback for Pappy Bush's stomping of Iraq in the Gulf War. Hamid Karzai used to consult for Unocal, as did Zalmay Khalilzad, US special envoy to Afghanistan. Months before September 11, American officials told the Pakistani foreign secretary that an attack on Afghanistan was planned for October.
http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/got_oil/
and
A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks.
Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm
and
[The Guardian (UK) - 5/18/02] George Bush received specific warnings in the weeks before 11 September that an attack inside the United States was being planned by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, US government sources said yesterday.
In a top-secret intelligence memo headlined 'Bin Laden determined to strike in the US', the President was told on 6 August that the Saudi-born terrorist hoped to 'bring the fight to America' in retaliation for missile strikes on al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1998.
http://www.refuseandresist.org/newwar/051902bushknew.html
Don't get me wrong. There is a threat from Saddam, however it does not seem to be any more of a threat compared to that presented by North Korea, or several other nations. The only difference is, Iraq can't stand against us, even in a war of attrition we will come out on top...so, the question here is, is it just that they are 'easy' to beat, and we are shirking from the greater challence, or is it simply the fact that Iraq has billions and billions of $ in oil reserves, and N. Korea has, well, nothing of value?
Show us the proof Mr. Bush. Then the people will be behind you in reality, not just skewed surveys and imagination.
In closing, I leave you with some food for thought in a day when 'questioning' is considered terrorism:
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." ---Teddy Roosevelt.
"If we are willing to concede the President dictatorial authority where we happen to agree with him, as liberals have tended to do over the years, we will have little chance of tying his hands when we do not....You will see why many of us in the Congress understand how Dr. Frankenstein must have felt when his creation ran amok." -- Senator George McGovern, May 1973
"The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a great lie than a small one" - Adolph Hitler
Lest anyone thinks I'm hammering Bush...heres the other side of the congrssional coin and a comparison to some 'heros' of the past:
"There is the great, silent, continuous struggle: the struggle between the State and the Individual; between the State which demands and the individual who attempts to evade such demands. Because the individual, left to himself, unless he be a saint or hero, always refuses to pay taxes, obey laws, or go to war. - Benito Mussolini
"The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." - Adolph Hitler, quoted in Hitler, A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock (Harper Collins, NY)
"It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. .... This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture .... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man." - Adolph Hitler, 1933
"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." - Hillary Clinton, 1993
"My vision of a New World Order foresees a United Nations with a revitalized peacekeeping function." - George Bush (Sr. I think)
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