Bush Lied

Over the past couple of years, I've gotten kind of tired of the "Bush Lied" about the Iraq war and our reasons for being there.

If you are one of those people who truly believe that "Bush Lied", please answer these questions for me.

1) Why would he go into Iraq knowing that there were no WMD's and risk re-election failure and the perception that he was a competent commander in chief? Why not wait until after he was at least re elected?

2) Why were Tony Blair, John Howard, et al willing to put their own political careers on the line for a "Bush Lie".

3) What is the motivation for the Lie? Afterall, if it was strictly about oil, he could have simply lifted the UN sanctions and let all the US oil companies make big time deals with Saddam.

4) If Iraq was never a terrorist haven/threat why is it that terrorists such as Abu Nidal were living there and Musab Al-Zarqawi went there after we invaded Afghanistan?

5) Do you really believe that Bush would have invaded Iraq if the Towers were never attacked? (note, I'm not saying that Iraq was responsible for the WTC attacks I'm just suggesting that the invasion was a direct response to terrorist activity in general and part of an overall terrorist strategy)

6) If Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove et al knew there were no WMD's, Don't you think they would have had people plant them to justify the war?

I've just listened to a news report regarding Bob Woodward's interviews with Gerald Ford prior to his death. According to Woodward, Ford suggested that the invasion was wrong since there were no WMD's but we should have increased sanctions on Iraq.

What for? If they had no WMD's, why would we increase sanctions? How would we get the UN to bite on that one?

By the way, in case everyone forgot, we already had sanctions Hussein refused to follow already, why would we just add some more?

I do believe there were other reasons we went into Iraq besides WMD's. I'm sure that there are many other geo political reasons for going in, the least of which is to be right next door to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria with an established political presence.

However, it really bothers me there is so much criticism of Bush's hadndling of the war yet no one in our media ever holds any critic up to challenge with these types of questions and now we have the head of the House Intelligence Committee who cannot tell you if Al-Queda is a Sunni or a Shiite led organization. How can this party really be the judge of Bush's motives when they can even pass the basic test on knowledge in the region?