I've refrained from participating in this forum for a couple of days, tampa, ever since you decided to make it your personal platform, and especially as I do not feel you've shown any convincing interest in a civil and rational discussion. In my observation, you've consistently employed tactics that you now claim to deplore when used by others - ridicule, mockery, and direct insults, and so on. Your protests on this score suggest either the rankest hypocrisy or deficient mental faculties. As for the rest of this bitter, multi-page tear you've been on, I've seen little reason to respond to your confusing mix of empty assertions, manipulative exaggerations, and false distinctions.
Since you now claim, however, to be ready to undertake a real discussion, and are insisting on the importance of certain "issues," I'll offer my take, mainly because I hate to see false or extreme claims left unchallenged in a public forum. I also think that your handling of these issues illustrates to some small extent what I was describing above, though, frankly, I think the truth of the matter is too obvious to require additional proof. Your posts speak for themselves.
As for the first of your three "issues," you again bring up Bush's misstatements regarding an inspections report on nuclear weapons development in Iraq. You've never provided any details, but I believe you're referring to a statement that was made on the occasion of Blair's most recent US visit, when Bush confused a '98 report with a '91 report. The White House immediately acknowledged the error. It appears to me that only you and a few others who make a custom of drawing paranoiac inferences from incidents of no intrinsic meaning have chosen to make anything of it.
Then, echoing unhinged accusations that came from observers like Katrina vanden Heuvel of THE NATION, you then turn to the famous "aluminum tubes," and claim that the Bush Administration deliberately misrepresented their actual or potential utility in nuclear weapons development. Typically, you write as though you possess certain knowledge of the truth of the matter, stating that these tubes are "not suitable" for use in nuclear weapons development. I don't know where you obtained qualification as a nuclear expert, but, if indeed you possess such qualifications, you should know that many of your colleagues disagree with you. Powell spent some time on the issue at the UN, both acknowledging the controversy and outlining the Administration's position in some detail. You may choose to disagree with the analysis, or to favor the analysis of someone else who may support your position, but you have given no basis whatsoever for your further charges of dishonesty.
Finally, you suggest that the launching of remotely piloted planes carrying chemical or biological agents is "laughable." I share your opinion in part, in that I find it difficult, though not impossible, to imagine a scenario under which such a direct attack on US territory would be in Iraqi interests. I can't pretend, however, to possess certain knowledge of Iraqi strategy and tactics, or to be able to predict the circumstances that might obtain five years from now if Hussein and his regime were allowed to continue weapons development and a military build-up unhindered. In any event, I consider the issue a minor one at most, as I believe the larger issue of direct and indirect threats to the American populace, and inarguably to American and allied interests, to have been amply demonstrated on many other scores. I also suspect that many uninformed observers would have considered the whole 9/11 scenario to have been laughable if it had been presented to them ahead of time. Get real - fanatical zealots in separate cities boarding planes, hijacking them with box cutters, and flying them into the WTC and the Pentagon?
