Debating with blinders on.

I Love how the conversation about how the administration handled the run up to the war brings out the pedantic stereotypes people allow themselves to use in order to explain why others don’t agree with them. It takes heroic levels of asininity to convince yourself that blanket statements often used (for empire, for oil, for profit, etc) such as have been expressed by so many of the wars detractors actually have merit. Regardless of what the administration said during the period prior to the invasion. Or how what was said has been perceived and or mischaracterized by the administrations detractors. Many, if not most people had arrived at the conclusion that Saddam needed to go long before any of that debate began. I think its safe to say that the argument for regime change put forth by the previous administration went a long way towards convincing many of us that we were going to have to deal with Saddam. In fact, many of us came to the conclusion that in leaving Saddam in power in '91. We as a free people had betrayed our own principles and in the process millions of Iraqis. Many of us are painfully aware of the inconsistencies of our past foreign policy decisions. And looked to removing Saddam and establishing a situation where Iraqis can choose their own government as a way to begin to address those past inconsistencies. Sure, some were totally motivated by the wmd aspect of the administrations justification for the war. But a whole lot of us were fully motivated by reasons we had come to prior to any wmd debate. And in fact were comforted by the fact the administration included those reasons, along with wmd, while laying out the reasons to remove Saddam.

An unfortunate outcome of that debate that myself and many others have come to realize is this. It's hard to say what’s a more damning example of the degeneration of a significant segment of our society. Their deliberate mischaracterization of the WMD issue as the only reason given and or accepted to remove Saddams fascist regime. Or the fact that of the approximately 20 reasons given to take the Ba'athists out.. The administration felt that it had to emphasize WMD. Because the same crowd currently making such an issue of WMD couldn’t be convinced Iraq was worth doing out of any commitment to humanitarian or democratic ideals. There's a sad irony created when these people project their own moral and ethical decay on the rest of us while making their stereotypical accusations pertaining to our motives - or lack of - behind supporting the invasion.

Tragic.