If you were to concede that the REPUBS are correct in saying...?

[kentuck]

...that Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, and all the other Democrats were guilty in saying that Saddam was a threat and that he had "weapons of mass destruction". Does that excuse Bush and Cheney and all their little men for lying about going to war with Iraq? If all the Democrats thought there were WMDs in Iraq, why did the White House have to make up stories and exaggerate to take us to war? Then why did they cover up the fact that they lied?

Why couldn't they expand the inspectors that were looking for WMDs? Why did they think American troops would do a better job at finding WMDs than the intelligence we had on the ground, including Ahmed Chalabi and all his lying friends. Bill Clinton did not invade Iraq, no matter what he might have thought. And the argument that 9/11 changed everything is a bunch of bullshit.

[HardWorkingDem]

1. One word.......Clelandized...

With the way history in America is examined, the conventional thought of the nation always seems to be quite forgetful.

If you go back and examine all the quotes of most of the democrats, you will find that the ones used by the right to bolster their claims tend to run up to a certain time area and then stop. The date they stop at is when UN inspectors started finding very little in Iraq and people started learning the Bush march to war was based on lies and manipulated data.

However, this does not excuse Dems for backing this war - I'm not bragging, but the sources I read BEFORE the war started had me convinced that the Bushies were manipulating the minds of Americans. (Actually, we all saw this movie once before with the first Gulf War: the lie about babies ripped from incubators, the claim of Hussein massing troops on the Saudia Arabian border, et cetera).

Now, to me, the thing that pushed the Dems over the edge was fear of being Clelandized - that bastard Chambliss from Georgia's successful depiction of Max Cleland as soft on Hussein and Bin Laden frightened a lot of Dems who became worried about losing their jobs. This is how I see it anyway.

[tularetom]

2. No it doesn't excuse it

bushco is guilty of the most cynical manipulation of public opinion in modern American history. But that doesn't mean that Kerry, Edwards H & B Clinton etc. should be given a free pass for thier votes for the Iraq war resolution. I knew the WMD stories were bullshit when I first heard them and I would hope our Dem leaders are smarter than me. So the only other explanation is that they lacked the cojones to stand up against an administration which they knew was lying to them. Sad to say nobody in this little drama will be featured in future "Profiles in Courage" (except maybe Byrd, Feingold etc)

[LittleClarkie]

3. The problem with all this is Saddam himself

Not exactly a peach. And he was playing musical inspectors. He didn't help matters by acting guilty as all hell. We couldn't get inspectors in for the longest time, so the Dems were dealing with an unknown. They chose to err on the side of caution, as Randi said a couple days ago on her show.

But that doesn't change that the evidence was trumped up.

And Saddam was just as big a monster when Rummy was shaking his hand back in the 80's.

Not to mention that when in 1998, Kerry said in the Senate that we needed to hold Saddam accountable, he didn't mean invade. He meant inspectors and making sure Saddam followed the agreement that ended the first Iraq War. People like Rush used that speech to say that Kerry would be doing the same as Bush did in Iraq. But there is more than one way to hold someone accountable.

[zbdent]

4. I would ask them why they opposed Clinton actually doing something

about it, and why they had to handcuff him with impeachment hearings while he was trying to defend this country . . .