The below is something I posted to EBNelson in a thread below, but since I'm back and 'rarin fer a faht', I thought I'd post it up top.

(a quote from Ebnelson ):
"This anti-Bush movement is religious in nature"

My reply:
You don't get it. The pro-bush pro-WMD 'movement' is entirely religious in nature, is becoming a more irrational and indefensible position by the day, and is akin to anomalist thinking.

Its the late-middle of June. We have had substantial boots on the ground since the end of march. 3 months of owning most of Iraq. If it [the discovery of WMDs] was going to happen, it would have happened is those WMDs existed to the degree of certainty and quantity that this administration claimed.

And then there are the Saddam+Al-Qaeda terrorist ties, which despite the protestations of the the preening pious rehashing the failed Ansar Al-Islam, Salman Pax and MKO stories, have yet to materialize.

We can already tell that the claims of certain knowledge of WMD and their location (ala Rumsfeld, for example) were wrong. Entirely and categorically... Pure and simple: WRONG.

If we knew not only THAT they existed, but WHERE they were, why can't we exhibit any proof?

Ultimately, faith has to give way to reason. Ultimately, if any of us here wish to claim to be rational and thinking men who evaluate their politics like they evaluate any other idea, then we MUST acknowledge that in the least this administration was incorrect in its claims concerning WMD and terrorists.

Or we could rename the Habitable Zone the Anomalist Zone and let Sam, Johannes and company into the fold. Why not? Why believe one set of claims that have no evidence and are disprovable but eschew and deride another set of claims that have no evidence and are disprovable?

In a way, it is so very sad that we are stuck here debating the existence of WMD- there are much more important issues on the table. Issues including:
1) The credibility of our government in the moral theatre

2) The damage this administration had done to our alliances and national interests

3) The definition of 'pre-emptive strike', even granting the WMD, being redefined as any violent action a superpower carries out in the absence of provocation and the absence of imminent threat
3b) the very real effect this has had on the Military Policy of China WRT Taiwan

4) The fact that, before the conflict, many claims made about Iraq by the bush administration were patently false and disprovable to any interested party with a search engine. Including, but not limited to:
4a) That Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda operatives and was acting in concert with them
4b) That Iraq had purchased plutonium from African states.

5) The COMPLETE and TOTAL failure of the attack on Iraq of accomplishing the broader stated goals of the attack, namely but not limited to:
5a) Bringing N Korea to the table in a meaningful way(hasn't happened)
5b) Cutting down terrorist activities in the middle east and wider world(the contrary has occurred)
5c) Urging the Palestinians to eschew terrorist strategies (no dice there)
5d) Bringing Iran to heel (not gonna happen, has not happened)

6) the CURRENT and OBSERVED failure of the US to bring the promised 'stable democracy' to Iraq.

7) That this government has locked us into an occupation consisting of more than 50% of our forces for an indefinite period.

That there are no WMD, that our government either LIED about WMD OR was so entirely STUPID as to believe that mountains of WMD existed is only one slice of the pie that is plasterted to the face of America right now.

We got real problems folks. I mean REAL problems. Are we more interested in solutions or in ideology and being right?

Davin