Mark, I honestly believe that the move into Iraq (despite the UN resolution and evidence of abuse by Saddam of his people) was truly based on intentionally fudged evidence and I've seen a huge volume of information proving that contention. The number of whistle blowers coming out of the Bush administration that have bolstered that accusation is staggering in my memory of politics and the telling thing to me is how damned consistent they've been.

Had the US simply gone into Iraq without fudging the evidence and misleading the world over the severity of Saddam's threat, your contention that they were in violation of UN resolutions might hold water but then again the consent of the UN might never have occurred without that doctored crap so the logic is circular.

What the motivation of the administration might have been in their decisions is immaterial. Invading a sovereign country under false pretenses and without a real significant threat is a crime under international law. To say that we had honorable intentions is moot unless you're willing to forgo all prosecutions of people that take the law into their own hands in this country. Under your pretense there should be invasions of at least half a dozen countries around the world. Is that what we should be doing?

I don't think the motivation was just the oil profits but I also don't believe the proponents in government were blind to the possible windfall by controlling that area. However, not one piece of legislation was passed to ensure that the war profiteers were held back. Once we were there the floodgates opened for connected contractors to get their piece of the pie.

Everywhere you turned Mark, something stunk to high heavens. Even if it was just the smell of complete incompetence, the outrage had to be of maximum volume to end the abuse and ensure we didn't make the same mistake again. You seem to still hold out that some good came of this invasion so that wipes the slate clean but that's a dangerous road to go down. Every invasion throughout history (even the truly evil ones) had some good come of them but one must look at the total sum, the huge number of deaths and injury, the loss of property, the increase of tension and motivations for revenge. When one steps back and assesses those intangibles this mess becomes a colossal failure and verges on the insanely criminal.

So basically I reject your notion that commentators that decried the war as criminal and that the evidence was flawed or deceptive were distorting things themselves. Let's remember that they didn't start out with these pronouncements. The evolution to the hyperbole took years Mark and was racheted up in increments as not only more and more evidence emerged but also as the administration refused to acknowledge clear mistakes and humble themselves in the world a bit. At that same time guys like Limbaugh and Hannity were pushing out more and more lies and hatred. We're not talking a chicken and the egg thing here. One side clearly went over the line first and they just so happened to have not just some of the power but all of it.

I truly appreciate your thoughtfulness and compromise in this discussion though. It brings out my sane side.

Art