Reply #13: My big question is, why didn't Bush

[Crunchy Frog]

use those arguments as the basis for justifying the war, rather than the fairly blatantly bogus ones that he did use? My suspicion is that those are more your own justifications than they are his. At any rate, if those were his real reasons he could have used them as the initial justification to the American people and the international community, allowing them to decide if war was the right thing to do on that basis. He chose not to go that route, preferring instead to cook up fake evidence of WMDs, and terrify people with visions of mushroom clouds over American cities. Add to that his strong insinuations that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks and you get a very strong impression of a President who lied us into war.

I still probably wouldn't have agreed with the invasion, but I would have felt better about it if he had given the reasons you gave, rather than using the arguments that he did.

As far as the oil goes, no I don't have any links, and frankly that is not my greatest area of interest. There are probably other people here who can point to specific links. I think that was only one part of Bush's real agenda anyway. At this point they are not pumping remotely enough even to subsidize the war and occupation, let alone make a profit. However, ultimately, having control over the worlds second largest oil reserves must in my opinion have been part of the calculation.

Have you noticed that our leaders seem to be much more concerned about human rights abuses in countries with lots of oil? Is that just a coincidence?

I hope that I haven't come off as offensive in my answers. There are many people on here far more knowledgable and articulate than I am that can probably do a much better job of addressing your issues than I can.

Oh, and I do not consider myself to be on the left. I think of myself as a liberal, which in my opinion is a very different thing. Anyway, if you're going to classify people as being on the left on the basis of opposing the war, you will have to count Pat Buchanan as a leftist as well.