A critique please.

[RMJ]

Background:

I sent MoveOn's WMD petition to a bunch of family and friends, and got this response back from my BIL:

"Sorry, I can't support such a call. Even if there were no WMDs (and I believe there were), the brutality of that regime was obvious. I believe this president has learned from past mistakes of letting brutal dictators go unchecked. Hitler, for example.

I can see where people who do not understand military intelligence would be "suspicious." Unfortunately, intelligence is not a black and white business. I've only seen one piece that was blatantly wrong out of the flood of reports the White House had received and made public. I support what the president and his cabinet did at the time, because to reveal any more to the world would have put American operatives, supporters, and special forces in mortal danger.

I believe we need to stop second guessing and concentrate on phase II, bringing Irag back to order, establishing a peaceful government and getting out of there. This will take time, and better planning than I've seen so far. Americans need to remember that we were in Germany from 1945 to the mid 1990's in force. I'd rather we stop pointing fingers and get down to the work at hand.

I would support the President's decision regardless of his party affiliation and strongly resent attempts by either party to discredit a sitting president for political gain. This is no different from the Republicans going after Clinton, the only difference is that the Democrats are using the valiant service of our armed forces for their country as a launching pad for political attack. In a way, that makes what the democrats are doing worse.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one."

I do not want this to devolve into mess where our family is torn apart. This is my response, what, if anything, needs to be changed to maintain family harmony?

"You're right, we will have to disagree. What the Republicans did to Clinton was wrong, because it was nobody's business. Clinton lied because he didn't want his wife to find out he was having an affair. That makes him a lousy husband. But if Bush lied about the reasons he sent our military to war, he needs to be held accountable. 210 of our soldiers, not to mention thousands of Iraqis are dead. Americans serve with the belief that their sacrifice will never be treated casually. I will not let them die for a lie. If he did everything right, he has nothing to fear, does he?

What about the other lies and false information that Bush gave about WMD in his State of the Union speech? Bush said that there was an Al-Qaeda connection to Iraq, a claim that has been thoroughly debunked. Who put that lie in the SOTU?

Bush also said that Iraq had:

1. 25,000 liters of anthrax
2. 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin
3. 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent
4. 30,000 chemical munitions
(These four alone add up to over a million pounds of material, which Rumsfeld said we "knew" were hidden to the northwest of Baghdad and in and around Tikrit. Well, where are they? Hard to hide, considering we've got 150,000 troops on the ground and advanced satellite tracking)

5. several mobile biological weapons labs
(The two we found, were later determined to be mobile balloon filling facilities sold to them by the British. Weather balloons, conventional artillery practice balloons; not that I could understand how anyone could believe that CANVAS covered trucks were supposed to be used in the manufacture of deadly biological weapons in the first place. That must've been a pretty tight weave on that canvas.)

6. advanced nuclear weapons development program
(Oh yeah, the parts of a centrifuge that scientist buried under his rosebush 12 years ago. Of course, he's only got a few pieces and it's useless if it gets any dust inside it and it's been buried under a shrub for over a decade....)

7. a design for a nuclear weapon
(So does anyone with access to the net.)

8. five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb
(That would be ONE. The inspectors discovered that they had some success and did on a couple of occasions manage to enrich several grams of uranium. Of course you need 60 pounds to make a weapon....)

9. high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production
(These would be the tubes that the IAEA, MI-6, and the CIA state are absolutely NOT SUITABLE for nuclear weapons)

No one is defending Hussein. I agree he was a brutal man and that everyone is better off without him in power. But war should be a last resort, not a convenient response. There is always more than one way to solve a problem, and violence is almost never the answer. The point is that Bush unequivocally stated that America was in mortal danger and needed to pre-emptively strike another nation to protect itself, and that is turning out to be not true. Because of that assertion thousands of people are dead.

It is extraordinarily difficult, some would say impossible, to impose democracy on a people. Freedom is earned. You have to want it badly enough to take it. That is why, if any one was going to overthrow Hussein, it should have been the Iraqi people themselves. Could we have helped them? Of course. But to just bluster our way in, with half a plan, assuming they'd be thrilled to receive us was beyond stupid, it was criminal.

And for what? Their lives are better now? They're terrorized daily, they haven't had clean water, electricity or a steady supply of fresh food in months. Their children are dying of dysentery and their wounded from lack of medical supplies. And what about us? Are we safer? Our soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan, (the war that everybody forgot.) Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose, plotting, even now, unspeakable horrors, and with new ammunition considering the ill will the rest of the world holds for us after the colossal blunder that is Iraq. Hussein may or may not be secretly in control of the insurgents that are daily upping the death toll. The weapons, IF he had them, are scattered to the four winds, exactly the thing we didn't want to have happen. Our allies are exasperated, our enemies are enraged, and Bush decides to put on his best cowboy swagger and say, "Bring 'em on." How is this helping?

You obviously believe the person who got us into this mess is capable of getting us out and I don't. But more importantly than that, withholding information to protect "American operatives, supporters, and special forces" is different from blatant lies to convince the American public to support an idea that would otherwise be insupportable. I do not support this investigation because I am, "using the valiant service of our armed forces for their country as a launching pad for political attack." But because I believe what Truman said was true, "The buck stops here." I don't know if it's true in the Army, but in the Navy, whatever happens on your watch you are responsible for. If troops were put in harm's way under false pretenses then that is wrong. And Bush needs to be held accountable.

Thanks IndianaGreen for your info for my second and third paragraphs. Well DU, are there inaccuracies? I don't want a wrong fact to discredit my entire argument. Do I sound as ticked as I feel about his condscending tone? Should it be shorter, am I overwhelming him with information? Do I hit send or not?