[mburbank]

Didn't watch, but just finsihed reading the transcript.

First, I want to be clear, I don't think this is a conspiracy. I do think a lot of the evidence is trumped up and needs to be examined. I am partuclarly confused by this claim in particular.

"Presented declassified satellite pictures that he said were 15 munitions bunkers. Powell said four of them had active chemical munitions inside. "
-reuters

This would indeed have been irefutable evidence had it been given to the inspectors. Revealing it on live television seems an almost deliberate step to insure the claim cannot be verified. If we could have had them red handed, why didn't we?

The evidence from 'sources' is highly questionable. Remember, 'sources' like this, ie. people with a political agenda of their own, are what lead us to bomb a wedding party in Afghanistan.

Naldo, to you in particular; I'm not defending Iraq. In fact I think they almost certainly are hiding chemical weapons, maybe bio weapons, and almost certainly not a nuclear program. It's also true they are not cooperating.

But our investment in making this war happen boggles the mind. We still haven't got Afghanistan under control, we barely have Kabul anyhwere even near stable, we don't lknow where Osama bin Laden is, Al Quaeda is very much active and in the meantime North Korea is ramping up the odds every day and we're too focused on Iraq to deal with them. Our adminsitration insists it isn't a 'crisis'. North Korea admits to posessing arms we only speculate iraq has, is aiming them at our allies, and is going just about nuts that we don't seem to take them seriously.

Economically, things are VERY bleak and that's before you factor ion the cost of a ONE FRONT war.

The question is not so much if I believe Powell or Biden or Bush or whomever, the question is, if we give TOTAL benefit of the doubt and trust this evidence WITHOUT QUESTION, why is this situation our #1 world priority? This War is something the adminsitration has craved since day one. This war, which I think is inevitable, will turn us historically from defenders to conquerers and set forever as precident that the USA will topple other nations when they see fit. THAT is what makes us frightening and dangerous to a world already frightened of us. You can argue that the Roman Empire did lot of good on the whole. It didn't keep it's occupied nations from hating it, it didn't stop power of that kind utterly corrupting it and in the end Visigoths and Vandals toppled it.

Our current foreign policy doctrine is to work toward controlling the world. That is a very bad thing to even want, let alone try for.