Obviously nothing conclusive here; but it keeps the door open. After all, even if it's the same guy, he may have actually been spying on aq (since it was a threat to saddam), not overtly assisting them. Hopefully, we'll learn the truth some day. As for the thread degrading into the rationale for the war again, why not give it a break. At this point, no one will change their minds about it unless new, material information is presented. So why waste your time?
The 12 years of sanctions were obviously working. The policy of containment was keeping Saddam from building up his military and was keeping check on his power. Yeah, obviously Saddam had "substantial opportunities" to expand his WMD programs. He had so much opportunity and desire that we have now found exactly zero weapons labs, zero stockpiles, zero programs, and a single 15 year old artillery shell filled with the precursors to sarin (already expired and relatively harmless). No, but we were getting to the bottom of the WMD issue with weapons inspectors AND we could have put 2000 FBI and CIA agents into Iraq to further verify that Saddam was compliant. At the point where we invaded, it appears that the only thing that Saddam was guilty of wrt the GWI treaty was bad paperwork accounting for less WMD than the US loses to degradation and paperwork errors every year. Yeah, the administration has conveniently perverted the argument post- Saddam's fall alright. When the case was being made for war, the argument was that not only did we KNOW for a certainty that Saddam had WMDs , but we knew exactly where they were and how big the stockpiles were. That is a far cry from the "weapons related program activites" that GWB mentioned in the latest SOTU. The weapons inspectors were about to clear Saddam and GWB just couldn't handle the truth, so he invaded. Once AGAIN, there has been no credible evidence presented wrt Saddam's connection to terrorists or 9/11. Rumsfeld and Bush have both testified to this under oath. Saddam never posed anything approaching a serious threat to the US. Subsequent events have indicated that the Bush admin could have been manipulated by a hostile government to invade a soverign country preemptively. Bush and his cronies wanted SO badly to believe that Iraq was a threat that they just trusted Chalabi even though the CIA wouldn't vet his "intelligence." This war was unjustified, unnecessary, and has been FAR more expensive than the admin claimed would be the case. This is Bush's war and he should go down with it.
Wrong. You don't get it. Most everyone thought he had WMDs. I did. I'm sure France did, Denmark, etc. But the key here is thought. We weren't certain, merely thought it was higly probable. That is the distinction that many war supporters have always overlooked. Like many, I said that a war based on probability is not a war to fight. War as a lst resort seems to just be words to some people, but in reality it lies in the difference between knowing he had WMDs which constituted a threat and thinkking he had WMDs which had yet to represent a threat. THAT was why people asked for proof. THAT was why Blix asked for more time. THAT was why many other nations wanted to wait.
