Another sorry casualty is poor Tony Blair; sounds like he's up to his ears about this non-existent WMD crap as well. Wish Blair would have had the guts to walk out on Bush. Not doing so is going to cost him his job.

Just wish there was more outrage about this mess -- why isn't anyone screaming about these lies? They'll get all hot and bothered about a blow job but not war?

Rayne, I think I can help with your question. You see, over time, the world changes. Not everthing in the world is exactly the same today as it was yesterday, and tommorrow may be a little different as well.

Last week, I was asked for a loan, and I said, "I'm sorry, I don't have that much money." Today, though, I do. (Thank goodness for paychecks!) Following Billmon's logic, that would make me a liar, wouldn't it?

Everyone - Bubba, Blixxy, Scott - probably even you - believed at one point that these WMD's existed. Well then, where are they? Has Sadaam been sprinkling some Ricin on his Cheerios every morning, until it's all gone? Did the Sarin Fairy show up and whisk them all away to Never-Never Land? Where the f*** are they??

A series of out of context quotes regarding a changing situation, with no clues about the wording of the questions, doesn't concern me much. It's an old game, and can be played with anyones quotes. Perhaps a similar trip through Billmons literary leavings would be instructive.

What does worry me is the number of people in this country who believe that their own Goreless bitterness is more important than the very real dangers we face, from a rather large group of people who would very much like to kill us all. If anything is a threat to this country, it ain't Bush, it's a Left so full of hate that it can no longer see reason.

Part of the problem, though, Mike, is that they weren't saying they "believed" that Iraq had WMD, they were saying that they knew for a fact that he had them, that he was in the process of producing more (note: producing more would eliminate his "destroying them" during that time as an option - which is what they're now saying they think was happening), and that he could use them immediately (remember the infamous statement from the British dossier that he could have them ready to use in 45 minutes if he wanted to?). That was before the war - now they're saying "maybe" he had time to destroy them. They've gone from statements of absolute certainty to offering excuses for why their earlier certainty has - to date - turned out to be unfounded.

Oh, and as to your contention that probably everyone believed the WMD existed? I, at least, was never entirely convinced that they did - I thought it was possible - and I know we may yet find them - but I was pretty skeptical, and I know many others were, also. For me, their certainty that he had them conflicted too greatly with their inaibility to point the inspectors to the right places too look, and their unwillingness to specify how they knew he had them. I also had a lot of difficulty with the way that key examples and evidence that they offered turned out to be wrong (the aluminium tubes and 'balsa wood' drones), forged (attempts to get nuclear materials from Niger), plagairized from a decade-old grad student's paper (British dossier) or otherwise worthless.

I find it curious that now, after the war, they're acting almost surprised that they can't find anything, and are trying to blame it on bad intelligence, when prior to the war, the UN inspectors, using the intelligence we were giving them, couldn't find anything either, and were saying that the information we were passing on to them was "garbage". I can't imagine that we were passing to them anything other than the best information we had, since we so badly wanted to find banned weapons to justify the invasion (and doing so would have gone a long ways to getting the rest of the world on our side), so our leaders HAD to know at that point that the information they were getting wasn't accurate - yet they STILL painted it as an absolute certainty that Saddam had WMD.

As for the context of the quotes - I'd noted that Billmon was planning to link each of the quotes to it's source, and he has done so. Anyone who wishes to check the context of those quotes can do so quite easily.

Lastly, regarding your money example - if I asked you for money and you said you didn't have any, you would probably be able to provide me with pretty good evidence of not having money if I asked you to - an empty wallet, a current bank statement, something like that. If I later found out that you did have money, you could also explain where it came from or demonstrate that it had been added after I'd initially asked you for some - again via a dated bank statement or other such proof. That wasn't the case here - at the time they were telling us that they were so certain he had them, they couldn't point anyone to where they were or provide any solid evidence that the weapons existed. Now that they're not finding any, they can't tell us what happened to them or why they're not where they thought they would be. It's makes for an important difference.

here are some of your liberal heros saying the SAME thing..... it's ON record. it "happened"....

**"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical, biological weapons, and if events are allowed to run their course, will someday possess nuclear weapons."
Sen. Evan Bayh (D.-Ind.), Intelligence member Statement, Oct. 3, 2002

**"I believe that Saddam Hussein rules by terror and has squirreled away stores of biological and chemical weapon."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.), Intelligence member Floor speech, Oct. 10,
2002

**"The people of the United States and the rest of the world are at risk as long as Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Last night, the President . . . made the most effective case to date that the risk of inaction is too great to bear."
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D.-W.Va.), Vice Chairman of Intelligence Committee
Statement, March 18, 2003

**"For the last 12 years he's [Saddam's] ignored U.N. resolutions and embargoes while rebuilding his illegal chemical and biological weapons. . . . He is dangerous. I believe he needs to be disarmed."
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D.-Md.), Intelligence member Floor speech, March 18,
2003

**"In 1991, the world collectively made a judgment that this man should not have weapons of mass destruction. And we are here today in the year 2002 with an un-inspected four-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them... .The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new."
Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass.), Foreign Relations member Floor speech, Oct. 9,
2002

**"On Monday night, President Bush, I think spoke for all of us. I know of no one who really disagrees at all. He described Saddam Hussein as a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction. It is that addiction that demands a strong response. We all agree on that. There is no question that Iraq possesses biological and chemical weapons and that he seeks to acquire additional weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons."
Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.), Foreign Relations member Floor speech, Oct. 9,
2002

**"I believe if Saddam Hussein continues to refuse to meet his obligation to destroy his weapons of mass destruction and his prohibited missile delivery systems, that the United Nations should authorize member states to use military force to destroy those weapons and systems."
Sen. Carl Levin (D.-Mich.), then-chairman of Armed Services and member of
Intelligence Floor speech, Oct. 9, 2002

**"He [Saddam Hussein] stockpiles biological and chemical weapons."
Sen. Jon Corzine (D.-N.J.), Foreign Relations member Floor speech, Oct. 9,
2003

---Joseph A. D'Agostino, Human Events
June 16, 2003

OOOOH, that HAD TO HURT!
IT MUST SUCK TO BE A LIBERAL AND
HAVE TO LIE TO YOURSELF TO KEEP
FROM GOING GRAZY!

Sure, they said those things, and they were wrong also.

The important difference, however, is that to the best of my knowledge, the people you're citing were making their claims based on what they had been told and shown by the Bush Administration - information that the Bushies KNEW was less than complete and less compelling than they were making it out to be. And I will say this - any liberals or Democrats who DID have access to the full range of intelligence on Iraq and willingly went along with the Bush administration in lying about that intelligence is every bit as guilty and deserving of being tossed out of office as any conservative or Republican who did.

So, yeah, some liberals got fooled. That doesn't change the fact that Bush and his advisors - who had access to the complete information, and not just the edited version that was used to make their fraudulent case - lied to Congress and to the American people about the true nature of the (non)-threat Iraq posed to the US and took us into a war that they could not, or would not, justify honestly.

Something to keep in mind - I may be ideologically a liberal, but I'm not one who believes that if liberals have acted in way that I object to seeing in conservatives that it somehow excuses the conservitves of their bad behaviour. It means that the liberals acting that way are every bit as wrong as I consider the conservatives to be.