Deepening doubts on Iraq

http://www.arbiteronline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/09/04/3f56e3f516bfc

Where are the weapons of mass destruction? As President Bush and other administration officials made the case for war with Iraq, their biggest selling point was the claim that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime possessed chemical weapons. Allegations he had biological weapons were shakier; assertions he had nuclear arms or could build them were even more dubious. There were other ever-shifting official rationales for the Iraq invasion, like Hussein’s torture and killing of his own people and promoting Mideast democracy through his ouster. The main justification, however, for sending Americans to die in the desert was Hussein’s earlier use of chemical weapons, his continued possession of them and the imminent threat he would inflict them on the United States.

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The war was more popular in the U.S. But Bush, administration officials, intelligence analysts and Congress need to keep asking: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? And if they are not found, was the defiant U.S. insistence that Iraq had them the result of incompetence or lies?

and also see their Letters column!

http://www.arbiteronline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/09/04/3f56e2afed551

excerpt:

This is not the first time that Idahoans have caved into the “herd mentality.” Last summer, when the Governor’s Summit met here in Boise, the police and FBI also gave protesters a small space in which to voice their opinions on topics of concern. Again encircled by crime scene tape, protesters were told that their speech was only free within a designated “zone.”

Finally, and of particular interest, was Andy Benson’s editorial in last Thursday’s Arbiter, p.4, second paragraph on right...Isn’t anyone outraged that Dan Wolf (photographer) “was forcefully threatened with arrest when he strayed out of bounds to capture the image on the front page” I am just beside myself! Hasn’t anyone else noticed these basic erosions of our 1st Amendment rights? Are we all so blinded by the Patriot Act that we are willing to be herded like cattle into an area called “crime scene” in order to express ourselves?

...more...

in the Boise paper???