Please, proof my oped before I send her in.

Allen Shirley (Globe, Nov. 20th) quotes a list of Democrats who believed Iraq had WMDs. Allen is right in that many Democrats believed that Iraq had some chemical and possibly biological weapons. What he doesn’t tell you is that there is a difference between citing incorrect intelligence and exaggerating and fabricating incorrect intelligence to support a policy.

To illustrate this point visualize the difference between a chemical bomb and a chemical bomb installed on an unmanned aerial vehicle that can only fly from Iraq to Syria before requiring more fuel. One is what some Democrats mistakenly believed Saddam had left from the inspections and the other is what Bush was concerned about Iraq using “for missions targeting the United States.” It is the difference between a mobile biological weapons laboratory and a weather balloon maker.

How many Democrats claimed Iraq had nukes? None that I am aware of but Dick Cheney did before the Iraq war. “We believe has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Cheney later said he “misspoke.” “Iraq has nukes; oops, I mean, Iraq has a centrifuge buried in a rose garden.”

first line. "We believe ___?_____ has, in fact, ...."

Sounds great!

You presented your ideas very clearly and I found no spelling errors.

And btw, someone should tell Cheney that 'we believe' is not a fact. Beliefs and facts are 2 different things. And wars should not be declared based on beliefs. (I know that's an old quote but that always bothered me when he said 'we believe')

Look out on paragraph 3. Madeline Albright, Bob Graham, Jay Rockefeller, Waxman, Hillary and Robert Byrd all mentioned nuclear in speeches (many of them preior to 2000). If they can call you on a mistake, they will call you on everything.

of dem Senators and Representatives currently in Congress voted NOT to pass the IWR.

W.C. Fields may have said, "Never smarten up a chump. Never give a sucker an even break." But in the end the chump/sucker does catch on.

This whole quoting that Democrats beleived the lies of 'shrub and Co.' smacks of the great cartoon line, "I didn't mis-lead you. You missed followed me." In the end shrub lied and elected to go to war. He is 100% responsible and liable.

Why is Allen Shirley acting as an apologist for shrub?



Shrub Lied. People Died. Media Cheered.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Quite a few of the "lists of Democrats who believed Iraq had WMDs" in circulation cite quotes from 1998 or before. Iraq in 2003 had 5 additional years of sanctions and at least two additional teams of UN inspectors who certified Iraq's WMD arsenals as nonexistent or, at least, unfindable and undeployable.

The problem as Scott Ritter frequently points out is not that Iraq had WMDs, they did have such things at one time, but that those weapons have a shelf life and require maintenance which Iraq under the sanctions regime was incapable of providing. For example, much was made (on Fox News, primarily) of the "discovery" of some chemical weapons shells used in a roadside bomb during 2003. The symptoms caused to the few soldiers who were affected by the devices were temporary numbness and nausea, IIRC. Now I don't want to understate that, since it's possible their health really was damaged in the process, but if those shells had been a fresh active nerve agent, they would have been as deadly as the high explosives that regularly take lives and limbs from people in Iraq on a daily basis.

Such was the state of Saddam's chemical weapons arsenal in 2003: Weapons of Mass Destruction decayed into Weapons of Individual Annoyance.

And thence we run up against the true scope of the disaster. Now that the sanctions regime is gone, we do have cause for concern as to what Iraq's future holds. Whether or not there were terrorists and WMDs in Iraq before the invasion, we know for a fact that there are terrorists and WMDs (mostly our own) there now.

You needed commas here -
Allen is right,
To illustrate the point,
One is what some Democrats mistakenly believed Saddam had left from the inspections,

You needed your prepositional phrase made proper, and I did that here -
None, of which I am aware,

Also, I added "Iraq" parenthetically here -
“We believe (Iraq) has

You're good to go.
============================================

Allen Shirley (Globe, Nov. 20th) quotes a list of Democrats who believed Iraq had WMDs. Allen is right, in that many Democrats believed that Iraq had some chemical and possibly biological weapons. What he doesn’t tell you is that there is a difference between citing incorrect intelligence and exaggerating and fabricating incorrect intelligence to support a policy.

To illustrate this point, visualize the difference between a chemical bomb and a chemical bomb installed on an unmanned aerial vehicle that can only fly from Iraq to Syria before requiring more fuel. One is what some Democrats mistakenly believed Saddam had left from the inspections, and the other is what Bush was concerned about Iraq using “for missions targeting the United States.” It is the difference between a mobile biological weapons laboratory and a weather balloon maker.

How many Democrats claimed Iraq had nukes? None, of which I am aware, but Dick Cheney did before the Iraq war. “We believe (Iraq) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Cheney later said he “misspoke.” “Iraq has nukes; oops, I mean, Iraq has a centrifuge buried in a rose garden.”