cost the lives of 2,492 young and old American men and women. Tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children.

And all of the maimed - how many americans and iraqis lost pieces of their bodies for this erroneous preemption?

Wait a second, so Saddam didn't have WMD but Zarqawi did?


OWWWWWW!!!!! My head hurts.

the 'funny' thing about it is that it's just as easy to use a corpse as a live person when 'proving' that someone has connections. "look, this madman was making ricin and cyanide to attack us with. the fact that we blew up his lab and killed him *in iraq* proves that he was working with saddam." yeah, it's total bullshit, but it's not like americans didn't eat many a bullshit sandwich while they were running up to the war. they coulda had colin and the batshit crazyman rummy stand up and people woulda ate it up with a spoon. the administration apparently felt that more american deaths would work better than an al queda death. bastards.

If we killed him a few years ago, we wouldn't have the ex-video store clerk boogey-man to focus on.

You should see some of the twisted logic people are useing to refute this.
"
No No. I am saying what was the offical reason for not going through with their plans. Al-zarqawi was not as much of a threat as sadam. YOu see the article helps back our reason for going to war in Iraq.

The fact that Zarqwai had his own camp in Iraq and was making WMD, means there must have been other terroists in Iraq hence an al-qauida connection. If Zarqawi who was just a soldier at this point had his own camp what else was going on there. So Iraq you say was sort of a terroist base... Since the ricin from Iraq was headed to England.... Wow so imagine if we never went into iraq what kind of terroist playground it would be..

Thank you for proving the Sadam Al-quada connection..
"
That gem is from "Bill" I don't make this stuff up.

Making no statement for, or against, Iraq/Zarqwai/ETC. ...but simply wishing to make a forensic point...

I didn't find anywhere in this article, nor the link, as to why the attacks were not executed. There is absolutely nothing to support, or refute, the assumptions made in the linked article - or this article - that the attacks were avoided so we could make a stronger point for war. That is 100% assumptive.

Without more information, one might as well speculate the attacks were not carried out because the aliens said not to.

I COULD speculate as to two legitimate reasons as to why the attacks were avoided...

1. As with all criminal activities, sometimes you allow a small fish to live with the hopes it will lead you to a larger, better fish...especially if you have active tabs on the small fish and could, theoretically, intervene at any point before the small fish kills anyone.

2. These were chemical weapons labs. Where were they located? Populated areas? How large a storage of cyanide did they contain? Might one point out that if you bomb a cyanide lab, with a 1000 gallon vat of cyanide you get a 1000 gallon cyanide cloud drifting in the wind.

Let's envision the SG headline after they did bomb the lab...
"Zarqwai dead...along with 5000 Iraqi citizens...but it was worth it!!"

Items 1 and 2 are also entirely speculative. Basically, both the SG article, and the MSNBC article, are utterly meaningless and an example of extremely poor journalism.

You must have skipped over this part:

That's certainly not an assumption. And unless you feel like doing away with unnamed sources altogether, then one is as good as another. Leaks and background briefings are this administration's stock-in-trade, but turnabout suddenly isn't fair play?

For those who doubt the NBC story, i'd like to know why this administration, who fights every atom of negative press, has never denied the substance of the reporting?

I guess the same aliens told the President to invade then. Nice logic.

Good post.

I find it amusing that the same people who have viciously criticized the Administration for pre-emptively attacking Saddam are now using the decision not to pre-emptively strike someone else as evidence of poor decision making.

In light of Zarqawi's death, these same people are also downplaying his importance and claiming that terrorism is a hydra, in that if you cut off a head then two more grow. If that is the case, then wouldn't it make more sense to overthrow a regime that harbored these activities as opposed to simply taking out one camp?

Um...but, sorry charlie. "Unnamed Military sources" and "experts in [field]" are not legitimate journalistic sources, by themselves. Once upon a time, [the good ol' days, perhaps] an unnamed source was only valuable as a method by which to get to the actual supporting data. A starting point. Now, they have become the "data" in and of themselves.

Now, let me explain why this is bad. 3 reasons.

1. I have met many "High ranking members of high level intelligence offices" and know that this can mean anything from the director of the CIA, to the Major who handles the library. But, to quote as a source, "High ranking members with the [high level security agency] said..."

Get the point? Meaningless.

2. At a scientific conference, I once met a PhD who was convinced the use of Microwave transmitters by telecommunications companies was the cause of global warming. Now, feel free to pull out your calculator and start doing some math on fluid dynamics, heating and cooling of fluid volumes, and the amount of energy that would have to be put into microwaves to heat just a small section of the atmosphere (say 200 billion cubic feet of atmosphere at 29.92 density.)

And yet...he was a PhD. It was in Meteorology. He would have qualified as "an expert."

Thus, we quote item 2 under the "Category of Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric" by Carl Sagan...
"Argument from "authority".

3. Without either a name, OR independently corroborating evidence so we would not NEED a name, we cannot determine if the "Military source" was "General so-and-so, the current acting investigator for internal review", or "Lieutenant I just got 'early retired' and am pissed", or "Master Sergeant I just converted to the Hari-Krishna's and realize the Bush admin is evil".

Granted, those are all fairly extreme examples. But without independent corroborating evidence, or a name so we can check the "status" of the individual providing the information...the information is, in and of itself, useless as evidence.

That would be item #4, of the same category...
"Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence). "

Um...nope. Neither you, nor MSNBC, has successfully offered any Journalistically (or scientifically) credible facts to support the argument. Ay best these "Anonymous sources" could serve as a starting point to begin the journalistic research, not the end point to complete it.

As my father, a former newspaper Editor in Chief, has frequently proclaimed, "It's a sad day for modern journalism."

Because you don't see the difference between taking out a single site and invading an entire country.

Ok so from an American viewpoint(which I am not) 2,492 americans have died since the invasion of Iraq nearly 5 years since the 911 attacks which claimed a total of 2,986 lives.
Hmmmm, the reasoning for going to war still isnt making a lick of sense.

Man, I thought Iraq had no terrorist links.

These people need to find one story and stick with it, too much switching confuses my consertive mind.

Zarqawi operating in Iraq != Iraq having terrorist links. I mean, the 9/11 terrorists operated in the US, but (officially, at least) don't have any link to America. America did not (so far as we know) train, fund, recruit, or tacitly cooperate with said terrorists. So Zarqawi could easily have been in Iraq without the cooperation of Iraq's (anti-Al Qaeda) government. Or even their knowledge.

Now, it would likely have been sensible to get rid of any identified terrorist bases of operation that we could, but it does not make sense to invade or bomb the hell out of an entire country when their government is not actively giving aid or comfort to those terrorists. And if we're looking for governments that are...hello, Saudi Arabia! How are you doing today?

Um...this is not a Soccer match.

Iraq aside, 'cause no one really buys the Terrorism-Iraq link at this point...we went to Afghanistan after 9/11 because...um...if we didn't try to kill the people who blew up the Twin Towers they'd a blowed up s'more shit...?

I mean...what was your point. We should have thrown up our arms and said, "Well...shit! We just lost 3000 people. Let's just hunker down, and hope we don't lose anymore. Oooohhh SHIT! They did it again...there's ANOTHER 2000 people gone. Good thing we didn't send soldiers over there...then we would have EVEN MORE people dead. SShhh...be quiet...maybe they'll stop NOW. I mean, what's the MOST they might want to kill?"

WTF?

Yeah, Ill concede that. Wasn't really going anywhere with that and it was basically flamebait. My bad....