Has anybody (besides me) completely flip flopped in their support for President Bush?
I'm politically moderate with conservative leanings. I completely supported the war in Iraq (oddly not because of Bush's explaination but because of PM Tony Blair's)
Hoping we still salvage a positive outcome in Iraq, I now think is was a mistake to take troops to Iraq.
I don't believe "Bush lied". The preponderence of intellegence through out the world indicated that Saddam had WMD. He didn't. However, Bush's prosecution of the war (reliance on Rumsfeld's analysis) has, ultimately, been a failure. ( I wanted Rumsfeld's firing long ago)
I now view Bush as an incompetent Chief executive. No, I don't hate him like my Democrat friends, but I'd never vote for him again. (Which is a meaningless statement as he won't be running for office, but it lets you know my sentiment for Bush as a politition.)
Somewhere inside I feel betrayed by Bush. However, he probably was simply never the leader I thought he was.

 

I respect your willingness to admit that. I never cared for him from day one honestly i dont think we have much a choice on Presidents since 1996 but i was 11 then and could not vote.

I just can't stand people that still believe Bush can do no wrong and my dad is one on those people well thats what happens when all u care about is the Born Agains agenda[:@]

 

Regarding the evidence of Saddam's WMD, I have to respectfully disagree.Still, Ican see how those whofirst believed in Bush also went for the WMD theory because many Republican friends whom I considered to be very smart peoplewere also totally convinced that Saddam'slittle postage stamp country with it's defeated rusting army and non existant AF was going to rear its ugly head and smite us with his WMD. Yet Bush's intense campaign of fear run amok effectively shut down the nations ability to reason...and we rushed into his drummed up war.... Which has now been proven to a lie by so many...including Colin Powell, and many mid level CIA analyst....

Still, I and many others, includingScot Ritter and othertrainedintelligenceanalysts were carefully following the events and so-called intelligence prior to invading Iraq.Even then it was apparant thatall so called solidevidenceof an IraqiWMD programwas little more than outright lies, or a smoke and mirrorexericise conjured up to deceiveWorld public opinion.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6190720/

But since the citizens of the USA were not privy to real, hard news.... that is, unless they bothered to inform themselves via the interntet.. or had other ways to tune into various European media, only the US citizensswallowed the bait, hook line and sinker.. Even then, there was a large percentage of US citizens who didn't buy it.Still,even ifthere were a remote possibility that Saddam had some WMD's, we or the world had nothing to fear. He was contained.His army was rusting.He had no spare partsor even if availble, the money to buy them.Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iran, et al had many reasons to hate and fear Saddam, but they didn't for a minute beleive he posed any threat to them... And they told us that, over and over again..... saying in effect that if you invade Iraq you'll destabilize the M.E...... but no one but the powerless were listening....

Yetthe thing that clinched it for me... waswhen Colin Powel sold his soul/integrity to Bush et al as he sat in the UN with that phoney dog and pony show,which waslittle more than a series of badly drawn cartoons,which solid inteligence had long ago proven to be false....Only the USA bought that ridiculous performance. ( which Powell later said was the low point of his carreer. ) The rest of the world saw that performance as a hoax perpetuated by Bushet al in order to fulfill the neo con dreams of PNAChttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project...erican_Centuryand Big Oils dreams of getting their hands on that 90% of Iraqi oilwhich has yet to be surveyed. http://chat.thisislondon.co.uk/londo...message=794741

Scott Ritter:
Bush loyalists continue to point to 'Bush-haters' accusations of WMD 'lies' as evidence of their hate. After all, 'everyone,' including Democrats, believed Saddam had WMD.
Let's go over this again. When UNSCOM, the first weapons inspection team in Iraq (1991-98), realized that Iraqi officials had been lying about its weapons program, former UNSCOM Chief Inspector Scott Ritter was the expert they called in to find what Saddam was hiding, and where, and then to destroy it. I interviewed Ritter several times three years before the U.S. invasion.
'I bear personal witness through seven years as a chief weapons inspector in Iraq to both the scope of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and the effectiveness of the U.N. weapons inspectors in ultimately eliminating them,' Ritter explained, adding that given the lack of infrastructure in Iraq after the Gulf War, coupled with the sanctions, it was impossible for Iraq to reconstitute a viable WMD program from 1998 forward.
By the time UNSCOM ended its work in 1998, it had stripped Iraq of 90 to 95 percent of its WMD. The missing 5 to 10 percent, Ritter said, was likely destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War, making 100 percent quantitative compliance with the U.N. disarmament mandate an impossible benchmark.
'A lot of information we were given was provided to us by the Americans. It was either out of date, incorrect or it was completely false and designed to take us down the wrong path,' explained Australian UNSCOM inspector Roger Hill.
Ritter, a former Marine captain and Republican who voted for Bush in 2000, resigned in frustration, and when he traveled the country trying to educate the public, the 'liberal' media paid more attention to the neocons trying to discredit him; ignoring what he was actually saying.
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/32244/