I was going through some old mail, cleaning out the cache, when I came across this:
Re: This "man with no ability to harm us" meme
(Anonymous)
2004-02-19 00:21 (link)
Dr. Elioff: "In your heart, can you honestly say you thought Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat to your life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness?"
Ah, cleaning your desk can unearth such delightful things... Yesterday I found a constituent letter dated 10/15/02 that argued that Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the US.
"As a member of the [Senate] Intelligence Committee, as someone who has read and discussed and studied the history of Iraq, the record of obfuscation and the terror Saddam Hussein has sown, one comes to the conclusion that he remains a consequential threat. ... Saddam Hussein's ability to use his chemical and biological weapons against us is not constrained by geography - it can be accomplished in a number of different ways - which is what makes this threat so real and persuasive. ...... Disarming Iraq under Saddam Hussein is necessary and vital to the safety and security of America..."
and summarized
"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein and his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons pose a real and persuasive threat to the safety and security of the United States, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East."
Signed... California's oh-so-liberal Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Dr. Elioff, your & my own senior senator would have to answer your question "Hell yeah."
Let's learn from our mistakes and critique our failings, but let's not rewrite history in the process. "Saddam is a threat" was indeed the consensus: left/right, Dem/GOP, US/Euro.
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Too bad that the DemocRats have spent so much time and energy trying to smear President Bush with the "he lied" meme, when they're own words are cached in a number of places, showing that when THEY examined the same intelligence the President had to go on, they agreed with his assessment. For them to now go with the smear tactics just shows that there is NOTHING the DemocRats won't go to in the name of Partisian politics, and demonstrates that they're words are untrustworthy.