"And a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief."

That is quite well stated. And it's why I want Bush out of office.

For the sake of argument, lets say the explosives were missing before our troops even arrived. My question is, why are we just finding this out now? Shouldn't we have checked out the "explosives depot" much earlier on in our securing of Iraq?

Dude, just keep repeating "explosives" and "weapons of mass destruction" together and maybe you'll fool us into thinking they're one and the same! And then when we find the missing "explosives" we can celebrate. Finally, we found our justification for invading Iraq.. it wasn't about toppling a tyrant who was mean to a minority within his country, it was about weapons of mass destruction all along.

Apparently, there can only be one reason. Interesting.

Last night on Hannity and Colmes...Alan Colmes said something very revealing. He said "We were warned from the beginning that this was a major site for the nuclear weapons program." That actually came out of his mouth...but I thought there was no WMD! It was quite a slip on his part I thought. Furthermore, I believe an ounce of this stuff can bring down a 747...and as I recall can be used to trigger nuclear weapons. Sounds like powerful stuff to me. I don't believe WMD has an official Webster's definition but that qualifies in my mind (not that we haven't found evidence of WMD numerous times already in Iraq). BTW...did you actually say "mean to a minority within his county"? Wow...read up man. Also, every once in a while there is a great special on the history channel on the Hussein Regime. You might want to get yourself educated on it.

Ryan...your point is interesting. I'm glad you brought it up. We DID know about the possible missing stockpile in April of last year. It was reported at that time and is NOT a new story...so why did CBS plan to run it on Sunday, two nights before the election on 60 minutes until someone found out and leaked it early to the NYT?? Sounds like good 'ole fashion October media sabotage to me!

Yeah, it was totally the October surprise.

But so what if they had some explosives that could be called weapons of mass destruction. A nuclear North Korea is an insanely higher security risk than Iraq ever was, so that rational for invading doesn't fit.

What does fit is that there is no "South Iraq".

We have little money in countries surrounding Iraq when compared to the Korean penninsula, so the Bush administration apparently only cares about innocent civilian lives if a lot of US money is at risk.

So let's see, who has money around Iraq? Oh yeah, Germany and France.

I wonder if some day, the EU will invade North Korea against our will. ;)

One pound of the explosive in question brought down a famous PanAm flight.

We're hearing about it now because the Iraqi Interim Government reported it to the UN last week. I am fully willing to believe they had political motivations in the timing of the report.

There's another NYT article on the matter (login and password "testtesttest" to avoid registration):
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/politics/27bomb.html

According to this article the troops that were there in April did not search the site, but there was no evidence of looting.

Great.

Dude, this is something you do not realize. The only reason the Bush administration had for invading Iraq that justified it in the minds of the American people was the one, now disproved, that Iraq had WMD. After we came in and they were nowhere to be found Bush flip-flopped to other reasons for justifying the war.

As much as you'd like to believe that WMD have been found, these explosives are not WMD. If they were, then the definition of WMD has just grown to encompass something that probably any military has and the definition becomes meaningless. Are you going to say that we used WMD against Iraqi civilians many times over?

Polomex - North Korea is a fair point. but Noth Korea wasn't weakened by a prior war in which they invaded a sovergrn nation and were called on it. We can't take on all these threats at once...but I think Iraq presented a unique opportunity to take out one significant threat so we dont have to worry about it later while dealing with the others. In truth, Iraq was an easy, sensible and justifiable target considering past events. I am amazed at how lost on the past 12 years people are when making their arguments. Plus...if Iraq becomes peaceful and democratized, what a powerful message that will send. It has incredible historical potential.
Personally, I was hoping Bush would finish the job in Iraq even before 9/11. In 1998, Clinton alluded to the fact that if we kept allowing Saddam to play cat-and-mouse with the inspections he agreed to after the Gulf War, it would empower him to further defy the international community. His ground installations had been firing on our jets for almost 8 years when this war started! In violation of the treaty he agreed to when he lost the war! I just don't understand why this critical history doesn't seem to be important to anyone on the left. Bush made a mistake in focusing SO MUCH on WMD, yes. But, fully comprehending the historical necessity of something by understanding and processing a serious of complicated facts is unfortunately, not something Americans are good at. I think it was just an attempt to streamline the reasoning for the media (though he did talk about the other things too) and it backfired.

So it was weakened by a war and ripe for picking, but they were so dangerous that we had to take them out.

Hmmm....

A democratic Iraq would be great, but no one at all has the tolerance for casualties to make that happen. It's not like Japan. (Repeat after me - *There is no link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.*)

The history of the Iraq's misbehavior is important, but what it somes nowhere close to justifying invasion.

So Dude, what do you think the real reason for invading Iraq was? Do you really believe our Government thought they were a threat? Then our intelligence is disgustingly horrible. Was it because we have a moral obligation to take out mean evil people? Then why the heck aren't we even talking about Darfur. Once Saddam Hussein saw how easily 9/11 happened, he might be more willing to give terrists WMD? Then why haven't out first responders gotten better training and equipment?

I think our government has an alterior motive. And that is money.

If you don't think Bush had a hard-on for invading Iraq long before 9-11, you must watch a lot of Fox news.