I say it's misleading in that it offers a linear progression of the administration's WMD stance, as if it were the only cause to war. You yourself point out there are other issues (such as [Saddam] is a bad bad man).
On the matter of an Al-Qaeda connection, the administration doesn't need to come clean on that, because they in fact CORRECTED a massive public opinion oddity that there was in fact a direct Al-Qaeda-Iraq link. Please at least get your facts straight.
I still say if a government having WMDs would be extremely dangerous, and they are capable and have the will to make them, the situation needs to be corrected. France had WMDs and no one is clamouring to uninstall Chirac, likewise with Putin, and etc. I think getting Saddam out was the right thing, period, and I think it was a good -if poorly justified- move after 9-11. And you know what? If the administration came out and said they flat-out lied on purpose to get us into the war, I would respect that, because I believe the war was so very neccessary.
In regards to the economy the energy sector is going to drop gasoline prices just before the election, providing an auxillary boost to the economy via increased spending power, in addition to the direct effect of consumers simply paying less at the pumps. So I doubt your conspiracy theory about the economy when there's a much better conspiracy already in play ;) ;) ;)
There's also a very direct link between advances agaisnt Al Qaeda and the stock market so again I won't be surprised by some early-autumn news there. :) :) :)
In all seriousness though much of the Dem's problems are their own. They need to get real and hard on some issues, no matter what they are. Simply being "sort of against being mislead into war" isn't good enough. The issue is complex, and people across the board (I'm a good example of this) aren't neccessarily against the war even if we don't like how we got into it. Kerry for example could take a strong stand on principle, saying he would make one of the focuses of his adminstration to gear up the U.N. into being a body capable of handling the threat of terrorism, and working to get better functionality when military force is needed, rather than having the U.N. body raped and left in a ditch. This wouldn't neccessarily put him against the war, but this would place him in favor of legitimacy, something I think this war points out as a sore issue. This is just an example, there are a slew of issues like this were Kerry is just all over the map ("I voted for the legislation before I voted against it", "I'm for gay marriage on Tuesdays but I'm against it in May", blah blah).
In any event I think this is going to be an itneresting election, and I'm waiting for some surprises. I'm hoping for a surprise VP nom from Kerry to liven things up pretty soon.
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Vote Jeb Bush 2008