Yelling at Bush on the TV

Ugh, I'm reduced to yelling at the TV when Bush speaks. Here's what he just said:

"On September the 11th we learned that America must confront threats before they reach our shores, whether those threats come from terrorist networks or terrorist states. I'm often asked why we're in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat. And after 9/11 Saddam's regime posed a threat that the world could not afford to take. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power."

I yelled at the TV: "What was the threat?!?!" Really what was it? It wasn't WMDs, he had none. It wasn't a strong military, it wasn't an economy. It wasn't a relationship with al Qaeda. What was it?

And this crap of the Congress and UN knowing the threat? They thought there were WMDs because the Bush administration lied and said there was. Cheney said there was no doubt he had WMDs. That was a lie. The intelligence community had doubts and others had doubts and they were right. Colin Powell told the UN he had WMDs. That the aluminum tubes could only be used to build nuclear weapons. Wrong again. So now saying that the Congress and UN knew the threat, when all they knew is the lies you told them, is really contemptible.

Oh and the Congressional vote was merely to go to war if you determined the need, and it was also a good diplomatic tactic. The idea being the other side would negotiate to avoid the harsher penalty of not doing so. But you didn't want to negotiate.

Oh and the sanctions were working. Skipping over all the crap of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, his report after his visit was right. Saddam didn't get yellow cake. He did ask, but Niger didn't give it to him because they didn't want to violate the sanctions. And one of the things lost on Meet the Press yesterday was Dick Cheney saying that Saddam would have been a threat if the sanctions ended. Well who was going to end the sanctions? That little "if" let him suggest a falsehood while still saying the truth. And fuck Tim Russett for letting him get away with that crap for a full hour.

So again, what was the threat? Cheney also cited that he used chemical weapons on his own people. Yes that's bad, but he did that in '91 and we already had a war where we used that as a rationale. And remember we launched a pre-emptive war, that means we attacked him. Our rationale was an imminent threat. It better have been real or else we invaded a sovereign nation.

What was the threat!??!