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Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Iraq update (memo) 

I wrote a blog a couple days ago, discussing what I felt were some unexplained differences between our (the US) handling of two international fiascos: 1. The Iraq war and 2. North Korea’s claims of nuclear capability. My blog centered around the idea that while both situations were and continue to be bad, that the situation in North Korea seemed to be the more volatile. I harped on my view of each situation; that each country was under the rule of a tyrannical, and possibly mentally unbalanced leader who by his command committed many atrocities against his own people. Where I diverged in my opinion between each situation was in their threat against us. I had neither seen nor heard of any documented verifications of Saddam’s nuclear or biological threat, and the last I had heard was that the connection between Iraq and terrorists (al Qaida) was a fabrication. Conversely, although we had no solid proof our officials were of the opinion that the presence of materials necessary for nuclear weapons and their associated missiles were possibly in the hands of the North Koreans, as Kim Jong Il has claimed. To me, it seemed more important to rid N. Korea of these weapons and at the same time bring some relief aid to the people there than it did to attack a blowhard dictator that was no real threat to anyone but his own people (vast oil fields notwithstanding).

No more than 10 minutes after I posted that blog, I clicked onto Andrew Sullivans blog page to check out his topics of the hour. Lo and behold, he was talking about a memo that was discussing the Iraq/al Qaida link I had just been purporting never existed! I did not get the time until just now to take a more in depth look at what the memo had to say, and now I’ll jot down some thoughts.

First of all, I am not sure government speak is much clearer than lawyer lingo. Which means that the context of this memo was not nearly as clear to me as I had hoped it would be. No matter, the point was made clear. In this memo, that was drafted to serve as a clear (to some folk) document of the intelligence findings on the supposed connection. Based on what I read, if it is in fact all corroborated, I am closer to giving my full support back to Bush’s decision to invade. If these claims are true, then an all too clear link existed, and may still exist today. However, the Department of Defense issued a statement saying that this memo does not draw any conclusions, etc. etc. I am not yet clear on what it is they (the DoD) are trying to say. I am not sure if they are refuting the facts included in this memo or if they don’t want to be seen as saying for sure that its contents are clear when in actuality they have not yet been validated. I am sure more will arise from this in the coming days. I will try to stay on top of it.

My point being, I am back to being severely unsure as to my opinion on this whole affair. As I stated before, I would like to believe we were totally justified in attacking, and that oil was not the main motivating factor. We’ll see what the next few days brings. I do, however, stand by my belief that our officials (Senor Bush) need to do a major overhaul of their foreign relations and work towards repairing our severely damaged international reputation. Somebody, get Bushie a world religions/history/societal teacher!

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ABOUT ME
Name: Corey
Location: Portland, Oregon, United States

I'm on a journey with no destination. The path is constantly changing direction but there are always adventures to be had. "Never" and "always" have left my lexicon.

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