**** MARCH 06 2003 - PRESIDENT BUSH “I've not made up our mind about military action. Hopefully, this can be done peacefully.
****
President George Bush Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference
**** Hopefully, that as a result of the pressure that we have placed -- and others have placed -- that Saddam will disarm and/or leave the country.”
*** DECEMBER 2002: SECRETARY POWELL: They have been cooperating with the inspectors and we'll see if that cooperation continues
*** SECRETARY POWELL: We've never said that war is inevitable. The President has always said that he is interested in a peaceful solution. resolution?
***
Interview on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos
*** SECRETARY POWELL But at the same time, if Iraq does not cooperate or if we find reason to believe that they do have weapons of mass destruction that they have not identified and turned over to the international community, then the President has all of his options available to him. And he has the option of also going back to the United Nations or acting unilaterally with likeminded nations.
But a warmonger claims in post 27207599 that reality at the time does not matter or exist. History must be rewritten.
The inspectors were NOT peacefully disarming Iraq. The WMDs, we now know, were already destroyed. Thus, the claim that they were doing it, was not true. It was already done.
It was not known to the inspectors too: .
They now know SH was telling the truth that Iraq was clear of WMD. If the inspectors had three more months to resolve the unilaterally destroyed WMD in 1991 then half a million Iraqis would not be dead - if W had kept his ******* word.
Nearly 5000 Americans who served in the military would not have died in Iraq if W’s representatives didn’t go to the US SENATE to deliberately misinform the American people with updates like this:
* Mr. Armitage in a written statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Iraq, a few days after the Blix sixty day report, these exact words, “The president was clear on Tuesday. He has not yet made a decision to resort to military action.”
*JANUARY 30 2003 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, And the United States continued from that point on to support the continuation of inspections. *
If the inspections were averting the necessity for war on January 30 2003 it is a fact that by March 10 2003 there was nothing but improved inspections and cooperation from Iraq. That fact should not have caused or forced W to draft a second Resolution for a vote in the UN Security Council offering to cancel a US invasion, and leave SH in power, ONLY if the inspectors would declare Iraq disarmed by a March 17 deadline. If the inspectors could not, W wanted the UN to support whatever military action W decided to take.
The deadline date was rejected by the UNSC because although the inspectors were reporting proactive cooperation from the regime they also reported that in order to (1) verify that the unilaterally destroyed 1980s materials were verifiably destroyed and (2) to advance the enhanced inspections into southern Iraq - it would take a few more months. Say by June 2003.
Half a million Iraqis and 5000 Americans were killed in a needless war because W Could not give inspectors three more months to finish their work in a process that was going on for 12 years. FACT!
Biden addressed those three months in February.
***** Senator Joe Biden: I am going to front-end guess it. I come down on the side of suggesting that another several months is not something that in any way appreciably increases any risk.
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, FEBRUARY 2003 on Iraq.
Wise man - that Joe BIden.