!!!!!!!Colin Powell Endorses OBAMA !!!!!!!!

[tstew]

Originally Posted by deacon blues

The typical anti-GOP caricature: Republicans vote the way they do b/c they're stupid. Only smart folks vote liberal or vote third party.

It's amazing that one has to reiterate history over and over because the opposition continues to beat the same old tired drum about an unnecessary war with Iraq, blah, blah, blah.

Well here goes: EVERYONE, including those opposed to war with Iraq, agreed that Saddam Hussein possessed illegal weapons of mass destruction. Russia, France, Germany, Britain, Israel and others along with their intelligence services agreed on this point. NO ONE was saying it wasn't there. He had possessed them once and used chemical weapons on his own people before. When UN weapons inspectors went to Iraq, he continuously gave them the run around and certainly gave the signals that he had something to hide. Satellite photographs showed evidence of suspicious activity around inspection sights. Hussein violated UN resolutions 17 different times, violating terms of the CEASE FIRE. He was given a deadline to let the inspectors back in. All he had to do is show them they didn't exist. All he had to do was expose the Americans and the rest of the world to how stupid they all were and show them without any slight of hand that there were no WMDs anywhere. But he didn't. To the very end he conducted himself like a man who possessed them.

All of these things led the Bush administration, including Colin Powell, to deem it necessary to remove him and his reign of ruthless and barbarous terror from power. We went in with the support of a multinational coalition. In the wake of 9/11 we realized we could no longer play games with dangerous leaders and those who consistently uttered threats to us and our allies.

It's easy to cast aspersions toward the Bush admin with the hindsight that WMDs weren't found. Yet, Iraqis live in greater freedom and hope than they ever did under Hussein, who is estimated to have been responsible for deaths of millions of those he was supposed to serve and protect. Iraqis have a democratically elected government for the first time in their history. Millions of Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Kurds and others have more freedom now than ever in their nation's history. There are problems there still, but not near the level of the evil days of Saddam, Uday and Qusay Hussein.

It was the right thing to do then and the world and the Middle East are better off and safer because of it.

Inside information suggests that Colin Powell was fighting to have his appearance and speech to the UN be postponed as he was not comfortable with where we were in the process. Some of the stuff related to all of this makes for interesting reading. He is known to have had strong misgivings about Iraq from the beginning and seems to resent the situation the nation and he, personally, were placed in.