Originally Posted by cmac2012

I don't let them off the hook for it, but after the 6 months of steady drumbeating by all members of the Bush admin. in the rollout of their new "product," the nation was primed with the belief that Saddam had to be removed, and soon.

A recent letter in the SF Chron said it well:

Editor -- Debra J. Saunders' denial of Bush's war because of the votes he was able to squeeze out of Congress is so misleading. Remember what post-9/11 America was like? We as a people were so terrified at our newly revealed vulnerability that we were putty in our leaders' hands. President Bush knew it, as did Congress. His use of the red/orange/yellow terror alerts are now shown to have been placed at politically convenient times, and helped to preserve the 9/11 fear (and give Osama bin Laden more bang for his buck).

Bottom line: Any politician who openly questioned Bush's war was political roadkill. The Democrats did let us down, but we would have killed them off, if they hadn't.

MIKE FLEMING

I understand the pre-emption POV but my concern all along was that our very presence in that area, freely tossing about deadly force, would lead to more danger than it would allay.