Bush Defends His Iraq Policy

President George W Bush has "accepted" responsibility for going to war in Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence, but said it was still the right choice. He said: "Saddam was a threat, and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power." How that affected America or the World, I don't know. What I do know is that we are under increased threat from terrorists as a direct result of Bush and Blairs reckless decisions.

"Many intelligence agencies judged that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and it's true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," said Mr Bush in the speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. But he added that Saddam Hussein was nonetheless a threat, and had been looking for the opportunity to restart his weapons programmes. Does this mean that he is willing to attack anybody even if they are just only thinking about weapons? "As President, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that," Mr Bush said.

Whose intelligence needs fixing? If his intelligence was wrong, how could he possibly be able to assess that Saddam Hussein was a threat? What about the "intelligence" that allows America to kidnap people and hand them over to other countries to be tortured? Also, should we entrust the "fixing" of this calamity to the bozo that caused it?

Here's a thought, did any of this "wrong" intelligence come from such sources? If so, does not this prove, - even from a pragmatic view point, that "rendition" does not work?

The president insisted that US troops would stay in Iraq until the country's forces were sufficiently well trained to fully take over security duties. A stable Iraq was in the interests of both the Iraqi and American people, he said, and he accused critics in Washington, many of whom had originally supported the decision to invade, of playing "pure politics". He said: "Victory will be achieved by meeting certain objectives: when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can protect their own people, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot attacks against our country". Does he not realise that terrorists were not using Iraq to plot attacks until his ill-judged and reckless invasion.

I'm sorry, America. I love your country, and most Americans I meet are pretty good human beings, but I've got two questions? What the hell happened, - how could you vote in such a wazzock as Bush? and secondly, What are you going to do about it?

P.S. We Brits have similar questions to ask of ourselves about Blair, - thanks Jay.