1. “It’s an illegal war!”

Bullshit. Let’s look at the timeline:

• On August 2, 1990, Saddam (having just fought a decade-long war against Iran, and running low on cash) invades Kuwait.
• Four days later, the UN begins sanctions against Iraq. (Remember this, it’ll be important later.)
• Operation Desert Shield began the next day, running through January 15th, 1991, hoping to prevent Saddam from continuing south into the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.
• On 29 November, the UN Security Council passes Resolution 678, authorizing the US-led coalition to use military force to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
• On January 15th, Desert Shield became Desert Storm, and, in the words of the Commanding General, “In 100 hours, Iraq went from the fourth largest army in the world to the second largest army in Iraq.”
• Saddam, having been so thoroughly spanked that the persuing Coalition troops hesitate to fire on fleeing troops, and with Iraqi troops surrendering to unarmed news helicopters, accepts a Cease-Fire, as defined by UN Security Council Resolution 687. (Pay attention, now… This is a CEASE-FIRE, not a Peace Treaty.)
• That Cease-Fire had several conditions which Saddam was required to fulfill - to return anything stolen from Kuwait (Paragraph 15), to stop researching WMD programs (and submit a report of anything they already have, for removal and destruction - Paragraphs 8 & 9), to stop supporting International Terrorism (Paragraph 32).
• Not only did Saddam not fulfill any of them, he also attempted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush, and fired on American jets patrolling the No-Fly Zones.

That first war, started by Saddam, never legally ended. It was a conditional Cease-Fire, but none of the conditions were met. Disregarding that fact, he was firing shots at our military forces and tried to kill a former Head of State. These are Acts of War anywhere on the planet.

So much for it being “an illegal war”. Moving on…

2. “Our troops are dying!”

Not to be flippant to those tragedies (for tragedies they are, for both the immediate family and friends and the nation who has lost its best and brightest), but “well, duh!!”

Look, the job of being a soldier is inherently dangerous. As we have already seen, we were losing military members to training accidents at a MUCH greater rate than we are losing them in Iraq.

“Between 1983 and 1996, 18,006 American military personnel died accidentally in the service of their country. That death rate of 1,286 per year exceeds the rate of combat deaths in Iraq by a ratio of nearly two to one.”

Not to mention that Janeane Garofalo (Left-wing talk show host)admitted it wasn’t “cool” to protest military action under Clinton. Those deaths do not include the ones in Somalia or aboard the USS Cole.

So let’s not kid ourselves, because it isn’t that soldiers are dying. Moving on…

3. “Bush lied, people died”. Funny when asked, the best (and in many cases, ONLY) reason they can come up with is the lack of WMD in Iraq.

But that implies that they supported the war up until that lack had been investigated and proven wrong, doesn’t it? Yet I have not seen a single case in which these people supported the war on Iraq up until the issuing of the Final Report of the Iraqi Survey Group, which came out less than a year ago - September 30, 2004. No, they were against it from the very beginning. So it wasn’t because “Bush lied”.

Moving on…

4. “The inspections were working! We just needed more time!”

Hans Blix disagrees with you.

The substantive cooperation required relates above all to the obligation of Iraq to declare all programs of weapons of mass destruction and either to present items and activities for elimination or else to provide evidence supporting the conclusions that nothing proscribed remains.

Paragraph 9 of Resolution 1441 states that this cooperation shall be “active.” It is not enough to open doors. Inspection is not a game of catch as catch can. Rather, as I noted, it is a process of verification for the purpose of creating confidence. It is not built upon the premise of trust. Rather, it is designed to lead to trust, if there is both openness to the inspectors and action to present them with items to destroy or credible evidence about the absence of any such items.

On 7th of December 2002, Iraq submitted a declaration of some 12,000 pages in response to paragraph 3 of Resolution 1441, and within the time stipulated by the Security Council. In the fields of missiles and biotechnology, the declaration contains a good deal of new material and information covering the period from 1998 and onward.

This is welcome.

One might have expected that in preparing the declaration Iraq would have tried to respond to, clarify and submit supporting evidence regarding the many open disarmament issues which the Iraqi side should be familiar with from the UNSCOM documents 9994 and the so-called Amorim report of March 1999. These are questions which UNMOVIC, governments and independent commentators have often cited.

While UNMOVIC has been preparing its own list of current unresolved disarmament issues and key remaining disarmament tasks in response to requirements in the Resolution 1284, we find the issues listed in the two reports I mentioned as unresolved professionally justified.

These reports do not contend that weapons of mass destruction remain in Iraq, but nor do they exclude that possibility. They point to a lack of evidence and inconsistencies which raise question marks which must be straightened out if weapons dossiers are to be closed and confidence is to arise. They deserve to be taken seriously by Iraq, rather than being brushed aside as evil machinations of UNSCOM.

Regrettably, the 12,000-page declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does not seem to contain any new evidence that will eliminate the questions or reduce their number.

Even Iraq’s letter sent in response to our recent discussions in Baghdad to the president of the Security Council on 24th of January does not lead us to the resolution of these issues.

Moving on…

5. “This was a job for the United Nations.”

I’ve actually heard people say this with a straight face. But let us stipulate that the UN was actually capable of ousting Saddam from power, and actually NOT accepting bribes from Saddam. Would the UN have been capable of passing such a war resolution with France threatening to veto - sight unseen - any UNSC Resolution authorizing force against Iraq.

Of course, we now know WHY France didn’t want him deposed, but if the UN couldn’t do it, who’s next? It’s a dirty job, and who else is actually capable of it?

6. “The US military is overstretched"/"what about Iran/North Korea/Saudi Arabia/Syria/anywhere else?”

Ah, yes, the “if we can’t take care of them all at once, we shouldn’t do anything at all” argument. I wonder how they would feel about the criminal justice system having that attitude - cops not allowed to arrest anyone until they can arrest them all, prosecutors not allowed to punish any one criminal until they can imprison them all at once. Firefighters not allowed to put out fires unless they can put them ALL out at once.

That also presumes that the lessons of History don’t matter anymore.

Moving on…

7. “This war is too expensive”

I would argue that it would be more expensive to our economy if we didn’t fight it, but that can’t have been the reason the Libtards were against it before it ever began, since that cost was not determined until the needs were identified and the Supplementary Spending Bills were drafted. Besides, in a Global Conflict of this magnitude, are we going to let a bunch of ragtag cowards hiding in the shadows chase us off the planet (nothing else will satisfy them) because it cost us money? Meanwhile, let’s spend it on National Health Care!

Moving on…

8. “This is a war for oil!"/"No Blood for oil!”

Funny how we’re still buying all that oil, isn’t it? At prices they set, no less…

And if that’s how you really feel, let’s examine all of the ways that you need that oil. Let’s accept that you are driving a car - no, we can’t have that, since you are using gasoline in order to move that car down the road.

Let’s assume that you are taking public transportation - no, we can’t have that, either, since they use more gas per mile than the average car, and pollute more than a fleet of cars. (Have you ever seen the gouts of black smoke they pump out?)

Let’s assume that you are riding a bike - no, we can’t have that, since the tires are rubber. It takes oil products to produce and shape those tires/inner tubes, not to mention all of the plastic parts.

Let’s assume that you don’t use electricity, since that requires oil products to produce that energy, plus all of the lubrication of the generators. You only wear cotton clothes and leather shoes (that you made yourself). You only eat food products that you raise yourself (but without any of those pesticides and fertilizers available through the use of oil products). You do all of these things because to do otherwise would only prove that you are a hypocrite, and we can’t have that, can we?

Moving on…

If Libtards out there want to give up some other reasons why they were against this war in Iraq, rather than just doing anything and everything to bash Bush (because it’s “cool” again to bash the President for using the military), please feel free.

UPDATE: I’ve heard that someone was disturbed by the “Mission Accomplished” carrier landing on May 1, 2003. I’m not sure how this counts as a complaint against the war itself, since all that Bush did was to announce the “end of major combat operations”. And, amazingly enough, there haven’t been any “major combat operations” since that day. So hearing the President tells the truth doesn’t seem to be a valid reason to be against a war that was already over.

Unless they are upset at the political realities of the display, in which case it reverts to a hatred of the man himself, to the point where that “anti-war” individual isn’t against the war so much as against the man who got the ball rolling. Since none of these people were protesting Clinton’s use of the military (sans personal military experience, sans Congressional authorization, sans UN support) because it “wasn’t cool”, then it all boils down to their perception of the Party in Power. If Democrat, all is forgiven. If Republican, nothing is ever good enough.

Which eliminates the need to argue, since it is all about emotion. But only their emotion.