I found an interesting website that lists quotes from Democrats both after and before 9/11. All of the quotes support the claim that Saddam Hussein has been producing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Many of the claims show support for using force against Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically. All of the quotes have sources listed for contextual purposes.
I think these quotes demonstrate an interesting point. The Democrats quoted on this page are all currently against our current war in Iraq. However, these same Democrats were for taking action against Iraq at some time between 1998 and 2003 based on their quotes. I think information like this becomes quickly lost in the hate-driven debates between the Republicans and Democrats we see all over the media nowadays.
One of the main reasons we are in Iraq is because the Bush demonstration claimed there was a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and deemed it necessary to take action against Iraq. The facts brought up by the Democrats in the link above about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was also a very strong point.
The 9/11 and Iraq connection seems to be a foggy and easily-forgotten part of our recent political history. The Bush administration asserted that there was a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq but many dismissed this link stating that there was not any valid evidence to support this connection. Cheney's haughty response probably did not help the Bush administration's case much. The odd thing about this Al Qaeda-Iraq debate was that the Clinton administration believed there was a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq also.
I'm not bringing up these points to determine whether starting the war was the right thing to do and I don't necessarily believe that any of the statements made by the Republicans or Democrats mentioned above are correct. I think there was an interesting connection between the agenda of the Democrats and Republicans though.
I am not going to go into details on whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. You can use this Wikipedia article for that.
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I'd like to clarify the purpose of this post. This post was originally put up to demonstrate the fog that can come over political arguments. This article is not meant to be an argument in itself. Those who say that most Democrats were not for the war originally are not correct just as there was also a well-known (or at least thought to be known) connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda at some point.
A related article was just released today in which Edwards argues that Bush's points to connect Iraq and September 11 "border on delusional."
Personally I think many of Bush's arguments are horribly worded but that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a valid basis for some of them.
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