Look, let's start over, okay?

Ryan… why do you constantly strive to insult and demean each and every position I might take that contradicts that of the GOP or F. Ryan? Why do you insist on wrapping that blanket of disdain around your head when I question Bush policy, yet you feel perfectly justified in denigrating any possible support I might feel inclined to give to a Democratic administration of the last 50 years?

You constantly tout your “rational, objective” viewpoint in all matters political… as long as they are conservative in nature and function. Any possible chance that a social issue might be addressed is instantly seen as pandering to bleeding-heart liberals, even if that isn’t the intent or purpose of the policy.

I’m not now, nor have I ever, suggested that I believe or subscribe to the attitude that the effort in Iraq should be abandoned simply because a Republican President initiated the conflict, or that questions exist as to the reasoning behind the conflict, or that support for the effort should be sacrificed on the alter of “political correctness” or “global sympathies”.

Yes, I do have concerns about how the war has been prosecuted to date. Yes, I have issues with the Administration that has led us to this point in our national War on Terror. Yes, I am inclined to hold people like Bush, Cheney, Powell, Tenant and Rumsfeld accountable for their actions and policies while in office. None of these things, however, have anything to do with what party affiliation I, or they, hold. I don’t care if Bush is Republican, Democrat, or an anarchist wanting to live in a commune in the forests of northern California… he and his Administration have given assurances to the world, but more importantly to ME personally as an American citizen, that the situation was THUS… and when history has shown that the situation was, in fact, something else entirely, I expect valid, measurable and reasonable explanations for the differences between the two positions.

I have shown myself to be as open-minded as anyone could hope to be in regards to these sorts of issues… yet when I continue to question established conservative viewpoints, it is instantly dismissed as “orgasmic” enthusiasm for anything that might constitute an “anti-Bush” position.

So, that being said, I will again ask for a reasonable, rational explanation of the following points I brought up in previous discussion and posts.

1. Why, knowing that the need to keep ANY detainees is drawing to a close, is it in anyway helpful to the country, the war effort, and the hope that we might be able to bring other nations into the effort in the future to keep GITMO open? No new detainees have been brought there since 2005, and the prospect of high-level targets be found now are limited to bin Laden and his immediate associates… and I just don’t see bin Laden being kept at GITMO ever… so explain it to me slowly and clearly.
2. 
   I have repeatedly heard you and pundits such as Hannity, Wilkow, Levin and Rush state over and over again that the international community was in 100% agreement with our threat estimates of Iraq prior to the ’03 invasion. I have repeatedly said this is patently false, and I feel that the Frontline piece makes my point rather clearly… Germany, the UK, France and Russia all told the US State Department that the “yellowcake” deal between Saddam and Nigeria was a complete fabrication from the Chalabi supporters working with Rumsfeld’s intel-teams. It was MI6 that made the case that if the Saddam regime was indeed as far along in a nuclear weapons program as the Bush Administration stated, then they wouldn’t have needed to BUY aluminum tubing for centrifuges… they would have already had them or they would have been capable of making them in Iraq. Now, when I produce a documentary which also questions this position, I am simply showing “orgasmic” enthusiasm due to someone sharing my questions about the rational and reasoning behind the invasion. This, too, I would like explained very slowly.
3. 
   When will I hear a defense of Cheney clearly and unequivocally stating in an interview with Larry King, and another with the Jim Lehrer, in late 2002, that Saddam had the capacity and the weapons needed to strike US forces in the region with chemical and biological agents with no more than 18 minutes of warning? He clearly stated in the Lehrer interview (five times) that Saddam had “expelled” the weapons inspectors from Iraq… when in fact they had been withdrawn at the order of then President Bill Clinton because he was planning a missile strike against Saddam… four years earlier! I really want this explained to me. When will a GOP apologist defend these statements to me? Cheney said he was advocating the invasion of Iraq to “pre-empt” another attack on the US that would cost another 3,000 or more American lives… and that is a noble sentiment, but more than 4,000 have died trying to accomplish this goal. Does this seem like functional strategy and policy to ANYONE reading this?

Pick any item you want from the Frontline piece… or any item I may have brought up myself, now or in the past, in which YOU, Ryan, feel I have been flat out wrong in my opinion that the Bush Administration has instituted and promoted flawed and failed policy in regards to Iraq since DAY ONE. Explain you position to me, again, if needed, and we can discuss it like adults.

All I ask is that you don’t lump me in with the “Code Pink” crowd, or the “Move On” folks any more. I crossed the aisle four years ago because I couldn’t bring myself to vote for a man that was as fundamentally flawed in so much of his make-up… that should show that I am the rational, open-minded individual that I claim to be. Now I want someone else to be rational and show me where I am wrong about Bush and Co.