everything looks perfect from far away

The BBC has a short, interesting article in it today, about the status of W.

Imagine an administration has given more than $15bn towards treating HIV/Aids, mainly in Africa; that has hinted it might boycott the Beijing Olympics if China doesn’t intervene to stop Burmese monks from getting slaughtered; that has tried - and failed - to force immigration reform down the throats of its own party; that obsesses about alternative fuels and talks climate change.

Imagine an administration that prefers a diplomatic to a military option in Iran, is in bed with the French, on the sofa with the Germans and in the cooler with the Brits.

Stop imagining. What I have described is the White House of George W Bush in October 2007.

The quote above is all true. And to be honest, I don’t understand the complaints about Bush. I just don’t get it. They say he lied to us about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Well, there are two parts to that statement. First, I’ll take on the WMDs. Let us define weapons of mass destruction. I’ll use Wikipedia:

Weapon of mass destruction (WMD) are weapons which can kill large numbers of human beings, animals and plants. The term covers several weapon types, including nuclear, biological, chemical (NBC) and, increasingly, radiological weapons.

Then, I’m going to reference this Fox News article which states WMDs were found in Iraq, and additionally provides a link to a report from the National Ground Intelligence Center that was sent to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).

It states chemical agents, such as mustard and sarin nerve agents, were found in Iraq. These are weapons of mass destruction. But this in-the-face fact is refuted by many, because the WMDs found were not nuclear. That is a bullshit excuse.

Which brings me to the second part of that argument: George W. Bush lied about the pre-War intelligence. The key word there (in italics if you didn’t catch it) is intelligence; intelligence is not a fact. Everyone (Colin Powell, the UN, Iraq’s generals, etc.) believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including, but not limited to, nuclear weapons. So, I’ll paraphrase. The United States said, “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. And from our intelligence, this includes nuclear weapons. This is bad, and we should stop it.”

We were right. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction (see above). But we didn’t find any nuclear weapons. So that is the scapegoat being used to discredit our military action. They still had WMDs! This reasoning makes my blood boil. There is no reason to dislike our actions, our Administration, or our military based upon this information. A sound decision was made based upon this information. Those who voice complaints choose to ignore the facts which are repeatedly presented to them.

They are idiots. And they will continue to complain for no good reason. Just look at what the BBC stated above; that’s pretty good. And they forgot to mention that the US stock market this week hit an all-time high. Or that our unemployment rate is low at 4.6%; the unemployment rate in France is 8.7% (December 2006 est., source: CIA World Factbook). The French unemployment rate is 89% more than ours. Ouch. Our GDP is almost six times the size of the French GDP.

I’m sick of hearing compliants. People need to start looking objectively at the current state of our country before they speak or complain.