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Iraq for Dummies^© 
Moral clarity and steady leadership in times of change

PREFACE
The text below is a summarized (usually, but not always, paraphrased) version of statements made by the Bush administration (including President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their cabinet) starting circa 2002 and continuing to this day. The URLs (most of them from Billmon) provide links to the actual statements made by Dear Leader and his band of brothers and sister.

IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO USE Iraq for Dummies^© 
1. For best results, reboot after installing each new Version of Iraq for Dummies^©. 
2. When there is a major version upgrade (e.g., Version 1.0 to Version 2.0) we recommend you uninstall the previous version from your brain, for best results. Failure to do so may, in some cases, have potentially devastating consequences for your ability to not think.
3. When there is a minor version upgrade (e.g., Version 1.0 to Version 1.1), no reboot or uninstall is required. However, in some cases there is a risk of information overload for those with All Hat and No Cattle. 
4. If you are a member of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, there may actually be no risk in installing multiple versions at the same time. Most likely, the version most useful will emerge on your website on a given day. This has the added benefit of providing you the training required to become a highly overpaid Republican staffer/expert in a Republican administration - or if the increasing size of the Federal Government still has no place for your hard working genius, there's always cable TV!
5. Owing to the limits on the number of versions I am able to display on this page, only a select number of versions is captured here in Iraq for Dummies^©. For more, just sit down and watch the Bush administration's speeches over the past several years.

LET THE MAYHEM BEGIN [Ack]

BEFORE THE INVASION OF IRAQ

Version 0.0: We don't know whether Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). We know that Saddam has not developed any significant capability with respect to WMDs. We do know that we are able to keep Saddam's arms from him and that his military forces have not been rebuilt.

Version 1.0: Saddam has dangerous and huge weapons of mass destruction (WMD) stockpiles - and we know it beyond all certainty - so help us God. After years of U.N. sanctions, he continues to possess such weapons and is expanding his capability/programs to build more. The U.N. inspections did not work and we can't keep waiting to see proof that he got rid of his WMDs - we've run out of patience. He is a grave and gathering threat to the United States and we need to invade Iraq to "disarm" him because he is not a disarming man by any means. 

Version 1.1: If Saddam disarms that would avoid war 

10/1/02 - [Bush]: "...Of course, I haven't made up my mind we're going to war with Iraq. I've made up my mind we need to disarm the man...He's a threat to the United States of America. And we're just going to have to deal with him. And the best way to deal with him is for the world to rise up and say, you disarm, and [sic] we'll disarm you. And if not -- if, at the very end of the day, nothing happens -- the United States, along with others, will act." 
[see Version 12.1 for a follow-up].

AFTER THE INVASION OF IRAQ

Version 1.2: We are sure he has WMD stockpiles and they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

Version 2.0: Well, we haven't found any WMDs yet but we know Saddam had them and it's only a matter of time before we find it. Geez, you guys really don't have patience, do you! All this hard work takes time. 

Version 2.1: Well, we haven't found the WMDs but we have absolute confidence they are around. As soon as we track down Saddam's former staff who know where everything is stashed we'll discover them. So there!

Version 3.0: No one ever said we're going to tumble over WMDs in Iraq. No one ever said we were going to open garages and find WMDs in Iraq. No one said we knew exactly where them WMDs are! 
[REBOOT ASSISTANCE: To help Faux News viewers cope with the rebooting, it's time to throw in some friendly O'Reilly-isms against all those anti-American commie pinkos who kept thinking that there were little or no WMDs in Iraq and traitorously stressed out the hard working 101st Fighting Keyboarders: Shut up! Shut up!]

Version 4.0: We haven't found WMDs yet and we are not sure why. Perhaps they were destroyed, perhaps they are still hidden, perhaps they were even shipped to bad characters outside Iraq. Indeed, we haven't found Saddam yet either (at this time). But get this y'all! Saddam Hussein no longer threatens America with weapons of mass destruction! So there!

Version 5.0: Saddam has/had WMD programs which he could have used to make WMDs! I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program. Didn't we say so before we invaded that this is why we went to war? 
[SPECIAL BONUS WORDS courtesy of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders: How easily you are revisionist historians, you amnesiac French loving commie anti-war pinkos!] 

Version 6.0: We found them weapons of mass destruction ("mobile labs")! Hooray! 

Version 7.0: No, we haven't found them weapons of mass destruction yet, but we found the capacity to make WMDs - part of Saddam's weapons program! Hooray!

Version 8.0: Actually, we're not completely sure if we found a weapons program yet. But get this you U.N. loving hippie morons! Iraq had a weapons program...Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out they did have a weapons program.

Version 9.0: There's no difference between Saddam having WMDs and the possibility that he might try to acquire WMDs some day. 

Version 9.1: Iraq is no longer going to be a state of weapons of mass destruction concern.  It's simply rewriting history to suggest that people did not think that Iraq was a serious weapons of mass destruction state of concern.

Version 10.0: Alright, listen. We haven't found WMDs yet and we aren't 100% sure he had WMD programs in place when we invaded, but guess what, Saddam had WMD-related program activities which he was setting up to make WMDs.

Version 11.0: Well, Saddam did not have WMDs before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He did not have any known plans to build WMDs while sanctions were in place. U.N. sanctions crippled his ability to restart his WMD program. He was a diminishing threat to the U.S. before the invasion.

Version 12.0: Still, Saddam had the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away. Therefore we were right to invade Iraq even though the world was not looking away, and it was entirely justifiable that more than a  thousand Americans have been killed to-date over this war, with many thousands more permanently maimed severely, not to mention the $130-200B cost, the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives lost and/or injured. 

Version 12.1: Knowing everything we know today, even though Saddam had actually disarmed and was a diminishing threat before we invaded Iraq, it still was the right thing to do. This is leadership, you Purple Heart bandage lovers!

PRE-EMPTIVE GRAND FINALE Rev 13.0: Saddam was the WMD, so shut your trap (as long as you are not a Republican).

BONUS: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! 
[cross-posted at Compassiongate]

Revision 1.0 - [Bush]: "...I am happy to see you, and so are the long-suffering people of Iraq. America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished..."
Woohoo! Mission Accomplished

Revision 2.0 - [Bush]: "...The "Mission Accomplished" sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished. I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way..." [Compassiongate NOTE: The above statement itself was false. See here].
Er, Mission NOT Accomplished

Revision 3.0 - [Bush]: "A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we'd accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." 
Woohoo! Mission accomplished

Revision 3.1 - [Link via Americablog/Atrios]: "President Bush said he had no regrets about donning a flight suit to give his "Mission Accomplished" speech on Iraq in May 2003 and would do it all over again if he had the chance, according to excerpts from an television interview released on Sunday.
When asked by Fox News if he still would have put on a flight suit to declare major combat operations in Iraq over, Bush replied, "Absolutely."
When Bush gave his May 1 speech fewer than 150 Americans had died in the war. Since then more than 900 have died."

SEQUEL: Iraq for Exceptional Dummies^© 

Click here. 

^$$ Not exactly.