Bush can't seem to make up his mind.
"Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks, to build and keep weapons of mass destruction,'' Bush, State of the Union speech, January 2003
"Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take,'' Bush, U.N. General Assembly on Sept 12, 2002.
Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament. And in order to disarm, it would mean regime change... And our mission won't change. Our mission is precisely what I just stated.'' Bush at a news conference, March, 2003
"Our mission -- besides removing the regime that threatened us, besides ending a place where the terrorists could find a friend, besides getting rid of weapons of mass destruction -- our mission has been to bring humanitarian aid and restore basic services and put this country, Iraq, on the road to self- government.'' Bush, April/May 2003
"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq. We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.'' Bush, July 2004
"The goal in Iraq and Afghanistan is for there to be democratic and free countries who are allies in the war on terror. That's the goal.'' Bush, August 2004
Plus, these goodies:
On March 6, 2003, for example, Bush insisted during a prime-time news conference that he would offer a resolution before the United Nations calling for the use of force against Iraq even if other nations threatened to veto it.
"No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote,'' Bush said.
A few days later, after it became apparent that the measure would not only be vetoed but might fail to win a majority of the Security Council, the Bush administration dropped its demand for a vote.
and
"I do know that we expect [American prisoners] to be treated humanely, just like we'll treat any prisoners of theirs that we capture humanely,'' Bush said, many months before American soldiers committed the atrocities at the Abu Ghraib prison.
