Conservative Blogger: Romney's Debate Answer on Iraq and Weapons Inspections...

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has been taking a lot of hits, both on the cable talking heads shows and in the blogosphere, with regard to his answer to a question about Iraq. The excerpted question and answer is below:

TOM FAHEY, NH UNION LEADER: Governor Romney, I wanted to start by asking you a question on which every American has formed an opinion.

We have lost 3,400 troops, civilian casualties are even higher, and the Iraqi government does not appear ready to provide for the security of its own country. Knowing everything you know right now, was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?

GOV. MITT ROMNEY: Well, the question is, kind of, a non sequitur, if you will. What I mean by that -- or a null set -- that is that if you're saying let's turn back the clock and Saddam Hussein had opening up his country to IAEA inspectors and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein therefore not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn't be in the conflict we're in.

But he didn't do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in.

I supported the president's decision based on what we knew at that time.

I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came after we knocked down Saddam Hussein.

Fahey later redirected Romney back to the question:

FAHEY: Governor, thank you, but the question was, knowing what you know right now -- not what you knew then, what you know right now -- was it a mistake for the United States to invade Iraq?

ROMNEY: Well, I answered the question by saying it's a non-sequitur. It's a non -- null set kind of question, because you can go back and say, "If we knew then what we know now, by virtue of inspectors having been let in and giving us that information, by virtue of if Saddam Hussein had followed the U.N. resolutions, we wouldn't be having this discussion."

So it's a hypothetical that I think is an unreasonable hypothetical.

And the answer is: We did what we did. We did the right thing based on what we knew at that time. I think we made mistakes.

Well, as you can imagine, the überLibs went nuts with the Governor's answer. First it was Paul Begala on CNN and then, later, just about every diehard Liberal website was calling Romney every name in the book: liar, moron, idiot...you name it.

So, I figured I'd give Governor Romney the opportunity to expand on his answer.

I had the occasion to attend an "Ask Mitt Anything" campaign appearance at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH where I did, in fact, ask him to clarify his answer.

(If you are unable to see the embedded video of my question of Mitt Romney, please click here.)

...and the thing is, Mitt is right.

When IAEA inspectors were allowed back in to Iraq in 2002 after being kicked out of the country for four years, they were not given full access to all sites...just like they weren't between 1991 and 1998. It was all over the news at the time. We used to hear about it every day. How quickly the überLibs forget.

Even Hans Blix, a man most revered and heralded by the Left said Iraq had "not genuinely accepted U.N. resolutions demanding that it disarm."

That meant that Iraq was in defiance of Resolution 1441, which was "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations." Those disarmament obligations for Iraq were specified in ten other UN Security Council Resolutions.

Let's also not forget the TWO TONS OF URANIUM and other highly radioactive found in Iraq in 2004 which I'm thinking Saddam wasn't supposed to have, either.

Mitt Romney is right: we went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein did not comply the resolutions to disarm.

It's just a shame that the überLibs seem to want to re-write history.

William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com

Posted by WilliamSmith on June 7, 2007 07:05 PM to Conservative Blogger