We can not leave iraq now with no arrangement, this will cause very bad situation in the middle east and uncontrolled influx of terrorist to U.S.A because of the immigration laws and the human rights and so many complicated things. The right thing to do is decrease the troops number just to secure the boarders and trains the iraqi forces and get paid for any thing America do for Iraq

This is the one big issue where I actually disagreed with Obama. Yes, we should leave Iraq as soon as possible. But we have to make sure we don't set the stage for a civil war, invasion by Iran or some other calamity. If that means staying a little longer, unfortunately, I see no other choice. What we should do, right now, is revise our mission and move our forces mostly to the border, so they're not as visible and so that Iraqis don't feel like they live in an occupied country any more.

Leave Iraq now?

Yes we can!

leaving Iraq now would leave a power vacuum that Iran would soon take advantage of, leaving Iraq immediately would be the worst possible case scenario as long as the Iraqi are unable to defend themselves. finish the job of re-arming Iraq first. then pull out slowly without a public schedule. that is the only safe way out of Iraq

We need to finish what looks like could be a success story for Iraq and other dictatorships.  There were many wrong decisions made during this war but that said NOW a real change for the better has happened for the people of Iraq.  A secure peaceful Iraq that could become a leader in that part of the world is not out of the question now.  We need to get out of the police biz and let the Iraq people take charge of there destiny but we don't need just cut out when there is actual progress that a year ago no one would have imagined, and with folks that make suggestions like "Get Out Now" that have no real idea of what is at stake or have never served in the military and have traveled the world like I and have saw the otricities that opressed people face.  I say now is the time to work closely with the Iraq government to secure the freedoms that have just started and also help/guide them to continue in a positive direction.  Before gulf war one an two Iraq was in war with Iran over land.  The Iraq of today is no where ready to defend themselves from a possible attack from Iran which is sure to happen if we abandon them after we destroyed thier ability to defend themselves.  If Iran took over that counrty then Sudia arabia and Kuwait would be next.  To think otherwise or to believe that this would not affect our future is crazy thinking.  It is fact and unfortunately while i wished we all could hold hands and sing Kum Bi Ya together, that is not going to happen.  Those that think it will are gravely mistaken.  Remember this, when everyone cried get out of Vietnam and stop the killing, we left a void that allowed for the extinction of OVER 2 million souls.  So I want a smart way out of Iraq with a positive outcome.  This ideia has been applied before and when we "bail" out the outcome is horrible. 

Alright, first of all, Operation Iraqi Freedom Was not as it seems. Our invasion of Iraq, was just that; an INVASION of Iraq. Yes, there has been some achievements made by our time over there. However, our loss has been much greater. We have spent so much money on this "war" in Iraq, AND Afghanistan. Mind you, we also have bases in Kuwait and many other neighboring countries that ALSO endure combat. As a veteran from both OIF 1 AND 3, in addition to my recent 5 month tour in OIF 5, I am speaking from quite a bit of experience. We can't just get up and leave tomorrow. You have to understand a middle eastern culture. Middle-eastern countries, are taught to never give up. It's not a matter of beating them once. We already went once. Desert Storm sound familiar? I was supposed to join in on that as well, however, I came down on orders for Oki, Japan, first. Anyways, Like I said, we already went once. We tried to handle things then; and we thought we had succeeded. Now we are where we are. Obama isn't trying to take everyone out of Iraq and bring them home. He's just moving next door, to Afghanistan. THAT'S WHERE WE STARTED!!!! We started in Afghanistan, and moved our focus to Iraq! Now, we've given the taliban and al-qaeda a chance to regroup; and now we're going back. There's 2nd Brigade at Ft Stewart, GA leaving for Afghanistan in November of 2009, followed by 1st Brigade, leaving in February of 2010. That's one post. two brigades. leaving to the same country, not even 4 months apart. There's a reason we are sending TWO Brigades both with roughly 10,000 soldiers, gaining new soldiers everyday. THESE PEOPLE DO NOT GIVE UP! I would say that if we pull out now, as fast as possible, we're just asking for them to follow. And quite frankly, I would rather fight this war in another country, rather then my backyard. Think about it. Many soldiers have been placed in a situation where they've been encountered by children with weapons. A child is trying to shoot at you for whatever reason, and we're trained to think what? It's either him, or I. If they follow us back here, we'll be fighting here, in America. And I'm gonna teach my children how to defend themselves. It'll be the same deal, only in our OWN country. We wouldn't be fighting for the same reasons. But it doesn't matter anymore. We could pull out tomorrow, But that is just asking for trouble. And I'm not even talking about them getting invaded by Iran. We need to stop worrying about other countries, period. And focus on the problems within our own borders. God bless the fixer of the world's problems.

LEAVE NOW!
WE CAN, YES WE CAN!

Team America needs to stop playing World Police.

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

The current Iraqi government has little to no sovereignty. Who's gonna stop a civil war? Who's gonna stop Iran from taking advantage of a weaker neighbor?

Immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq AND REPARATIONS PAID. Without the necessary reparations America's name will be besmirched in the Middle East forever. With reparations, we might recover our standing in a decade.

if you support this, then you def should support this:
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/end_us_imperialism

Support the troops, get them where they should be, protecting the United States, not off fighting wars that simply make us less safe and make the multi-national corporations richer.

Unfortunately we as the American public cant see whats going on over there, it seems it doesn't even make the news anymore. I am sure of one thing, if we leave, Iran will move in. We cant do anything to Iran, because China will get involved. That's why we let Israel keep attaching Iran's nuclear buildings and we don't follow the insurgents into Iran. China has been gearing up for war since 2000 and we are using all of our military on this war. We have to make the oil over there useless to keep WWIII from breaking out, which will happen  when we leave Iraq.

If everybody wants to end the War in Iraq. Then I invite you
to join the group 'Just Foreign Policy.' They have a petition urging Congress to end the War in Iraq. Here is some information about the petition:

As of July 2006, a scientific study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins found that 650,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion.
Unfortunately, the death toll has continued to mount since then.

It is likely that over one million Iraqis have been killed, according to an updated estimate from the organization Just Foreign Policy.
That's more than were killed in the Rwandan genocide and far more than were killed under Saddam.

You can find more information, a frequently updated counter of Iraqi deaths, and a petition to Congress urging them to end this war here:

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

It would be much appreciated if you could sign the petition.

God Bless everyone all the way from New Zealand

You are presently top on the issue of the Iraq war.  Short, sweet and simple; just get up and leave which is exactly what the majority of Iraqis wish!  The billions of tax dollars sunk into this war is alleged as a violation of our Constitution that went into a culture we knew nothing about, a culture with a mixture of Sunnis, Shite’s and Kurds!   This war and occupation knows nothing about what it took and what it will take for a government to lead that previously rich now severely damaged culture!   Unemployment is extremely high, over 50%, millions of Iraqis are displaced and the neighboring states are filled with refugees.  So YES we should leave ASAP as enough is enough and if our Soldiers knew that their present orders are illegal as alleged, then that process of leaving ASAP would be enhanced!  See my posting, Redress Our Illegally Convicted Resisting Soldiers, and http://www.resistingGI.com/ 

The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan must be ended quickly.  Furthermore, war reparations must be made to the violated countries.  This will show the world that we take responsibility for our mistakes and are willing to pay for our crimes. 

lemme get this straight..

some people don't want to leave iraq immediately because it was cause violence and distress?? you don't want a power vacum??

you do realize that's what us being there causes as well!!!

since when did we care so much about their well-being?
1 million people died from UN sanctions.. eh hem.. Clinton.

anybody care when that happened?

the state of our economy is directly tied to the amount of money we're spending blowing up beige people. Lets take care of ourselves for a second before owning a home in this country becomes a distant memory.

Let get hell out Iraq ASAP.

If you wanted to stay in Iraq until all threats subsided and the country was clearly under control then you should've voted for McCain.  Obama was smart enough to know it was a mistake to go in and it's a mistake to stay.  It's not our freedom and immorality that incites the radical Muslim groups, it's our occupation.  Osama Bin Laden has said this on many occaisions.

We can either play offense forever, killing everybody who doesn't like us, or we can actually CHANGE our foreign policy and leave the Arab and Muslim nations alone.  Too many soldiers are dying for Iraq when they could be in a much safer position guarding our borders.

I feel the next penny should be spent to send our troops home!!
I would also like to have a panel to find out where all the money went. I do support our troops but I cannot see how we can spend 10B a month in that support. There are 140 or so thousand troops they average 2K a month in pay so where is the other 8B going. I amazes me we as a country do not ask for an accounting on all our hard earned money. The politicians just say you should support the troops using this line to hide stealing 8B a month??? Spending it on blackwater is not a good answer!!

Please also vote for "Reverse Bootcamp for returning combat veterans" under Iraq War.  A very good suggestion.

                                    FACTS
           
            Important documentation of cases where 

          the US military did NOT even take care of its own:

As of Jan. 12, 2008, The New York Times found 121 factual cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/01/12/us/20080113_VETS_DATABASE.html?scp=7&sq=The%20Cases&st=cse
 
                                or search:
         http://www.nytimes.com/    for:  The Cases

Each one of these cases is a tragedy.  It's not about quantity.

NOT ONLY IS POSSIBLE...IT MUST BE DONE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
there was no comtemplations when they decided to INVADE IRAQ...
IT MUST BE DONE NOW!!!!! ALL THE OTHERS CHANGES WILL DEPEND FROM THIS ONE.... THAT'S THE MAIN ONE, THE ONLY ONE THE WHOLE WORLD IS EXPECTING ... ALL THE OTHERS PROBLEMS CAN BE SOLVED AFTER THIS...
IF THIS IS NOT SOLVED ANY OTHER CHANGES ARE JUST MAKEOVERS... TIME WASTED...POLITICAL RUBBISH...THE SAME KIND OF LIES WE ALL ARE TIRED TO LISTEN...

 i would love to see this  wear end   right  now  . and have a petition that  will help to do so. and here it is.
 http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/mens-holiday   
 by signing this you  can make a diffrence today.
   happy holidays  .

I love you peace nicks.  The same ones that end up getting into a hostage situation begging and crying for rescue then cry foul when your liberator come crashing in the doors taking out the bad guys.  I wish I could give all of you "get out now" folks your wish.  Just one thing you have to do is be the last one out and you must be the hands on guy that will change the world view with your well thought out plan.  It has to work, I don't see how we did not do this soooner. 

We must leave Iraq immediately, but to do that means we must surrender our efforts to force the Iraqis to sign Profit Sharing Agreements with the Multinational Oil Companies. We invaded Iraq to get control of their oil and to put their oil into the hands of those oil corporations. So far, the Iraqi's have resisted.   The ongoing political struggle behind the scenes  in US foreign policy is to try to get that those oil contracts signed.  In order to let go of this heist of Iraqi oil, and come home, we need to start learning to base our economy on  alternative energy sources.

We also have to surrender our efforts to keep US bases in Iraq.  The second goal behind the invasion of Iraq was to establish US bases there and use them to project US military power throughout the Middle East.  It is time to relinquish that goal.

We must also reject the policy of a troop surge in Afghanistan.
 That is another attempt to control a Muslim nation, using terrorism as an excuse.  That war is also unwinnable.  If we "surge" there, we will kill many more civilians, alientate more people, and generate more terrorists.  While Afghanistan does not have oil, it has a pipeline which the US wants to control.  It is time to relinquish that greedy goal as well.

We need to bring our troops back home, honor them and heal them,  and find a new way to live, without fossil fuels.  It's time to get started.

It is not only simple-minded, but unethical to simply say, "End the war in Iraq NOW."  Strangely, a teenage English major is more nuanced and intelligent than this posting.  Check out the posting:  Time Table for Iraq Exit.

We are now culpable for the devastation in Iraq.  We have bombed the infrastructure to hell and back.  If we simply pull out immediately, we leave the country in worse shape than before and will only lose more respect in the eyes of the world and more hatred in the eyes of terrorists.  Terrorists will also be able to point to how the U.S. destroyed Iraq but did not re-build it.  Do you think this will sway a new generation to the side of terrorism or love for our country?

I agree that we should never have gotten involved in the Iraq war at all.  However, the reality is that we are involved.  Mightily involved.  To run away from our country's mess, even if we did not want to be involved in it, that is the definition of cowardly.  How can we ever be trusted by the international community for any future "liberations" if we leave this in the quagmire it is in now?

Yes, the cost is huge.  But, we now OWE it to Iraq to rebuild what we have destroyed.  Otherwise, all the talk of bringing freedom to the middle east is so much political rhetoric that will translate to the U.S. being seen as an insane bully, willing to blow things up and kill human lives, but for no purpose and with no meaning.

Is this really the kind of message we want to send to the world at large and our children?  That we will run from difficulty because it has become inconvenient?  Yes, we should hold Bush and Congress accountable to the point of impeachment, but it is not the Iraq citizens' fault that we started a war, invaded their country, and have now left a devastated ruins.

Think about it and please, let's start a new idea or vote on one that actually includes the idea that Iraqi's are not just faceless demons that we can cast aside like trash.  A new idea that includes a withdrawal that is beneficial for both parties, which will result in a lasting peace, and at best, a new political ally in the Middle East.

Thanks for listening.

-Matt

I'm sorry, I mean to say, check out the topic under this cause entitled Time Table For Iraq Exit.

Thanks,

-Matt

since when did "rooting out terrorists" involve wiping out iraq's armed forces, demolishing their government, forcing a democracy(our own government) on their people, rebuilding their government, training and equipping their armed forces. we went there to capture a handful of people and instead are now playing daddy to a country that has shown that they don't want us there. "terrorists" are attacking our troops while all their "non-terrorist" countrymen support the attacks. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT! as a soldier myself I completely agree we need to root out terrorists. but "conquering countries" is terrorism in it self.

Have any of you been there? I have been to Afghanistan once, Iraq 3 times...Thanx to good 'ol George W.
Do you REALLY believe I want to go back?
How many times do I have to go before I don't come home?
But pulling out immediately would create a "Global Crisis" that would force our re-entry...phasing out is the only possible solution, but it WILL cost more lives...what is the right balance?

Honor our fallen, Finish their fight.

I, as a veteran of our US military, am all for the absense of war... However, it must be done correctly. You cannot just pull troops out of a war torn nation and expect good results. You can't just flick a switch on a war that's lasted for decades. Ever notice all the other countries we've invaded in the past? We got involved in WWI and WWII, and guess what, we're still in Europe. We invaded and NUKED Japan, and oh yeah, still there. Korea is just another. But also look, when we are still in the countries we've changed from war, they become prosperous. We built Japan's economy after the war. We can do the same for the Middle East.

The war cannot be ended in a day, and it will take far longer than Mr. Obama has to fix. There can't be a treaty signed, because frankly, who's on the other side to sign it. We've improved Iraq, they tried Hussein, not us. They elected their democratic officials, not us. Our responsibilities should be to train TRUSTWORTHY Iraqi militia, after all, WE trained Hussein how to go to war. Just remember that, no one can be trusted with American Freedom but Americans. We haven't had any attacks on our soil since we 're-invaded' Iraq. The military knows what's at stake when they swear in. The least we can do to honor our fallen, is support them, and finish what we started, not quit before it's over

We need to get out of Iraq now.  Any civil war will be the result of the colonial powers of the past centuries drawing the political boundaries to suit them.  We need to get out and let them change all the laws we passed to profit U.S. companies and let them get on with their lives.

NO PREVIOUS ARRANGEMENTS WAS NEEDED TO KILL ALMOST 2 MILLION PEOPLE...

YESTERDAY WAS TOO LATE...

GET OUT NOW!!!!!!!!!

It will be the same whenever we leave. The conservative press is trying to make the case for us winning this .... but gives no definition for "winning". The reason is simple ... it can't be done. We need to cut our losses and go home NOW.

They said we couldn't leave Vietnam either.....

How about we also pull out of the global economy as well.

It isn't a good idea, and will cause more problems then good. Anyone that screams this is a selfish bastard and needs to learn that we need to fully stabilize Iraq before we leave. A lot of the people that ive known that have gone into military service has stated that they think that we need to remain in Iraq till we can stabilize it. Otherwise we will be making a mistake that will cost far more lives.

War and the formation of governments isn't like the movies where it is quick and then over, they take years.

It is ridiculous the amount of people that sound just as much concerned (if not more) about the middle east's problems than our own. Even in this time of uncertainty, as we approach an all-time low. It is our concerns for the middle east that have either created or skyrocketed most of the primary concerns we have in America today. It is time that congress realizes that they are employed to aid in America's problems....not the middle east. We need to be pulled from Iraq without any delay, so we can put all of the blood sweat and tears that we have shown the middle east into solving our own issues. It's time to rebuild a strong national security once again with the troops that we bring home.

Leave Iraq and Afghanistan, too.  And why is the CIA doing all these sneaky things around the world making life awful for so many people?  And while we're at it, let's get rid of mercenery soldiers like Blackwater.  And then reverse that awful "signing paper" Bush just made that puts our US army soldiers on our own soil pitting them against us!  And letting the President control the National Guard (the state militias) over the Governors of those states.  This is a set-up for a dictatorship!  Add these to blackbox voting machines and other ways to cheat on votes, torture in prisons, targeting the press for police and military attack, spying on citizens,  and more, we are in deep trouble.

The U.S. military can only make things worse.  Every day they stay results in more civilian deaths that could have been avoided.  Unless Obama has some brilliant plan for stopping the neverending carnage, there is nothing good we can do there.  This is a job for the U.N., and if they can't do it, then we need to work on fixing the U.N. before we fuck up any more countries.

We need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan now! And to stop supporting Israel's continuing massacre of Palestinians!


"Never has there been a good war or a bad peace."
—Benjamin Franklin

I am amazed that getting out of Iraq immediately is not already among the top ten, if not #1.
So many lives have been wasted, so many trillions of dollars squandered, so much needless suffering caused by the illegal war of George Bush that was based on lies!
To those of you who say we cannot leave now but must wait for a phased withdrawal, I say:  Things can't get much worse in Iraq than they are right now.  The majority of Iraqis want the U.S. out and do not want a continued U.S. military presence.  Sure, the country is unstable.  But continued U.S. military presence only makes the violence and danger worse, the resentment against us increase.  The standard line is "There will be a bloodbath if we leave now!"  There is a bloodbath RIGHT NOW.  We must not take further part in it.

Leaving Iraq (or Afghanistan) sounds like a mantra to some. These are the people that don’t know how to play the “chess” or international politics.
It was foolish to go to war with no clear idea of victory.

It would be plain stupid of us to withdraw our forces now because this will make our terrorist “friends” (who have low IQ and a warped way of thinking) think we are a weak nation. We would earn more contempt from them.

People before voting for this issue must take the following into consideration.

The terrorists will never stop. There has been a whole generation of terrorists that have learned hate from their madrasasas (schools).

The only intelligent solution would be to stay and create schools of thought that oppose jihad that the madrasasas are teaching the young people in these terrorist nations.

This war on terror is a war on the ideology of jihad that is being preached. Also their schools preach this concept. "They" are pure somehow and we in the west are somehow impure. If this is the kind of nonsense they teach in the madarasa then we should also teach our values of equality (under God as noted in our constitution) democracy and capitalism and our religion(s) as well.

Clearly America with the "separation" of religion and state is and will be unable to defeat the terrorist’s ideology of purity and jihad which are religious concepts that are woven into the terrorist states governing civil laws.

So please do not vote for this issue. There is a better issue which proposes the establishment of counter schools to the madarasa in their countries. These counter schools should teach our idea of equality of all and the fact that no one is pure and that jihad is just an escapist way of having your say in life.

We should fight this war on the intellectual front as well and make it known that their (the terrorist's) ideology is nothing but a trivial pursuit of their rather over inflated ego.

I hope this blog. hits home the concept that the rest of the world is moving in a direction that is contrary to the American way. And if we do not defend our way or life and our laws with a "religious" zeal we would be doing ourselves and our future generations of Americans a deep injustice.

Here are the concepts we need to break in the terrorist nations.

Ego. This is the most used item in a madarasa to "teach" the young would be terrorist the idea that he/she is pure because of their religion and that everyone else (people that are not of their particular brand of religion) is an infidel, hence disposable by way of jihad. And that jihad is an act of purifying because you killed an infidel who is lower than you because he/she is not as pure.

Essentially the terrorist states promote this concept widely and even make it fashionable to perform jihad. Special kudos is passed on to the family of a jihadi suicide bomber because this is viewed as the highest "ideal" of their religion.  

What does it matter what terrorists think of us?  They already think we are evil; if they think we are weak, let them think so.  Better we should be principled and moral and let them think what they like.

WMD's were the excuse for this illegal war in the first place. There was and still is no reason other than profiteerinfg and plundering for the USA UK and others to wage this horrifying war in the first place.

What do you say to the murdered and starving millions in Zimbabwe. 'Yes we know you have a dictator worse than Saddam Hussein but we wont help you because you have no oil for us so we wont be helping you'

I think we all know who the real global terrorists are.

We went there illegally, we marched in we can just march out. - Ron Paul

They had no WMD's we went in there.

We used Saddam for our selfish purposes, when Saddam said enough in early 90's we bombed him.  Then we used 911 as an excuse to get rid of him.

America has to stop nation building, we spend more on Military than the rest of the world combined.

Our F16s are used by Israel to bomb Palestine, when it was Israel who established the Hamas years ago.  Sounds like US policy we fought vietnam now we're friends with them.  We're friends with Poland now, will they be our enemies 30 years from now.

We have to get rid of AIPAC and I not heard one pro Palestine thing on our radio.

I have one more comment, I would question anything they Feed us on TV.

They said Osama is responsible for 911, then they say Iraq has WMD's.  We know one is false for sure, Iraq had no WMD's are we also supposed to blindly believe that a man from a CAVE with a CB radio..... you get what I am saying.

Anyhow another 911 investigation should be in order but that's an idea that is banned.

You say..." We know one is false for sure, Iraq had no WMD's"

Actually you don't know anything to put it bluntly.  You know what is reported to you by in most case people such as yourselves that push a agenda on what they want to believe is the truth.  As a guy that spent 23 years in the military as a NBC Specialist and was privy to classified information you and the general public have no need to know I will tell you you are quite wrong.  There are reasons information is classified.  You may not like the reason or believe it is your right to know everything involved with the decisions that were made.  What I am telling you is not just related to Iraq but world wide WMD's.  So you can toot your conspiracy theories and may get traction from the naive that follow something that you can not prove just because "the proof" you say was was not there is not reported.  I will tell you this and I don't really care if you believe it or not...if the trail of those WMD's took a path to other enemies of the USA or now pose a threat to us or allies the information is classified and can not and SHOULD NOT be release to the general public just so you have a viable excuse for what you perceived as a un-just war.  Matter of fact, if you paid close attention to some report news stories and were able to make a logical decision you would actually see there is more to the WMD thing that you think. 
All this said, I am not saying the policies used in dealing with Iraq's threat were what appears to be the right ones.  But, I know I have only limited information to base my decisions on and I know because of that I can not make only assumptions just as you why such decisions are made.  Anyone that thinks you are going to get answers to all of your questions up to and including classified information that is put in that classification because we do not want enemies or alike to use what we know against us OR provides them the ability to hide or cover those things up....well guy if you or anyone else believes that's your right to know you are a fool and it is not going to happen.

For those of you "get out of Iraq now" folks...if you think this is going to happen you are in a dream world.  It is not as simple as you think...or should I say the ramifications of such action would be devastating on a much larger scale.  If you have not noticed, your man you voted in with a promise of getting out immediately has back stepped on that promise.  Now that he has all of the information that a leader like the president is given (eyes only clearance) you are going to find the get out now thing you are crying about is not going to happen and actually the current path that appears to actually have a positive impact on a Iraq that is a more stable influence in that region...well folks if you believe BO is going to stop that progress or will create a further unstable decision for this area, then you folks are really more gullible than you make yourself out to be already. 

So you people that base your decisions on information provided to you by people that feel the same as you or want the same outcome...you go ahead.  For people like me that have seen the information that you'll never have access too will continue to support decision made in our national interests because I have seen history and devastation of past WMD's that you can not imagine and I know to do nothing and think it will not happen again is just setting yourself and our neighbours for detestation none of you can phantom. 

There are no WMDs in Iraq.  This has been shown to be true by many respected journalists.  Saddam Hussein HAD weapons in the eighties but he no longer had an arsenal in 2003.  I seriously doubt that information about WMDs would be classified.  To what end?
I respect your military service but it is obvious that you have drumk some Kool-Aid, dude.

"There are no WMDs in Iraq.  This has been shown to be true by many respected journalists"

Do you realize how stupid this really sounds.  Since when did respected journalist carry a secret clearance or higher clearance such as top secret?  If your saying this journalist are so great they are able to did up the "smoking gun"...your smoking crack.  Here is an example of a journalist covering a "secret" story to the best of their ability.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/
If you check out this link that was reported July 08 then my  question to you is why did a man that was not supposedly working on a WMD program posses such a mass of this nuclear material, which by the UN sanctions he was not allowed to have. 

Why does the all the empty munitions canisters capable of holding chemical weapons, not really count as a chemical/bio weapon just because nothing was in them?  We discovered 100's of them.  Do you know difficult it is to make some nerve agent to fill them? 

I'll put it to you this way, many times a week right here in the USA we conduct training using real nerve agents capable of killing a human being within 15 seconds.  The nerve agent is mixed in the room within two minutes. The needed chemicals are brought in the room in two different flasks that by themselves are safe but when combined make the lethal agent.  Iraq had those required chemicals to make the agent.  They had the equipment to mix the chemicals to make them into agents (all legal because they could be used to mix other non lethal use chemical compounds) and they had the equipment to load a agent into a weapon.  I also say again that we did find empty munitions capable of holding agents.  If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quakes like a duck....its a duck. 

Listen folks, if you hate war and you want it ended that is one thing.  I support everyone's right to oppose war and I personally hate that we have becomes the worlds police.  I've lost good friends serving in the military over the past years doing some of this dangerous work that allot of Americans do not appreciate and in fact accuse them of killing women and children and all kind of other Innocent people. 

There was a hidden/secret WMD program in Iraq.  Saddam was trying to keep as much of the obvious stuff he could and had the plans and capability to gear a production line in weeks.  He had time on his side and not only that he had legitimate reason to posses the chemicals needed to make nerve/blister agents. 

So oppose war as you wish, but if you oppose the Iraq war based on the WMD lie theory....well you are gravely mistaken and naive.  For those of you that still believe Saddam had no capability of WMD's I suggest you look at how sane this man was.  A man willing to use these weapons against his own people to kill over 5000 of them!  I suggest all the "there were no WMD"s in Iraq" folks see Saddam's past handy work and ask yourself ...would he do it again?  You bet he would!  http://www.kdp.se/old/chemical.html

Any leader that would target his own people and know the majority were un-armed women and children?  The ones out there that think this man posed no threat are living in a dream world. 

Doesn't sound stupid to me.  How do we get information if not for respected journalists. (e.g. The New Yorker, the Nation, The New York Times) And you still haven't explained why the knowledge of WMDs was classified in the first place.