When I look at Giuliani. He has that same arrogant posturing, minus the fists-on-hips pose that Mussolini loved so much.

But the boastful absolutes that Giuliani spouts are just like the "Duce" and I fear he would rule the country the same way if elected.

He's got a set of brass ones.

"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."

Wait - I might be wrong here. But I recall a white guy with balding hair named Hans Blix or something in Iraq, looking for WMD's. And he didn't find any, but he was continuing the search. Then, somebody (I think his name was Bush or something) decided that time was up, because Saddam didn't turn over the weapons that we "knew" he had (well, unless you read the pre-war Iraq report, I guess).

So, inspectors were there, doing what they wanted, and yet Romney still wanted to go to war with him anyway. Somehow, ability to ignore historical facts does *not* make me want to vote for this guy. Who knows - he might decide that Hawaii had better give up the WMD's, no matter how many reports say they don't have any.

The IAEA inspectors WERE in Iraq -- they were NOT blocked by Saddam Hussein. When they left the country, it was because of Dubya's impending war, not because anyone in Iraq threw them out.

The inspectors said, loudly and publicly, that they were making progress, and wanted more time to continue their inspections.

Check the record, see what Hans Blix said then, and what he still says. Don't let this fall down the memory hole, aided and abetted by lies from people like Romney.

Read what Hans Blix told the UN for yourself:

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/SC7asdelivered.htm

...not that Republicans ever remember reality based historical events.

I'm astounded that apparently no one corrected Mr. Romney on this point. It's a pretty shocking statement from a candidate, but then again, Republicans seem to prefer blissful ignorance to facts.

Don't these people remember anything accurately?

a mronic question. Is it now a mistake to do what we did then?

saaddam was not open to the IAEA inspectors. He was not forthcoming. He was as beligerant and deceitful as he had been the previous decade through all the resolutions.

Not everyone is a spineless wig like edwards.

Shouldn't there be some sort of recourse for politician who flatly change the question they are asked prior to answering it? This is a trick that has been used for years, and a primary reason why I hate watching the debates sober.

This move on Romney's part is even more sickeningly brazen in that the moderator attempted to pin him down to the question as asked and Romney flatly said that he considered the question invalid and would rather give his talking point.

Clearly, Hilary works in similar ways but she at least fleetingly addresses the question before moving on to her scripted spiel.

I should also point out that Romney does not know what a non-sequitor is. It is something that seems out of sequence, that has no relation to what came before it. Something that is meant to stand on its own as its own entity can not be a non-sequitor since it does not offer illusion of being part of a sequence. It is similarly, not a synonym for null set.

A nitpick, I know but this is the kind of linguisitic bufoonery that we have spent 6 learning to recognize as a sign of an unstable and incomeptent mind.

That is obvious.

Basically, he just said "I'm going to rephrase that question into one that I want to answer and ignore the actual question". He'd make a good press secretary.

...in that only morons seem unable to answer it.

How could Harry Reid be wrong about the war in Iraq since Romney proved there is no war and that all those casualties are purely hypothetical.

...by comments from tiberius (who some think was formerly known as "Joe" here in the War Room).

Yes, Hans Blix and the IAEA inspectors said that more cooperation from Saddam Hussein and Iraqi authorities was needed -- but they DID maintain that they were making progress. They DID plead for more time. They WERE inside Iraq until Dubya's threats of war forced them to leave.

Do you deny that these are the facts?

. . . which is why, when he was mayor of NYC, he was sometimes referred to as "Mussolani."

Sorry, but that "null set" response cracked me up, made me think of something SLATE (I think) wrote about Romney being a cyborg. He really does seem like a robot who's a bit off-kilter (like him not recognizing Ralph "Antichrist" Reed on sight, confusing him with Gary "Mr. Toad" Bauer).

I expect him at some point to cry out: "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!"

Boy, do I wish Wolf Blitzer had asked him how the question was a "non sequitur". Is it possible for a question to be a non sequitur? His answer could probably be considered one...

Kind of like the inside of Mitt's head, if his response is any indication of what might be going on in that flip-floppin' noggin of his.

No carpetbaggers for president.

if elected, invade countless countries preemptively. He'll lay them all to waste and salt their soil. He is a raving madman that would , for all intent and purpose, finish the "ruining" of America begun by his lesser god, George Bush. God help us all...

Mr Romney keeps repeating the Bush Lie on inspectore. They were let in to Iraq and could not find WMD even with our "intelligence agency's help". Hans Blick was derided by Cheney and Rumsfeld as incompetent.

They were forced to leave when we decided to go to war.

Get your facts straight Mr Romney.

Also, a Bush Lie, "We were not in Iraq when they attached us".

We had a presence in the North protecting the Kurds and a no-fly zone in both North and South.

However, the reason Bin Laden issued his fatwah to kill americans was we were in Saudi Arabia, home of Mecca, a very sacred city. Any time an infidel occupies a Muslim country, it is acceptable to issue such a fatwah according to some Wahabi's. So, we multiply the reacvtions of his extremists by our actions.