RE: Didn’t he use nerve agents on the ethnic Kurds in the north?
Yes he did. At issue is were those nerve agents still active? Or dormant?
I think looking back, the questions are:
1) Did Bush LIE about WMD’s?
I think he sincerely believed there were WMD’s. His intent was not to lie, however, intelligence given to him ( CIA Chief George Tenant’s “Slam Dunk” ) was INACCURATE.
He could only act on the intelligence provided for him.
2) Were there WMD’s?
Of course there were. As per the article, they discovered them. However, most of them were old and dormant and it is uncertain whether they could be reactivated usefully.
Saddam could not account for them because there was not an orderly system of accounting for them.
3) Was it worth invading Iraq because of this?
To answer the question, we have to ask ourselves how many lives were lost in this war to depose a dictator who is admittedly evil but who at least maintained order among the warring factions in that sorry country.
Was it worth sacrificing these American lives ( including the thousands of civilian deaths ) to depose this dictator under the uncertain possibility that he might have been lying about his WMD’s only to discover later that they were not as potent as we thought they were?
I think the answer, now that we have the benefit of hindsight, is NO.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong though. So give me your best refutation. I’m all ears.
Iraq violated multiple U.N. sanctions and with that alone, was enough to invade.
Personally, I could not care less about the entire Middle East and would prefer to turn it all to glass rather than one American soldier risk their life.