This is old news. We have known for years that this was hyped up to scare nervous Nellie conservatives into supporting a Wilsonian war.
I'm glad GWB has us playing as a "visitor" in their ballpark. I'd hate to have to play as the "home" team in this war. IMO
PING
The perfumed princes are at it again.
1999 AP Flashback: Saddam has offered asylum to bin Laden
This is ‘The War on Terror’. It is NOT the ‘War on Al-Qaeda’, and it is not ‘The War to Avenge 9/11.’ Never has been.
Saddam's history, and the preponderance of evidence that he had WMD’s, and could pass these on to Islamic Jihadist surrogates, made his removal absolutely necessary.
The U. S. has removed now two of the world's most dangerous regimes: Al Queda in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
The does not minimize the problems that remain; but these problems are being gradually solved - as is evident from the feverish, and increasingly dispirited, attempt by Al Queda and regional tyrants to prevent this.
A US-occupied Iraq puts a real crimp in the plans of Iran, Syria and rest of the bad guys.
Bush, Cheney et. al. were all pretty clear: they were not just going after those who had already attacked us, but trying to prevent the next attack! Remember all the “Bush didn’t connect the dots” criticism he received after 9/11?
Too many people have never read the Iraq War resolution. It’s very instructive.
The idea was that we could no longer give our enemies “one free shot” before dealing with threats. And I’m sure that actually ENFORCING the terms of the Gulf War cease-fire, rather than ignoring them like Clinton did, was deemed necessary to show the world that America can and will follow through.
One may argue with the idea of “pre-emption,” but this whole “Iraq didn’t attack us” line of criticism seems to assume that the Bush administration said it did - something the President and others were very careful NOT to say.
Does Iran have ties to AQ? How about Chavez and venezuela?
A terrorist, is a terrorist, no matter which group they are supporting. Saddam Hussein needed to go. So do the others.
Paging j, paging jveritas!
Between 1996 and 2002, the overall MIC budget increased over forty-fold from ID 15.5 billion to ID 700 billion. By 2003 it had grown to ID 1 trillion. MIC's hard currency allocations in 2002 amounted to approximately $364 million. MIC sponsorship of technical research projects at Iraqi universities skyrocketed from about 40 projects in 1997 to 3,200 in 2002. MIC workforce expanded by fifty percent in three years, from 42,000 employees in 1999 to 63,000 in 2002.
So the MIC enjoyed a budget increase from fifteen billion to one trillion Dinars over seven years for nothing? MIC technical research projects increased 80-fold for no particular reason? Then there was the very well-chronicled systematic deception campaign that U.N. inspectors encountered every time they went into Iraq. In more than one case inspectors would pull up to a site and be halted; surveillance would pick up vehicles being loaded in the back and hurrying away; inspectors would then be allowed in. What was being carted away so quickly? If nothing was there, what was going on? One theory behind the deception campaign was that it was itself a deception — it was not so much that Saddam had something to hide, but rather he wanted to make us think he had something to hide in order to deter us from attacking him. That rationale was clearly too clever by half if true, at least judging by the results. (It is better to act like North Korea and say you have nuclear weapons whether you do or not.)
But I don't buy that explanation. The deception campaign was too systematic, too thorough, in ways that went well beyond what would be necessary simply to generate suspicion. This activity continued during and after the war when it would make no difference. One case in point — an exploitation team went to check out an apartment in an otherwise unexceptional residential area that was allegedly being used as a WMD site. They arrived to find the apartment stripped. The floor tiles were missing, the walls cleaned, the plumbing fixtures gone, the pipes under the floors ripped out. This was not the result of looting — the apartment had been sanitized, disinfected. How many such sites could there have been in Iraq? Were they all found and checked? Strains of biological organisms that could be weaponized were found in a scientist's home refrigerator — how much such dispersal took place? Not to mention allegations that critical nuclear and chemical program components were taken to Syria, Iran, or Russia. http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200504010813.asp
Who cares? Saddam was a dictator who killed thousands of innocent people, and he needed to be taken down. There’s nothing anyone can say that will make me care what was or was not found to tie Al-Q with Iraq or Saddam.
Good for Bush to take him down!!!
Has jveritas seen this?
Headline should read "Saddam Sponsored Terrorist Groups".
I don’t believe in the Gulf War I and II idea.
I just see it as a continuous military operation that started when he invaded Kuwait. We never really left Iraq since then.
Saddam never fully complied with the terms of his surrender(no fly zones, WMD inspections, etc) so we ended the war in 2003.
ping
Hypothetical:
Two members of separate gangs want to kill your family. One of those members manages to kill a member of your family. The other gang member continues to threaten the family.
Why in the world would you care if the two gang members ever had tea together?
So what? Saddam had non-operational ties, supportive ties, physical ties, to AQ and other terrorists, for whom he provided safe harbor, weapons and funding. And y’know what: none of that matters, because the blunt fact is that he was in violation of the 1991 terms of armistice and umpteen UN resolutions. Regime change was the policy of the US since 1998. Bush just acted instead of bloviating and kicking the can down the road for the next President to deal with as his predecessor did. Tens of millions of Iraqis are free as a result.