Posted on 12/27/2003 8:20:35 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Was the capture of Saddam Hussein a major victory for the United States? It was certainly a victory in the extended Iraq war. It was a victory for President Bush over the man who plotted to kill his father. It was a victory for the U.S. military and its intelligence service -- especially for the lieutenant and the corporal who figured out how to find him. It was a victory for the Republican Party's plan to keep a stranglehold on American politics. But was it, as the president told us, a victory in the ''war on terrorism''?
Despite the media hoopla and the White House spin doctors, it was not. The administration legitimized the invasion of Iraq as part of the ''war on terrorism'' and deceived the American people into believing that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 attack and that he had ''weapons of mass destruction.'' No one, except possibly Vice President Dick Cheney and the Wall Street Journal, believed that Saddam was involved in the attack on the World Trade Center. The weapons of mass destruction have disappeared. The president asks a TV interviewer what difference the mass destruction question makes, now that we have eliminated Saddam from power.
Note how slippery the administration line has been. The purpose of the war now is to get rid of an evil man who had done horrible things to his own people, even if he wasn't a real threat to us. Would those Americans who are willing to settle for that rationale have bought it at the beginning of the war? Such is the slipperiness of the administration's dishonesty that it can get away with a change in motives for the war. Do those who buy this shifting of the deck of cards want to send American troops into North Korea or Iran or a half-dozen African countries to rid the world of similar evil men?
The truth is that Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their ''neo-conservative'' intellectuals wanted a quick little war with Iraq to display America's strength as the world's only superpower even before the 2000 election. The attack on the World Trade Center provided an excellent excuse to unveil America's unilateral, preemptive foreign policy. Has the war made the United States any more secure from al-Qaida?
It would seem that it has not. Quite the contrary, it has stirred up a whole new phalanx of terrorists in Iraq with which we did not formerly have to contend.
It is reasonably well known that Osama bin Laden instructed his forces to have nothing to do with Saddam because he was a secularist and a socialist and not a good Muslim. A man who imagined himself as the holy Caliph of a new Islamic empire could hardly tolerate Saddam as one of his subjects.
The Iraq war, prolonged by unspeakably bad planning for the post-war period, has distracted the United States from the battle with terrorists. If the military force sent to Iraq and the immense efforts to capture Saddam had been diverted to pursuing bin Laden, Americans would be much safer today.
The ultimate failure of the Bush administration is that it permitted itself to be so consumed by its need to take on Iraq that it lost interest in hunting down bin Laden. Its ultimate dishonesty is the (effective) deception of the American people about Iraq.
So, brave and good American men and women continue to die in Iraq, as do good Iraqi men and women. The military tells us that the Army will have to remain for two more years. The war was not only unnecessary, it was unjust by any and all of the traditional canons of an unjust war.
Gen. Curtis LeMay, who led the firebomb raids on Japan (far more destructive than the atom bombs), once remarked that if the United States should lose the war, he would be tried as a war criminal. The United States won the war and no Americans were tried as war criminals. The victors are never tried.
The Bush administration is planning a trial for Saddam. The Europeans are insisting that it must be a ''fair'' trial, whatever that might be for such a man. No one in the Bush administration will be tried for the unjust and unnecessary Iraq war -- at least not by a court on Earth.
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"13. Recalls, in that context, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations;"
I consider the coalition kicking Saddam's butt a "serious consequence", wouldn't you agree?
No. Not true. They admit they used to have them, but got rid of them sometime in the 1990s. We haven't produced a single Iraqi govt official or scientist who says they had WMDs when we invaded.
When I look at a map of the middle-east, I see Iraq as the hub of a wheel. The mostly land locked terrorist (generally most are poorly educated and do foot, truck or car travel) have to go through Iraq to get back and forth from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, Afganistan and the the like. Removing the terrorist friendly Iraqi state makes it a lot tougher for Terrorists to stealthly move about. Atleast, along their traditional routes. JMO
More accurately, I embarass you.
As I pointed out earlier, and you ignored, the only justification necessary is that Hussein violated the cease fire agreement that ended the first Gulf War. Once Iraq was in breach of the agreement, we were at a state of de facto war. This was just finishing what Saddam started.
Also, I'd appreciate an answer to my initial question. I asked:
Because prior to 9-11, there were very few people on the planet, outside of Scott Ritter, who didn't believe and state for the record that Iraq was in posession of WMDs.
Not running TO the UN. Just reminding you that we promised, along with all other members, not to start wars. No matter what you think of the UN bureacratic organization, that provision is a good idea. It tends to prevent wars.
It makes the US invasion of Iraq illegal. The invasion was also weakining in that we have tied up major resources there, not fighting the War on Terror but helping Al Queda in its recruiting efforts. This makes us less able to handle whatever else might come up in the next few years, till we get loose of that tiger.
Prior to 9/11 the public was not paying much attention to Iraq. It was when the US government used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to demonize Iraq that all the public talk started. My own memory of the time between 9/11 and the start of the war was a belief in the possibility of Chem or bio weapons but no possibility of nuclear. I also was confidant that there was no risk of Saddam turning those weapons over to anyone. As it turns out, he had nothing to turn over and was probably bluffing to keep his neighbors from invading him.
Our government, which should have had much better information than we had, should not have been fooled by his bluff. They certainly should not have been raising the specter of nuclear weapons. That was pure BS. Yet there was plenty of talk about uranium purchases, aluminum tubes, and a reconstituted nuclear program. I recall that it was the Niger uranium story that was the deal closer in congress in October 02, 8 months after the report from Ambassador Wilson that the story was false.
Now did you also ask when it became legitimate to ask IF Saddam had weapons? Such a question can never be illigitimate. We must always question our government. They are too powerful to trust blindly.
You're kidding, right? Iraq and its WMDs was in the news almost all the time. Coincidentally it was usually when bad news about the Clinton administration was coming out.
It was when the US government used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to demonize Iraq that all the public talk started.
Of course, I'm not talking about just the US government. I'm talking about practically every world leader as well as your precious UN. They ALL admitted Iraq had WMDs, and voted on sanctions because of it. In the late ninetys everybody KNEW Iraq had WMDs and was willing to impose harsh sanctions. Why is it now so obvious that Iraq did NOT have WMDs?
Also, I notice you continue to regurgitate the line:
It makes the US invasion of Iraq illegal
As I, and others, have pointed out to you, you COULD say the invasion may have been ill-timed, it may have not been in the best interests of the country, it didn't have the proper international backing, etc., but you CANNOT say it was illegal. As was stated before, given Iraq has been in violation of the terms of the cease-fire from the first Gulf War, we have been in a state of de facto war since then. There is nothing remotely illegal with our actions in Iraq.
"If the weapons ain't there, you must dispair."
(er, sorry, its the best I can do on short notice.)
Neither of these men ever said that Sadaam was connected to the 9/11 attacks in their pronouncements in the run-up to the war. They only ever said that he was supportive of terrorists, and that it was important to make sure that he couldn't provide weapons of mass destruction to any terrorists he happened to finance. It was already established that he was sending money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in payment for the services of their sons.
There have been discoveries in Iraq, since the major hostilities ended that are pointing to Sadaam's involvement with Al Queda. So even if the President and Vice President didn't use this premise to go in to Iraq, in retrospect, it was good idea.
This just mystifies me. The whole world had known for 12 years that Sadaam had WMD! The Democrats and the liberal press makes it sound like the whole idea of WMD was born from the fruitful imaginations of GWB, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, et al. In fact, the UN passed the sanctions and all those resolutions, and sent weapons inspection teams on the intelligence developed by the agencies of SEVERAL nations, and because the fact that Sadaam actually USED chemical weapons, both in the Iran-Iraq war and against the Kurds.
The only reason there is questioning about this is that the Democrats have twisted what the President said in his statements about the war, and the media has repeated the lies, ad nauseum.
There they go again. The sloppy logic of WMD. Everyone knows that Iraq had chemical weapons 12 years ago. The whole world also knows that the US supplied those for use against Iran.
Subsequent to the 1991 cease fire, Iraq agreed to destroy those weapons. We never knew for sure what happened but since there are none now, the most probable explanation is that he did destroy them sometime between 91 and 98. It is really hard to imagine that our intelligence was so poor that our government could really believe all those precise numbers of sarin, vx, etc.
Beyond the poor intell, we know that were definite lies concerning the nuclear part of the threat. No Niger purchase, no aluminum tubes and no excuse for mistakenly believing that. If you put aside your undying support for Bush and think, you will come to the conclusion that we were lied into a war that was not any benefit to the US. We need to figure out who lied to whom and how to get disentangled quickly so we are at full strength if there is a real need for military might in the near future.
You seem to be purposely ignoring what people are telling you. Clinton, the US Congress, the CIA, UNSCOM, the UN, Tony Blair, most European leaders, have ALL stated for a fact that Iraq was in posession of WMDs AFTER 1998.
Now, my question again. What has changed that has made that information inaccurate?
The failure to find any weapons and any facilities to make any chemical weapons. The chemicals have a short shelf life and need to be made fresh regularly. Any left overs from before 1991 would have been useless by now. If follows that all the stories we were told, giving quantities of this and that chemical weapon were fairy tales, without any factual basis. The chem/bio stories were not obvious lies before the war, they were in the realm of possibility based on public information. The nuclear stories were clearly false from public information.
The post war facts tell us that the chem/bio stories were false as well.
But YES, he did have them, using the past tense. It just makes a really big difference when. It makes absolutely no difference who else was making the claims, unless you are claiming mass psychosis as an excuse.
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