Rant away trolls.
concerning the reasons for war in Iraq, all based on something other than what is now appearing as the truth, or "new version" of it.
As I understood the debate leading up to the war, much of the disagreement did focus on the issues being raised now.
1. Did Saddam's regime pose a threat, direct or indirect, to the US and/or her allies? What was the scope of the threat?
2. If yes, was that threat immediate (interchangeable with imminent for our purpose?) so as to justify a pre-emptive attack by the US, either unilaterally or with limited international support (because realpolitik would have authorized any action not opposed by UN veto holders)?
I think Wolfowitz accurately described the multiple concerns in the administration leading to war with Iraq. He stated those concerns in his Vanity Fair interview as, "One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two."
This was not a pre-emptive war in the sense of foiling an imminent attack. Bush never made the pre-emptive argument against Iraq alone. It was within the context of the war on terrorism. It was never a case of intercepting the Japanese navy in the Pacific on 6 Dec 1941. Bush did quote Kennedy from October 1962, describing the threat that the USSR posed during the Cuban missile crisis.
If Saddam wasn't an imminent threat, why did we have to contain him every day for the last 12 years? Was it because the threat of the "axis of evil" to the US was indirect; they were only direct threats to their region (and therefore our allies)? How prescient was Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on PBS NewsHour, February 9, 1998?
Most Americans were fully prepared to accept the proposition that Saddam Hussein is a very bad actor, and news accounts about his possibly having stockpiles of biological weapons have been running for months. So I believe that the American people have a very cursory knowledge, at least, of the need for some limited action against Iraq. And I don't think that they would be taken aback by limited military action. After all, we've done it before in 1993 and 1996. I don't think the Clinton administration, as some of my colleagues have already pointed out, has done an effective job first of all of preparing the American people for a more substantive military action if, in fact, that is necessary, but, more to the point, I don't think the Clinton administration has prepared the American people for the fact that we might have to go after Saddam Hussein again and again and again. They don't understand why, in fact, if this guy is such a bad actor, we don't just go in and take him out once and for all.
So, in Saddam Redux IV: The Post 9-11 Great-Great-Grandchild of all Battles, there seemed to be two chains of logic among the war supporters (not counting the "lesser" humanitarian reasons put forward in Bush's and Powell's speeches):
- Saddam has WMD => Saddam has ties to terrorists => terrorists hurt us badly => terrorists want to do it again => take out Saddam before he gives WMD to the terrorists.
- Islamic extremism fuels terrorism => the fountain of Islamic extremism is spread across the Middle East => war on terrorism requires hegemony in the Middle East (the corollaries being isolation from the Middle East is impossible and the status quo unacceptable) => implementing the long standing plan (i.e. since 1991) for regime change in Iraq significantly increases our hegemony in the Middle East (in a way Afghanistan did not).
Before the war, the serious war skeptics challenged the weak links in the logic chains. The fact that WMD was emphasized by the administration (for bureaucratic consensus) and substantial WMD evidence has not been found, has given the Bush critics and less serious war skeptics the opportunity to create the post-war perception that the causus belli was pre-empting an imminent WMD attack on America by Iraq, and that that was the only reason offered.
The "Bush lied" mantra concerning WMD in Iraq is a dangerous gamble. I'm convinced Saddam had WMD in 1991, when we were exposed to chemical weapons at Khamisiyah and elsewhere during cleanup ops.
I think he still had them in 1995, when Kamel defected providing proof of Iraq's deception and continued efforts in it's WMD programs. To be fair, Kamel said Iraq did not possess WMD in 1995. He also said it really was a baby milk factory we bombed in 1991 (and again in 1998) and there was no military significance to the air defense shelter we bombed.39, 40 But the documents on his chicken farm and the discovery by Dr.Diane Seaman on 25 September 199741, 42 throw into question Kamel's denials of weapons. In addition, remarks by Khidhir Hamza contradicted Kamel's claims, and in return Kamel attacked Hamza's credibility in the UN transcript.
There was consensus through 1998, 2001 and 2002 by the world's intelligence agencies (including the CIA, Canadians and BND), within Congress (including Democrats) and from UNMOVIC that Iraq was pursuing WMD.
Now we are starting to find the stocks that were never destroyed as Iraq claimed, but recently hidden:
Adnan Khalifa, an Iraqi who lives near the sealed-off area, told a Danish TV2 reporter in Basra that he helped bury the mortar shells three years ago. "We also dumped some of them in the river," he said.
Some Iraqis have said there are several caches of mortar shells in the area, including a stockpile dumped in the Tigris River that could contain as many as 400 shells, army officials in Denmark said.