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I agree. After all, why would any rational personal consider someone like Hussein to be a threat given that he was having his people regularly fire missiles at our pilots. Or given that he was regularly issuing threats similar to the ones issued by bin Laden about attacking the United States. Indeed, we know from repeated dealings with nasty types like Hussein that they never follow through on their threats, particularly when you fail to respond to their repeated attempts to kill your fellow countrymen. In fact, people like Hussein respect that type of restrain in their adversaries and recognize that it shows real strength of character just like was shown by the western democracies in the leadup to 1939.

Whoa whoa whoa.

RTA.

Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.

He made the statement on September 10, 2002.

It's stupid to deny that Israel was not a factor in our decision to go to war. As a person who is an extremely hawkish Israel supporter, and a supporter of the Iraq war, and a person who is going to vote for GWB, I don't think it's wise to abandon history.

Remember that a key argument made for how Saddam supported terrorism was his $25,000 bounty to every suidicde bomber's family that successfully struck Israel.

Remember that the WMD debate referenced the missile strikes on Israel in 1991.

The response to the charge is this: yes, Israel was a factor in why we went to war. It was not, however, a determining factor. The determining factors were first, the threat to the US, including our no-fly zone pilots (thank you vbmoneyspender), but also our strategic plan for victory in the War on Terrorism. Ultimately, we could not have defeated terrorism if Saddam Hussein remained in power in Iraq. Since we are serious about defeating terrorism, we had to be serious about defeating Saddam. The sanctions and the no-fly zones were in effect a stalemate. We had a stalemate situation in Iraq, and now we have victory. Ergo, the victory over Saddam is key to winning the war and ergo key to long-term US national security.