McCain and some Bush Family drama were probably the only reasons we got into Iraq.
I remember asking myself...”ok, 911 was setup in Afghanistan and Yemen and we decide to attack Iraq?”
Yep Sadam made a few fatal errors. Trying to assassinate W’s dad was one. Someone had to pay for 9/11 and it wasn’t going to be the Saudis who sent sympathy cards and all. Officially only Sadam was gleeful at 9/11. That probably tipped the scales since W figured he needed to send a message and Sadam was playing come and get me you Yankee swine.
When we invaded Iraq a group of our soldiers found a nice little mural of the burning World Trade Center and a grinning Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s Intel Service HQ.
Just before 9/11 the newspaper in Iraq controlled by Saddam Hussein’s sons published articles praising bin Laden and predicting an attack on the US on “the arm that is already hurting” [WTC which had been bombed in 1993] with a reference to Frank Sinatra.
Just before 9/11 an Iraqi was captured by Jordan. Turned out he had earlier been an Iraqi embassy employee in Malaysia and had shepherded two of the future 9/11 hijackers around to the terrorist meeting there where the attack on the USS Cole was planned- the two who were later part of the cleric al Aulaqi’s followers in California and in Virginia before their fatal attack. In the pocket litter of the captured Iraqi was contact information for an assortment of terrorists, including ones involved in the 1993 WTC attack, the USS Cole, and 9/11 and relatives of same.
Then as now, the radical left Human Rights Watch went immediately to his rescue, criticizing and pressuring Jordan for his release. Jordan eventually did release hi and he fled immediately to Baghdad, where the head of ANO already was based and where was living in a state funded house and on a state stipend the main perpetrator of the 1993 WTC attack. Also setting up shop there was the guy who later founded ISIS- though at the time his group was called al Jihad.