When?
After Gulf War I, when the “No-Fly Zones” were established and we began to police them, the Iraqis frequently shot at our aircraft. These were acts of war and they shot first.
We’re not the global police. At the time we weren’t the Iraqi police either. I agree him being gone isn’t bad. Us going in to do it, however, is another story.
While we’re not the global police, Iraq threatened global oil supplies, making them a threat to our national security. As I said before, we had a moral right (but not necessarily an obligation), to remove Saddam.
I was, at the time, a Conservative Republican who was widely outnumbered when I stated opposition to invading Iraq. There was no tie to Al Queda, there were no WMDs, we’d been non-violent with them for 10 years. I believed then and I believe now that we are the aggressor nation in Iraq.
While there were no ties to Al Queda, there were certainly strong ties to terrorism. Hussein openly supported and funded suicide bombers who attacked Israel. As far as WMDS are concerned, Saddam had them and he used them against the Iranians as well as his own people. After Gulf War I, the UN destroyed his WMDS, but Saddam purposely made it look as if Iraq still had WMDS. The 60 Minutes interview with his US interogator is quite revealing on this point:
“And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?” Pelley asks.
“He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s. And those that hadn’t been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq,” Piro says.
“So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?” Pelley asks.
“It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq,” Piro says.
Before his wars with America, Saddam had fought a ruinous eight year war with Iran and it was Iran he still feared the most.
“He believed that he couldn’t survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?” Pelley asks.
“Absolutely,” Piro says.
“As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn’t he stop it then? And say, ‘Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction.’ I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?” Pelley asks.
“He didn’t. But he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack. So you expected that initially,” Piro says.
Piro says Saddam expected some kind of an air campaign and that he could he survive that. “He survived that once. And then he was willing to accept that type of attack. That type of damage,” he says.
“Saddam didn’t believe that the United States would invade,” Pelley remarks.
“Not initially, no,” Piro says.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/…494_page4.shtml
Clearly this was a disasterous miscalculation for Hussein but it was something he brought upon himself, not a fabrication of US intelligence agencies and politicians.
However, that said - we are there NOW - we made a mess, and we have to clean it up. Just leaving w/o finishing the job (however the hell we do that) is not acceptable.
Bush certainly did make a mess of it, now I believe that the best chance we have of cleaning it up is presented by the deeply flawed candidacy of John McCain.
“only became certain” is right - it was a belief of not a few of the inspectors that there were none, prior to the invasion. They couldn’t prove it, even if they were there, because you can’t prove a negative.
It was a belief promoted by Saddam himself, so I find it bewildering that you and others continue to blame us for the charade that he perpetrated. You might also be interested in knowing that Saddam intended to reconstitute his WMD program when the attention died down.
(CBS) In fact, Piro says Saddam intended to produce weapons of mass destruction again, some day. “The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” Piro says.
“And that was his intention?” Pelley asks.
“Yes,” Piro says.
“What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?” Pelley asks.
“He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program,” says Piro.
“Chemical, biological, even nuclear,” Pelley asks.
“Yes,” Piro says.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/…494_page6.shtml
I paid close attention to the song and dance of the Bush/Powell crusade to get sanction for invasion. We were going in no matter how thin (transparently so) the evidence. All the rationalizations they’ve come up with since don’t change one simple fact: after 10 years, we struck first.
Absent 9/11, we would have never invaded Iraq. However in the aftermath of those attacks, this government had an obligation to pay greater attention to foreign threats as they were forming. Given Hussein’s bellicose rhetoric, his attacks on our planes, his demonstrated willingness to use WMDS and the deceptive games he played with WMDS, his funding of terrorists, etc…, the Bush administration should have been impeached if it ignored this threat.