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153 Comments
- IrishJoe, on 07/02/2009, -17/+149Of course he did. He had experienced a brutal 8-year long war with Iran and he wanted to scare them so that they wouldn’t attack again. But in the lead up to the Iraq invasion by the Bush Administration, International Weapons Inspectors with boots on the ground in Iraq had concluded that Saddam was lying and he had no more WMD. The Bush Administration claimed that they knew for a fact that he did have WMD and knew exactly where it was. The International inspectors asked the Bush Administration to tell them where the WMD was so that they could force Saddam to destroy them as they had forced him to destroy his Al-Samoud missiles thereby avoiding a war and removing the threat of Saddam. The Bush Administration refused to tell them where the WMD was and as it turned out they were lying about knowing where his WMD was. According to Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neil, Bush wanted a war with Iraq from the day he took office.
- inactive, on 07/03/2009, -9/+112Iran cooperated with the US after 9/11. They helped us coordinate with the northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
And what did bush do? He slapped Iran in the face and added them to the axis of evil right after they were helping us.
Iran, fearful of regime change in their own country, OFFERED to give up their nuclear weapons program.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/200704 ...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/showdown/t ...
Educate yourself about the recent history of US/Iranian relations.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/showdown/ - Frostek, on 07/02/2009, -8/+78This was pretty obvious to anyone, and was mentioned at the time.
A bit old news now though. - Rudegar, on 07/03/2009, -0/+55"brutal 8-year long war with Iran and he wanted to scare them so that they wouldn’t attack again."
again ? if was saddam who attacked Iran in the 80's - inactive, on 07/02/2009, -8/+52Something tells me that the FBI or CIA knew about this WELL before the 2003 invasion.
- inactive, on 07/03/2009, -3/+33Anyone with the tiniest knowledge of history in the middle east would know this.
- omenmedia, on 07/03/2009, -3/+31I dare you to go up to any family members of the 4,321 dead soldiers and say "Let it go man. It's getting old." Go and try it and see what happens.
- Exhibitionist, on 07/03/2009, -0/+27Iran never attacked Iraq; Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980.
Saddam was just ***** scared that the Iranians might seek retribution for Saddam's past deeds. - DiscoUnderpants, on 07/03/2009, -2/+29Dugg you up. Its amazing what revisionism get inadvertently propagated around the internet... Iran is evil so they must have instigated with Iran Iraq war(Ive heard this several times)... The fact is Iraq provoked the hostilities with Iran and then launched a full scale attack into Iran... with the support of the US... it became something of a Cold War proxy war.
- Mujokan, on 07/03/2009, -2/+27So it doesn't matter whether it's true, just that it happened 6 years ago?
- rocknog, on 07/03/2009, -2/+23Chinaman, I am terribly sorry you're an ignorant ***** moron who voted for Bush twice, but yes, the president was a *****-up. Just let it go.
- inactive, on 07/03/2009, -20/+41Saddam allowed the world to think he had WMD
Clinton believed him and bombed Iraq in 1998 declaring we must destroy WMD's
Saddam refused to allow weapons inspectors
NOBODY came out from any country and said definitively there were no WMD in Iraq. You think the CIA is the world's only spy agency or the best?
Bush initiated Iraqi invasion soon after 9/11 saying he wanted to destroy the WMD, without any complaints from his predecessor or the majority of Democrats.
Couple of years later, truth is revealed there are no WMD's in Iraq, something nobody including left wing shills posting today knew before the invasion.
Just a side note: When George Bush sr. writes a book in 1998 detailing why he thought invading Iraq and replacing Saddam would be a bad idea and than his son does just that I have to wonder if maybe they truly believed a real threat was present, unlike Left wingers believe who believe it was all about oil or revenge. P.S. Nobody, including US oil companies have received anything as of yet, so the conspiracy theory sucks. In fact they just had a digg article about how Iraq tried to sell contracts and basically accepted none of the bids. - SpinningHead, on 07/03/2009, -1/+19Facts are elitist.
- Mujokan, on 07/03/2009, -7/+24The point was that the evidence was very ambiguous, and the Bush administration cherry-picked and pressured the CIA to make it seem certain. Then they told everyone else it was certain. They did this because they wanted to invade Iraq, and didn't care about finding out the truth.
Outside of this process, many people were strongly questioning whether Iraq had WMD, including the inspectors. Bush and Cheney pushed through the invasion over these objections.
Go read something on Curveball or the Office of Special Plans. The only place where there was certainty was in what American politicians said to the public and to other governments. - Mujokan, on 07/03/2009, -1/+15" Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said."
They knew all about this since it was purchased. It wasn't related to the Valerie Plame thing or to the inspections issue.
The scandal here was that although the IAEA knew about it, the US managed to let almost two tonnes of it get stolen after the invasion. - joculator, on 07/03/2009, -14/+28Thanks W - a trillion dollars well spent.
- NSResponder, on 07/03/2009, -1/+15Saddam bluffed his way to the gallows. Sucks to be him.
-jcr - Mujokan, on 07/03/2009, -2/+15It's not that they didn't know, it's that they didn't care.
Any analysis of whether the world is better off for the war should take pages, not just a reference to 'meat grinders'. Besides the tens of thousands who died due to the war, the ethnic cleansing and millions of refugees, you also need to consider wider effects. Pakistan wouldn't be in the state it is now if we'd finished the job in Afghanistan. Iran wouldn't be one of the major powers in Iraqi politics. Destabilization of the whole area, including Jordan and other neighboring countries, is a real concern. Who knows where Iraq goes from here (e.g. the Kurdish area) or what would have happened otherwise?
The atrocities that pro-war people are so upset about now were happening when Rumsfeld was shaking hands with Saddam. It's just for the sake of convenience that they are soft-hearted about this when they are hard-hearted about death and chaos as the outcome of foreign policy they agree with. When it comes to funding terrorism, look at Saudi Arabia. When it comes to destabilization, look at the Taliban. That dog won't hunt, monsignor. - Homerr, on 07/03/2009, -5/+18Nuance at it's most basic level like this is where the Bush foreign policy failed miserably.
- theodenking, on 07/03/2009, -1/+13@arpad
Saddam may have been guilty of all those things, but deposing him made things worse. To date the invasion and occupation has killed more Iraqis than Saddam ever did. His regime had a handful of proven links to Palestinian terrorism but no more (not al-Queda). Now not only is the warzone in Iraq physically a training ground for would-be international terrorists but the global bad-will towards the west drummed up by the invasion of Iraq has swelled the ranks of Islamist terrorists more than Saddam ever could. To quote a Ministry of Defence report: "The war in Iraq ... has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world ... Iraq has served to radicalise an already disillusioned youth and al-Qaida has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act.". That 'disillusioned youth' includes British Muslims from my own home town who killed 52 people and injured 700 more in the 2005 London bombings. You can't tell me Saddam Hussein could have caused that to happen.
Oh, and in case you haven't noticed the Middle East is still very much in turmoil. - pyrite013, on 07/03/2009, -11/+23Saddam figured he would only be invaded by national leader both crazy and stupid. Never underestimate the USA.
- sodade, on 07/02/2009, -4/+15From the BBC article:
"An accompanying NSA commentary says there is no new information about Iraq's complicated relationship with the US, such as Washington's covert backing for his regime until the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. "
Gee, I wonder why they didn't dredge up all the crimes of the CIA? - mikemx7f, on 07/03/2009, -2/+13To be fair, yellow cake uranium by itself is not a WMD, and can't even be used in weapons as is, since it needs to go through an intense refinement process first. In the state it's in it's only useful for nuclear reactors.
- RogueGenius, on 07/03/2009, -8/+19Of course he did! Iran was next door and militant. Iran had a reason to attack Iraq and the US didn't. Nobody thought the US would be stupid enough to attack Iraq unprovoked.
But they didn't count on the toothless, banjo plucking vote in this US putting the inmates in charge of the asylum. - arpad, on 07/03/2009, -5/+13No, the point was that Saddam invaded Kuwait, got kicked out and to hang onto power signed an agreement to bring Desert Storm to an end. Part of that agreement was that affirmatively assist the weapons inspectors.
You know, high government official along to sort out any confusion on the part of local authorities, police escort clearing the way for them where ever they went, all doors with locks left unlocked and the people who ran facilities under inspection available for interview. Stuff like that.
That alone would've been enough to *resume* hostilities but Saddam did lots more that abrogated the agreement that left him in power. But Saddam decided to take the chance that this new president - Clinton - wouldn't have the stomach to enforce the agreement and he was right. It took George Bush to enforce the agreement and even then it took 9/11 put an end to our patience. - paradigmx, on 07/03/2009, -0/+8"Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it"
- Suil, on 07/03/2009, -3/+11Iran is a Shia; the Taliban follows a Wahabbi brand of Islam. Wahabbis generally do not consider Shia Muslims to be 'true Muslims'. From a political standpoint, Iran wanted to support the overthrow of the Taleban to increase their sphere of influence and, conveniently, the Northern Alliance was a primarily Shia force mixed with other factions, including Iranian Persians.
Similar can be said for Iraq; Iran is the only country in the region that had a vested interest in the success of America's actions in Iraq; both to increase their sphere of influence (bringing a new member into the Shi'a crescent), remove the threat from Iraq and avoid a failed state next door.
Ofcourse Iran helped and supported the west in removing the two major bulwarks to their expansionism in the Middle East. The key foreign policy question for the west now is what to do about Iran going nuclear, which they are heading towards with gusto. - inactive, on 07/03/2009, -2/+9If the US government knew without a doubt there were no WMD and it was all a sham, why were US soldiers sent into the scorching heat with chemical suits half-on just in case?
- Nintendesert, on 07/03/2009, -1/+8The Co being all the Democrats that funded and supported the invasion right?
- realeskimopimp, on 07/03/2009, -2/+9Here is the NYTimes piece on the "Grand Bargain," that Iran offered:
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/irans- ... - cersad, on 07/03/2009, -2/+9To all of you who claim this is government propaganda: look a little closer. This information wasn't released by the FBI but by the "National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute. [...] The institute obtained the FBI summaries through a Freedom of Information Act request and posted them on its Web site Wednesday."
So now you're going to need to prove that the FBI somehow fabricated this expecting it to get out. - arpad, on 07/03/2009, -3/+10Not that it much mattered since it was Saddam who was on the hook to convince us that he didn't have the WMDs. He chose to try to convince us he did have WMDs. What his reasons might have been were immaterial as was whether he had WMDs or not.
- alanocu, on 07/03/2009, -0/+7People were always comparing Iraq to Vietnam. I forget — did we win in Vietnam?
- JaseFace, on 07/03/2009, -2/+8bedpost - We did arm both sides, but they kind of started the thing themselves.
- cersad, on 07/03/2009, -1/+7Pure fact. Nothing more... nothing less.
- elTito, on 07/03/2009, -2/+8I'm sorry, you're just plain wrong. Most people were on television (including many, many Democrats) literally wagering their careers on the fact that Iraq possessed WMD.
Lefties pretend as though the Bush administration filtered intelligence passed to Congress, and this is simply untrue. Members of Congress have access to the same intelligence as the administration, and a large majority of them were in agreement on Iraq. - elliotys, on 07/03/2009, -1/+6But, I needed a pick for my bango and I thought my teeth would work great.
- peters1023, on 07/03/2009, -0/+5Pretty sure Saddam lost. . .
- irkalla, on 07/03/2009, -1/+6Mmmmmmmmmm ... babies.
- insomniacal, on 07/03/2009, -4/+9Talk about calling his bluff!
- MisteryMeat, on 07/03/2009, -1/+5The primary purpose of the sanctions was to remove WMD's. With zero evidence of these weapons, sanctions would be lifted and oil would flow - to foreign companies.
Well that's my understanding kids, please correct me if I'm wrong. - TrancePhreak, on 07/03/2009, -0/+4"2003 invasion".... we'll just stop right there....
- nismerf, on 07/03/2009, -3/+7I just don't know what I can believe anymore. This article said yellow cake uranium was found. But I remember it got very little press post bush era.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/
No I am not pro Bush, no I am not pro war, just pro facts. - cersad, on 07/03/2009, -0/+4After the Iranian elections, do you really think the public fears Iran? Right now, the only thing that worries most of the world about Iran is its government.
- davewashere, on 07/03/2009, -3/+7This was exactly what Scott Ritter (former U.N. weapons inspector) told me was going on... back in March 2002. Saddam wouldn't allow full access to weapons inspectors because he didn't want them to report that Iraq was in compliance, which would make him appear weak to Iran. The U.S. appeared to be a relatively weak threat at the time, because Saddam never believed there would be a full-scale invasion.
- elTito, on 07/03/2009, -6/+9"But they didn't count on the toothless, banjo plucking vote in this US putting the inmates in charge of the asylum."
Spoken like someone who has truly never been outside of his own personal, warped little reality bubble.
How does it feel to be a bigot? - inajeep, on 07/03/2009, -3/+6Anyone with access to a map would realize that.
- Rikape, on 07/03/2009, -0/+3http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9SOVzMV2bc
But you said... - inactive, on 07/03/2009, -4/+7Proof in this case would have been a whole lot of dead people and nobody in the time immediatly following 9/11 was in the mood to wait around for that to happen.
- peters1023, on 07/03/2009, -0/+3So it was a conspiracy by these "contractors" to start the war?
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