I don’t understand why, if they just had to attack a country, they didn’t attack Iran. Iran actually DID have an active nuclear development program, a brutal theocratic ruler, connections to international terrorism…why the hell did Iraq get attacked when we could have attacked Iran?
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19971217&slug=2578630
You have correctly identified a portion of my last post that was misleading. I apologize for that.
If you decline to look at anything much before the time of the invasion, that’s fine with me, but you can’t then plausibly claim to understand why the invasion occurred.
How about Al Gore, September 23, 2002:
I sincerely question your summary of the American discussion concerning Iraq. I wonder what part of America you were in at the time. Prior to 9/11 and the Bush/Cheney/Blair rhetoric average Americans barely gave a shit about the the continued bombing of Iraq. It was in the background and nobody was worried about ending it. It’s like Afghanistan today - people are barely paying attention because it has gone on for so long or has no effect on our personal lives. The average American was not disagreeing “over the timing of invasion rather than its fact”. The average American was listening to the rhetoric of Bush/Cheney/Blair. That rhetoric was making the case for invasion based on imminent danger.
Your last sentence could not be more wrong. Personality was everything in this because it had no driving force without a willingness by some in power to take disparate, unrelated fears and turn them into a bogeyman.
You may be from a part of American subculture that was worried only about timing and not its fact, but I guarantee you that the rest of America wouldn’t have given a shit without the lies traveling from Bush’s lips to our ears.
Because Iran is four times as large in size, twice as populous, and heavily mountainous in many regions. The invasion would be vastly more difficult, and even less plausibly do-able with a small force, especially for a followup occupation. It also doesn’t share any borders with friendly nations that will allow convenient buildup of a massive armored force–the only relevant border it shares is with Afghanistan, itself land-locked and thus difficult to get massive armored forces into to stage, at which point they still face a mountainous border that’s not optimal for tank forces. Also, a lot of Iranians still alive remember the days of the American-backed Shah, so an occupation was even less plausibly quick and out.
Iraq, on the other hand, has a long and basically undefendable border with Saudi Arabia, and it’s mostly nice, flat desert, which is ideal for fast armored spearheads. They had Chalabi all lined up to head up a government, and the Kurds to fall back on as a friendly ethnic group. They also had a recent history of backing Iraq, and Iraq was considered one of the most western nations in the Middle East, after Israel. That the invasion would go as well as it did was very plausible; that the occupation wouldn’t be the clusterfuck it turned out to be, was at least plausible under standard Army doctrine that required three times the number of boots on the ground.
Because Iran is four or five times as big?
Seriously, we’re choosing which country to invade based on which ones are convenient?
Certainly. The war was a war of conquest; it had nothing to do with the character or alleged crimes of any of the countries there. It was just a mugging writ large. If Iran or Syria or wherever had looked like an easier target we’d have attacked it first. Iraq was supposed to be just the first; Iran would have come later. Except the Iraqis didn’t roll over and play dead as planned.
I meant to say relatively few american lives. Compared to the civil war and world war 2. The overall cost of the war is of course massive, but to me that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was wrong to go into the war in the first place. Maybe it was right to go into the war, but you should’ve prepared a lot better for the aftermath. The thing I’m asking about is why this is never the subject of discussion. (Although maybe it is, and I have just missed it.)
I don’t accept the argument that there are other countries that are worse off, and that you shouldn’t invade Iraq before you have invaded all of those. If I give aid to people who suffer from measles, that’s still a good thing, even if there are people suffering from AIDS.
In the same vein, of course it was wrong to give him weapons three decades ago. That is not a reason that you shouldn’t invade now either.
Perhaps you might explain to us how that makes it better. Is your view that Iraqi lives are worth much less than American ones? By what ratio?
And you still might tell us relative to what - it seems to many of us that the proper baseline is zero, the number that would have been lost if we’d never gotten into this clusterfuck in the first place. There are thousands of American families that have been destroyed by the useless loss of their loved members’ lives - would you tell them that their loss was relatively light? Or perhaps you simply consider the lives of servicepeople an expendable commodity - is that it, perhaps?
The Americans are the aggressors here. It’s a bad thing that the casualty rate was so lopsided, not a good one. Ideally they would either never have attacked, or been slaughtered to the last person. Low casualties just encourages them to go and mass murder someone else later.
:rolleyes: The conquest of Iraq was “giving aid” about as much as machinegunning those people with measles and AIDS would be.
“One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.”
[FONT=Verdana]–President Bill Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998[/FONT]
“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”
–President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
“Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.”
–Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998
“He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.”
–Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”
Letter to President Clinton, signed by:
– Democratic Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others, Oct. 9, 1998
“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”
-Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
“Hussein has … chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies.”
– Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
“There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.”
Letter to President Bush, Signed by:
– Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), and others, Dec 5, 2001
“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.”
– Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002
“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”
– Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
“Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.”
– Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”
– Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons…”
– Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002
“I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force—if necessary—to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.”
– Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002
“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years … We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.”
– Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002
“He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do”
– Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002
“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members … It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
– Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
“We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.”
– Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002
“Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation … And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real…”
– Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003
In a Press Release dated August 11, 2002, the United Nations Security Council censured Iraq, and discussed the adoption of Resolution 1441, stating:
It is clear from the linked Press Release that the United Nations believed, in 2002, that Iraq, with Saddam Hussein at the helm, was a dangerous loose cannon in the international arena. They had passed 17 resolutions against Iraq—since the end of the Gulf War in 1991 to force Iraq out of Kuwait—and Iraq had disregarded all of them.
Pre-invasion Iraq was no picnic for the Iraqi people:
The method of execution and the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was most certainly an unmitigated clusterfuck. But it is disingenuous to maintain that the invasion did not have international backing.
Yes, I suppose we forgot about Poland.
We might chose based on what’s possible. Our military might is not infinite. We could fight Iran to the point where they didn’t want to fight anymore–I mean, ignoring the whole nuke issue, we’d win a war with them, but I seriously doubt we have the ability to invade and completely occupy their territory: we certainly couldn’t do it without a WWII-style total war approach, and that’s politically impossible.
Irrelevant, since it was worse after.
No, it had the backing of politicians we bribed or threatened into going along, many of whom took serious political damage or lost their jobs for doing so. Most people on the planet outside the US knew that it was a bad idea, that our justifications were lies and the war an example of pure American aggression. It was after all extremely obvious.
If you are asking about my primary information sources, I go back and forth between the New York Times and Washington Post. Mostly the former. Although a registered Republican, I love our lamestream media 
Well, enough cared about what was going on so that the House passed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 by 360 to 38. There not much good I have to say about Ron Paul, but I agree with him there (he was one of nine Republicans to vote no), because once you set a national goal so clearly, it becomes hard to avoid ratcheting up, step by step, to achieve the goal regardless of possibly changed circumstances.
They couldn’t plausibly make the case until mainstream elite opinion channeled them there. Once the decision was made, based on the underlying historical causes making invasion inevitable, of course the politicians then did their job of trying to obtain public support for government policy.
The average American was barely aware that the US/UK/France had been bombing Iraq throughout the 1990’s (until France dropped out in 1998). You’ve heard the phrase that the Army is at war, and America is at the Mall? Well, throughout the Clinton and early Bush II administration, that’s how it felt at the White House, with large chunks of the President’s time spent on bomb targeting decisions. Meanwhile, in the wake of the bellicose post-9/11 mood, you had liberal hawks like Tom Friedman and Kenneth Pollack saying it would show horrible weakness not to take advantage of the present bellicose mood to take out Saddam.
Well, I was part of the subculture, if you want to call it that, which was quite aware that Iraq’s government was by far the largest user of poison gas, in war, of any nation in many decades (probably since World War I, certainly since the Italian fascists in Ethiopia). I did read, if I recall correctly, two of the pro-invasion books, and admit to being in favor of the invasion in 2002. I say this is the spirit of openness, but, really, it matters not a bit who I am and where I come from – I’d rather discuss the issues.
Earlier I showed that the alleged Bush lies were merely repetition of the conventional wisdom also spouted by top officials of the previous administration. Your colorful language did not refute this.
:rolleyes: So where are those WMDs? Those fleets of drones? those mobile WMD labs? And why did our troops completely ignore Iraqi armories (allowing them to be looted), completely ignore alleged WMD sites, and make a beeline right to the Iraqi Oil Ministry?
We knew Saddam had no WMDs. We never cared about WMDs. It was all about grabbing Iraq, its oil, using Iraq as a military base, and using its population as lab rats in an attempt to create a libertarian free market utopia. And killing Muslims for kicks.
You’re making it sound like Bush was just an innocent bystander as the world got swept up in a grassroots movement to go to war with Iraq. Bush was just a dead fish going with the flow, as Governor Palin might say?
I’m alternating between the view that you are just putting us on with this nonsense, or that you are like 20 years old and all you know of the run-up to the war is what you read on Wikipedia or something.
The smoking gun cannot be a mushroom cloud? Drones spraying chemical weapons over New York? Yellowcake uranium? Iraq giving safe harbor to Al Qaeda? Mobile biological weapons labs?
I laugh at you, sir.
There’s a crucial difference. Other people were saying that Iraq had WMD’s in the past or wanted to have WMD’s in the future. But the Bush administration was saying that Iraq was working on WMD’s in the present. That was the primary justification for the invasion given prior to the invasion.
There were plenty of people at the time who were saying this was not true. They agreed that Iraq had a history of WMD’s and wanted WMD’s in the future. But they said that Iraq had no current WMD programs. And these people were right - Iraq did not have any current WMD programs in 2003.
The Bush response to this was saying he had access to information that nobody else had. That the people who said there were no current Iraqi WMD programs were wrong because he had information that they existed. We believed that the President had better information than anyone else. And because we believed this, we agreed there was justification to invade Iraq to stop their current WMD programs.
And as I said above, the Bush administration was wrong. When we invaded Iraq, we found there were no current WMD programs.
Some supporters of the Bush administration forgave them for this error. I do not. Other people looked at the available evidence and saw the truth. If the Bush administration didn’t see the truth, it was because they made a choice to not look at the available evidence. That was wrong and the result was thousands of American and tens of thousands of Iraqis died.
Let me see if I got this straight. The War was “good” because it might help the Iraqi people, but in assessing the War’s “goodness” only American lives count, not those of the people the War was intended to help.
I’m afraid you’ll have to help us here. I can’t figure out how you’ve connected the dots to derive this strange conclusion.
It was wrong to go into that war, but you’re correct that if we did we should have prepared much better for the aftermath. Rumsfeld et al should be imprisoned for their derelictions there.
If you’re asking why that question seems to get little attention, you’re overlooking that in post-modern American politics there are two camps, which I call the Rationalists and the Stupidists. Stupidism dominates today’s political discourse in America.
Although Saddam was despicable, and tortured his enemies, much of the Iraqi suffering circa 2000 was due more to sanctions than Saddam’s evil. (Iraqis avoided becoming Saddam’s enemies :rolleyes: ). And even then, if you somehow quantify suffering you must conclude that the atrocities in, e.g., Sudan were more severe and could have been alleviated for much MUCH less than a TRILLION dollars. It’s not possible that’s unclear to you, is it?
On the matter of “intelligence misleading Bush into believing Saddam had WMD’s” anyone who believes this lie is under-informed. The one most concrete piece of “evidence” was the Niger yellowcake contract; it was thoroughly discredited by Valerie Plame’s husband; the response to that by Cheney et al clearly demonstrates their guilt and hypocrisy. I do not want to listen to people pretending there is any doubt about Bush-Cheney intelligence falsification unless they post what readings they’ve done on the yellowcake-Wilson-Plame matter.
Not we. You. The evidence that mainstream US media and politicians, of both parties, knew no such thing is overwhelming. Underlining the weakest part of your argument does not advance it overall.
Yes, you (assuming you are saying that your views were similar in 2002) were right. But the evidence then existing was against your correct view. Iraq had used lots of poison gas against Iran, many of victims of which still have medical problems. After the Iraq-Iran War, we knew Iraq still had plenty left, because inspectors had tagged it. Most Americans – certainly most who read mainstream newspapers – did not believe that the gas had disappeared, which would have been, and is, quite strange. It still of course remains a mystery what happened to it.
You are saying the GW Bush killed Muslims for kicks? Since Barack Obama is pursuing similar policies, the same would have to go for him, as the evidence for it is comparable (none). Or are you attacking US servicepersons, saying that atrocities done for kicks are their norm? Or are you just trying to enrage anyone whose thinking is from the other side of the street?
I don’t know how to put this claim to the test. I guess that there were some years when Saddam massacred fewer Iraqi innocents than others, and maybe “circa 2000” was among them.
If you are right, you might take it up with some people on this board who have suggested sanctions worked well and presumably would have continued them to the present day.