Does anybody know why the US invaded Iraq in 2003?

[G-SE]

I don’t know, you could always ask the Democrats:

“There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has invigorated 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, December 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 mandated 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

“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

“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

“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

“Saddam Hussein’s regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal.” Senator John Edwards (D-NC), October 10, 2002

“While the distance between the United States and Iraq is great, Saddam Hussein’s ability to use his chemical and biological weapons against us is not constrained by geography - it can be accomplished in a number of different ways - which is what makes this threat so real and persuasive.” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), October 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

“The essential facts are known. We know of the weapons in Saddam’s possession: chemical, biological, and nuclear in time. We know of his unequaled willingness to use them. We know his history. His invasions of his neighbors. His dreams of achieving hegemonic control over the Arab world. His record of anti-American rage. His willingness to terrorize, to slaughter, to suppress his own people and others. We need not stretch to imagine nightmare scenarios in which Saddam makes common cause with the terrorists who want to kill us Americans and destroy our way of life.” Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), September 13, 2002

“Make no mistake: Saddam Hussein is a ruthless tyrant, and he must give up his weapons of mass destruction. We support the President in the course he has followed so far: working with Congress, working with the United Nations, insisting on strong and unfettered inspections. We must convince the world that Saddam Hussein is not America’s problem alone; he is the world’s problem. And we urge President Bush to stay this course for we are far stronger when we stand with other nations than when we stand alone.” Governor Gary Locke (D-WA), January 28, 2003 Democratic Response to President Bush’s “State of the Union” address

[DrDeth]

@G-SE

I don’t know, you could always ask the Democrats:

And, in large part, they were either correct or operating under then current intelligence.

No one can fault GWB for thinking SH had a large store of WMD pre- Blix.

It was after Blix came up empty handed that the reasons got specious.

[filmstar-en]

Having pursued the perpetrators of 9/11 to Afghanistan and bombed them to blazes that should have been it.

There was no evidence to suggest that Iraq was in anyway connected with 9/11. Nor have the supposed weapons of mass destruction been found.

However Saddam, though he was once a useful proxy for fighting Iran, went on to invade Kuwait and lobbed missiles at Israel. Thus going from friend to enemy. At a time, when the neo-cons were looking for state sized enemy to deal with and release huge war-time expenditure. Chasing nebulous terrorist organisations around the world was not enough. The US military machine is designed to fight wars with other states.

Iraq was an expensive adventure that has achieved little and cost much. In fact it has strengthened the hand of states like Iran and the remnants of Al Qaeda.

But some people got rich.

Its net effect was to move large amounts of money from the public finances of the US economy and into the private hands of participating companies.

The first Gulf war cost the US very little, it was financed by the Saudis, Kuwaitis and other interested nations. The second Gulf War was hugely expensive. With little prospect of it being recouped in any way.

Why did the US invade Iraq in 2003?

So JWBs friends could raid the cookie jar?

[DrDeth]

@filmstar-en

There was no evidence to suggest that Iraq was in anyway connected with 9/11.

Nor have the supposed weapons of mass destruction been found.

Well, other than celebrations, no.

They did find them. Lost and rusting in the desert. Some few truckloads were likely shipped to Syria.

But no, in 2003 SH’s WMDs were absolutely no threat to the Western world.

[BrokenBriton]

@DrDeth

And, in large part, they were either correct or operating under then current intelligence.

No one can fault GWB for thinking SH had a large store of WMD pre- Blix.

It was after Blix came up empty handed that the reasons got specious.

Sorry, but that is nonsense. UNSCOM conducted inspections and destroyed materials for 8 years during the 90s:

In June, 1999, Ritter responded to an interviewer, saying: "When you ask the question, ‘Does Iraq possess militarily viable biological or chemical weapons?’ the answer is no! It is a resounding NO. Can Iraq produce today chemical weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Can Iraq produce biological weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Ballistic missiles? No! It is ‘no’ across the board. So from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed. Iraq today possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction capability.

Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

[split_p_j]

@tomndebb

The article to which BrainGlutton linked provides one view of the motives.

However, there is more to the “Plan B” than that post describes. The Neo-Cons mentioned in the article were part of a larger group of people who had formed the think tank, Project for the New American Century. (The 20th Century was the old American Century.)

They believed that the U.S. had the right and obligation to shape the world in the manner that it deemed most appropriate. One of its key concepts was the need to establish an “American” style democracy in the Middle east that would, through its social and economic successes, become a beacon to all the other Middle Eastern nations to switch over to a similar form of government and economic system. It had to be a country that was sufficiently populous with sufficient wealth to actually provide influence in the region. Syria was populous, but lacking in wealth. Jordan was neither wealthy nor populous. Lebanon was shattered and had become a Syrian puppet and Israeli military playground. Iran would have been ideal, had it not had an overwhelming hostility against the U.S. after suffering under a U.S. imposed dictator for decades. And so it went with Kuwait, Yemen, Bahrain, etc. Saudi Arabia and Egypt had their own problems, not least being that they were nominal allies of the U.S., making a hostile takeover problematic from the perspective of imposing “democracy.” Iraq was chosen as the best prospect for such an activity. It did not hurt that Iraq was already mistrusted by all its neighbors (save Syria), and had significant oil reserves.

Paul Wolfowitz wrote a naive paper in the late 1990s that was pretty much a masterpiece of ignorance, in which he expressed the idea that the Iraqi people would be delighted to simply fall in line with “American” ideals in the fashion of Germany and Japan following WWII, completely ignoring the artificial nature of the nation of Iraq: the ethnic and religious conflicts that already governed most of its internal politics. (Hussein and the Ba’ath party were already spending significant resources suppressing the nationalist impulses of the Kurds and religious infighting among Sunni and Shi’a.) He also claimed that the oil reserves in Iraq could be used to “repay” any effort the U.S. expended to “liberate” that country, totally ignoring the fact that Iraq was massively indebted to a number of Gulf region nations following the the Iraq-Iran War and the First Gulf War and could not hope to “repay” the U.S. under its existing debt load.

The members of the PNAC loved his paper and began pushing it in Washington whenever they could. At some point, they picked up George W. Bush as a member and he, in turn, heavily populated his administration with PNAC members.
Prior to the 2000 election, (at least as early as 1999), GWB publicly expressed an interest in carrying out something similar to the Wolfowitz plan.
There has been speculation that GWB felt that his father had made a serious mistake by not taking out Hussein in the First Gulf War and was further angered at Hussein for the clumsy assassination attempt on his father in Yemen in 1993. Those motives remain speculative. Whatever else he thought, GWB definitely had bought in to the PNAC rhetoric and expressed a desire to overthrow Hussein and, probably, impose an “American” style democracy long before he took office as president.

He did not make any overt moves to carry out such a plan in the first eight months in office, but when the WTC/Pentagon attack occurred, he saw that as the opening he needed to overthrow Hussein and, beginning September 12, 2001, he was quite vocal within the White House that the WTC/Pentagon attack provided the perfect opportunity to carry out the PNAC goals.

The PNAC papers stated point blank that there was no way they could accomplish their goals short of another Pearl Harbor type event.

I and several other’s have brought the PNAC papers up on the 9/11 threads on this board. Every time, people got up in arms over it, asked me if I actually read it, ect. Then they dismissed them as not relevant.

Now you bring PNAC up as a possible motive to invade Iraq, and no one says a word. But remember, there is no invasion of Iraq without 9/11.

I guess the neocons should be thanking “al Qaeda” for attacking and giving them their new Pearl Harbor. Or could something else be going on here.

[tomndebb]

@split_p_j

Now you bring PNAC up as a possible motive to invade Iraq, and no one says a word. But remember, there is no invasion of Iraq without 9/11.

I guess the neocons should be thanking “al Qaeda” for attacking and giving them their new Pearl Harbor.

Which was pretty much my point when I noted

He did not make any overt moves to carry out such a plan in the first eight months in office, but when the WTC/Pentagon attack occurred, he saw that as the opening he needed to overthrow Hussein. . . .

[NotfooledbyW]

“I don’t know, you could always ask the Democrats”: “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) -cited by G-SE August 16, 2013 07:51 PM

GT-E must have supported the Bush’s decision to invade Iraq because it is mostly those who supported the invasion who cite the above by John Kerry in this edited manner by cutting Kerry off in mid-statement to revise the context from the speech givers’ intent.

What GT-E managed to cite I have underlined in the his full excerpt of the speech. Just look at how right wingers distorted what Kerry said by skipping over complete sentences to misquote what Kerry actually said.

Where GT-E’s source cut Kerry’s sentence in half is underlined and in red.

Making a speech at Georgetown University on 23 January 2003, during the build-up to the war with Iraq, Senator John Kerry said:

Second, without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. He miscalculated an eight-year war with Iran. He miscalculated the invasion of Kuwait. He miscalculated America’s response to that act of naked aggression. He miscalculated the result of setting oil rigs on fire. He miscalculated the impact of sending scuds into Israel and trying to assassinate an American President. He miscalculated his own military strength. He miscalculated the Arab world’s response to his misconduct. And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm.

[COLOR=“Red”]So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real[/COLOR], but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War. Regrettably the current Administration failed to take the opportunity to bring this issue to the United Nations two years ago or immediately after September 11th, when we had such unity of spirit with our allies. When it finally did speak, it was with hasty war talk instead of a coherent call for Iraqi disarmament. And that made it possible for other Arab regimes to shift their focus to the perils of war for themselves rather than keeping the focus on the perils posed by Saddam’s deadly arsenal. Indeed, for a time, the Administration’s unilateralism, in effect, elevated Saddam in the eyes of his neighbors to a level he never would have achieved on his own, undermining America’s standing with most of the coalition partners which had joined us in repelling the invasion of Kuwait a decade ago.

In U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, the United Nations has now affirmed that Saddam Hussein must disarm or face the most serious consequences. Let me make it clear that the burden is resoundingly on Saddam Hussein to live up to the ceasefire agreement he signed and make clear to the world how he disposed of weapons he previously admitted to possessing. But the burden is also clearly on the Bush Administration to do the hard work of building a broad coalition at the U.N. and the necessary work of educating America about the rationale for war. As I have said frequently and repeat here today, the United States should never go to war because it wants to, the United States should go to war because we have to. And we don’t have to until we have exhausted the remedies available, built legitimacy and earned the consent of the American people, absent, of course, an imminent threat requiring urgent action.

What’s with this cherry-picked quotes being cited so often from the right?

[septimus]

@NotfooledbyW

What’s with this cherry-picked quotes being cited so often from the right?

It’s sad, but I pretty much ignore anything said by right-wingers these days. It’s a waste of time to hunt through the lies.

Random example:
Obama: “Insurance executives don’t do this because they’re bad people; they do this because it’s profitable.”
Hannity: “Obama said ‘Insurance executives are bad people.’”

[The_Second_Stone]

@split_p_j

The PNAC papers stated point blank that there was no way they could accomplish their goals short of another Pearl Harbor type event.

I and several other’s have brought the PNAC papers up on the 9/11 threads on this board. Every time, people got up in arms over it, asked me if I actually read it, ect. Then they dismissed them as not relevant.

Now you bring PNAC up as a possible motive to invade Iraq, and no one says a word. But remember, there is no invasion of Iraq without 9/11.

I guess the neocons should be thanking “al Qaeda” for attacking and giving them their new Pearl Harbor. Or could something else be going on here.

The neocons got their “Pearl Harbor” by standing down on all terror alerts. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but Richard Clark, the anti-terror coordinator spilled the beans on just how aggressively (my words) the Bush people ignored all the warnings. The neocons got what they wanted and acted according to their PNAC white paper drafted in the 1990s. This was a smoking gun. They wanted this war to reorganize the Middle East politically through military means. It continues to this day. And yes, whenever the PNAC document is trotted out as an example of a call for a Pearl Harbor style disaster to bring this country to war, the howling on even this board gets extreme. I’m rather surprised that the howlers haven’t found this thread yet.

When someone writes a plan as an architect, and then it comes to fruition through their actions as the builders, there is a strong inference that those people caused the events, rather than some fake reasons they offered for their acts that turned out to be untrue.

[BrokenBriton]

When are some of you people going to grasp the issue is the entire political class, and even system - flagging up a politician from one party lied isn’t really going to knock anyone over …

[NotfooledbyW]

@G-SE

I don’t know, you could always ask the Democrats:

@DrDeth

And, in large part, they were either correct or operating under then current intelligence. No one can fault GWB for thinking SH had a large store of WMD pre- Blix. It was after Blix came up empty handed that the reasons got specious.

DrDeth has a valid point for G-SE, and I would add that whereas all but three of those Democrat’s statements were prior to Mid-December 2002. The fact is that Saddam Hussein made an offer in Mid-December 2002 to let the CIA, FBI and US Military WMD experts enter Iraq and look for WMD alongside the UN Inspectors.

There is no excuse or rationale for pro-Bush types to continue to accept that there was some kind of intelligence failure with regard to Iraq’s stockpiles of WMD and active WMD programs.

Bush has never been asked why he did not at least test that offer from Saddam Hussein. The White House response at the time the offer was made was that the U.S. expected the UN to handle it. I would really be interested to find out if GT-E has an explanation as to why Bush did not allow or insist that the CIA go into Iraq.

Ravenman put up an explanation a while back but it was not very good. I’d like to see what a Bush supporter has to say about the peace offer by Iraq in December 2002.

The Democrats did not reject the offer. So why should we ask Democrats who said things prior to the offer being made?

[NotfooledbyW]

@BrokenBriton

When are some of you people going to grasp the issue is the entire political class, and even system - flagging up a politician from one party lied isn’t really going to knock anyone over …

The President of the United States lied to all of us on the day that he announced that he had no choice but to order the invasion of Iraq and his lie was exactly this:

We have sent hundreds of weapons inspectors to oversee the disarmament of Iraq. Our good faith has not been returned.

About Iraq’s failure to comply with 1441 - Not once but twice:

The Iraqi regime has used diplomacy as a ploy to gain time and advantage. It has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament.

And here I believe is the biggest Bush Lie in order to invade Iraq that he made:

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime** continues to possess and conceal **some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

He could not have possibly had actionable intelligence on March 17, 2003 worth a damn that told him that the Iraq regime continues to possess and **conceal ** the most lethal weapons ever devised.
So why should we not continue to seek answers to this deception and falsehoods that Bush handed us as the reason he ‘had to’ decide to invade Iraq instead of letting the inspections continue.
Bush decided on his own and he chose to lie and deceive on his own. He should be held fully accountable for what he said and did.

[NotfooledbyW]

@septimus

It’s sad, but I pretty much ignore anything said by right-wingers these days. It’s a waste of time to hunt through the lies.

Random example:
Obama: “Insurance executives don’t do this because they’re bad people; they do this because it’s profitable.”
Hannity: “Obama said ‘Insurance executives are bad people.’”

The ‘if you own a business - you didn’t built it’ was a classic. You didn’t build the bridge and roads that bring customers to your business but that *You did not Build that *was the main Theme of the Republican Party National Convention in 2012.

[waterj2]

@NotfooledbyW

So why should we not continue to seek answers to this deception and falsehoods that Bush handed us as the reason he ‘had to’ decide to invade Iraq instead of letting the inspections continue.
Bush decided on his own and he chose to lie and deceive on his own. He should be held fully accountable for what he said and did.

My favorite quote was from a press conference Bush did with Kofi Annan in 2004, explaining why we went to war in Iraq:

The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful.

It’s just such a blatantly obvious lie, claiming that Saddam didn’t let in the inspectors.

[NotfooledbyW]

@waterj2

My favorite quote was from a press conference Bush did with Kofi Annan in 2004, explaining why we went to war in Iraq:
{{The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region.}}

It’s just such a blatantly obvious lie, claiming that Saddam didn’t let in the inspectors.

In answer to the Sheikh’s OP question, I think you have to take Bush at face value from this press conference and other similar references to Saddam did not cooperate (including on March 17, 2003) and start at that point as to why Bush decided to invade Iraq before the summer heat in Baghdad set in, rather than permitting the inspection process continue.

I say starting solely with Bush’s version of why he decided to invade Iraq and then tearing that apart based upon the blatant fallacies that Bush himself has uttered, is the best way to answer Sheikh’s OP. Some or many of the underlying suggestions put forth here of political motives and greed and ideological obsessions may very well be relevant and factual, but they should be weighed separately from Bush’s own words.

Journalists within the main stream news media were not bewildered at all by Bush’s claim that inspectors were no ‘Let In’ and that is where the breakdown in journalism is so obvious and blatantly in need of repair.

Maybe they are ashamed that they didn’t get it or know the facts when Bush uttered such absurd nonsense in a press conference. I don’t think they treated it as a gaff because I believe he repeated this bogus claim at least three times.

He is basically saying it this year with the opening of his Library.

[BrokenBriton]

There was no “beakdown in journalism”, either you were with us or your organizaton got frozen out and became irrelevant.

[DrDeth]

@BrokenBriton

Sorry, but that is nonsense. UNSCOM conducted inspections and destroyed materials for 8 years during the 90s:
Iraq and weapons of mass destruction - Wikipedia

A few other quotes from that same article:
In August, 1998, absent effective monitoring, Scott Ritter remarked that Iraq could “reconstitute chemical biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program.”[59]…In 2002, Scott Ritter stated that, as of 1998, 90–95% of Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities, and long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons, had been verified as destroyed. Technical 100% verification was not possible, said Ritter, not because Iraq still had any hidden weapons, but because Iraq had preemptively destroyed some stockpiles and claimed they had never existed. Many people were surprised by Ritter’s turnaround in his view of Iraq during a period when no inspections were made.

Now that’s interesting as post Iran invasion would find those “non existent” stockpiles rusting in the desert.

NSCOM encountered various difficulties and a lack of cooperation by the Iraqi government. In 1998, UNSCOM was withdrawn at the request of the United States before Operation Desert Fox. Despite this, UNSCOM’s own estimate was that 90-95% of Iraqi WMDs had been successfully destroyed before its 1998 withdrawal. After that Iraq remained without any outside weapons inspectors for four years. During this time speculations arose that Iraq had actively resumed its WMD programmes. …
There is dispute about whether Iraq still had WMD programs after 1998 and whether its cooperation with the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was complete. Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said in January 2003 that “access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect” and Iraq had “cooperated rather well” in that regard, although “Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance of the disarmament.”[68] On March 7, in an address to the Security Council, Hans Blix stated: “Against this background, the question is now asked whether Iraq has cooperated “immediately, unconditionally and actively” with UNMOVIC, as is required under paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 (2002)… while the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as “active”, or even “proactive”, these initiatives 3–4 months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute “immediate” cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance.” Some U.S. officials understood this contradictory statement as a declaration of noncompliance.

According to reports from the previous UN inspection agency, UNSCOM, Iraq produced 600 metric tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, VX and sarin, and nearly 25,000 rockets and 15,000 artillery shells, with chemical agents, that are still unaccounted for. ." However, Hans Blix said in late January 2003 that Iraq had “not genuinely accepted UN resolutions demanding that it disarm.”[73] He claimed there were some materials which had not been accounted for. Since sites had been found which evidenced the destruction of chemical weaponry, UNSCOM was actively working with Iraq on methods to ascertain for certain whether the amounts destroyed matched up with the amounts that Iraq had produced.[74][75] In the next quarterly report, after the war, the total amount of proscribed items destroyed by UNMOVIC in Iraq can be gathered.[76] Those include:
50 deployed Al-Samoud 2 missiles
Various equipment, including vehicles, engines and warheads, related to the AS2 missiles
2 large propellant casting chambers
14 155 mm shells filled with mustard gas, the mustard gas totaling approximately 49 litres and still at high purity
Approximately 500 ml of thiodiglycol
Some 122 mm chemical warheads
Some chemical equipment
224.6 kg of expired growth media

Later they found more degraded crap rusting in the desert.

Do note that I said “But no, in 2003 SH’s WMDs were absolutely no threat to the Western world.”

In other words, stuff was missing, there was evidence more stuff was being made. We certainly had the justification to demand that SH allow Blix back in and conduct more inspections- even Blix said so. BUT, once SH did so, *there was no justification to attack. *

[DrDeth]

@waterj2

My favorite quote was from a press conference Bush did with Kofi Annan in 2004, explaining why we went to war in Iraq:It’s just such a blatantly obvious lie, claiming that Saddam didn’t let in the inspectors.

Well, for four years he didn’t.

[NotfooledbyW]

@BrokenBriton

There was no “beakdown in journalism”, either you were with us or your organizaton got frozen out and became irrelevant.

Journalists and news organizations ceasing to objectively pursue facts and report events based on facts, in order to prevent being frozen out, is a major breakdown in journalism as I see it.