There might have been a justification. As Bosnia and the situation in Africa has shown, there might be times when severe human rights violations justify action. But to prevent this from being an excuse for aggression, it needs international approval. So, the legitimate thing to do was to go to the UN and the American people saying that Saddam was evil, and should be removed. No lie there.
But this wouldn’t have worked for a few reasons. First, there are a lot more evil people around than Saddam, so we’d have to wonder why we didn’t go after them first. Second, the polls at the time showed that there would not be support for such a move in the US. Therefore the came up with Bushit about WMDs and the link to terrorism, and found an imminent threat to justify starting the war before it became absolutely clear that there were no WMDs where we thought there were.
The excuse of “WMD related activities” is particularly lame when you consider the urgency with which the invasion was justified. Even if there were more activities than there seem to have been, I don’t think Iraq would have made it from drawing board to launch site in a matter of weeks with inspectors in the area.
I still think a well defined set of principles about when and how to intervene to stop human rights abuses would be good. Iraq probably would have failed any such test, and might have made such policies harder to enact.
BTW, I would feel much safer in a world with bin Laden caught or dead, fewer aQ members, a better controlled Afghanistan, and Saddam being watched by inspectors than the one we’re in now.
I am in absolutely no doubt that the Bush administration was lying about the reasons for the war. I knew they were lying right from the start. It was so blindingly obvious that I am slightly amazed at all the people who say they believed the Bush administration and felt let down when WMDs weren’t found.
In spite of the fact that I knew they were lying, I still reckoned the war was probably a good idea. The reason for this was because the REAL reasons for the war were such that they couldn’t tell the truth. The sanctions may have been working in one respect (stopping Saddam acquiring WMD or whatever) but they were failing massively in another respect - they were getting the muslim world increasingly angry. They were like an open sore.
Every single muslim demonstration that occured during the 90s and early 00s focused on two main issues - Palestine and the sanctions against Iraq. The sanctions had to go, they were a major recruiting tool for al Qaida and the like. But there was absolutely NO WAY that they were going to drop the sanctions with Saddam still in charge. NO WAY. They had been bombing him for ten years prior to gulf war 2 - they didn’t trust him an inch.
So the only way to get rid of the sanctions was to get rid of Saddam. Getting rid of the sanctions was the object but they had to make up various reasons to justify a war and the whole endeavour was made easier by the fact that the Iraqis themselves hated Saddam anyway and so wouldn’t be too bothered about getting rid of him.
Another reason for getting rid of Saddam was an attempt to introduce democracy into the middle east (the Iraqis having been judged to be sophisticated enough to deal with the idea of democracy). The introduction of democracy would be another nail in the coffin for the terrorists (who draw a lot of support from the unrepresented).
So the Iraq war was really about killing off al Qaida - but just not in the way it has been presented to us. Now obviously, in the years following an invasion of a soveriegn muslim country, the muslims are going to be really pissed off and things are going to get worse before they get better. But once things have calmed down, the sanctions will be gone, Saddam will be gone, Iraq will be richer and will have some kind of representative government.
However, although I could see that an invasion of Iraq was probably a good idea, I always thought that America should get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. I thought Kerry made a valid point in the debate about America building huge bases there - I agree with Kerry that this is a mistake.
In fact, I think the best thing now would be for Kerry to be elected President and then he can start to disengage America from the situation as much as possible. By building bases there and by giving contracts to Halliburton etc Bush is playing into the hands of the muslim extremists who claim it’s all an oil grab and an attempt by America to take over part of the middle east. He is therefore making another terrorist attack on America (and elsewhere) more likely.
Bush was needed in order to get the attack on Iraq out of the way but he’s done his job now and can go. As I said before I am completely convinced that they planned to do Iraq long before they ever came to power for a number of reasons - the reasons I gave above but also there is some truth to the idea of wanting to establish another oil supplier in the region in case Saudi goes up. I am also completely convinced that everything they said about WMDs and terrorist connections were lies.
I can’t believe anyone believed them really. This is no big deal though - politics is all about controlled lying. I don’t mind them lying as long as they are doing it for the right reasons.
Oh other reasons for the Iraq war concern Iran and the Palestine situation. Saddam was a pretty hardline supporter of the militant Palestinians. It gave him something to rage about to his people and not have to deal with his own internal problems. The Palestine situation can only be helped by not having Saddam in the mix.
And a peaceful, wealthy, democratic Iraq could have repurcussions in Iran.
However, just so I am not accused of being remiss in my duties, allow me to ask you for a cite. And in order to facilitate the discussion, allow me to provide a few.
“The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.”
This was from Feburary 98. I think it demonstrates pretty clearly that AQ was quite pissed about the sanction regime and was indeed using it as a recruitment tool.
Perhaps you can provide a link to some documentation which disproves this?
And this is an excuse, in your eyes, to tell the world a pack of lies as an excuse to bomb the bejasus out of Iraq - murdering thousands of innocent civilians??
After the Afghanistan fiasco, the USA was in breach of the Geneva convention concerning treatment of prisoners , for starters. Or do the same rules not apply to the USA?
Surely the main point here is that Iraq was not a threat to the USA, and there was no justification to attack it, apart from the lies made up by Bush/BlairCo.
Boy, silly me. I always thought it might be up to the U.N. Security Council to decide who was in violation of their resolutions and what the appropriate action should be. Now, I realize that it is in fact the role of the U.S. to decide.
To this point, the discussion was directed towards credibility insofar as people possessed of reasoning and critical abilities were concerned.
The joke post rightly reminds us that the demographic is a tiny sliver of the US electorate. Rather, to bring the focus onto the majority, barely the slenderest ‘justification’ was necessary.
However asinine, devious or irrational the justification, it was immaterial. Reasons had no part to play in buying public support. It was all about a bloodfest when the monkeys were howling for it.
Well, the sanctions were certainly an issue in the Islamic world and did serve as recruiting leverage for radicals and extremists, that’s true. However, I question the wisdom of replacing the sanctions with a recruitment programme order of magnitudes greater than any sanctions could ever be. Talk about feeding the fire.
It is refreshing though to see a portion of Americans are waking up to what was done in their name, including some servicemen in Iraq. Now, if only certain usual suspects could acknowledge such concerns…
To answer the OP: not unless the different explanation were in fact more credible to begin with, and even then there are obstacles to doing as one pleases on the world stage. There simply isn’t a right to supercede a distant state’s sovereignty based on some imaginary pretext, so the justification must be solid. Normally that is what the UN is for, it is among other things a forum for scrutiny of possible human rights abuses by any nation, dispute resolution, formulation and issue of warnings, collection and analysis of evidence, and even war. The slight problem for the Bushites was that the UNSC wouldn’t respond to the kind of propaganda and fear-mongering the administration successfully employed domestically, so that particular avenue was ditched fairly rapidly in the build-up to the war (accompanied by endless demonizations of the UN by ignoramuses in government (not just US but also UK) and in the populace). Other than the UN, no provision for action against a far-away non-bellicose sovereign state exists, as far as I know.
Now, Pervert, please. I’ll refer you to the last discussion we were having on the “If Bush’s flaws are so obvious…” thread, packed with citations about what actually happened during the weapons inspections, not to mention before and after the war, in the hope that you will change your reconsider your position of White House Spokesman.
I’ll just address this one execrable passage in your conclusion above:
Compared to the Iraq war it was a trifle and you know it.
You are good, pervert, but I think you have to be better to pull this kind of thing off on this message board. This is the same technique you employed when you were faced with thousands of quoted words to the effect that the war and subsequent planning in Iraq were inadequate (in the afore-mentioned thread). What you did then was try to turn the debate around by avoiding providing direct challenges to the arguments and evidence given, instead asking if “we” thought more troops would have helped (implying --similarly as you imply above-- that they wouldn’t have, when the lowish troop count was one of the most heavily criticized failings in this war and a heavily discussed topic in the numerous citations provided!). You then proceeded with a long series of equivocations that went nowhere, but that would have passed for legitimate discussion to the eyes of the casual reader. An excellent propaganda tactic, and one employed by the very same administration under criticism.
In the passage quoted above you are taking virtually incontrovertible facts – that we are less safe today, that terrorists are recruiting more thanks to sentiments engendered by our efforts, that Iraq had little or nothing to do with the precious War on Terror, etc. – and avoiding the issues by hand-waving and equivocating about them until they are reduced to a grey, meaningless pulp.
To answer your questions, in the hope they were posed honestly and not presented as the obfuscatory techniques they came across:
Yes, I think continuing the pre-war programmes would probably have resulted in a safer situation than we face now. Oil for food could have been reformed to make up for its apparent shortcomings, since it otherwise worked fairly well. Containing Iraq was working perfectly, as we have seen, and there is no reason to think the system couldn’t have lasted another few years while Saddam’s ambitions were further discouraged. Weapons inspections effectively got rid of Saddam’s weaponry and programmes, and credible indications suggest Saddam thought WMD development was simply not worth the risk. US troops in Saudi Arabia were an irritant to the extremists who claim Americans shouldn’t trample on holy land and all that, but you’ve now gone from a few controversial military bases to a not entirely unfounded perception of a “clash of civilizations” (de Villepin) between America and a few increasingly unwilling stooges and Arabs and Muslims. You’ve upped the radicalization rate, driven new recruits into the waiting arms of extremist organizations, and validated the inflammatory rhetoric employed against the US not just in the Arab or Muslim world, but all over the globe. Let’s not even discuss America’s vanishing credibility, a development that hardly increases one’s sense of safety.
In the meanwhile, as the efforts of ideological cretins were focused on Iraq, North Korea was arming itself and making its shrill and unreasonable demands, risking destabilization of the entire region as the six-country talks tried to grind away without the US (amusing, since the US is North Korea’s chief concern). Iran became increasingly defiant and may even have played a part in steering the hand of the brainless towards Iraq. The North Caucasus marched towards a critical situation, of which the Beslan tragedy is simply a recent exposition, apparently planned in conjunction with al Qaeda to destablize the region – not for any Chechnyan independence movement but rather to radicalize populations and upset Ingushetia and other neighbours. There is anger and resentment of an unprecedented scale in MENA as Israel apparently does as it pleases against Palestinians, and the US not only fails to act as restraint for the Israeli right-wing hawks, but instead sets about killing Muslims on egregiously false pretexts.
Bush and co must have known the evidence they were presenting was bogus. They had to retreat from the UN when it became clear that no automatic war would ever be authorized by any resolution based on sloppy evidence, and given the existence of better alternatives (such as weapons inspections, which in spite of the low-brow propaganda we’ve heard so often, were working). If only Bush had been able to do half the job his father managed, to earn UN and especially regional cooperation to deal with a credible danger, many of these problems could have been avoided. But since there was no credible threat the US was forced to go it alone, misleading or arm-twisting a series of countries (including mighty warrior states and global policy leaders such as Iceland and Eritrea) into forming a “coalition of the willing” – willing to engage in reckless idiocy, that is, as many of them (including the previously stalwart Poland) are beginning to find out.
Please let me know if and why you don’t think this general trend is hazardous not just in terms of America, but globally. While it is true the sanctions regime was used by some to encourage terrorist recruitment, are you seriously suggesting that it was anywhere near as significant in scale or severity as the unilateral ex-UN war against an effectively hapless Iraq, an illegal war of aggression not supported by a single piece of credible evidence? I would find such a view incredibly hard to support, yet you appear to be implying precisely that (without evidence).
The invasion of Afghanistan and getting Bin Laden should have been A-1 top priority while allowing the UN to do its job in Iraq. There was absolutely no need to rush into Iraq. Iraq became the perfect distraction Bin Laden needed to disappear. And, it is correct (and disgraceful) that Bush outsourced the burden onto Afghani sympathizers to our cause (what an oxymoron that is) to help the big, bad USA - despite all its intellegence sources - find Bin Laden. Who’s to say they weren’t deliberately leading us in circles? If you want something done right, you do it yourself. (This may be oversimplifying, but can’t satellite IR imagery help monitor activity in those mountains, esp w/how cool it gets up there, etc.? Surely it might help narrow down the mostlikely spots to explore and suspicious patterns to study…for a more strategic search, etc? )
Our top priority should have been to focus on Bin Laden and Al-Queda…as opposed to declaring war on ALL terrorists…a hyper-Herculean task, indeed!
The invasion of Afghanistan was justified, but then Bush’s administration dropped the ball…perhaps allowing Bin Laden to slip right through our fingers. At the same time, we should have been watching Iraq closely to better justify our position.
Bush, Jr. was itching to finish the job his father started. He’s now dragged us into something that we cannot get out of successfully. It is speculation on my part, but I believe it is not that much of a stretch to say that we’ve created a vacuum in Iraq waiting to collapse in upon itself (once we pull out) as the new government is not popular with those skilled in guerilla warfare…juct looking for the chance for a coup. Furthermore, I know Bush’s pride prevents him from pulling out. There is no way he can save face other than “staying the course”.
Last, I am surprised Congress is not equally under fire for the continued funding of this war. When is it time for Congress to pull the plug? Why aren’t we, the constituents, and the media as well, demanding more answers from Congress about when enough is enough. Afterall citizens, there IS still a balance of power by checks and balances in the USA, or at least I hope so. Bush didn’t do this deed all by himself. It’s time to demand Congress re-assess the situation based on the current evidence - not the old, flawed evidence - and flex their muscle to send a message to the White House! If not, then let’s remember we can send a message to Congress come Election Day, too! - Jinx
Knee jerk, huh! Injure somebody, huh?? Perhaps you would think differently if you had lived in a country like this, where we have had over 30 years of terrorist activity, largely financed on both sides by money collected in the USA … if your house had been bombed, if your close friend had been gunned down in the street, if your infant child had nearly been killed escaping from a bombed building … I could go into more detail about my experiences, but I doubt if you give a damn.
While what happened here could be considered small scale in comparison to what is occurring now in Iraq - at least I have some experience of trying to carry on a ‘normal’ life in a war situation. Have you?
Do I? How do I know this? How do you, for that matter? It is mentioned in most of the prominent AQ statements. It is mentioned quite prominently. How, exactly, do you measure the recruitment effect it has had?
As I said there, I asked a simple question.
Well, no, I’m not doing anything like this. I’m really asking a simple question. You say that more people are being recruited by AQ than before the war. Indeed, you now say that more people by an order of magnitude are being recruited. I’m simply questioning this assertion. Surely you are not basing this on the press coverage of AQ since the invasion.
This is a fair opinion. I can respect it. I don’t agree, but I can respect it.
How many of those shortcomings did we even know about before the invasion?
I completely disagree with this. Saddam was continuing to withold his cooperation to the inspections. I agree he did not turn out to have much in the way of active programs. But this was only because of a large scale war and over a decade of invasive inspections. It had very little to do with Saddam being discouraged.
I have no idea what credible sources you are talking about.
Enough of an irritant that they orchestrated several terrorist attacks on America and others throughout the 90s.
I don’t think I have ever said that the current course of events was not hazardous. I simply contend that it has a light at the end of the tunnel. An end point. But I never said it was without dangers. Dangers unique, even from the alternative.
Yes.
What sort of evidence would you like. I gave evidence that the Iraq situation was quite prominent in AQ statements before the invasion. Not a minor irritant, but a prominant complaint. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to how you measure the effectiveness of AQ recruiting techniques. If we can agree on such a measure, perhaps we could compare the before and after picture.
Allow me to summarize my position. I agree that the Iraq war is being used as a recruiting tool by AQ. I contend that the inspection regime was also being used this way. My opinon is that very little could be done by the US to deter AQ from using its actions as a recruiting tool. However, I also think that the Iraqi occupation has an end date in sight. The inspection regime did not. Remember, Saddam was not likely to give up power very soon. And when he did, his sons were more likely than anyone to take over.
If you project the Iraqi occupation out to 5 or even 10 years, it still becomes shorter than the inspection regime. Now, if you are correct and the inspection regime was nothing more than a minor irritant to AQ, then this time difference would have to be quite large indeed to make up for it. If, however, it was far more than a minor irritant, if it was, infact, comparable (in terms of recruitment power) this time difference alone might make the war worth while.
I have not even begun to address the possibility that the war shortened the Iraqi people’s oppression, that it provides a singular opportunity to transform MENA (another issue raised by AQ and the like) which the inspection regime could not supply, nor that the war allows the US to fight said terrorists in Iraq as opposed to elsewhere.
For the sake of this thread, let’s just agree to disagree on all of the other issues. We can simply stick to the proposition that the occupation is or is not a greater recruitment tool to AQ than the inspection regime. Specifically whether or not any difference makes the world safer or not. Fair enough?
A bold statement, to disagree with General Zinni. He is the man who was responsible for the containment and sanctions regime. He has been vocal about its effectiveness. You may recall I referred you to his analysis in an earlier thread. Abe’s opinion matches Zinni’s.
Conversely, is there a serious argument to be made that pervert knows better than General Zinni? It is a hard sell.
I think it’s arguable either way really. My take is similar but slightly different to perverts. I take a more practical view. The fact is the sanctions were there and were pissing off the muslim world more and more with each passing year.
The problem was that there was no real likelihood of the sanctions ever being removed. I know that some on the left think that the sanctions should have been dropped for various reasons but the fact is that no American administration was ever going to drop them while Saddam was there. The sanctions were upheld by various Administrations (republican and democrat) and there was no serious desire to remove them even in the UN.
So the sanctions would have just kept on going for year after year. Even if Saddam died, say, then his even-madder sons would have taken over so the sanctions wouldn’t have been dropped even then. So what are we going to do - sanction Iraq for the next 100 years?
Whilst it’s true that the war is bound to cause great hostility, at least a war is a finite thing. So this hostility will burn brightest during and just after the war and then tail off as the years go by. The sanctions, being an ongoing thing, just keep the hostility going.
Even if democracy in Iraq doesn’t work and another dictator takes power, at least the sanctions will have gone.
In purely practical terms, there was no way to get rid of the sanctions without getting rid of Saddam. Yes they could have dropped them but they weren’t going to. No way. The war has probably served as one big recruitment tool but the sanctions were an ongoing recruitment tool. If you take the long term view then it’s probably better to have one big event and get it out of the way than to have a smaller ongoing event that never ends.
Another point to remember is that many muslims actually don’t have that much of a problem with the Iraq war. They didn’t particularly like Saddam and they recognise that most Iraqis are probably glad he’s gone. So whilst they raise a big stink about American actions in Iraq (as they should), they also see the other side of the story. At least, most muslims I know. The whole issue is not quite as one-sided as some may think. The “official” muslim position is they don’t like America and they disapprove of the war but dig a little deeper and it’s not something they are going to go on a jihad about.
Most muslims are not going to get all jihaddy about the issue. But they are watching to see when America gets out of the country. If America stays then it will become like another sanctions - another ongoing thing that gets muslims all steamed up. They don’t like interference in “their” world. So when occasions arise where we (the west) HAVE to interfere, history shows that it’s usually best to do what you’ve got to do and then get the hell out.
And secondly, if “not-pissing-off-the-muslim-world” has been such a priority for the US of late how expensive would it be for GWB to call up Ariel Sharon:
Get the fuck out of Gaza and the West Bank, by Tuesday.
Because they didn’t trust him. Please note I’m not saying whether or not I think they should have dropped the sanctions. What I think and what you think is irrelevant. I’m talking about (what I think is) the reasoning inside the corridors of power.
Personally I don’t know whether dropping the sanctions would have worked. It’s a difficult question to answer since it didn’t happen. Maybe Saddam would have undergone a Qadaffi-like epiphany and become nicer or maybe he would have just faded into obscurity. I don’t know.
But amongst the world governments there was no particular impetus to get rid of the sanctions. Yes, America hated Saddam for various personal reasons but most of the other countries in the UN didn’t have that much of a problem with the sanctions either (with the possible exception of France who made various lukewarm arguments in favour of dropping the sanctions - but even then, their heart wasn’t really in it). So no one particularly liked Saddam.
America went to war against Saddam once and then bombed him for ten years and then had another war against him to get rid of him. Does this sound like a country that was going to consider dropping the sanctions any time soon?
FACTUALLY, objectively, those sanctions were here to stay, whatever you think or I think.
America doesn’t have that kind of leverage over Israel - where they can just directly tell them what to do. They can exert pressure, sure, but only up to a point. And anyway “not pissing off the muslim world” has nothing to with Israel’s day to day security matters.
American governments always support the existence of Israel so obviously they’re not going to agree to any plan which involves getting rid of Israel (which Saddam wanted - one of his favourite slogans was “Palestine - arab from sea to sea”). So they try to promote peace but that doesn’t mean that Israel can’t take harsh measures if it decides it needs to.
Lots of muslims are bothered about the Palestine situation, it’s true, but if there was some kind of agreed settlement there then I think a lot of the resentment would die down in time (maybe hundreds of years). America is seeking a Palestine solution that is inclusive of the existence of Israel.
So whilst America does not want to piss off the muslim world, that doesn’t include stopping support of Israel. The Palestine issue on it’s own isn’t necessarily a huge recruitment tool for al Q since many people (muslims and non-muslims alike) see it as a regional conflict. It’s when the Palestine issue becomes connected to other muslim-related issues (by people like Osama) that impressionable muslims think there’s some kind of global effort against them.
I think we were headed to a discussion of whether appeasing the Muslim Arabic world was a genuine reason for ending the sanctions regime. You say it is. I can’t really dispute that.
However being as the method chosen has proved less than optimum, you have to wonder if wise heads couldn’t have done it better.
Secondly the Israel point. I dispute that the US doesn’t have that leverage over Israel. More importantly, the only serious flaw in your reply is that you equate my hypothetical 'phone call with withdrawl of support for Israel, a policy of negation.
Not so. Withdrawl from the non-Israeli occupied territories is no such thing. It does not threaten the security of Israel and would meet the goal of appeasing the Muslim Arabic world in a manner far more economical that some others.
So - Considering these, I am reluctant to accept your overall argument that the invasion was addressed to a betterment of Arab-American relations.
*I believed that Saddam Hussein was trying to pull a fast one on the U.N. inspectors in that he wanted them to give him a clean bill of health because they couldn’t find a smoking gun. In other words, a stockpile. And I don’t believe he had a stockpile. What he was very cleverly doing was building a framework that could start a program once he came out of sanctions. In other words, he had a missile system that he was allowed to have, the Al-Samud Missile System, that was limited in range. But within that missile program he could do research and development, develop special fuel systems. So it would have been easier just to extend the range and increase it as a weapons system. He had dual-use plants, pharmaceutical plants, pesticide plants, that could be turned over. He had the scientists all in place with the documentation. But what the inspectors did, what their charter was, was not to necessarily just look for a smoking gun or a stockpile, but that he was in compliance with the United Nations resolution in that he had dismantled that capability and didn’t have the ability to restart it. In addition to that, to ensure that he had destroyed previous stockpiles. And I think, again, Hans Blix, just like his predecessors Richard Butler and Rolf (Akkaus), were on to him. And what annoyed Saddam is they wouldn’t give him a clean bill of health until they could talk to the scientists, until they could assure themselves that that framework didn’t exist. And the threat was the framework. And the inspectors, including Hans Blix in my mind, would have never given him a clean bill of health for two reasons. He was in non-compliance, he wouldn’t give them access to the scientists and others. And there wasn’t full accountability of previous stocks. *
And of course, you were referign to this quote from that article regarding Zinni’s opinion on what was to be done.
Continue to contain them. Containment worked. The president has said containment didn’t work. I disagree. First of all, containment worked with the Soviet Union, the Cubans, the North Koreans, thus far. Containment was done at very low cost. In Centcom, in my time there when we had the dual containment policy, there were less troops on a day-to-day basis in the entire theater than than report to work at the Pentagon every day in the entire theater.
Or perhaps this quote about Saddam’s “capability”.
*I would call it a framework to restart building a capability. It was not capable of threatening us. It was neither imminent nor grave and gathering.
A framework to restart. Didn’t it represent something of a risk to permit that to continue indefinitely? Obviously Saddam had some future intent.
It would present a risk if you weren’t able to monitor it. Let’s say the program moved beyond the framework and he decided to weaponize it. I can’t think of any place on earth we had a more concentrated look, intelligence focus. Whether it’s satellite, whether it’s communication intercept and everything else. If he suddenly decided to take those missiles and weaponize them, if suddenly that L29 program would have flown unmanned at greater ranges, we would have seen it. And actually we had a bank of options short of war that we could have taken.
*I would call it a framework to restart building a capability. It was not capable of threatening us. It was neither imminent nor grave and gathering.
A framework to restart. Didn’t it represent something of a risk to permit that to continue indefinitely? Obviously Saddam had some future intent.
It would present a risk if you weren’t able to monitor it. Let’s say the program moved beyond the framework and he decided to weaponize it. I can’t think of any place on earth we had a more concentrated look, intelligence focus. Whether it’s satellite, whether it’s communication intercept and everything else. If he suddenly decided to take those missiles and weaponize them, if suddenly that L29 program would have flown unmanned at greater ranges, we would have seen it. And actually we had a bank of options short of war that we could have taken. *
I would draw your attention to a couple things. First of all his admission that Saddam had intent to build WMD in the future. Second his comparison to the containment of the Soviets, North Korea, and Cuba. And thirdly his emphasis on the development of missle programs. Where I disagree with Mr. Zinni is in the idea that the sort of containment we used against the communists could or should apply to Iraq. I agree that Saddam did not have missles or weapon systems capable of reacing America. I don’t think anyone ever seriously suggested that he did. The whole connection with 9-11 is that this was no longer sufficient to guarantee the safety of the United States. The fact of his intention, his location, and his ties to other enemies of the United States, is IMHO reason enough to justify the war.
So, I do not disagree in substance with what General Zinni says. I do disagree with his conclusions based on a different set of values.
I agree with your posts, Jojo. I would add that the sanctions would not necessarily have to have been lifted in order for Saddam to become a threat to teh US. Remember, the fear was that he could lend his expertise and equipment to terrorists bent on obtaining WMD. As sevastopol points out, Zinni suggests that the inspection regime was capable of keeping Saddams conventional war machine contained. Additionally, it was capable of keeping his own WMD delivery systems contained. As I said above, he was not about to build multiple ICBMs anytime soon. But, that was never the fear.