Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Obviously. But no one knew that: the UN believed he had weapons or the sanctions would have been gone, he acted like he had them, etc. The "Bush lied" rhetoric ignores all the facts. In essence what Bush said was "given what everyone belives we can't ignore it." I agree.
Guys like Ty answer: if only we let the inspectors keep looking they would have proven there were no weapons.
Problem though was that sadaam kept interfering with inspectors and only really let them in when the US put/kept 200K on the Iraq border.
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The UN was our and Israel's rubber stamp on the Iraq sanctions. We pushed for them to remain in place indefinitely, and we had Israel and the Saudis and Kuwaitis backing us up on it. The UN just followed the easiest course. Iraq also did itself no favors by shooting at UN aircraft every now and again.
The timing says it all. Bush had no justification for going to Iraq pre 9/11. Once he got the justification and political capital he needed to do so, he did it. If Iraq were always as real a threat as he claimed post 9/11, Bush would have urged us to go from the day he got elected. But he didn't, did he? I don't recall Bush running on any foreign policy involving us attacking Iraq. In fact, I believe one of his biggest campaign promises was to decrease US troop presence abroad. And Rummy was supposed to be the "Chainsaw Al" style cost cutter at the Pentagon.
Iraq was never a threat until we needed/wanted it to be one. Then it became our convenient first step in the Neocons' Middle East plan.
