20 years ago, the U.S. warned of Iraq's alleged 'weapons of mass destruction'

The source... Seymour Hersh.

 

Only if Hussain would have given up his WMDs, the US would never have invaded.

 

The lowest point of Colin Powell's career that he himself came to regret.

It's almost impossible to know how the world have turned out if we didn't invade Iraq. Over 4,000 US troops and probably 100's of thousands of Iraqis paid the price for that invasion.

 

...I always came to believe (because I was in the service at the time of the first Gulf War), that if there was ever to be any time to change the status quo in the Middle East, that was the time to do it.

...I remember Norman Schwarzkopf practically begging President Bush Sr. at the time to go on into Iraq and get Saddam Hussein out of there. We had the international mandate (an actual "coalition of the willing"), not to mention the willingness of the Iraqi people, to see if a truly democratic nation-building experiment, not unlike what happened with Japan after WW2, could actually take place.

It wouldn't have happened overnight. It would have been a massive commitment to the region, but we've done that in a roundabout way for the past 20 years anyway. But it certainly was more possible then than at any time since.

...I don't know if "Stormin' Norman" actually said any of that stuff to Bush Sr. beyond just going in and rooting out Hussein.

...that was all my idea.

 

Sadaam committed genocide against his own people and was generally sabre rattling against his neighbors and "The West". He has used chemical weapons against his enemies domestically and abroad (and our enemies for the matter) but he want from a necessary evil in the Middle East to a rogue, evil entity.

WMDs aside, I think there is a good rationale for removing Sadaam and leaders like Sadaam from power who commit genocide and become a rogue state. BUT how we did it was tremendously arrogant and short-sighted. Moreso, I wish there was a better system for removing leaders of rogue states that didn't involve the US doing much of the dirty work.

North Korea is a different animal and one where we may regret not taking military action against.

 

Israel pushed hard for a war in Iran.
Cheney and other neocons were teliing Israel they were going to hit Iraq first.

They were going to get their "free" ME war no matter what.

 

Saddam was horribly brutal and did commit many attrocities. The problem was that so many other leaders have done the same including at the sametime that Saddam was in power and we either turned a blind eye or even supported them. In fact we tacitly supported Iraq during the Iran Iraq war.

In an ideal world there shouldn't be a Saddam or Saddam could be removed without other repurcussions and Iraq becomes a liberal democratic state (emphasis on small 'l'). That wasn't true then or now and the GW Bush Administration was either blinded by their belief in themselves or just incompetant in the rush to war. It always was going to be difficult to hold Iraq together once Saddam was gone. It always was going to have other repercussions for the region and many not good. Powell knew that himself when he told Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney that if you break it you own it. Yet he was still the good soldier and went along with it out of his sense of duty.

And again more than 4,000 US troops and hundres of thousands of Iraqis paid the price.

 

Would have been a hell of a lot better to just buy him off (again) and focus on Afghanistan.