Why did we go to war?

I challenge this; big surprise, huh?

You have restricted the War on Terror to a definition that is US-centric. Wasn't the War on Terror pledged to be prosecuted wherever and whenever terrorists existed? Certainly Saddam's regime in Iraq qualified as being a terrorist government-- he terrorized his own people.

 

I know; I know. If MacBeth said it, it must be true.

Can you even begin to prove this assertion? Now remember, you have to prove that: 1) a majority of Americans believed that Saddam was behind 9/11 and 2) this was due EXCLUSIVELY to administrative statements.

You have two years. Begin!!

 

Use google or Lexis Nexus, and you can prove #1 easily with any poll mentioning the two in the past year. We've had several threads where you participated and these were mentioned. You either haven't been reading anyone's elses posts or forgotten what was there if you've forgotten this.

 

Don't get into this Woofer, it's going to degenerate into a long, pointless exchange in which giddyup will split all sorts of ridiculous rhetorical hairs in order to justify #2....I can already see it now and it is giving me headaches:

"But Richard Perle RESIGNED from the defense policy board, therefore he is no longer with the administration!" "The administration didn't say that, they merely said it to Hannity and Hannity repeated it!" "Americans could have made their own judgments on the basis of their own independent analysis of the raw intelligence!" "Just because the Bush administration reinforced this misconception at every opportunity doesn't mean they EXCLUSIVELY caused it!"

Please spare us this spectacle.

 

on that basis, we should be attacking pakistan too, not making them our ally and giving them billions of dollars in aid.

 

When we were the ones to predominantly use OUR forces in 1991 and pulled out because of the agreement, we are the ones that should enforce the agreement ... From now on I don't think we should use the UN period ... It's a big political waste and is worthless now anyways.

And No the UN was not doing anything other than shuffling inspectors in only to have them shuffled right out.

 

As all the post war evidence showed, the UN inspection regimen shut down Saddams active WMD programs.

 

I'm a bit flummoxed as to how your post is meant to be a response to mine, if in fact that is what you were trying to do.

 

I see you, too, resonated to the inclusion of the word EXCLUSIVELY.

 

What does that mean? That means nothing. So if Bush did everything he could to insinuate a bogus connection to 9/11 but it can't be proved that his insinuations are the EXCLUSIVE cause of the vast majority of Americans being flat wrong on this, he's off the hook right? I wonder what you think the prize is for some of your absurd crusades.

 

1. The inspectors were working, and when the inspectors were shuffeled out as you say, that was because the U.S. was going to attack, not because the UN was flip flopping. The enforced no-fly zones were also working. Saddam wasn't a threat to anybody. Add to that the fact that there were no proposals on the way that would have done even more.

 

This is an easy question to answer, now that we know that the Bush Administration was full of sh*t during the run-up to war and that they had been planning to attack Iraq from the day Bush was inaugurated.

We attacked Iraq for two reasons:

1. Control of Iraq's oil supply
2. A Bush family vendetta

 

My, how soon we forget. After 9/11/2001 the US Government renewed its efforts to the war on terror (if there even was one before). Part of that effort was to bring weapons inspectors back into Iraq to ensure they have been complying with the UN resolutions (which we already knew they werent). After playing many games, Iraq let the inspectors in; promising total access. Something that was in UN resolution after UN resolution. After several months of playing games with the inspectors AGAIN, we made the obvious conclusion that they were playing us for a fool. Delaying access to some sights, denying certain drone planes to take pictures of facilities, protecting some facilities from being looked at at all.

The UN - like always - didnt have the balls to do anything (maybe because they were busy stuffing their pockets). 13 measures had already passed the UN security council acknowedging the aformentioned facts. The US gave Iraq the ulitimatium to give weapons inspectors total access or face war. Saddam did not comply, so we did.

 

Just as a matter of clarification. Those claims have been debunked, too.

 

the second one here is false. the President can't wage war without congress behind him. Actually, there's not much the president can do without congressional approval.

-- droxford

 

Actually the UN inspectors did say that Saddam wasn't being as cooperative as they wanted. That much is true. The drones were initially not allowed, but were later allowed unlimited access. Objections were being made to looking in to some facilities but in the end no facilities were denied access to the inspectors. The main complaint that the UN had was being allowed access to the scientists for interviews in private and outside the country of Iraq. That was the number one complaint the inspectors had.

But the weapons inspectors did find the only thing that Saddam was guilty of having at that point, missles that exceeded the range limit. At that point Saddam agreed to destroy them, and had already destroyed a number of them.

Further more there was on offer on the table to bring in not only UN inspectors but thousands of CIA and FBI agents on the ground in Iraq. Do you honestly think that they would let anything like WMD get by them?

Your claim that Saddam was playing the UN for fools didn't hold up with results of the war. What held up was that Saddam didn't have the WMD, and those of us that thought he did were the ones being turned into fools.

 

Give me a f###ing break. Saddam's "terrorism" of his own people happened IN THE 80S for Christ's sake.

If we are going after every government that "terrorizes" their own people, there is a long list that we should have attacked before Saddam.

 

They were "shuffled" out by OUR PRESIDENT when he ORDERED them out because we were going to war.

In addition, Saddam agreed to allow 2000 CIA and FBI operatives to come in and verify the UN findings, but we spurned the offer because we had already decided to go to war.