Quote:
Originally posted by ltl/fb
What do you think was the underlying reason for the war, then, if WMDs were a pretext?
|
I think that after Guld war I, the conventional wisdowm was that Saddam would fall to the Shiites and the Kurds. HW Bush has said many times that that was what he assumed. Saddam lasted longer than anyone imagined. The no flight zones were gettting harder to enforce and it was just a matter of time before one of our pilots got shot down and was captured by Saddam. He had completely disregarded the treaty that ended Gulf War I and the sanctions were only hurting the natives. The status quo couldn't last. The US had the choice of giving up on forcing him to comply with the treaty and cooperating wiht the inspectors or invade. After 9-11, I think the administration decided that this what not a time to act weak by giving up on enforcing the treaty and giving up on the Weapons Inspections. In addition, they probably thought that considering there were terrorists out there it was just a matter of time before they hooked up with the Iraqi regime. So the choice was 1) leave a hostile regime, that might hook up with other terrorrists (maybe giving them a WMD) that is constantly thumbing its nose at us by shooting at our planes and stopping the inspectors, and since we had fought him before, new we could take him out pretty easily, 2) or invade, solve all those problems and show the terrorists and the rest of the world that rules had completely changed after 9-11.
Number 2 was the only choice. They just tried to package it the best they could.
