The Blair admininstration was up to their eyeballs with the Bushwhackos in cookiing the books. The rest of the world "thought" no such thing, and many of the world's intelligence agencies, including many honest members of our own intelligence community, tried to tell the Bushwhackos their evidence of Saddam's alleged WMD's was bullsh8.Originally posted by: PrevaricatorJohn
You are ignoring the fact that Saddam was given 10 years to disarm and cooperate with inspectors and during that time he did neither.
You are ignoring the fact that Saddam had a history of responding to threats by cooperating with inspectors for a while. And then when the worlds attention turned away he returned to playing games and throwing up smoke screens.
You are using 20/20 hindsight, see he had no WMD, as evidence that the inspections were going to be successful. You ignore the fact that at the time of the war EVERY nation in the world believed that Saddam still had WMD. The only thing the world disagreed upon is how to deal with Saddam and his WMD stockpiles.
The US, UK and Spain thought we should go to war, France, Russia and China thought we should allow more inspections. But no matter which side of the fence they sat on they all agreed that there were still unanswered questions when it came to Saddam and his WMD programs.
They paid about as much attention to them as they did to General Eric Shinseki, who told them they'd need 300,000 - 400,000 troops to accomplish their goals in Iraq.
They paid about as much attention to them as they did to Richard Clarke, anti-terrorism expert and consultant to four administrations, who warned the Bushwhackos from day one of their administration that they needed to take stronger precautions to prevent attacks like 9-11 and told them ON 9-11, following the attack, that Iraq had nothing to do with it.
They paid about as much attention to them as they did to Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who warned them that there was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq was trying to acquire yellow cake uranium in Niger.
They paid about as much attention to them as they did to Bushlite's father, George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft who, in their book, A World Transformed, wrote:
Sound familiar? :shocked:Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different ? and perhaps barren ? outcome.
Go ahead and tell us again that the Bushwhackos' lies have been worth the lives of 3282 (and counting) American troops, tens of thousands more American wounded, many scarred and disabled for life, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians dead, wounded or displaced and trillions dollars in debt our great grandchildren will be paying long after we're gone.
