Joe Nation wrote:So, on September 10th, 2001, Iraq was an imminent threat to his neighbors? Bush was already actively spreading the warning of the possibility of war in August of that year?
I'm not saying you said that, I'm saying that one would expect in the totality of twelve years, or in this case, eleven and a half years, of Iraq's recalcitrance towards the UN inspectors, they would have already triggered the drumbeats heard after 9-11. Instead, the UN inspectors were doing their job, the Bush Administration was saying then that Saddam was contained and the rest of the world agreed.
What changed? Did Iraq's attitude towards the inspections change after 9-11? No. They were as obstinant with their denials as ever, and now we know their denials were true. Was any new evidence of WMDs presented? Or any new evidence that turned out to be right, that is.
First of all, we do not know whether or not Bush would have invaded Iraq earlier had he been president during all that time. Iraq did present a grave danger to the world and here is why. During most of history, in order to pose a grave danger to a major power like the US, a country would have to have a strong industrial base and use it to produce many ships and weapons. They would have to send a large armada against the target country, which the that country would have a chance of preparing for as it approached. When the ships arrived, the invaders would have attacked with gunpowder weapons. Today, a terrorist group with a little money might obtain WMD, sneak the components of one or two into a country, and kill...who knows, up to a million people maybe with one use of one weapon. We are in a fundamentally new situation. Even during the Cold War, small unsophisticated entities did not have much realistic probability of acquiring WMD. Now they do, and as time passes and technology advances, smaller and less sophisticated groups will have more chance of constructing or buying one of these weapons. Specifically, the danger that Iraq presented was that it was a country led by a monster, friendly with terrorists, had developed WMD, and had been duplicitous in its implementation of promises to disarm. There was some chance that it had disarmed and some that it had not. Certainly it had demonstrated deceit in its implementation if its disarmament agreement. What had changed? World terrorism was on the rise, as brought home to us by 9/11, raising the specter of a future WMD 9/11, but even had that not been the case, the danger simply had to be eliminated at some point, and diplomacy had not produced verifiable disarmament in a dozen years. Had Iraq retained its WMD and/or WMD development programs, there was always the chance that at some point Hussein might have either used them in our cities and denied involvement, or simply progressed in his development of WMD to the point that he could declare that he would now pursue them openly and use them against any invader who tried to stop him. Time was not on our side, since he might have either used ones he had to strike a crippling blow against us, or progressed far enough in their acquisition that no one would dare attempt to stop him. This is more or less the position that North Korea is in now. Because they have nuclear weapons, they can now openly develop and stockpile more WMD, and no one can coerce them to stop.
Joe Nation wrote:We now know that there was nothing bad about those trailers and those drones were proto-types from before the first Gulf War. So what turned the spotlight on Iraq as the number two target instead of, for example, Libya?
Libya, we now know, was importing nuclear weapons technology, via our ally Pakistan, by way of North Korea. Sounds like an axis of evil to me.
But we're okay now because Kaddaffi now says he's gone straight. Whew. That was a close one. But how come we believe Kaddaffi and we didn't, and don't believe, Saddam? Well, for one thing, Richard Perle and his elves don't have an obsessive need to blame Libya for the world's problems. (Though they did harbor Osama bin Laden for a long time.)
We don't know much about what happened to Iraq's WMD, when it happened, or why it happened, except that we cannot find them now. We really aren't that sure of our facts. I do not know the specific history of Libya's WMD programs and their state of readiness before they agreed to disarm. If they were the same kind of threat, then they should have been acted against too. We are now rewarding them for verifiably disarming, something Hussein never did. We helped the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan years ago, of which OBL was one, resist the Soviet invasion because it was the right thing to do, and was part of our program of resisting communist expansion.
Joe Nation wrote:How about Syria? There's a harbor for you. Behind an attack or two on it's neighbors, or at least one of them, and guided by a group of Baathists, the same folks who were oppressing the poor people of Iraq. How come we didn't whack them before 9-11 or even after?
Must I explain the obvious? We have not invaded Syria, because there is no clear knowledge that they are attempting to acquire and stockpile WMD. If it turns out that they have some WMD, we will undoubtedly begin trying to induce them to disarm.
Joe Nation wrote:I could be wrong, but I think Bush and his lads really believed Chalabi when he said that Saddam would be a pushover and that the Iraqi people would hug us around the neck when we came to save them. So now they are having a little different effect on our necks...
Not sure what your point here is, but I wish to express the opinion that wars sometimes need to be fought even if they are difficult.
