US-Iraq/war/justifications

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Great work, webmaster, nice design!

Sources

1

• 2004-10-03 $Disputed Intelligence on Iraq ($ for full article) abstract reads: "The Bush administration was made aware as early as 2001 that the aluminum tubes used as critical evidence against Iraq were most likely not for nuclear weapons, but White House officials continued to embrace the theory as they led the nation to war."

Another source ² cites the article as stating that "The CIA inform[ed] the Bush administration that the "aluminum tubes," later to be used as evidence of a nuclear WMD program, were probably not intended for that purpose. In the article, CIA officials and a senior administration official say that Rice's staff had been told in 2001 that Energy Department experts believed the tubes were most likely intended for small artillery rockets, and not a nuclear program."

2

• Bush's Impeachable Offenses, Part 1

3

• 2003-07-14 President Reaffirms Strong Position on Liberia
  • final paragraph: "The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region."

4

• beingism: Charges and Evidence: Impeachment of George W. Bush:
  • illegal war

Comments

• The Architects of War: Where Are They Now?: telling quotes from various Bush administration officials on the need to invade Iraq, likely costs and benefits of same, etc., as well as updates on their status

WMDs as justification?! WTF??

The claimed presence of WMDs in Iraq always seemed to me like an extremely good reason not to invade.

Picture the situation in 2002: you have a crazy dictator who has demonstrated that his only interest is power and that he is willing to sacrifice anything, including his own people, to keep it. Add to this an invasion by an incomparably strong foreign power, pushing that dictator back up against the wall: all of his genuine strategic options are used up, he knows he will either be killed or captured by an extremely unsympathetic enemy. If he had actually been in possession of WMDs, what are the odds that he would have taken the humane route and declined to use them?

So I have to ask the question: why did anyone buy the WMDs lie as a reason in favor of invasion in the first place? Oh, certainly, if Saddam had really had WMDs, or been in the process of making them, we couldn't have just stood around doing nothing about it – but bashing the hornets' nest has to be the worst possible way to go about dealing with that situation (unless you know that he hasn't actually got any of them ready yet; Bush did his best to convince us of the opposite, that Saddam was ready to use his WMDs at any time). When a mad bomber terrorist takes hostages, you tread delicately; going in with guns blazing is a recipe for disaster.

Well, we've managed to get our disaster even in spite of the lack of WMDs; we were just damn lucky that the WMDs were a figment of neoconservative ambition, because apparently we happily bash the hornet's nest when The Decider tells us to. The results could have been much, much worse if the WMDs had been anything more real than scrap tubing and twisted words. --Woozle 14:34, 16 March 2007 (EDT)

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia: rationale for the Iraq War

Filed Links

1. redirect template:links/smw

News

• 2006-12-20 Diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war: The UK had no reasons to believe Iraq possessed significant chemical, bio, or nuclear warfare weapons. Also, "British officials warned US diplomats that bringing down the Iraqi dictator would lead to the chaos the world has since witnessed."
• 2006-12-09 Smith's war critique cracks wall of support: Republican Senator Gordon Smith's switch from passive support for the war may signal the beginning of a fall-off in GOP support
• 2006-11-18 Spy says al-Qaeda tricked US into war (please make a note here if you get redirected when trying to access this site)
• 2006-09-15 The Rest of the Story: Iraq's Links to Al Qaeda: may cast new light on some of the accusations above
• 2005-12-01 Lying about the War
• 2003-04-01 Prewar predictions coming back to bite by Susan Page, USA TODAY
• 2003-01-19 Saddam will not be deposed by sweet reason or sanctions: pre-invasion opinions from a number of prominent Britons
• 2003-01-12 U.S. Decision On Iraq Has Puzzling Past: "Opponents of War Wonder When, How Policy Was Set"
• 2002-08-26 MoveOn petition against invading Iraq

Commentary

• 2005-12-01 Lying about the War: "truth became the first casualty in their campaign to whip up support."
• 2003-03-18 Why I Oppose An Iraq War by Russ Daggatt: exposes several blatant misstatements by the administration which do not seem like they could possibly be innocent errors
• 2003-01-21 One of the More Nauseating Images by Harold Pinter [W]

Video

• 2007-08-02 video Rep. Kucinich: V.P. Dick Cheney "Fabricated" the Intel (see also Dennis Kucinich, Dick Cheney)

Quotes

• "I thought they were out of their minds, once I realised that they weren't kidding. The most inappropriate, the most counterproductive thing we could've done would've been to invade Iraq and I rather thought that was self-evident." – Richard A. Clarke, former US Counter-Terrorism Advisor [1]

Related Information

• "In 2003, Republicans refused to allow a vote on a bill introduced by Waxman that would have established an independent commission to review the false claims Bush made in asking Congress to declare war on Iraq. That same year, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss, refused to hold hearings on whether the administration had forged evidence of the nuclear threat allegedly posed by Iraq. A year later the chair of the Government Reform Committee, Tom Davis, refused to hold hearings on new evidence casting doubt on the "nuclear tubes" cited by the Bush administration before the war. Sen. Pat Roberts, who pledged to issue a Senate Intelligence Committee report after the 2004 election on whether the Bush administration had misled the public before the invasion, changed his mind after the president won re-election. 'I think it would be a monumental waste of time to re-plow this ground any further,' Roberts said." [2]