Hi michael97123; Re: "So why were inspector removed under clinton ..."
Saddam may have had WMDs back during Clinton, but that was then, this is now. Personally, I'm not sure whether he had them or not. Assuming that he didn't have them, his reasons for getting rid of inspectors were undoubtedly the ones that he gave at the time: (a) the inspectors were never going to give Iraq a clean bill of health [an assessment that now seems to be fairly accurate], (b) the CIA was using the inspectors for spying having nothing to do with WMDs, and (c) that the US was too much of a pussy to invade.
Re: "... why wasnt there any proof given for wmd destruction."
The Iraqis did give mounds of "proof" that they had gotten rid of their WMDs, it's just that the inspectors demanded higher levels of proof. At the time that some weapons were destroyed, the Iraqis were very likely figuring that whatever they provided was good enough proof. But more importantly, there was a time that the Iraqi regime denied the existence of any WMDs while they definitely did have them. So they secretly destroyed what they had been hiding, figuring that the UN would never know the difference. I would guess that they didn't know how thorough the UN would be, so they didn't bother keeping the extensive records and "proof" that the UN demanded.
One of the things that man has the most difficulty doing is admitting that he lied. This is true not just of American politicians, it's also true of Arabs.
Re: "The man let himself be destroyed when all he had to do was point the UN to the right places and the right documents."
Yes, if Iraq had complied fully with the WMD inspection process starting in 1991, Saddam would still be in power and 500 Americans would still be alive. But when he tried to pretend that he didn't have any, and then secretly destroyed them, he provided a pretext to Bush. He probably didn't comply fully back in 1991 because he knew that the US was not going to invade Iraq over a couple of unimportant WMDs that had already proved nearly useless in the war with Iran.
One thing that the war with Iran "proved" to Saddam was that the Iraqi people would fight against a foreign invader, even if the foreign invader posed as a liberator and was Muslim. Maybe he figured that the US would also see that lesson (which I noted on this thread) and would refrain from invading Iraq.
There are no heroes or geniuses in this story. We got into the war from a combination of deep stupidity on the part of many people both in Iraq and the US / Britain.
-- Carl |
