Ten,
re: You can bet greed was also behind that push. (So much for Bush being the only one guilty of "It's all about oil.")
I never said greed was behind anything. Closer to self preservation, and you are right that all of the consuming nations were concerned.
re: In the years after Saddam kicked out the inspectors in 1998
I didn't think he kicked them out, I thought they were withdrawn.
re: but the truth remains: Saddam would never voluntarily disarm.
Well, what the f--- did he do when attacked? If he was so rich in WMD, why didn't he use them to defend himself? Hell, we killed his family, distroyed his 20 some year old government, he's hustling around, hiding, trying to protect his ass. Is this the evil aggressor that is going to bring down the US with terrorist WMD's? If he had any effective weapon, you know the asshole would have used it in the war.
They've interviewed 100's of people in SH's past WMD program, we haven't left a stone unturned, they have all said the program, while it existed, was a miserable failure. And the evidence sure supports that view. So if the guy isn't capable of using WMD's to defend everything in his own world, what makes you think he was capable of using them from 1000's of miles away? Any threat from SH was complete speculation, there has never been a terrorist act linked to Iraq, before 9/11 the agencies said it wasn't the way he did business.
re: Would you have preferred to wait until he actually did it? Or got close?
We have more to fear from Canada than Iraq.
re: By the way, in your six-step program, all Saddam really needed to do was steps one and two. The other four can be taken care of by some terrorist group he does business with.
What terrorist group did he do business with? Answer: none. All the real intel has said that, the crap you choose to believe is political spin and fantasy.
SH, from a military and command perspective, was a wimp with oil reserves, an easy three week desert war for economic advantage. North Korea, Sudan, those are countries where there are much worse human rights problems; much, much worse terror problems, but no coveted natural resources. So what was the key driver of our decision to defeat and occupy Iraq?
Honest, Ten, you can't believe it was fear. If it was, we need to go after EVERYBODY.
John |
