Re. peace challenged - I, for one, think it would have been wonderful to have gotten rid of Saddam without war. I remenber the extensive efforts to get Saddam to accept exile. The Arab nations were asking him to leave and Bush supported the idea too:
Bush backs Saddam exile plans
By Stewart Powell in Washington
February 1 2003
For the first time President George Bush has publicly endorsed efforts by Arab leaders to negotiate exile for President Saddam Hussein, to avoid a United States-led attack on Iraq.
Mr Bush expressed his support at the White House on Thursday shortly before a private meeting with the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal. The prince is the architect of moves by a coalition of Arab nations to offer Saddam asylum and exemption from war crimes charges.
Mr Bush said he hoped international pressure would convince Saddam to relinquish power. "Should he choose to leave the country, along with a lot of the other henchmen ... we would welcome that, of course."
smh.com.au
And the idea of forcing Saddam out wasn't something a bunch of "neocon puppet-masters" of the Bush administration thought up. As I've shown in recent posts, this had been formal US policy for years - expressed in the Iraq Liberation Act.
Unfortunately, there were some nations assuring Saddam he didn't need to go. We have security council seats, they said, we can rein in Bush. And even if we can't prevent the US from beginning military action, we can help you hold onto power, they told Saddam:
...his meetings with Russian and French intermediaries. Aziz said Hussein emerged from these diplomatic sessions — some secret at the time — convinced that he might yet avoid a war that would end his regime, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
Aziz has told interrogators that French and Russian intermediaries repeatedly assured Hussein during late 2002 and early this year that they would block a U.S.-led war through delays and vetoes at the U.N. Security Council. Later, according to Aziz, Hussein concluded after private talks with French and Russian contacts that the United States would probably wage a long air war first, as it had done in previous conflicts. By hunkering down and putting up a stiff defense, he might buy enough time to win a cease-fire brokered by Paris and Moscow.
msnbc.com |
