"the 19 conditions of the U.N. 1991 Peace Accord Agreement is the primary reason for our going into that country and removing him from power."
Perhaps. Still... I don't see any similar great desire to move against Israel <G>, and they currently hold the record for # of 'UN Resolutions' to be in breach of....
(So, personally, I don't think that a sudden inexplicable desire on our part to 'enforce UN resolutions' was the primary motivation for our war in Iraq --- especially considering that so 2/3 of the country had been under no-fly zones and debilitating economic sanctions had Saddam well and truly hemmed in, and his military [& certainly WMD potential] decaying. No, I think it's far more likely that the 'UN resolution' thing was employed AFTER-THE-FACT as a justification for decisions already made....)
"... That wasn't personal, that was business we had to do. All we did was to enforce the U.N. Agreement,"
And yet, somehow, the UN never asked the U.S. to do that. :-)
Hey, face it... after 9-11 we would have had GREAT DIFFICULTIES attacking (or benefiting from an attack on) the guilty parties: Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is very densely populated... while we need Saudi Arabia's OIL far too much (not to mention Mecca....)
Iraq, on the other-hand, was viewed by the neo-cons as LOW-HANGING FRUIT.
EASY to PLUCK! And strategically located with the largest un-tapped oil reserves (after Saudi Arabia) in the entire Middle East... with *very* low costs per barrel!
(And, it certainly WAS EASY to defeat militarily... although the second part of the neo-con 'plan' --- using Iraqi bases as a launch pad to destabilize Iran... has FOUNDERED rather disasterously on certain *realities* of the Iraqi condition and people. Namely: once we de-Bathified and de-Sunnified the government, that put the Shiite majority into power after centuries of being downtrodden. And, while they may have a lust for vengeance upon the Sunni... they have no such desire to attack their co-religionist Shiites in Iran. :-) |
