Why George W. Bush Really Invaded Iraq

I believe that Bush lied about why he invaded Iraq. And I don't believe that his lying is a unique thing, rather, political elites always lie, afterall, they are there to simply advance their careers, they don't have altruistic tendencies towards those that vote for them, though they will pretend that they do, often by giving sentimental speeches to manipulate the emotions of the public.

that all of them lied right along with him. You know it's a fact that Bill Clinton thought he had WMD, and said so, and many of the others from the last party did also.

Until you admit that, and of course Clinton might just have been after the oil, the conversation is childish. We can not change the facts with conspiracy theories, or the words of Patrick Buchannon,(sp) whom the people have rejected in droves, including the Democratic party. You go vote for him. Ask him what else he believes.

I don't know if Clinton lied, but I do believe Bush lied.

You seem to believe the conspiracy theory Bush put forth: that Saddam was conspiring to advance his weapons of mass destruction and use it to aid Islamic suicide bombers. Everything is a conspiracy theory, and everyone supports one theory over another. You chose Bush's conspiracy theory over Buchanan's. I believe Buchanan's theory has more evidence behind it.

My claim is that the killing of kurds, whether true or not, was not the motivation behind the war. Other motivations were involved.

There are many genocides going on around the world, such as against the White minority in Zimbabwe. "Human Rights" are being infringed upon everywhere. But, Bush was only interested in Iraq. This to me serves as evidence that there were other motivations involved.

kurds werent killed tells me your in outer limits have fun

I don't know if they were killed or not, it is not something I've studied. But I don't automatically believe everything I read. Even the people who write the history books and newspapers have political agendas of their own which may not include pure honesty.

My claim was that regardless of whether Kurds were kill or not, this was not the motivation for Bush declaring war.

but nor was oil gws reasons but you want to beleave your fanisys help your self

any more. Read about Mr. Pat Buchannon at google or
http://www.realchange.org/buchanan.htm or somewhere, grasp his racism (you wouldn't be in this country) or his admiration for Hitler and come back and tell us if you are a racists and Hitler lover and a anti-semite.

Regardless of all the ad hominem attacks against Buchanan, I still believe his research is valid.

on ad hominem analysis and more on facts, figures and verifiable data. If Pat Buchanan is wrong, then prove he's wrong. Show me where his argument fails. Name calling and character assasination should impress no one.

"The War Party may have gotten its war" <-- not that anyone is name calling right?

"People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics." <-- no ad hominem there!

(Notice this comes after Pat discusses Russert asking Perle a question, but doesn't include Perle's answer. Can you link to the transcript of this interview?)

If HIS words were purely reason, then it would be worth the effort to refute them.

The "War Party", that's a provocative label. No it's not objective. I don't think it helps him make his case except to those prone to hyperbole.
These comments detract from Pat's arguments and I wish he would not include these amateurish put downs in his interviews and articles.
Still we are not all perect. And, with Pat, I am prepared to sort the chaff from the grain. I still think he is an important voice in American politics.

... has some good to say. Buchanan peppers his with too much rhetoric, so that when he does make a good point, it is drowned out.

I used to defend Buchanan against charges of anti-semetism, but when one reads and listens to him long enough it is just simply unmistakeable. When you don't connect with the left, the right, or the middle, it's hard to be an important voice for anything.

The other columnist AA posted, Paul Craig Roberts, falls in the same category. He makes many excellent points regarding "multiculturalism" and "diversity" -- I think I was even hammered by some here for posting an editorial by him on that very topic here in SE -- but he seems to have mastered the art of the PC he deplores more than he realizes. By that I mean that he is capable of writing an entire editorial without peppering it with too much rhetoric so as to make a valid point. But again, when one looks further into his body of work, his agenda/beliefs are pretty blatantly obvious. I agree with him that diversity for diversity's sake is absurd, affirmative action is nothing but discriminating against the majority in favor of "prefered minorities", and am none too thrilled that assimilation has become a dirty word. But I'll use my own voice on that rather than Roberts' or the voice of less inflammatory columnists who say it much better and without Buchananite/Robertsian rhetoric.

Pat may be drifting away from everyone, left and right. I agree about the antisemitism. It's there. The reason I listen to Pat is because he was once a card carrying republican. He knows the neo cons and he knows how the Republican party works.So when he talks about this administation's foreign policy, I do listen. I think Pat is also neat because he is so conservative in the area of AMerican foreign policy. He really believes That the U.S. should avoid foreign entanglements.In that sense he is a holdover from a bygone era. The funny thing is many republicans know that Pat is "right" regarding America's foreign policy.Usually they look askance at overseas "adventures" The republicans have traditionally been pretty isolationist. I think Pat makes an interesting point when he says "A Republic not an Empire"
I agree with you regarding affirmative action. My only question is how do you guarantee, or at least try to guarantee a selection process that is color and gender blind.It seems to me doing away with some sort of equity policy is putting the cart before the horse.The
applicants have to first be assured that the playing field is level. Then we can dispense with the affirmative action style initiatives.
Yes I agree.Best to use your own voice on these matters. Although a selective sprinkling of commentary by some good writers can be quite effective at times.

>>>>There are many genocides going on around the world, such as against the White minority in Zimbabwe. "Human Rights" are being infringed upon everywhere. But, Bush was only interested in Iraq.>>>>

If we DON'T do anything, we are complained about for ignoring it. If we DO do something about it, we are accused of being 'war mongers'.

You just can't have it both ways, when the USA is nearly every time the FIRST country to act on humanitarian rights around the world.

There was NO conspiracy involved in going to Iraq regarding Bush......Presidents BEFORE him believed Saddam had WMD and would use them based on what happened with the Kurds. OTHER countries' leaders prior to Bush believed the same thing.

Stop focusing your frustration over the fact that we are in Iraq for over two years now and placing the 'blame' on Bush, when the very real fact is that Bush wasn't the only leader to get the information....the only OTHER fact is that the OTHER countries that were pocketing the cash were the ones who didn't want us going there because they knew we would find out about it. Which is exactly what has happened.

No matter the reasons anymore about WHY we went, the PEOPLE are safer because of it......do you not agree?

TONI

the US were not in any danger, imminent or otherwise, from Iraq.

Dan

you should play the lottery with the knowledge you think you possess.

but no matter what the results are great but then again you cant see the forest for the trees.

dan you really should look at the end result.

but then you wouldnt be happy would you?

Regarding the gassing of the Kurds. The U.S. Army War College came out with a study not long ago, which concluded that the Kurds were gassed by the Iranians,probably by accident. Apparently the gas "used" on the Kurds was the kind the Iranians use and not the stuff Germany and the U.S. had been giving Saddam.

But here's three, in addition to the one Dan gave. Google it. It seems there is some divergence of opinion on the issue:

here: http://web.sbu.edu/fcsc/globe.htm

Here's a mainstream media source. It's a good read. I include it here for your convenience.

New York Times

January 31, 2003, Friday

EDITORIAL DESK

A War Crime Or an Act of War?

By Stephen C. Pelletiere ( Op-Ed ) 1128 words

MECHANICSBURG, Pa. -- It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: ''The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured.''

The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's ''gassing its own people,'' specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein.

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.

I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent -- that is, a cyanide-based gas -- which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran.

I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them.

In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on America's impetus to invade Iraq.

We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region.

Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.

Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades -- not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein's Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies.

All that is needed to get us into war is one clear reason for acting, one that would be generally persuasive. But efforts to link the Iraqis directly to Osama bin Laden have proved inconclusive. Assertions that Iraq threatens its neighbors have also failed to create much resolve; in its present debilitated condition -- thanks to United Nations sanctions -- Iraq's conventional forces threaten no one.

Perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against his people. And the most dramatic case are the accusations about Halabja.

Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive regimes Washington supports?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company


Here's an excerpt from a book on Sadam Hussein:

Nita Renfrew, the author of Saddam Hussein :

"In March 1988, the Iranians managed to take the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja, near the border. Some of the fiercest fighting of the war ensued in Iraq's effort to retake it, and Halabja became the site of one of the greatest tragedies of the war. After the fighting stopped, with Iran still in possession of the town, the international press was invited in. Hundreds of people lay dead in the streets, many of them Kurdish women clutching their dead babies, their dark blue lips indicating that they were victims of cyanide gas.

The Iranians condemned Saddam for gassing his own people, and the Kurdish rebels quickly joined in the condemnation, but Saddam denied the charges.

The Pentagon later issued a report that said that although both sides used chemical weapons at Halabja, each apparently believing they were targeting enemy positions, there was no evidence that it was the Iraqis who gassed the Kurds. In fact, Iraq was not believed to have cyanide gas, whereas, it was known that Iran did.

The mayor of Halabja also said he believed it was the Iranians who gassed the Kurds. Although the Pentagon's findings on the Halabja massacre were reported by the Washington Post, they went largely unnoticed by most Americans. Instead, most U.S. media used the Halabja incident as definite proof that Saddam was a mass murderer.

Later, there was another incident in which the Kurds claimed that Saddam had used chemical weapons. A UN inspection team, however, found bad burns but no evidence of gas."

since the UN found no evidence lends a lot to there credibility doesn't it

and as we had bad Intel, plus the rest of the world including that great corrupted place we fondly call the UN I'm so glad our president went in.
and i bet the Iraqis are to.
now the French who were in Saddam's pocket along with another great nation( sarcasm used here ) Russia you know that country , were making money off of Iraqi deaths says allot.

and Saddam is a mass killer.
you cant accept that to bad soon i hope he will get that long dirt nap

Believe the U.S. government on all this. You are aware of course that the West, U.S. and Germany and others, armed Saddam Hussein with chemical and biological weapons.The Reagan administration was very good to Saddam Hussein.
At the end of the first gulf war we allowed him to slaughter shiites when they rose up against Saddam as we had encouraged them to do.
Even if Saddam had all these stockpiles of chemical weapons, where is the proof he was going to try to use them?
I agree, the French and Russian roles in all this is despicable but let's be consistent.

and i believe in my country, I'm a patriot.

yes we might have helped him but times have changed.

look at france, russia, germany they were once super powers now there just dead wood.

we didnt allow him to do anything, your UN didnt have the balls to enforce there mandates, do you forget that?
and talk about being constant the uns coruptions that.

dont ask me to be constant i from day one was on my presidents side, you and your kind well

jane fondas your kind just remember her name from us vets.

government. Being a patriot does not mean you have to believe in your government every time it tells you something.By consistent I mean if you are going to be critical of the U.N. France,Germany and Russia, then you have to be crirical of the U.S. All of these countries did very well in their dealings with Saddam Hussein.
You mention Vietnam. Well, if more people had questioned their government in 1965 (Lyndon Johnson Dem.), both Vietnam and the U.S. would not have suffered so much.

since your reply " thought Americans had an inborn distrust and suspicion of government" tells me your not an american.

and as not beleaveing in my government i disagree.
ive hated the un from its screwing iseral. and want it gone from usa soil.
we supported him in the past saddam, but we saw the error of our ways, not like russia france gernamy who were in saddams pocket thats why they didnt want saddam out, never mind that that thing was killing his people.

and as to nam, seems the french got there asses kicked by the vc.we went in and would have won that but when you fight with 1 hand tied behind your back your at a great disadvantage.

plus when you have the peace pansys at home and the cowards running to canada. you give the enemy strength.

and if we let george patton do what he wanted there wouldnt been that problem.

invaded Vietnam.Dec.21,1945 to be precise.

and he wanted to take out korea then and wouldnt been a nam as then we were in place to do it.