[quote=Arraya]He was a US strongman that became unpredictable and went rogue. I understand the policy of preemption and the rational behind it. However, to me it looks like there was ulterior motives. First and foremost, there was NO intelligence agency that thought he was a threat to anybody, but his own people. Actually Colin Powell was out in early 2000 talking about how he was a “junk yard dog with no teeth” living in constant fear. Yes, *some* thought he could *possibly* have, loosely defined, WMDs. And he liked to pretend he did as well. But so do a lot of tin pot dictators. They DID, however, completely twist facts and somebody slipped a the “Yellow Cake” charge in for good measure(I have an idea where that came from)
Sure, he was a piece of shit – but his real estate made him a powerful piece of shit.
In a sense, the precarious nature of the oil market, made him too powerful and potentially very dangerous. So, I understand the rationale behind wanting to take him out beyond what was sold beyond just monetary gain.
Still, where we stand today, is Iraq has aligned with Iran due to ethnic ties. So, even from the conspiratorial view, it did not work out. To really make it work then need to take out Iran and I highly doubt that is going to happen.[/quote]
Arraya: How about Saddam’s use of chem weapons at Halabja and throughout the Iran – Iraq War? I’d also point out that Saddam was actively seeking to weaponize both anthrax and botulin for strategic/theater-wide use. While I now realize that the Iraq war was ill-considered, given that there were no WMDs (and the fallback excuse of removing Saddam as a dictator is thin soup, given how many of his ilk we’ve supported over the years), there was credible intel on his weapons program over the years, supported by events like Halabja. Further, the Brits, French and Germans had actionable intel on the same programs. It wasn’t cut from whole cloth as many on the Left assert (especially given that a good many Dems were also stridently for regime change).
