I have both asked this question a hundred times over the past 5 years and probably been asked it a similar number of times. It is pretty obvious to all but the most blinkered Bush apologist that there were never any credible links between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. It is also equally obvious that there was nothing close to real evidence that Saddam Hussein either possessed the capability to use weapons of mass destruction against this country or had any motivation to do so.
I have been scratching my head wondering why the President decided that this war had to be fought…at times I thought it was payback to Saddam for trying to assasinate his Pappy, at other times I thought it was a Bush family pride thing; Pappy Bush got a lot of heat for not finishing the job first time so Jr. decided to save his honor by taking it upon himself to do just that. I’ve been scoffed at by Bush apoplogists for being a conspiracy theorist loon, but they have never ever been able to give me a credible alternative. I don’t buy for one second the current neo-con nonsense that we are engaged in democracy building and its for the good of the region and the world…these people don’t have an altruistic bone in their collective carcases…this just doesn’t make sense. Nation building has always run contrary to all shades of conservative thinking.
So what is left?
Greed.
Greed should be the default answer when you are unsure as to why this administration does anything. The President is asking for another $50 billion today to fight this war. THis would put the current tab at almost HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS with analysts predicting that we can’t get out of there in any way shape or form without spending at least another HALF A TRILLION IN THE PROCESS.
So. we’re looking at a trillion dollars when all is said and done. Follow that money, find out whose pockets its in and you’ll find the people who originally designed this war policy, who planted this war idea in Bush’s head, who advocated for this war, and who are profiting from this war.
I don’t know, but when I watch FoxNews I see comercials of dedicated fathers who lost their lives defending this country. The widows seem pretty sad and are urging us not to pull out now. For me, that’s the best reason to be there.
During the Tora Bora operation, captured Al Qaeda documents indicated that the one thing they valued above all else was acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Following 9-11, the Bush administration was absolutely petrified of the thought of Al Qaeda acquiring such weapons.
Not only discredited HUMINT, but all sorts of other techinical “INTS”, such as IMINT, ELINT, and SIGINT gave the impression that Saddam was hiding WMD. Much of the evidence was circumstantial, but after failing to and being savaged for not “connecting the dots” before 9-11, the administration convinced itself that Saddam was still hiding WMD. CIA Director George Tenant told Bush that it was a “slam dunk” that Saddam still had WMD.
During the inspection regime, before the inspectors were kicked out for good due to the Operation DESERT FOX strikes, Saddam had managed to hide a fairly substantial bioweapons program right under the noses of the inspectors. This program was only found because of Iraqi defectors, who told us about the program. The inspectors would have never found out about it, otherwise.
America also had absolutely no clue before inspectors arrived in Iraq immediately following Operation DESERT STORM how close Iraq was to acquiring a nuclear weapon…some reports said it was a matter of months and not years after the full extent of their program was discovered.
It is my opinion that facts #3 and #4 led the Bush administration to think that A) Inspectors would never be able to reliably conclude that Iraq had disarmed without the complete and full cooperation of Iraq, and B) US intel was typically conservative when it came to Iraq’s actual capabilities, despite the evidence.
The post-OIF CIA Duelfer report makes it clear that Saddam was interested in maintaining a strategic ambiguity about whether or not he had WMD. His main fear was not the US, but Iran, and this was his method of “deterrence” against Iranian aggression. In fact, Iraqi commanders in the field were convinced that Saddam had hidden stockpiles of WMD, and were shocked when they found out that they didn’t exist. If Iraqi commanders thought that Iraq harbored WMD, I can easily see how US intelligence would have thought the same, especially since we had no good HUMINT sources inside the country.
Although it was clear that there was no operational links between Al Qaeda and Iraq, especially when it came to 9-11, there had been documented discussions between Iraqi security officials and Al Qaeda officials.
Saddam had been reckless enough to attempt to murder Bush senior, which may have led the administration to believe that he would attempt to pursue terrorist attacks against the US at some point, although most intel analysts thought that was extremely unlikely.
All of the above is documented, easily found on the internet. I believe Bush went to war for the reasons stated. I think the onus on you is to show the links between the money and the administration, and how anyone in the administration is getting rich off of this.
Finally, remember Occam’s Razor…instead of trying to find some convoluted reason why somebody would do something, the simplest answer is usually right. Your conspiracy theory is much more complicated than simply following the actual facts.
Don’t forget that this administration has a lot of people who sincerely think that the most direct way towards democratic change in the Middle East was to get a foothold in Iraq. Regardless of whether or not they are correct in that assessment, there is no doubt that many people do believe it. Writing this off to pure financial greed is simplistic in the extreme.
During the Tora Bora operation, captured Al Qaeda documents indicated that the one thing they valued above all else was acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Following 9-11, the Bush administration was absolutely petrified of the thought of Al Qaeda acquiring such weapons. And this had what exactly to do with Iraq?
Not only discredited HUMINT, but all sorts of other techinical “INTS”, such as IMINT, ELINT, and SIGINT gave the impression that Saddam was hiding WMD. Much of the evidence was circumstantial, but after failing to and being savaged for not “connecting the dots” before 9-11, the administration convinced itself that Saddam was still hiding WMD. CIA Director George Tenant told Bush that it was a “slam dunk” that Saddam still had WMD. You don’t go to war on circumstantial evidence and Tenet’s slam dunk comments were made after the decision to invade was made. Read Plan of Action.
During the inspection regime, before the inspectors were kicked out for good due to the Operation DESERT FOX strikes, Saddam had managed to hide a fairly substantial bioweapons program right under the noses of the inspectors. This program was only found because of Iraqi defectors, who told us about the program. The inspectors would have never found out about it, otherwise. Heresay. You don;t go to war based on heresay. Besides there were weapons inspectors in Iraq right before we invaded and they couldn’t find any WMDs nor could our extensive intelligence gathering efforts. try again.
America also had absolutely no clue before inspectors arrived in Iraq immediately following Operation DESERT STORM how close Iraq was to acquiring a nuclear weapon…some reports said it was a matter of months and not years after the full extent of their program was discovered. Again, you don’t go to war based upon things you DON’T KNOW. We had no proof that Saddam had the kind of weaponry you refer to and certainly no evidence that he would use them against us.
It is my opinion that facts #3 and #4 led the Bush administration to think that A) Inspectors would never be able to reliably conclude that Iraq had disarmed without the complete and full cooperation of Iraq, and B) US intel was typically conservative when it came to Iraq’s actual capabilities, despite the evidence. It is my opinion that the defense industry led by Haliburton and Dick Cheney concocted this web of half truths, bogus intelligence and paid iraqi informats to get their hands on that trillion dollars I refered to in the OP.
The post-OIF CIA Duelfer report makes it clear that Saddam was interested in maintaining a strategic ambiguity about whether or not he had WMD. His main fear was not the US, but Iran, and this was his method of “deterrence” against Iranian aggression. In fact, Iraqi commanders in the field were convinced that Saddam had hidden stockpiles of WMD, and were shocked when they found out that they didn’t exist. If Iraqi commanders thought that Iraq harbored WMD, I can easily see how US intelligence would have thought the same, especially since we had no good HUMINT sources inside the country. Again I ask, you you think this is a good enough reason to go to war? rumors and innuendo and bravado from a tinpot dictator? Not even the most paranoid neocon could say yes to that.
Although it was clear that there was no operational links between Al Qaeda and Iraq, especially when it came to 9-11, there had been documented discussions between Iraqi security officials and Al Qaeda officials. More bogus intelligence from paid and unreliable sources.
Saddam had been reckless enough to attempt to murder Bush senior, which may have led the administration to believe that he would attempt to pursue terrorist attacks against the US at some point, although most intel analysts thought that was extremely unlikely. So, still not enough to take the country to war. Where’s the beef?
All of the above is documented, easily found on the internet. I believe Bush went to war for the reasons stated. I think the onus on you is to show the links between the money and the administration, and how anyone in the administration is getting rich off of this. Its not about who in the administration is getting rich its about which of their friends are getting rich. The Carlyle Group and Haliburton to name just two corporations with close ties to this administration have made billions from this war.
Finally, remember Occam’s Razor…instead of trying to find some convoluted reason why somebody would do something, the simplest answer is usually right. Your conspiracy theory is much more complicated than simply following the actual facts. **Occam’s Razor is what led me to my own conclusion. In Washington DC its always about the money. If drug companies can get a bogus prescription drug bill passed in order to reap billions in profits why can’t defense contractors start a bogus war? **
The fact that YOU don’t buy the reasoning doesn’t mean the decision makers didn’t believe it. You don’t get to say “I don’t believe what they believed, therefore they must just be greedy.”
So, you don’t or won’t understand why an administration that had just been burned by not “connecting the dots”, wouldn’t do so aggressively the next time as to not be burnd again, and launch a war that they thought might preempt something worse? You are using 20-20 hindsight to bolster your position, rather than placing yourself in the role of policy maker immediately following 9-11. And I did read “Plan of Action”, thank you very much, and I believe that your interpretation is incorrect. I fully believe that if Tenet hadn’t made the President believe that the intel surrounding Iraqi WMD wasn’t a “slam dunk”, we would not have gone to war. Why did all of those Senators vote for war if they didn’t think so as well? I think you are also conveniently forgetting that it wasn’t just the Bush administration that believed Iraq had WMD, but the Clinton administration, all of Europe, and virtually everyone else that had an intel service. Do some research, look it up…prior to the end of OIF, there was almost no one that thought Iraq wasn’t hiding something. Thus your loony conspiracy theory is quite the opposite of the simplest explanation.
The fact that YOU don’t buy the reasoning doesn’t mean the decision makers didn’t believe it. You don’t get to say “I don’t believe what they believed, therefore they must just be greedy.”
In the absence of a credible explanation for this war, in the absence of any concrete evidence to validate the fear mongering this administration whipped up to get us into this war I do get to ask…then why? Like I’ve said I’ve asked myself that question many times and the only logical answer I can come up with is greed.
We have spent half a trillion dollars on this war…you don’t think that its plausible that the people who have pocketed that half a trillion dollars and the people who stand to make another trillion from Iraq’s oil reserves just might have had some influence on the President? do you think that all his oil buddies who hang out at the ranch weren’t filling his head with tales of disaster if we don;t go into Iraq? don’t you think its plausible that James Baker of the Carlyle Group, one of his closest advisors wasn’t telling him that Saddam had WMDs? I think its highlt plausible, much more plausible than the argument that supposedly intelligent men and women took this country to war without a single shred of evidence that there was any tangeable threat to this country or its people.
I get to have my opinion and you get to have yours. I get to draw my conclusions based upon a review of the facts and you get to do the same. In the absence of any viable, credible, reasonable reason for this war I am following the money.
I am not using 20/20 hindsight. I have been opposed to this war since before the first American soldier set foot in Iraq because of the lack of evidence of a threat to this country.
I don’t care who believed what about Saddam’s supposed possession of WMDs. In order to take the country to war you need PROOF that he has them and either evidnce that he has or is about to use them against this country. We had NO PROOF of WMDs and NO EVIDENCE that he was going to attack us. There were weapons inspectors in Iraq looking for WMDs and couldn’t find any. We had a ring of spies and paid informats and couldn’t find any. We had an array of satellites looking at Iraq 24/7 and couldn’t find any. A lot of people spent a lot of time looking for WMDs in Iraq and turned up nothing. This administration decided to go to war anyway…I have to ask why?
All those Senators voted for the war because they were chickenshits and read the polls not the intelligence.
“In the absence of a credible explanation for this war, in the absence of any concrete evidence to validate the fear mongering this administration whipped up to get us into this war I do get to ask…then why”
The problem is that you assume that since YOU don’t see credible evidence, no one else could see credible evidence. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t work that way.
“you don’t think that its plausible that the people who have pocketed that half a trillion dollars and the people who stand to make another trillion from Iraq’s oil reserves just might have had some influence on the President?”
I don’t think it’s plausible that anyone would or could have known it would cost half a trillion dollars when we went to war. As spot said, you are conveniently using 20/20 hindsight.
"I think its highlt plausible, much more plausible than the argument that supposedly intelligent men and women took this country to war without a single shred of evidence that there was any tangeable threat to this country or its people. "
Well, just like atheists do every time we talk about faith in God, you have assumed that since you don’t see evidence, no one else could possibly see evidence. Unfortunately for any attempt to defend your position, many many people did see credible evidence, and then voted to go to war.
“I get to have my opinion and you get to have yours. I get to draw my conclusions based upon a review of the facts and you get to do the same.”
Sure. And I’m not saying that you can’t look at the evidence and conclude that there was not a good reason to go to war. However, what you can not do, if you want to maintain any intellectual credibility, is decide that since YOU have concluded there was no good reason, it must also be that no one in the administration thought there was a good reason either. You only get to that point if you can show evidence that the administration did not believe these threats were real or didn’t see the evidence as pointing to a potential threat. So far, all you have done is demonstrate why YOU don’t think we should have gone to war, based on things you know NOW. You have not demonstrated that you made any attempt to view things from the administration’s perspective before the war.
“I think at this point, we should be able to agree that there was no evidence of WMDs. We know this because there were no WMDs.”
That’s not the same as saying there wasn’t evidence that convinced people there were WMDs. It just means they interpretted the evidence incorrectly. If MattinSF wants to complain that the administration was in error, that’s cool. But that’s different from him saying that he thinks there was no good reason, and therefore the administration must also not have seen a good reason, and therefore must have been motivated solely by financial greed.
Its patently obvious from reading this last retort that you didn’t read a single thing I posted, otherwise you would understand why our intel didn’t discover the fact that Iraq didn’t have WMD.
There were weapons inspectors in Iraq looking for WMDs and couldn’t find any.
No shit, ya don’t say? Remember that there were inspectors combing over Iraq after Operation DESERT STORM and didn’t find any evidence of a bioweapons program, yet it was there, right under their noses. That program wasn’t found until defectors told us about it. Inspectors must have the cooperation of the state they are inspecting…this is why Clinton ordered the Operation DESERT FOX strikes, because even though Saddam HAD COMPLETELY DISARMED BY THAT POINT, he was still not cooperating and Clinton was convinced that he was still hiding WMD programs. Was that done for greed as well? By your logic, that must be the case. And don’t pull that bullshit “but Clinton” crap…you want to hold 2 contradictory thoughts in your head…that there was viable intel that Saddam had WMD before Bush came into office, and then that intel magically disappeared when Bush became President, and it should have been obvious that Iraq had disarmed.
**All those Senators voted for the war because they were chickenshits and read the polls not the intelligence. **
Completely, utterly false. While most Senators did not read the NIE, they had been briefed quite extensively. Go and research what Hillary has to say about the intel estimate.
That’s not the same as saying there wasn’t evidence that convinced people there were WMDs.
No, you’re semantically correct. It’s not the same thing as saying that there wasn’t evidence that convinced people there were WMDs. (Though there wasn’t.) It’s the same thing as saying there was no evidence of WMDs. I think it’s an exceedingly minor distinction, but I grant you the point.
But that’s different from him saying that he thinks there was no good reason, and therefore the administration must also not have seen a good reason,
There was no good reason, at least relating to WMDs, and the administration did not therefore see a good reason relating to WMDs. Perhaps you mean to say that they *wanted *to see a good reason concerning WMDs, but they didn’t, because they could not have.
It is not as if the administration has presented any of this “evidence” that you propose might have misled them, either, commodore. Every scrap of “evidence” they floated has been shot down as transparently false. They had rumors and fears, and they used those to roll themselves into war. Rumors and fears are not evidence.
“I think at this point, we should be able to agree that there was no evidence of WMDs. We know this because there were no WMDs.”
That’s not the same as saying there wasn’t evidence that convinced people there were WMDs. It just means they interpretted the evidence incorrectly. If MattinSF wants to complain that the administration was in error, that’s cool. But that’s different from him saying that he thinks there was no good reason, and therefore the administration must also not have seen a good reason, and therefore must have been motivated solely by financial greed.
I don’t believe this administration made such an monumental error of judgement. I don’t believe this administration made a well intentioned though ultimately incorrect preemptive strike against another country with such a paucity of evidence to justify such a drastic action. I don’t believe the people in this administration are either that foolish or that reckless. I believe there was another agenda at play and that was good old fashioned greed.
Vitus, if it is was so obvious that Iraq didn’t have WMD, then please explain why the Clinton administration believed that Iraq had WMD, and virtually every other country in the world did so as well. Do you think that everyone is in on some giant Bushian conspiracy? Your contention that all evidence has been shown to be transparently false is incorrect…much of the HUMINT regarding Iraqi WMD has been discredited, but all of the other “ints” on which we base much intel was not. HUMINT is but a small part of any puzzle that an intel analyst must try to piece together. Its not as simple as you and others always try to make it out to be. Intel is by nature a guessing game by which analysts try to come up with the most reasonable conclusion given the available evidence. In the case of Iraq, the evidence pointed to Iraq hiding something, given the fact that Iraq was not cooperating with the inspectors and that all of the other “ints” out there pointed to some sort of weapons programs as well.
" I think it’s an exceedingly minor distinction, but I grant you the point. "
Exceedingly minor? Jeez, you’re a tough critic. I guess the fact that people thought the world was flat was not based on anything but greed, because there wasn’t any evidence of flatness, nor could they have thought there was evidence of flatness, since the world is, in fact, not flat. Give me a break. People see the evidence, they interpret it, and, from time to time, they get it wrong. I know this must be hard to understand for you, since you are never wrong.
"There was no good reason, at least relating to WMDs, and the administration did not therefore see a good reason relating to WMDs. Perhaps you mean to say that they wanted to see a good reason concerning WMDs, but they didn’t, because they could not have. "
Again, you fall into the trap that MattinSF did. You are so wrapped up in your own importance, that you assume that since you don’t think something, it must not have been thought by anyone else. Sad, really.
Matt has decided that, since he can not see any valid reason related to terrorism, WMD, or anything else, everyone else in the Administration must also not have seen any good reason, and therefore must have been motivated by the only thing he can imagine, greed. That displays a really sad inability to relate to the world from any other perspective other than his own. If you want to join him in that, feel free.