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Originally Posted by JAD_333
I don't care much about all the intricate details of what Iraq may have had or didn't have. Of course, it would have been better in the ensuing debate had we discovered all the WMD we thought Saddam had and, of course, had we found evidence of an ongoing effort to build nukes, all the better.
The fact--history will show this in due course--is that WMD was not the key reason for going into Iraq. It was the cover--like arresting a Mafia don for jaywalking as a pretext for holding him 72 hours while you grill him. The truth is, it was taking the offensive against extranational terrorism and the best way to counterbalance that threat was to estabish a beachhead in the ME. Iraq was the ideal fallguy because of its appearant violation of WMD resolutions and also very important was its geopgraphical position between the two leading national supporters of terrorism, Iraq and Syria. Never mind that terrorists groups weren't centered in Iraq. Boundary lines are just lines on a map.
Any serious projection of events stemming from our taking out the Taliban and disrupting AQ would make Iraq the potential locus of future terrorist santuaries. We acted when momentum was in our favor. If we can sustain our efforts in Iraq and succeed in seeing to the creation of a viable democratic country there, history will vindicate our decision. Never are things sweet and smooth in an armed struggle. Those who get tangled up in legalities and cite mistakes made lose sight of this and ultimately the larger picture. So, while I think it is fine to discuss the WMD details and such, no points won by detractors from Iraq make any difference to me when it comes to the larger picture. It had to be done; sorry the cover story evaporated. Let's get 'er done.
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Putting aside for a moment that the administration built its entire case with the international community for invasion on the premise that Iraq had these WMD, there are still problems with the invasion. The absence of WMD renders Saddam's alleged terrorist ties moot. Without the potential of use of WMD, terrorism becomes not a threat, but rather a bothersome annoyance.
Before 9/11, the largest terrorist attack only killed several hundered people, and after 9/11 the largest terrorist attacks only killed at most, several hundred people. 9/11 was an anomaly, it could not have been repeated even if we did not go after Saddam. Before the invasion Saddam had at best a cursory relationship with an anti-Iranian group (MEK) which the US eventually co-opted, allowed several heads of defunct terrorist organizations sancutary (Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, etc.) one of whom was killed/died before the invasion, another had renounced terrorism ten years prior to his caputre in Iraq, and periodically gave money to the families of Hamas suicide bombers after the fact.
Saddam's sponsorship of terrorism was basically non-existent against Western (non-Iranian targets) since 1991, and even then during the Gulf War his ISI only gave a half-hearted attempt at exploding one device in the Philippines, and one in Lebanon. Even during the hey-day of state sponsorship of terrorism (the 1980s), Iraq sponsored the least amount of terrorism of all the Arab/Moslem states on the list of state sponsors: Libya, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Iraq (removed from the list in 1982 after kicking out ANO, put back on the list in 1990 after invading Kuwait).
So in a war to thwart the proliferation of WMD, and the state sponsorship of terrorism, we invaded a country that had neither WMD, nor state sponsorship. But as you say, it did have a weak military making it an "easy" target, and had a viable middle class to make democracy well viable. But even in trying to promote democracy in this barren land, the administration has failed. Gone is the middle class, over half have fled, many of the rest have been killed, and with it any chance of a viable democracy. In its place arose the Shiite rabble (orgainized by former terrorist groups sponsored in whole by Iran), susceptible to the honeyed words of demagogues, and instrumental in converting Iraq (once a bastion of secularism in the Moslem world) into a theocracy in many places.
So low are expectations now, that we are merely left to fighting the remanants of a terrorist organization that did not exist prior to the invasion, and our "victory" will be defined on if we can beat it or not. How anyone can look at Iraq and not see a classic strategic error is beyond me.