DaveP said:
I don't think there's any evidence of that. Only evidence to the contrary. If you look at the correspondence between officials the entire tone of it was "We need to find evidence of WMDs to sell the war". There was no desire to stop the war. As far as I see none of the key people worked at all for a peaceful resolution............... Avoiding war was possible but not desired.
Yes you are right, they were determined to remove Saddam whatever as they incorrectly perceived him as a threat.
But that was not what I said was it?
I said if they
knew back then, there were no WMD, that the whole country would erupt in civil war, that so many lives would be lost, that IS would emerge from the mess, that Blair's reputation would be trashed, if he knew all that, then I don't think he would have supported Bush.
DaveP
The only part I might agree upon is the question of ISIS. However, I really don't think they cared about the aftermath much
before the invasion. I seem to recall that Blair raised the issue as important only after (in the now released correspondence between him and Bush). And as for WMDs:
DaveP said:
Now, further more, I'm guessing you never read the policy statement by the neo-cons that ended up in government. But if you read their statements it was absolutely 100% clear that once in government they would all push for deposing Saddam, WMDs or not.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5527.htm
Yes I've read it and you are right, they wanted to remove Saddam because they thought he could make WMD and be a threat to moderate Arab states. They also said diplomacy was failing. I think you added WMD
or not.
At the time, he was viewed in much the same light as Assad is now, only much more powerful. He had gassed around 5000 kurds at Halabja, he had killed many thousands in the 1991 uprisings and he had invaded Kuwait to get their oil.
I have read your article, maybe you should read this article on human rights atrocities under his regime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein%27s_Iraq
We do need to put ourselves back in the shoes of the actors at the time before we make judgements in hindsight.
Definition of Revisionist History.
When people, with the benefit of years (or generations) of hindsight and typically with ulterior motive, try to rewrite history as it originally occurred.
DaveP
I'll recap on what my reasoning is after these short videos, because I think it got a bit lost. But just watch these few clips:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHnSPsZshyM
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/meet-the-press/24917310#24917310
Here's my point, or reasoning, because I think you're somewhat missing it;
- The neo-cons wanted Saddam gone, and they didn't care if he had WMD or not. They wrote that " Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. " But inspections
did resume and they
did produce results. They knew that once they were in power. Thus the real reason wasn't ridding Iraq of WMD and thus your position that it would have been different had they known they wouldn't find WMD is something I disagree with. They didn't care.
- Condi Rice and Powell were clearly
not part of the above group of people. They most likely tried to do their jobs as well as they could and spoke the truth about the estimates of Iraq's capabilities in the above linked video. But their opinions didn't have enough weight compared to all of those powerful men inside the Bush government. So them speaking the truth was less important that getting rid of Saddam.
- The third video again affirms that the decision to go to war was made well before the inspectors would have finished, thus regardless of what they would have found. So, yet again, WMD were not the issue, at all. The recent report on Blair/UK involvement in the run-up to the war is entirely consistent with this.
- Other than Curveball being a questionable source, you had Iraqi defector Kamel saying Iraq indeed had dismantled and destroyed WMD.
- These neo-cons were in power under Reagan, and back then WMD were apparently not much of a problem, because they were used against a nation they didn't like. In other words; WMD isn't ever really much of an issue, it's who has them. This is a horse/cart situation, because they want to imply that Saddam was bad because he had and used WMD, but he really wasn't. He was bad for other reasons, otherwise they'd have never supported him under Reagan.
- Remember the "Iraq dossier"? Highly questionable sources revealed ahead of the attack. Blair gave it his approval.
So all of the above is to say that WMD were not the primary reason the war was fought, it was desired to get rid of Saddam well ahead of time, not because he was evil but because he no longer served a purpose. WMD was just a sales point to push the Clinton government to do it and then to get public support. Scott Ritter, Hans Blix and others all said Saddam eventually cooperated and they found nothing, well ahead of the actual attack, but none of that mattered because these people wanted war.
