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slavegirljoy -> The Iraq War - Know the History, Not Just the Hype (12/16/2008 7:53:18 PM)
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It is estimated that the Iran/Iraq war cost the two sides a million casualties. Iraq used chemical weapons in that war extensively from 1984. Some twenty thousand Iranians were killed by mustard gas, and the nerve agents tabun and sarin. This marked the first time a country had been named for violating the 1925 Geneva Convention banning the use of chemical weapons.
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IRAQ THREATENS ISRAEL WITH USE OF NERVE
GAS; MIDEAST: LEADER DENIES NUCLEAR
CAPABILITY BUT SAYS HE WOULD DESTROY 'HALF'
HIS ADVERSARY IF ATTACKED.
Los Angeles Times, Part A; Page 1; Column 2; Foreign Desk
April, 03 1990
By NICK B. WILLIAMS Jr. and DANIEL WILLIAMS
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared Monday that his military machine has nerve gas and the means to deliver it, threatening to destroy "half of Israel" if it attacks Iraqi targets.
In an escalating war of words with the West, the truculent Iraqi leader rejected American and British charges that his government is attempting to make a nuclear weapon, adding menacingly: "We don't need an atomic bomb, because we have the double chemical," a clear reference to binary chemical warheads or nerve gas.
"I swear to God that if Israel dares to hit even one piece of steel on any industrial site, we will make the fire eat half of Israel," Hussein warned in a mid-afternoon address broadcast over state radio.
Since last Wednesday, when five alleged Iraqi agents were arrested in London attempting to ship smuggled nuclear-trigger devices to Baghdad, Hussein's government has portrayed the case as a pretext for Israel to attack Iraqi military targets.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/60028612.html?dids=60028612:60028612&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Apr+3%2C+1990&author=NICK+B.+WILLIAMS+Jr.%3BDANIEL+WILLIAMS&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&edition=&startpage=1&desc=Iraq+Threatens+Israel+With+Use+of+Nerve+Gas+Mideast%3A+Leader+denies+nuclear+capability+but+says+he+would+destroy+%60half%27+his+adversary+if+attacked
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THE TIMES POLL Military Ouster of Iraqi Leader Favored by 60%
Los Angeles Times, Part A; Page 1; Column 2; Foreign Desk
January, 21 1993
By DOYLE McMANUS
A solid majority of Americans favor U.S. military intervention to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and many are also willing to support some uses of armed force in Bosnia-Herzegovina and other conflicts around the world, the Los Angeles Times Poll has found.
When asked whether they would back an all-out effort in Iraq to topple Hussein -- even "at the risk of losing some American lives" -- 60% of those questioned said yes, only 30% said no.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/60160293.html?dids=60160293:60160293&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Jan+21%2C+1993&author=DOYLE+McMANUS&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&edition=&startpage=1&desc=THE+TIMES+POLL+Military+Ouster+of+Iraqi+Leader+Favored+by+60%25
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“We should not be surprised by such deeds coming, as they do from a regime, like Saddam Hussein’s, which is ruled by atrocity, slaughtered it’s own people, invaded two neighbors, attacked others, and engaged in chemical and environmental warfare. Saddam has repeatedly violated the will and conscious of the international community.”
“As such, the Iraqi attack against President Bush was an attack against our country and against all Americans. We could not and have not let such action against our nation go unanswered. From the first days of our revolution, America’s security has depended on the clarity of this message, “Don’t tread on us.”
“A firm and commensurate response was essential to protect our sovereignty, to send a message to those who engage in state-sponsored terrorism, to deter further violence against our people, and to affirm the expectation of civilized behavior among nations.”
“Therefore, on Friday, I ordered our forces to launch a cruise missile attack on the Iraqi intelligence services principle command and control facility in Baghdad. Those missiles were launched this afternoon, at 4:22 eastern daylight time. They landed, approximately, an hour ago. I have discussed this action with the Congressional leadership and with our allies and friends in the region and I have called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to expose Iraq’s crime.”
“Saddam Hussein has demonstrated repeatedly, that he will resort to terrorism or aggression, if left unchecked. Our intent was to target Iraq’s capacity to support violence against the United States and other nations and to deter Saddam Hussein from supporting such outlaw behavior in the future.“
“We will combat terrorism. We will deter aggression. We will protect our people. The world has repeatedly made clear what Iraq must do to return to the community of nations and Iraq has repeatedly refused. If Saddam and his regime contemplate further illegal provocative actions, they can be certain of our response.”
“While the Cold War has ended, the world is not free of danger. And, I am determined to take the steps necessary to keep our nation secure. We will keep our forces ready to fight. We will work to head-off emerging threats. We will take action, when action is required. That is precisely what we have done today.”
President Bill Clinton
June 26, 1993
Clinton Orders Missile Attack (1993)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mpWa7wNr5M
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In December 1995, after Jordan reported seizing 115 Russian-made missile guidance components allegedly bound for Iraq, UNSCOM said Iraq had procured some missile components since 1991, in violation of sanctions, and that it had covertly developed and tested prohibited missiles. (In December 1995, prohibited missile guidance gyroscopes -suitable for a 2,000 mile range missile, were retrieved from Iraq's Tigris River. Iraq apparently procured the components from middlemen with connections in Russia's defense-industrial establishment.) UNSCOM also has evidence that Iraq, after the Gulf war, conducted secret flight tests and conducted research on missiles of prohibited ranges. Iraq is continuing to develop and test short-range (under 150 km) missiles, and UNSCOM is monitoring about 63 missile sites and 159 items of equipment, as well as 2,000 missiles of permitted range (Ababil and Samoud missile programs).
In a March 26, 1997 speech, Secretary of State Albright said that, as long as Saddam is in power, Iraq almost certainly will not be able to demonstrate its peaceful intentions sufficiently to warrant a change in U.S. policy toward Iraq.
Since the Gulf war, the United States has signed defense agreements with Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates for training, equipment prepositioning (Kuwait hosts a brigade's worth of U.S. armor, another brigade's worth is to be stationed in Qatar, and other U.S. ground equipment is on ships in the Gulf), and exercises, and has renewed an access agreement with Oman.
According to Department of Defense figures, as of early November 1998, the United States has spent about $6 billion to contain Iraq since the end of the Gulf war, including no-fly zone enforcement and incremental costs associated with the confrontations with Iraq.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/crs/Crsiraq2.htm
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“Earlier today, I ordered American forces to strike Iraq. Our missiles sent the following message to Saddam Hussein, “When you abuse your own people or threaten your neighbors, you must pay a price.”
"Our objectives are limited but clear: To make Saddam pay a price for the latest act of brutality, reducing his ability to threaten his neighbors and America's interests."
“We must make it clear that reckless acts have consequences or those acts will increase. We must reduce Iraq’s ability to strike out at its neighbors. And, we must increase America’s ability to contain Iraq over the long run. The steps we are taking today will further all those objectives. Time and again, Saddam Hussein has made clear his disdain for civilized behavior. He brutalized his own people, attacked his neighbors, supported terrorism, and sought to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
“Our policy is equally clear. When our interests and the security of our friends and allies is threatened, we will act with force, if necessary. That is what we did this morning in Iraq.”
President Bill Clinton
September 3, 1996
U.S. Missile Strikes on Iraq (1996)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBCclD33wQU
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“Together, we must confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons and the outlaw states, terrorists, and organized criminals seeking to acquire them.”
“Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade and much of his nation's wealth not on providing for the Iraqi people but on developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.”
“I know I speak for everyone in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats, when I say to Saddam Hussein, "You cannot defy the will of the world," and when I say to him, "You have used weapons of mass destruction before. We are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again."
President Bill Clinton
January 27, 1998
Clinton to Saddam: You cannot defy the will of the world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2iOVqYBqME
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“Force can never be the first answer but, sometimes it’s the only answer.”
“No military action, however, is risk-free.”
“Dealing with Saddam Hussein requires constant vigilance.”
“Let there be no doubt, we are prepared to act.”
“One way or the another, we are determined to see that he makes good on his own promise (to give up his weapons of mass destruction).”
“Saddam Hussein’s Iraq reminds us of what we learned in the 20th Century and warns us of what we must know about the 21st. In this century we learned, through harsh experience, that the only answer to aggression and illegal behavior is firmness, determination, and when necessary, action.”
“In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat that Iraq poses now, a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.”
“If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.”
“But, if we act as one, we can safeguard our interests and send a clear message to every would-be tyrant and terrorist that the international community does have the wisdom and the will and the way to protect peace and security in a new era. That is the future I ask you all to imagine. That is the future I ask our allies to imagine. If we look at the past and imagine that future, we will act as one together and we still have, God willing, a chance to find a diplomatic resolution to this, and, if not, God willing, the chance to do the right thing for our children and grandchildren.”
February 17, 1998 - Speech given to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff concerning the need to deny Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction.
Bill Clinton: Clear Evidence of Iraqi WMD Program
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0f5u_0ytUs
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“And now, once again, the international community faces a serious challenge in the Persian Gulf, a challenge that has engaged the very best of our diplomatic skills and could once again test the might and mettle of our armed forces.”
“There should be no doubt, Saddam’s ability to produce and deliver weapons of mass destruction, poses a grave threat to the peace of that region and the security of the world.”
“His defiance of the will of the international community to allow UNSCOM to do its job can not and will not be tolerated. And, for that reason, over the last several months, President Clinton and his team, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, along with the support of leaders in our Congress, such as, Senator Lott and Senator Daschle, Speaker Gingrich and Leader Gephardt, Senator Robb and Congressman Skelton and their colleagues in both chambers of the Congress, with the support of all these individuals, the President and his team have been pursuing every possible diplomatic solution to this problem. And, even now, we are working around the clock to pursue a possible diplomatic solution and to ensure that the international community is united in the face of Saddam’s threats.”
“Saddam should never doubt the will of the American people, their legislators, their military, or their Commander in Chief to protect our interests, defend our security, and ensure the wellbeing of our fellow citizens and that of our friends and allies around the world. He should know that, when it comes to protecting our vital national interests, Americans will stand as one, we will speak as one, and, whenever necessary, we will act as one.
February 17, 1998
Al Gore: No Doubt Saddam's Weapons Are Grave Threat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFBl0fnMUVc
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On August 20, 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack against a chemical weapons factory in Sudan. The cruise missle strike was in retaliation for the August 7, 1998 truck bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya which killed more than 200 people and wounded more than 5,000 others. The chemical weapons factory in Sudan was funded, in part, by Osama bin Laden who the U.S. believed responsible for the embassy bombings. Richard Clarke, a national security advisor to President Clinton, told the Washington Post in a January 23, 1999 article that the U.S. government was "sure" that Iraqi nerve gas experts had produced a powdered substance at that plant for use in making VX nerve gas.
On November 5, 1998 a Federal grand jury in Manhattan returned a 238-count indictment charging Osama bin Laden in the bombings of two United States Embassies in Africa and with conspiring to commit other acts of terrorism against Americans abroad. The grand jury indictment also charged that Al-Qaeda had reached an arrangement with President Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq whereby the group said that it would not work against Iraq, and that the two parties agreed to cooperate in the development of weapons.
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1999: Osama bin Laden & Saddam Hussein forge an alliance
A 1999 ABC News report on the connections between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.
Again, this is from 1999, while Bill Clinton was still President. This segment was from a "Crime and Justice" show originally aired on January 14, 1999 featuring John Miller, the late John McWethy, Sheila MacVicar, and Cynthia McFadden.
In Germany, Mamdouh Salim, alleged to be a key military advisor and believed to be privy to bin Laden's most secret projects, is also apprehended. The U.S. government alleges he was under secret orders to procure enriched uranium for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons. These are allegations bin Laden does not now deny.
SHEILA MACVICAR: (voice-over) Saddam Hussein has a long history of harboring terrorists. Carlos the Jackal, Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas - the most notorious terrorists of their era - all found shelter and support at one time in Baghdad. Intelligence sources say bin Laden's long relationship with the Iraqis began as he helped Sudan's fundamentalist government in their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Three weeks after the bombing, on August 31, bin Laden reaches out to his friends in Iraq and Sudan. Iraq's vice president arrives in Khartoum to show his support for the Sudanese after the U.S. attack. ABC News has learned that during these meetings, senior Sudanese officials acting on behalf of bin Laden ask if Saddam Hussein would grant him asylum.
Iraq was, indeed, interested. ABC News has learned that in December, an Iraqi intelligence chief, named Farouk Hijazi*, now Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be welcome in Baghdad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7n3ivH3pCQ
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On February 14, 1999, an article appeared in the San Jose Mercury News claiming that U.S. intelligence officials are worried about an alliance between Osama bin Laden and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The article states that bin Laden had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official near Qandahar, Afghanistan in late December 1998 and that "there has been increasing evidence that bin Laden and Iraq may have begun cooperating in planning attacks against American and British targets around the world."
According to this article, Saddam has offered asylum to bin Laden in Iraq. The article said that in addition to Abu Nidal, another Palestinian terrorist by the name of Mohammed Amri (a.k.a. Abu Ibrahim) is also believed to be in Iraq.
On February 28, 1999, an article was written in The Kansas City Star which said, "He [bin Laden] has a private fortune ranging from $250 million to $500 million and is said to be cultivating a new alliance with Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who has biological and chemical weapons bin Laden would not hesitate to use. An alliance between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein could be deadly. Both men are united in their hatred for the United States....."
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During the 1st session of the 107th Congress, the Congress passed S.J.Res. 23, on September 14, 2001, in the wake of the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center in New York City, and the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia.
This legislation, titled the "Authorization for Use of Military Force," passed the Senate by a vote of 98-0; the House of Representatives passed it by a vote of 420-1.
This joint resolution authorizes the President "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
During the 2nd session of the 107th Congress, the Congress passed H.J.Res. 114, the Authorization for the Use of Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (P.L. 107-243 ).
This statute authorizes the President to use the armed forces of the United States:
as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
Prior to using force under this statute the President is required to communicate to Congress his determination that the use of diplomatic and other peaceful means will not "adequately protect the United States ... or ... lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions" and that the use of force is "consistent" with the battle against terrorism.
Finally, the statute expresses Congress' "support" for the efforts of the President to obtain "prompt and decisive action by the Security Council" to enforce Iraq's compliance with all relevant Security Council resolutions.
P.L. 107-243 clearly confers broad authority on the President to use force.
The President's exercise of the authority granted is not dependent upon a finding that Iraq was complicit in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Moreover, the authority conferred can be used for the purpose of defending "the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq. On March 19, 2003, President Bush used the authority granted in P.L. 107-243 by launching a military attack against Iraq.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/ib81050.htm
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On October 16, 2002, the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 was signed into law. The authorization (Public law 107-243) had passed the House by a vote of 296-133, and the Senate by a vote of 77-23. This resolution stated, "Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;" and "Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens."
On April 25, 2003 CNN report that Farouk Hijazi had been captured by U.S. forces. Farouk Hijazi was a former intelligence official who may have plotted the attempted assassination of George H.W. Bush in 1993. He was also a contact between Saddam Hussein's regime and Osama bin Laden. Farouk met with bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998 and is also believed to have met with bin Laden in Sudan in the early 1990's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyEeQJN2uVQ
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On September 13, 2006, a deputy prime minister of Iraq by the name of Barham Salih gave a speech in which he said, "The alliance between the Baathists and jihadists which sustains Al Qaeda in Iraq is not new, contrary to what you may have been told." He went on to say, "I know this at first hand. Some of my friends were murdered by jihadists, by Al Qaeda-affiliated operatives who had been sheltered and assisted by Saddam's regime."
Iraqi Official Testifies to Links Between Saddam and Al Qaeda
By ELI LAKE, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 14, 2006
WASHINGTON
A deputy prime minister of Iraq yesterday offered a sharp contradiction of the conventional wisdom here that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda had no connection before the 2003 war, flatly contradicting a recent report from the Senate's intelligence committee.
A Kurdish politician who took his high school exams from inside a Baathist prison, Mr. Salih said he was the target of the alliance between jihadists, Baathists, and Al Qaeda in 2001, when a group known as Ansar al-Islam tried to assassinate him.
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iraqi-official-testifies-to-links-between-saddam/39631/
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It is too often forgotten, not least by historians, that George W. Bush did not invent the idea of deposing the Iraqi tyrant. For years before he came on the scene, removing Saddam Hussein had been a priority embraced by the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton and by Clinton’s most vocal supporters in the Senate:
Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons. . . . Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: he has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. . . . I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.
These were the words of President Clinton on the night of December 16, 1998 as he announced a four-day bombing campaign over Iraq. Only six weeks earlier, Clinton had signed the Iraq Liberation Act authorizing Saddam’s overthrow—an initiative supported unanimously in the Senate and by a margin of 360 to 38 in the House. “Iraqis deserve and desire freedom,” Clinton had declared.
On the evening the bombs began to drop, Vice President Al Gore told CNN’s Larry King:
You allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons. How many people is he going to kill with such weapons? . . . We are not going to allow him to succeed. [emphasis added]
What these and other such statements remind us is that, by the time George Bush entered the White House in January 2001, the United States was already at war with Iraq, and in fact had been at war for a decade, ever since the first Gulf war in the early 1990’s. (This was literally the case, the end of hostilities in 1991 being merely a cease-fire and not a formal surrender followed by a peace treaty.) Not only that, but the diplomatic and military framework Bush inherited for neutralizing the Middle East’s most fearsome dictator had been approved by the United Nations
As Clinton recognized, Saddam’s WMD programs, in combination with his ties to international terrorists, posed a direct challenge to the United States.
In a February 17, 1998 speech at the Pentagon, Clinton focused on what in his State of the Union address a few weeks earlier he had called an “unholy axis” of rogue states and predatory powers threatening the world’s security. “There is no more clear example of this threat,” he asserted, “than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” and he added that the danger would grow many times worse if Saddam were able to realize his thoroughly documented ambition, going back decades and at one point close to accomplishment, of acquiring an arsenal of nuclear as well as chemical and biological weapons. The United States, Clinton said, “simply cannot allow this to happen.”
In October 1998, Saddam threw out ten Americans who were part of a UN inspection team, and on the last day of the month announced that he would cease all cooperation with UNSCOM, the UN inspection body.
Although the UN hesitated to invoke the technical term “material breach,” which would almost certainly have triggered a demand for a response with force by the world body, Clinton himself was determined to act. He had already received a letter from a formidable list of U.S. Senators, including fellow Democrats Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urging him to “respond effectively”—with air strikes if necessary—to the “threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its WMD programs.” After consulting with Great Britain and other allies, Clinton ordered Butler to pull out the remaining inspectors. On December 16, he launched Operation Desert Fox.
For four days, American and British planes and cruise missiles bombarded Iraqi sites in an effort to degrade Saddam’s programs. The key objective was to knock out communication-and-control networks—and in this, a Clinton official would assert, Desert Fox “exceeded expectations.” But the attacks did virtually nothing to destroy facilities suspected of housing weapons, most of which were in unknown locations. The only way to find out where they might be was by reintroducing UN inspectors, something Saddam now adamantly refused to permit.
True, passage of the Iraq Liberation Act meant that the United States now had a regime-change resolution on the books and was providing a certain amount of money and aid for covert internal action against Saddam. True, too, Vice President Al Gore was a particularly strong supporter of these initiatives. But in the wake of Desert Fox, Saddam had conducted his own violent crackdown on potential opposition figures, which meant there was no hope for Iraqis to retake their country without massive outside help.
Confronting the same threat faced by the Clinton administration, and the same policy predicament, the incoming Bush team arrived at the same conclusion—namely, to do nothing. Bush’s advisers, like Clinton’s, were split. In the Defense Department, some, like Paul Wolfowitz, seemed (according to Pollack) “obsessed” with getting rid of Saddam—though in point of historical fact Wolfowitz’s position was not strikingly dissimilar to Al Gore’s. For others, like Secretary of State Colin Powell, Iraq “simply did not measure up” to China or Russia or Europe on the scale of international importance.
Most, like Vice President Cheney, were in the middle. They saw plainly enough that containment was not working, and they also saw the long-term benefits of regime change. But they recognized as well that (to quote Pollack again) “toppling Saddam was going to be difficult, potentially costly, and risky.” The net result was that by the summer of 2001, despite the almost complete collapse of the sanctions regime, “it had become clear that the administration was not going to pursue a radically new approach to Iraq.”
Then came September 11.
Hillary Clinton, the new junior Senator from New York, put it this way in an interview with Dan Rather two days after 9/11, using starkly confrontational language of the sort for which President Bush would soon be pilloried: “Every nation has to be either for us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.”
As for the administration, it had come to understand something else—namely, that its responsibility extended beyond the clear and present danger presented by nations, like Afghanistan, guilty of harboring terrorists. It had to prepare for future threats as well. In that regard, Iraq moved quickly to the head of the list.
In March 2002, a New Yorker article described the presence in Afghanistan of a radical Islamic group, Ansar al-Islam, whose members were being trained in al-Qaeda camps but being paid through Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service—suggesting a connection “far closer than previously thought.”
Saddam also collaborated with jihadists fighting the American presence in Somalia, including some who were members of al Qaeda. It may be that al Qaeda had no formal presence in Iraq itself, but the captured documents show that it did not need such a presence. Saddam was willing to work with any terrorists who targeted the United States and its allies, and he reached out to al-Qaeda-affiliated groups (and vice-versa) whenever the occasion warranted.
UNSCOM had uncovered Saddam’s extensive biological-weapons (BW) program, dating back to before Desert Storm, only in 1995. Since then, Iraq claimed to have destroyed its BW stockpile—but there was no proof of this. Similar doubts surrounded Saddam’s chemical-weapons (CW) program, of which even bigger stockpiles remained unaccounted for. (In UNSCOM’s estimate, there were 1.5 undocumented tons of VX gas alone.) In addition, UNSCOM believed Saddam still possessed clandestine Scud missiles, useful as a delivery system for a chemical attack.
He was the only world leader who actually applauded the attacks of 9/11.
In October 2000 a supposedly “contained” Iraq had boldly renewed its military cooperation with Syria, moving divisions to the Syrian border and even deploying troops into Syria itself to put pressure on Israel. Since then, Saddam’s attacks on American and British air patrols over Iraq had grown more intense.
Osama bin Laden’s escape from his Tora Bora hideout raised the possibility that he might find safe haven in Baghdad. (Saddam had offered the terrorist leader sanctuary at least once before, after his 1997 expulsion from Sudan.)
Since 1998, no inspector had visited Iraq. Huge quantities of chemical WMD’s were known to have existed before Desert Storm. Quantities had been destroyed since. How much more was left? Saddam had never made the accounting demanded by the UN. In its absence, the UN’s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, reasonably inferred that considerable quantities must still have existed.
Exiles and/or charlatans may indeed have played a part in misleading the CIA and other Western intelligence services. But by far the most important deceiver was Saddam himself. For more than a decade, he had consistently acted like a guilty man, evading inspections and moving trucks from palace to palace in the dead of night. Even his own army officers, Feith writes, believed he was hiding biological and chemical weapons. And as became clear from his post-capture interrogations, this was precisely the impression he intended to convey, assuming that it would be enough in itself to deter not only an American invasion but an insurrection by Iraqi Kurds or Shiites, or even—his most consistent worry—an attack by Iran.
Nor was there any way to know, at least until troops were on the ground. Thus, dealing forthrightly with the issue entailed, first, threatening Iraq with a full-scale land invasion and then, if Saddam refused to back down, launching an actual attack.
September 2002, the Senate virtually arm-twisted Bush into giving it time to pass a new and more specific resolution than the Clinton-era one authorizing regime change in Iraq. In ringing the tocsin, moreover, leading Democrats spoke at least as assertively as leading Republicans.
One of them was Charles Schumer: "Hussein’s vigorous pursuit of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, and his present and potential future support for terrorist acts and organizations . . . make him a terrible danger to the people of the United States."
Another was Hillary Clinton: "My position is very clear. The time has come for decisive action to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s WMD’s."
Howard Dean, then the governor of Vermont, was of a similar mind: "There’s no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the U.S. and our allies."
More than half of Senate Democrats, including John Kerry and Joseph Biden, joined with Republicans in authorizing the President “to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq,” and in so doing to enforce all the relevant but ineffectual resolutions passed by the UN Security Council. In the House, 81 Democrats (out of 209 in total) concurred. Later, many would claim that they had been tricked or misled or even lied to. In fact, the vote reflected nothing more than an affirmation of the old Clinton-era position, now urgently reinforced by the experience of 9/11.
It was, after all, California’s Nancy Pelosi who had warned the nation on December 16, 1998, during Operation Desert Fox, that Saddam’s “development of WMD technology . . . is a threat to countries in the region.”
During the House debate in October 2002, Pelosi sounded the same urgent theme, summing up a threat whose imminence the Democrats had been insisting upon for years. “Yes,” reiterated the tireless Pelosi, “[Saddam] has chemical weapons. He has biological weapons. He is trying to get nuclear weapons.”
The main feature of the containment regime had become the Oil-for-Food program, set up by the United Nations in 1996 with Clinton-administration approval. Within months, the program had become a spigot of cash for Saddam and his family and cronies. The full extent of the corruption, and the full roster of who paid in and who was paid out, may not be known for decades, if ever.
Saddam had shrewdly realized that vouchers for the sale of his oil might serve as a kind of international currency, distributed by him to favored customers who would be obliged to pay him kickbacks, all out of reach of the scrutiny of the UN.
September 2002, President Bush was willing to yield to Colin Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and ask the UN for one more resolution, this one explicitly threatening Saddam with military force if he did not finally comply with all the preceding resolutions against him.
The case against Saddam, even by the UN’s own rules, was rock solid, and in November 2002 the Security Council did unanimously issue Resolution 1441, ordering him to disarm his WMD’s or face “serious consequences.” Everyone understood that “serious consequences” meant the use of force, including on Iraqi territory. But the Europeans, determined to thwart the U.S., declined to take it that way. No military action was envisaged, they insisted; the passage of Resolution 1441 was action enough. Large crowds mobilized across Western Europe to denounce the very thought of war.
On November 25, 2002, under the terms of 1441, UN inspectors re-entered Iraq. They came back empty-handed. On December 7, Iraq dumped thousands of pages of documents on UNMOVIC. Even Hans Blix recognized that this mountain of materials, some of them over a decade old, contained nothing to clear up the question of what had happened to Saddam’s stockpiles. All the same, Blix asked for time to sift through the document dump, knowing the task would consume months.
“UNMOVIC had the impossible task,” John Keegan notes, “of proving a negative, that Saddam no longer had forbidden weapons.” But the burden of proof belonged legally on Saddam himself, as stated in Resolution 1441, and it was his failure to comply with that demand, and not Bush’s supposed doctrine of “preemptive war,” that triggered the U.S. invasion. What finally forced the Americans’ hand was the UN’s failure or refusal to acknowledge the very existence of the demand that it itself had made.
February 5, 2003, when Powell gave a final presentation of the case against Saddam to the Security Council, with CIA director George Tenet sitting behind him. Powell’s 76-minute exercise in destructive analysis documented what everyone knew was the case: that Saddam was in “material breach” of the UN’s own stated requirements. That being so, the UN had lost any empirical grounds for declining to take military action. The only question left was whether the Security Council had the moral courage to stand behind its own resolution.
Even so, he offered over 100 examples of Saddam’s evasion and deceit, evidence based on eyewitness accounts, radio intercepts, and satellite photos. Nor did he hesitate to bring up the al-Qaeda connection as an indicator of possible future horrors along the lines of 9/11. “Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al Qaeda together,” Powell asserted, and only military action could ensure that they forever remained apart.
Indeed, even before Powell’s speech, Joseph Biden, reacting to Blix’s interim report, had summed up the feeling of many Democrats in these words:
Saddam is in material breach of the latest UN resolution. . . . The legitimacy of the Security Council is at stake, as well as the integrity of the UN. [If] Saddam does not give up those WMD’s and the Security Council does not call for the use of force, I think we have little option but to act with a larger group of willing nations, if possible, and alone if we must.
Saddam’s FBI interrogations would confirm Kay’s analysis. There Saddam admitted that he intended to rebuild his WMD programs once he rid himself of the international sanctions imposed after 1991. He knew that WMD’s were the key to his future power, just as they had been in the past. Had he been allowed to remain Iraq’s dictator, he would have emerged as an even greater international menace than before the Gulf war.
Why Iraq Was Inevitable
Arthur Herman
July/August 2008
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/why-iraq-was-inevitable-11456
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U.S. WAR DEATHS
Revolutionary War (1775-1783): 4,435 deaths
War of 1812 (1812-1815): 2,260 deaths
Mexican War (1846-1848): 13,283 deaths
Civil War (1861-1865): 364,511 Union deaths and approximately 133,821 Confederate deaths,. (Authoritative Confederate casualties are not available.)
Spanish-American War (1898): 2,446 deaths
World War I (1917-1918): 116,516 deaths
World War II (1941-1946): 405,399 deaths
Korean War (1950-1953): 36,576 deaths
Vietnam War (1955-1975): 58,209 deaths (From the commencement date for the Military Assistance Advisory Group through the date the last American service member left Southeast Asia.)
Persian Gulf War (1990-1991): 382 deaths
Operation Enduring Freedom (2001-2008): 628 deaths
Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2008): 4,209 deaths
Source: U.S. Department of Defense/The Associated Press.
http://icasualties.org/oef/
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WorldNetDaily Exclusive
U.S. military deaths below 26-year average
Annual toll in Bush years down despite 4,000 fatalities in Iraq
Posted: April 25, 2008
12:10 am Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
WASHINGTON – Despite suffering 4,000 deaths in Iraq, annual U.S. military casualties overall during the first six years of the Bush Administration are well below the average for the 26-year period beginning in 1980, a WND investigation has revealed.
In 2005, a total of 1,942 U.S. military personnel were killed in all causes, including accidents, hostile action, homicides, illnesses, suicides, etc.
That compares to 2,392 in 1980, the last year of President Jimmy Carter's administration.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=62294
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ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY DEATHS - 1980 through 2007 (as of April 22, 2008)
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/Death_Rates.pdf
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U.S. Deaths from Drunk Driving
Total (2003-2007): 66,266 deaths
2003: 13,096 deaths
2004: 13,099 deaths
2005: 13,582 deaths
2006: 13,491 deaths
2007: 12,998 deaths
NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811016.PDF
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This was long but, it's factual and people need to be reminded of what actually took place over the many years leading up to 9/11 and to the decision to launch a ground attack against the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003. If you choose to be on the Bush-hating bandwagon, that's your choice but, at least know the history, instead of just going by the hype.
Every loss of life is tragic, whether lost on the battlefield or during a training exercise or from an illness or from a drunk driver. Remember those who have died for our right to live in a nation that has been safe from a terrorist attack for that past 7 years. And, cry out against the death and destruction that is caused on our U.S. streets each year by drunk drivers.
joy
Master David's erotic-domestic slave
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