Why We Went to War With Iraq

War in Iraq

Should we have gone to war with Iraq based on the reasons given at the time the war started? When we went to war with Iraq, Bush gave three reasons for doing so. First, he claimed that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda (Richelson, p. 44, p. 69). Secondly, he said that Saddam Hussein at the very minimum was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons and in fact might have already gotten them. Third, he claimed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Of the three claims, the third one regarding WMD was instantly believable, because American news had been full of pictures of dead Kurds, citizens of Iraq, killed with Iraq's chemical weapons. Hussein had used WMD's in the past on his own citizens, and so it seemed likely that he could easily use them on people he regarded as enemies of his country. In addition, he used Scud missiles (short-range, and easily moved) to attack Saudi Arabia and even Israel during the Gulf War (Richelson, p. 75), demonstrating his willingness to attack other nations. The second concern, that Iraq might already nuclear weapons, had less direct evidence people could recall easily, but was also quite scary. Since the end of the Cold War, a recurring fear was that a terrorist-driven country would use nuclear weapons to try to force its will on other countries. The first claim, that Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda, was unproven but both believable and scary. If Hussein could get al-Qaeda to do its bidding, they might well be willing to use both WMD's and nuclear bombs, such as small 'dirty bombs' that would do little destruction but cause considerable radiation contamination. We knew that other countries had built ties to terrorists with disastrous results. He was our President, and he claimed to have proof.

In fact there is evidence that in 1990 Saddam Hussein believed that he needed to have chemical warfare weapons and that he viewed himself as the potential "protector" not only of his own country but of all of the Middle East (Richelson, 93). However, considerable pressure was brought on Iraq to rid itself of such weapons between the end of the Gulf War and the beginning of the Iraq War, and in fact U.N. inspectors searched assiduously in the months leading up to the beginning of the Iraq War and failed to find any substantive evidence of WMD's (Richelson, p. 47).

It all seemed reasonable and even righteous. In a world where small cells of terrorists could sneak in dirty bombs and set them off in, say, the New York Subways, just as terrorists released poison gas into the Tokyo suburbs some years ago, a pre-emptive strike might be the only way to protect ourselves. After all, we waited in 1941, and the result was the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Some claim that George W. Bush had no clear vision for U.S. foreign policy when he took office, and the result was a cabinet made up of two factions: one lead by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who aligned himself with Clinton's more moderate policies, and the other lead by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, more prone to an aggressive and pre-emptive stance toward Iraq (Barry & Lobe, p. 2). The second faction became the dominant one and subsequently their views set foreign policy.

However, in his book The Price of Loyalty, Paul O'Neill, the former Secretary of the Treasury, claims that President George W. Bush wanted to get Saddam Hussein out of office from the very beginning of his term, well before the attacks of September 11, 2001 (5,-PAGE), and that he went so far as to ask the military to explore the feasibility of a ground invasion of Iraq, again, before the events of September 11. O'Neill's claims are of grave concern because of the way Bush has presented the war. He has described the war as "global and unending (Barry & Lobe, p. 2), a statement that should leave no room for surprise when countries are attacked. Critics note that Bush's war on international terrorism begins to resemble "a moral crusade in which good is facing off with evil." (Barry & Lobe, p. 2). In fact, Bush labeled the alliance he said exists between al-Qaeda and some other countries as an "axis of evil" (Barry & Lobe, p. 2), possibly terms designed to remind us of the Axis-allied Japanese attack.

Great Britain along with the United States and a few other allies wanted the United Nations to pass a second resolution that would have authorized armed action against Iraq. However, key members of the U.N. Security Council, including Russia, France and Germany, protested and wanted the U.N. inspectors to have a chance to complete their work (Richelson, p. 18). The United States and Great Britain both subsequently claimed, repeatedly, that the WMD's existed and that the proof would be forthcoming. Of course the opposite occurred; to date no evidence has been found.

On March 19, Ari Fleischer said that information suggested that some leaders in Iraq were uneasy about the prospect of war, but that saw no signs that Saddam would meet the demands that would have prevented the U.S. attack (CNN, PAGE). However, the during the Gulf War and its aftermath, the combination of military actions, and U.N. inspections, all resulted in the destruction of nearly all of Iraq's WMD, including chemical, biological, nuclear and long-range missiles (Richelson, p. 16).

The United Nations had sent in inspectors after the end of the Gulf War to monitor any acquisition of banned weapons by Iraq. Eventually Iraq stopped all pretence of cooperating with the inspections, and they stopped. However, they were begun again in 2002. When they began again, the United States believed that Iraq had not only Scud missiles but various forbidden agents that could be sent via the Scuds including bacterial and chemical warfare mixtures (Richelson, p. 41). Essentially, the United States government maintained those beliefs even against growing evidence provided by the U.N. inspectors that these weapons no longer existed (Richelson, p. 41).