Interesting articles and maybe the whole picture has not yet emerged. However, to date whatever links there may be seem to be tentative at best. I don't think we've seen conclusive evidence and the Bush administration has not made a convincing case that they ever had conclusive evidence - not enough to warrant an invasion.
You can always justify anything but I think the Bush administration took the wrong tact in invading Iraq based on WMD's. It seems they were very confident they would find them. If you believe Bob Woodward's new book, they were very confident they would find them - but it looks like a case of seeing what they wanted to see. I think they could have invaded on the basis of noncompliance with x number of UN resolutions and never had this trouble. Such is politics.
Much like "why Truman decided to drop the bomb", in reality there were a number of reasons why the decision was made to invade Iraq. "Intelligence" that Iraq was still developing or possessed WMDs, ties between terrorist groups and Iraq, Saddam's disregard of resolution after resolution, the belief that there would be pressure to end sanctions against Iraq soon and the fact it took a continual no fly zone at cost to the UK and the US in order to contain Iraq. Probably most importantly that the US didn't get the political result from the first Gulf War that it expected because this influenced the Iraq hawks like Cheney and Wolfowitz who had considerable influence on the decision.
Historically, this is a rematch. The Bush administration completely overemphasized the WMD component. In retrospect, they should have emphasized the disregard of the resolutions. I am disappointed with the Bush administration's handling of the political component of this war.
What is interesting is that history - for many people - will probably view this event in terms of "the ends justifies the means". If Iraq becomes a stable democracy like Turkey, it may be viewed well by many people. If a civil war erupts or a coup reverts Iraq to a dictatorships, it will rightly be seen as a political loss. The victors get to write history but not as much as they used to.
Last edited by Colin at Jun 20 2004, 06:13 AM
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