Why does the media keep recycling this story as if it'd never been discussed before?
Although the Clinton administration and other countries' governments also believed that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, they supported sanctions and weapons inspections as means to contain the threat, he said.
The Bush administration's decision to go to war indicates other motivations, Pillar wrote, namely a power shake-up in the Middle East and a hastened "spread of more liberal politics and economics in the region."
The Bush administration "used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made," Pillar wrote. "It went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq." |
I'm so tired of addressing this over and over again, that I'm just going to quote myself... again. That and I'm too lazy to try to put up something new... Besides if the MSM can recycle stories I'm going to recycle my responses to those stories.
So what? The US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution. What's that point out? It points out that there was a first resolution. What was done about the first resolution? Nothing. In fact Saddam was in violation of 17 different UN resolutions since the end of hostilities from the first gulf war. After 9/11 and after the extremely successful war to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US and the "Cowboy President" were done with the "all talk, no action" crowd.
So what do we do? Have the UN send in more inspectors, while Saddam plays a dangerous shell game with them, let that go on for months, maybe years, and would be perhaps inconclusive in the end? We were done with that game. Clinton had played it his entire presidency with Saddam... no fly violation here, shot at plane there, single missile strike here... What did that yield? Nothing.
So Bush decided to get the UN support but had the back up plan just in case the UN decided to drag their feet... again. And with more evidence coming forward that Saddam moved his weapons to Syria before the war makes you ask what would we have found if we didn't waste all that time with the UN? Saddam knew we were going to come for him this time. He knew Bush wasn't bluffing action, as Clinton and the UN had bluffed action for eight years. Why else would he ship out weapons? He knew we were going to come after them. I actually find it comforting to know thatBush and Blair were committed to justice regardless of what the UN said. The article also tries to debunk the connections between Iraq and al Qaeda. I've got all that info at home (I am actually working here people), so I'll try to get that info up in an update to this post on at lunch.
UPDATE: Iraq-al Qaeda connection given it's own post due to it's length. Check it out.
UPDATE 2: Paul at PowerLine does some full disclosure on the CIA analyst cited above. Man it's a small world... |
