Monday, November 08, 2010

Reflection on the run up to the war on Iraq

David Michael Green points out the most basic of logical questions that should have convinced every thinking person that there was NO WMDs in Iraq in March 2003, and that our politicians were LYING:

Why Iraq, if it had nothing to do with 9/11? Why Iraq if several dozen other countries in the world also had WMD? Why Iraq if it was neither attacking the US nor threatening to do so, nor molesting its neighbors? Why the unrelenting urgency to invade, especially since the weapons inspectors were asking for only another month or two to determine whether the country had WMD? 

Why, since they were assuring us beyond all doubt that Saddam did possess such weapons, didn’t the Bush administration tell the inspectors where to find the WMD? [My personal favorite.  I often asked this one.  I knew when the US troops invaded that they would not find any WMDs in Iraq.]

Why wouldn’t the deterrence doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which had worked for four decades against the Soviet Union, not also prevent puny Iraq from committing suicide by attacking the US? And, if Iraq surely had WMD and was anxious to use them against America, what was sure to be the outcome if the US attacked the regime, with the stated purpose of liquidating it entirely? What could be the only possible outcome of backing a WMD-possessing “madman” against the wall, with nothing left for him to lose?

Any one of these questions of basic logic alone individually called the premise of the invasion deeply into question, without the necessity of Joe Sixpack possessing classified national security estimates on the WMD threat. Together, all of them made the case for going to war against Iraq an obvious and massively overdetermined lie.

All the above from this article.

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