Did Bush invade Iraq because his daddy regretted not finishing Saddam off? Is that what it's all about?

Question

Was it Daddy's idea, or did George just think he could make Daddy proud of him?

Answer 1

No.

His father wrote, at the time, that the reason he did not go into the capital and take out Saddam Huissan is that it would result in a need to occupy the country for years to come; that religious and insurgencies would almost certainly result, and that a successful exit strategy would be impossible.

So, why did he attack? It is a question that has bothered me for a long time, for while I do not support Bush, I also recognize that (perhaps misguided), he genuinely believes in those things he does.

1. Went to war because of the WMD issue. I believe Bush DID believe there were weapons of mass destruction. However, I do not belive he went to war on that issue -- it would be a war crime. The mere fact that a government has a weapon or weapons system, does not justify an act of aggression. To the contrary, you must be in IMMINENT danger of attack on YOUR country. There was never ANY evidence that an attack was imminent. There was no delivery system, and no intel that a delivery system was in place, to get any such weapon to the United States "IMMINENTLY." The imminent factor is important. A government, seeing a troop build up on its border, does not have to wait until it gets hit to respond. But, just because a country has tanks, guns, and weapons, does not justify an attack. Thus, for example, while North Korea has nuclear capability and is openly hostile to the US, an attack would violate international law, because there is no reason to believe that NKorea will "imminently" attack the United States.

2. Oil. While it is nice to have access to one of the world's largest oil reserves, I do not believe that this is the reason for the attack. If so, he would have taken far more action (and used far more resources) to protect and rebuild the pipelines and production facilities. He has not done so, and production is still far-below the pre-war production levels.

3. NO FLY ZONE. The UN created a No Fly Zone for Iraq, which was often violated. This, too, would be a bad excuse for the war, for two reasons. First, there was no difference in the violations from earlier, and they were minor. More important, the UN did not EVER make a resolution to attack Iraq due to this violation.

4. WMD Inspections. It is argued that Iraq did not fully cooperate with UN inspectors on its WMD inspections. But that is controverted by the UN Inspection teams, who indicated that while compliance was not perfect, it was substantial, and that there was no evidence of WMD. The argument "they have not told us where their weapons were, so they are hiding them" was never supported by the facts.

5. Terrorists. There were never terrorists (and certainly no al quaida) in Iraq until AFTER the attack. Saddam allowed no such movements in Iraq, as they threatened his power and control.

SO, WHY DID WE REALLY GO IN?

I think it is because George believed, in his heart, that we would be welcomed, get a democratic foothold in the middle east, and that democracy would spread naturally. He really believed our solders, having ended a tyranny, would be greated with cheers and flowers. He believed that the people would embrace a true democracy, that the various factions would embrace representation in a central system, and that it would eventually spread through the region. This is not only a good thing from a political point of view, but would result in long-term support in a region we rely on for our natural resources (oil). Unfortunately, he turned out to be wrong, and now we don't really have a PLAN B.

Answer 2

After the senior Bush fulfilled the mandate of the UN, and ran Saddam's forces out of Kuwait, he then put contract on the head of Saddam and when Saddam got wind of same, he executed the people involved, these were some of the Kurds he was accused of killing for no reason.
In retaliation, Saddam did the same thing, he put out a contract on Bush senior, now this made the whole thing a Bush personal matter, the result is the now "war in Iraq" for which the wmd's was no more than a flimsy excuse to satisfy the Bush clan, and for which over 3600 Americans gave their lives.
Bush made if clear before he was elected that he would get Saddam if he were to be made president.
Saddam posed no threat to the security of the United States, and broke no American laws, yet he was arrested by American military forces and eventually hanged. Who' s next?

Answer 3

I see a tendency here to oversimplify.

#1 daddy bush could damn well have taken saddam if he wanted to. Do i really need to say that? This is not like bush sr. lost tho he tried and jr. stepped in to avenge. Daddy CHOSE not to take iraq. Indeed, rebel iraqi generals asked only for captured iraqi equipment to use against saddam (generals the US Encouraged to rebel!) and the US said, "no. just die." and they did.

#2 This does belong in the religion/spirituality section. For one, religion, polotics and economics basically amount to the same subject. For another, is there really much difference between a fanatic muslem and a fanatic christian?
Fanatics start and sustain wars, esp. against people who like different books.

#3 It's not "just the oil": bush and his crew are making mad loot off the war, and not a lot of it is coming from oil. Actually quite a lot of it is coming from american taxpayer pockets.

All this info and more is available to anyone who checks around a little but certainly not one who subscribes only to mainstream american media (it actually makes me gag to mention american media, so corrupt and under the thumb of power are they)

BTW everyone here of course knows that the US had been bombing iraq all through the years inbetween the bushes, right? Cuz the news mentioned it all the time, right? So we didn't really "go back to iraq." Really, we never left.

Answer 4

As a matter of act that is the truth. He told one of his aids once while on Air Force one, for him to "find something" on Saddam or Iraq to give him the excuse to go in about a year before 9/11, and if you can't find something, make something up." As in weapons of mass destruction. This was widely reported in the news media.

Also it is aid that George Wya's drinking buddies gave him a couple of sly remarks about his daddy not really finishing the Gulf War, and I think that "stuck in his Texan craw" as it were.

Answer 5

I think it is an attemp at continuing the two pillar strategy the USA used during the cold war. (Pillars being Israel en Iran as military can cultural bulwarks to control the region.) Besides Irak was a regional superpower being the richest and most developed country in the region. It is in western nations geopolitical interest to keep underdeveloped countries underdeveloped to ensure their dependency and positive trade deficits.
The US has succeeded in transforming a country with high wealth, high life expectancy and low child mortality into it's opposite. Now if they can manage to keep their dicatatorial puppet regime in power by military backing we are right back in the 50's.
I feel bad for the political betrayal of the soldiers though. They are sworn to uphold the constitution, but they are involved in an unconstituional war. They are sworn to defend their nation, yet they feed fundamentalism and international enmity towards the US. They are to abide by the genava convention, but they are ordered to torture. The are told to set people free, but ordered to violate rights and remove liberty and imprison local leaders.

It is sad that Bush and Bin Laden have succeeded in breeding fundamentalist conflict around the world and rational, secular, nation builders have lost.

Answer 6

Daddy never wanted to take Saddam down, for he know how foolish the whole mess would be

Answer 7

There were probably several reasons that Bush wanted to invade Iraq. However, none of them were the ones he publicly stated.

Probably, a lot of the reasons had to do with funneling US taxpayer money to Bush's friends and supporters.

Answer 8

I wondered that also, and believed it, until recently.
Consider this, if we went over to really chase terrorists, how much cooperation would there have been from Iraq, especially since what we did in the first Gulf war?
NOT MUCH!!! Chances are, it would have been a hotbed of terrorist training camps, a support base for the extreme muslim forces.
I gotta admit, I still wonder though...

Answer 9

I think you are on the right track, of course, Georgie says its not at all about oil:

We SHELL not EXXONerate Sadaam Hussein for his actions. We will MOBILize to meet this threat in the Persian GULF until an AMOCOble solution is reached. Our plan is to BP repared. We ARCOming to get you all!

Answer 10

No, it was about eliminating a source of crude oil to give his buddies in the oil industry an opportunity to increase the price of oil.