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20 Years Ago on March 19…
…US President George W. Bush ordered air strikes on Baghdad, launching the war for “regime change” and the ousting of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The war was premised on the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies. Such a belief is now deemed to have been false, although the length of time between Colin Powell’s February 5 address to the United Nations, in which he laid out the case, and the subsequent Allied invasion – exactly six weeks later – left plenty of time for such efforts to be covered up, dismantled, or moved.
And so, with apparent evidence on both sides to support their respective cases, the conspiracy theorists, and the conspiracy realists, continue to joust over the truth, which is likely never to be fully known.
Regardless, or irregardless as the case may be, I remember the television coverage of those aerial attacks on that day exactly two decades ago. It was awe-inspiring, and thrilling. The subsequent initial phase of the land war – which lasted just over a month and was spearheaded by the United States with support from the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland, and the following “quagmire” years resulted in the deaths and wounding, both physically and mentally, of tens of thousands of Allied troops, and in consequences that we, and they, still live with today.
As cowards do, Saddam Hussein ran away and hid from reprisals, remaining undiscovered until December 2003, when American soldiers found him, filthy and deranged, hiding in a hole in the ground near ad-Dawr. He was subsequently interrogated, tried, and executed (by the interim Iraqi government) on December 30, 2006. Sic semper tyrannis.
Today, I remember not the meretricious crapweasels of the various governments on all sides who have been – ever since – revising the rather clear history of the war, those who started it, and even, sometimes, those who fought in it. I choose rather to remember the valiant soldiers from all services and all nations who fought, and those who were wounded and who died in the cause of freedom and to keep us safe.
From February 7, 2001–just a month into the first Persian Gulf War:
And from the UK:
Australia:
And Poland:
Thank you.
Published in General
The Iraqi insurgency was caused…..and….. abetted….. by Paul Bremer? You’re gonna have to show some pretty radical evidence to convince me of that.
You are absolutely right!!
If I remember correctly, off the top of my head, when the newly independent Iraq negotiated its first oil sales, not a drop of oil was sold to American companies.
And won the permanent gratitude of the Venezuelan people.
I think it’s quite reasonable to state, as a commenter did above, that WMD was the basis upon which Bush and Co. “sold” the war to the majority of the American people and their allies. We tend to remember WMD as Bush’s reason to go to war with Iraq because that’s what Bush, and Powell, and Cheney, and Blair, and others, wanted us to remember, and wanted us to think of as the main reason. I can’t help thinking they thought it a slam dunk all round, in terms of what we’d expect from Saddam, and what we’d regard as an unassailable reason to take him out.
That every citizen isn’t a policy wonk or invested enough to investigate the twelve or fifteen, or eighteen main or subsidiary other reasons it was necessary to go after Saddam doesn’t really matter. The object lesson is that–to all appearances–the main reason we were sold on the war turned out–at least superficially–not to be true. Hence the disenchantment. (I’ve equivocated in the OP and in the comments, because I’m still not really sure whether or not the WMD issue was real, although I do have a pretty firm opinion of my own. But I’m still not sure if we’ll ever really know.)
I’m really pleased–not so much by my post, which is quite pedestrian other than in its heartfelt gratitude towards those who’ve gone above and beyond to keep us safe at considerable cost to themselves over the decades–by the insightful and knowledgeable comments on this post. I have learned a lot. Thanks.
Since there were 5,000 WMD, how is it even superficially not true?
Or was the main reason something more specific than “Saddam has WMD”? Was it “He’s making a bunch of new ones”?
And/or “nuke ones.”
Nukes were a possibility, as were biological weapons, but he had already used chemical weapons. Various members of Al-Quaeda had travelled in and out of Iraq.
I think the Bush administration handled the actual fighting pretty well, but bollixed up nearly everything that came after.
GWB made his case for the war in the 2002 State of the Union Address, not because Iraq had WMDs, but rather that:
“Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.”
I don’t think the issue is so much the WMDs (how much, what kind, where they were, if they got hauled off to Syria, whatever), but rather that the 1991 Gulf War left behind such an unstable situation.
Is it? Or is it b/c the left and the media pounded the “Bush lied, people died” slogan so hard for years afterward that the other justifications have faded into the mists of memory?
As I recall, one reason Saddam wasn’t taken out in 1991 was that the “Arab allies” wouldn’t cooperate, at that time. So it wasn’t just on us.
That said, I think GWB did a terrible job executing the war.
The ridiculous Rules of Engagement. Tiptoeing around every religious and cultural detail so as not to offend.
(We couldn’t battle in a “holy city”, and suddenly all the cities are “holy”. Why can’t we do that here? The only holy city we have is… Toledo.)
Our troops were put to work building schoolhouses in the 115 degree heat, while being attacked with IEDs.
Just terrible. There was no plan to win, and it went on and on.
Indeed. It was a difficult situation.
I guess he didn’t watch the video.
Short answer, the de-baathification requirements and the prohibition of the Coalition Provisional Government from dealing with traditional tribal elders created the space where the insurgency could take root and thrive, particularly when the very policies create tremendous unemployment among military aged males.
Seriously, watch the video or read Capt Trav’s brief.
And thus began the geostrategic downfall of the United States.
The transcript of Bush’s 2003 SOTU, given on January 28 of that year, is here. I think it’s notable for several reasons, most strikingly for how much of it is NOT about the war on terror. He brings that up for the first time slightly more than half-way through, and–after a few obligatory remarks about how well we are doing, and how cooperative nations are being, says:
following up shortly thereafter with
General remarks about Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc.
Then back to Iraq:
More
And
But wait, there’s more!
To continue:
Furthermore:
And
I can’t find anywhere in Bush’s 2023 SOTU, given the week before Powell’s appearance before the UN (I remember all the satellite photos, all the twice-and-thrice documented sources and named names), and given just seven weeks before the invasion, that talks about any other reason for going to war besides the very clear threat that Saddam had, was continuing to manufacture, and would very probably use himself, or sell to terrorists, WMD.
This was Bush’s opportunity, with the attention of a nation on tenterhooks, to lay out his case to the American people. And that was it.
I’m not a military historian. But I’m not deaf, and I’m not a fool, and–even in my incipient dotage–my memory is still rather reliable. Policy wonks, either amateur or professional, might know more, might know different, or might know better.
What I know is that the man on the street was sold on the goodness of, and the necessity for, the Iraq war based on the immediate threat of Saddam’s WMD. End of story.
Ok. WMD and an imminent threat.
I don’t know that the 5k weapons found were an imminent threat.
So . . . good answer!
I think @percival hit the nail on the head in #15 when he said:
Given the administration’s hype (and I’m not judging/guessing whether or where good faith began or ended), I think that’s exactly what the American people, not unreasonably in the circumstances, did expect.
Keep in mind that even if Saddam had an after-the-last-second change of heart, orders to dispose of what stocks he did have might have met with … complications.
“We have new orders. Move the chem rounds out of the warehouse and into the trucks. They are to be sent out for destruction.”
“Even the leaky ones, Major?”
“Leaky ones? No! Leave those alone. I’ll call HQ for instructions …”
I wouldn’t be surprised if at least part of Saddam’s reticence was due to embarrassment.
That’s brilliant!
Your linked video is a little stick figure that says “I own a construction company” and plays for five seconds.
I find it hard to believe that the Iraqi insurgency was caused by the Coalition Provisional Government not dealing with the tribal elders. It was caused by radical people (mostly associated with the fallen Saddam regime) who hated and wanted to expel the Westerners. They had been used to killing people under their thumb en masse for the last 30 years. We didn’t deal with Nazi leaders or Japanese leaders either after World War II except to tell them what to do. Even so we had an insurgency against occupation troops in Germany after World War II.
W. has daddy issues. He is the Hunter of the Bush family. He older brother is chosen one and he was the druggie. And like a typical inferiority complex he was going to earn his daddy’s admiration by vanquishing his father’s foe, Saddam Hussein. I have more respect for Cheney, who was just looking to cash-in.
He was that bad eh? Was he Hitler, too?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5iveOQd6WE
This is Napolitano interviewing Ray McGovern who is former CIA and was in charge of daily briefings in the Reagan administration. In McGovern’s opinion, the war in Iraq was sold to the American public because the Bush administration was interested in oil, Israel, and logistics with bases in northern Iraq. WMD was simply a pretext. He goes on to talk about the origins of the war in Ukraine as well and what is going on there as well.
Get back to me on that one after Hunter has twice gotten himself elected governor of a large state and served as a two-term US President.
I think that’s ludicrous. And speaks to several things you can’t possibly know.
Not at all. But primogeniture is a real thing. Jeb was always the favored son. Jeb was the Beau Biden and was supposed to run for president, but missed winning the FL governor job on the first try. Jeb was the heir, and W. was the spare. A study showed that second sons were 20-40% more likely to be criminals. Daddy issues.
Wasn’t GW Bush the oldest male child of his parents? Isn’t that the very definition of the primogeniture “thing?” And of the heir? Rather than the spare? Not sure why–in the current enviroment–that’s even a question. Thank you Prince Harry.
By your logic, I guess Jeb should have been the criminal, right? Because last time I looked, Jeb! was about 6 1/2 years younger than George W. Wasn’t he?
Please think twice before responding.
Crimenutely.
Oh, Andrew. Not Janet. Phew.
I forgot about Janet. Or maybe more accurate to say I got her out of my consciousness as quickly as I could.
And your evidence that they knew it to be untrue?