Irvine511 said:
yes, but nowhere has ANYONE other than Bush thought that a full scale, unilateral invasion of iraq, while still having troops in Afghanistan, was a good idea. no government, other than ours, even thought the WMD intelligence was actionable enough to warrant a full scale invasion.
defend the Iraq War all you want. but don't say others supported the policy when the never did. Clinton seems to be saying that they would support efforts to remove Hussein, which in the context of the late 1990s would mean working with anti-Saddam forces on the ground in Iraq, NOT invading and then occupying the country, something that Bush 1 was unwilling to do.
The United States, United Kingdom and Australia all participated in the initial ground invasion of Iraq. More than 25 countries sent troops after the initial invasion, including Japan, South Korea, Italy, Spain. Multiple UN resolutions authorized the invasion including UN resolution 1441 and once the initial invasion was over, UN resolution 1483 authorized the occupation. There is NOTHING unilateral about the invasion of Iraq, and if you can described the 2003 war as being inilateral, then you could also describe the 1991 Gulf War as unilateral as well.
Its not a matter of "actionable intelligence" but whether Saddam has verifiably disarmed or not. That was the criteria that was set up for whether there would be further military action or not in the 1991 Gulf War Ceacefire. Its a well known fact that intelligence agencies under-estimated Saddam's WMD programs prior to the first Gulf War, based on what UN inspectors found in Iraq. That is why further military action would primarily be based on Saddam's level of cooperation and whether he was meeting the requirments of complete and verifiable disarmament.
Bill Clinton went on Larry King Live and stated he supported the actions that Bush was about to take in March 2003 just days before the invasion. His wife supported it as well.
The Clinton adminstration DID support anti-Saddam forces many times during the 1990s, and these efforts were a total failure as Saddam easily wiped out such forces. It became evident to Kenneth Pollack, Clinton's #1 National Security Staff member on Iraq in the late 1990s, that the only solution to the threat posed by Saddam was to remove him.
The reason Bush 1 did not go to Baghdad is because they had succeeded in getting Saddam to agree to a large number of serious demands in the 1991 Gulf War Ceacefire agreement and given the beating the Iraqi military to in the war, plus continued sanctions, the eventual complete disarmament of Saddam within two years through inspections, it was felt that Saddam would be so unlikely to do anything like he did in 1990 again, and would be out of power at least by 1996.
It was the least costly road, and if it had worked like that, it would have been great. Unfortunately, Saddam remained in power and by 1995, inspections and disarmament were not complete and Saddam was completely refusing to cooperate on the issue most of the time. Then in the late 1990s, sanctions and the embargo almost completely fell apart with the entire border with Syria completely open to any sort of trade by 2000.
The world in 1991 was also a very different place than that of 2003. Despite the Cold War coming to an end, there were still a half million Soviet Troops in Eastern Germany plus another half million in Poland, Czechleslovakia, and Hungary. Despite warmer relations and Nuclear and conventional disarmament treaties in place, everyone new there was the risk that the situation there could be reversed and that raised many questions about having a large occupation force in Iraq given the potential difficulties in Europe if the political situation in the Soviet Union suddenly reversed. In August of 1991, it almost did for 3 days as there was a coup attempt in the Soviet Union. No one knows what would have happened if the coup had succeeded, but it shows the risk were indeed there at the time.
Regardless, had Saddam refused to the ceacefire agreement and had continued to fight on, several US Army divisions were ready to drive towards Baghdad if given the order. Several smaller US units were within a 100 miles of the capital already along the Tigris Euphrates River. If Saddam had not surrended to US and coalition demands, combat operations would have continued.
Its ironic, but there were many Democrats in 1992 who actually used the slogan, "he did not finish the job" in response to Bush talking up the 1991 Gulf War. There was strong criticism used in the 1992 Presidential campaign and afterwards about Bush stopping to early or not finishing the job. Given what was known back in March of 1991 and the situation that the world was in at the time, I think Bush Sr. made the right choice. The world had yet to learn at the time just how dangerous Saddam was, and that he was so strong that only a full scale military invasion would be able to remove him from power. The inspections, his lack of cooperation then total defiance, the crumbling of sanctions and the weapons embargo, the inability of anti-Saddam forces to do anything to his strength, his successful resistence of repeated US airstrikes and his ability to continue on in power were not foreseen back in March 1991, except that the Ceacefire agreement did allow the coalition to use all necessary means to bring about enforcement of all subsequent resolutions through resolution 678. Despite that, no one really believed that Saddam would still be in power within 5 years.
both parties got exactly what they wanted out of this "interview"
