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> The U.S. mandate for its incursion into Iraq, and the justification for the predictably subsequent civil war, was to end human rights atrocities in a foreign

> The U.S. mandate for its incursion into Iraq, and the justification for the predictably subsequent civil war, was to end human rights atrocities in a foreign country. I seem to recall something about weapons of mass destruction as the main reason going around when we invaded Iraq. Did I just hallucinate that whole thing? Because the human rights thing sounds like a huge retcon.

thaumaturgy 17y ago
It depends on who you talked to at the time, I guess. WMD were indeed the initial justification; however, when various U.N. investigations failed to find much in the way of evidence for WMD development -- other than a possible mobile chemical lab which may or may not have been used for WMD development IIRC -- the WMD justification came under heavy criticism by those who were following the progress. The WMD reasoning in fact came under international criticism before we officially breached the Iraqi border. I distinctly recall this because this situation was what prompted my research and essay at the time. The U.S. had mounted large forces on Iraq borders and other points in the area, and I guessed that there was no way the U.S. administration would then simply recall of those forces. They were there, so they had to do something. So, to counter the weakening of the WMD case, the case for human rights protection started making the rounds in mainstream media and talk radio. Suddenly the case wasn't that Saddam might be able to harm the U.S., it was that Saddam was a bad guy and we were going in there to do good things for the population that he was oppressing. And that worked long enough to roll the troops in, destroy some cities, topple a statue, and find the guy hiding in a hole.
viggity 17y ago
Wrong. The main reason why we invaded Iraq was because Saddam wouldn't give full access the weapons inspectors, as was required of him after the cease-fire that ended hostilities in 1991. Granted, we thought that he was hiding WMDs but we really had no way of knowing unless he gave full unrestricted access to the weapons inspectors - which he did not Also, Saddam did at one point have WMDs, he used chemical weapons to kill over 5000 Kurds.

thaumaturgy 17y ago

It depends on who you talked to at the time, I guess. WMD were indeed the initial justification; however, when various U.N. investigations failed to find much in the way of evidence for WMD development -- other than a possible mobile chemical lab which may or may not have been used for WMD development IIRC -- the WMD justification came under heavy criticism by those who were following the progress. The WMD reasoning in fact came under international criticism before we officially breached the Iraqi border. I distinctly recall this because this situation was what prompted my research and essay at the time. The U.S. had mounted large forces on Iraq borders and other points in the area, and I guessed that there was no way the U.S. administration would then simply recall of those forces. They were there, so they had to do something. So, to counter the weakening of the WMD case, the case for human rights protection started making the rounds in mainstream media and talk radio. Suddenly the case wasn't that Saddam might be able to harm the U.S., it was that Saddam was a bad guy and we were going in there to do good things for the population that he was oppressing. And that worked long enough to roll the troops in, destroy some cities, topple a statue, and find the guy hiding in a hole.

viggity 17y ago

Wrong. The main reason why we invaded Iraq was because Saddam wouldn't give full access the weapons inspectors, as was required of him after the cease-fire that ended hostilities in 1991. Granted, we thought that he was hiding WMDs but we really had no way of knowing unless he gave full unrestricted access to the weapons inspectors - which he did not Also, Saddam did at one point have WMDs, he used chemical weapons to kill over 5000 Kurds.