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Maddening. The war planners expected everyone to be completely credulous. It was watching your country go to war on unverifiable "evidence" collected through a

Maddening. The war planners expected everyone to be completely credulous. It was watching your country go to war on unverifiable "evidence" collected through a game of whisper-down-the-ally. If you expressed doubt, you were unpatriotic and wanted another 9/11. If you wanted to cut the losses and end it, you wanted to 'cut and run' and wanted another 9/11. If you presented everything to a smart 8 year old, they would said it sounded dubious.

stickfigure 3y ago
Meh, it wasn't so clearcut. You have to remember that Hussein himself deliberately encouraged the belief that he had chemical weapons (perhaps thinking it would be a deterrent) and that he did, in fact, use chemical weapons against the Kurds in previous years. The information was bad, but it certainly wasn't clear to an 8 year old and probably wasn't even clear to Bush & Co. Given the incredible effort that the US military spent trying to hunt down WMDs after the war, it's clear the belief was genuine. That doesn't make their decisions good, but it makes them somewhat understandable. I was 30 when the Iraq war started. I had mixed feelings then and to be honest, I still have mixed feelings. I cry not one single tear for Saddam Hussein, though the population of Iraq deserved a better outcome.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Brazilian here. Around here, comedians were just repeating the evidence to get people to laugh. It was so clear cut that it didn't need explanation. But then it stopped being funny when the US actually acted on it.
- ok123456 3y ago
  It was pretty clear cut to the point that France, Germany, Russia and China voted against Resolution 1441 in the UN, and there was unprecedented demonstrations across the globe against it. The only reason that we suspected he had chemical war systems is that the US sold him those chemical war systems in the 1980s to use against Iran. I'm not sure how ready or what level of disrepair they were in 20 years later. Removing Saddam absolutely was wrong strategically, and lead to about a million people dying.
deleted 3y ago
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stickfigure 3y ago

Meh, it wasn't so clearcut. You have to remember that Hussein himself deliberately encouraged the belief that he had chemical weapons (perhaps thinking it would be a deterrent) and that he did, in fact, use chemical weapons against the Kurds in previous years. The information was bad, but it certainly wasn't clear to an 8 year old and probably wasn't even clear to Bush & Co. Given the incredible effort that the US military spent trying to hunt down WMDs after the war, it's clear the belief was genuine. That doesn't make their decisions good, but it makes them somewhat understandable. I was 30 when the Iraq war started. I had mixed feelings then and to be honest, I still have mixed feelings. I cry not one single tear for Saddam Hussein, though the population of Iraq deserved a better outcome.

marcosdumay 3y ago
Brazilian here. Around here, comedians were just repeating the evidence to get people to laugh. It was so clear cut that it didn't need explanation. But then it stopped being funny when the US actually acted on it.
ok123456 3y ago
It was pretty clear cut to the point that France, Germany, Russia and China voted against Resolution 1441 in the UN, and there was unprecedented demonstrations across the globe against it. The only reason that we suspected he had chemical war systems is that the US sold him those chemical war systems in the 1980s to use against Iran. I'm not sure how ready or what level of disrepair they were in 20 years later. Removing Saddam absolutely was wrong strategically, and lead to about a million people dying.

deleted 3y ago

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