A rchive Date
[ 08-09-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/brodbeck.html
Iraq war was one big fraud
By TOM BRODBECK -- Winnipeg Sun
September 8, 2003
Can you imagine if a year ago the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were talking about the need to invade Iraq based solely on the desire to liberate the people there?
Not because there were weapons of mass destruction. Not because Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the world. Not because Iraq had direct links to al-Qaida and was therefore responsible in part for Sept. 11.
No, imagine if the only rationale given to invade Iraq, kill thousands of civilians and injure tens of thousands more was to "free" the people?
Imagine if the Bush administration told Americans that they wanted to invade Iraq to liberate the people, spend about $1 billion a week to occupy it and tens of billions more to rebuild it after they bombed the hell out of it?
It would have gone over like a lead Zeppelin.
But "liberating" the people is about the only supposed rationale left on the diminishing list of reasons to invade Iraq. And even that one is now starting to fade.
Going into the war, there was a veritable grab bag of "good" reasons to invade Iraq, all of which have since been thoroughly discredited.
Proponents of the war had what they thought was a well diversified portfolio of reasons to support their position. They thought they'd hit on at least one or two of them to justify the slaughter.
Instead, they got a big goose egg.
There were no weapons of mass destruction. Claims by Bush that Iraq could attack the U.S. within hours was proven a lie. Hussein was not an imminent threat to the world. And there were no direct ties to al-Qaida.
The whole thing was a fraud.
So all the arguments about Canada not "being there" for the U.S. in time of need -- based on the false supposition that the invasion of Iraq was somehow tied to Sept. 11 -- are down the toilet.
Proponents of the invasion now say the war was justified because the U.S. and the British have "freed" millions of people.
They don't criticize the Bush administration for lying to them. They don't re-evaluate their support for the war, even though every "good" reason for going to war was proven false.
No, they just change their rationale for the war.
And many are now surprised at how difficult it is to bring democracy to Iraq and clean up the mess the war caused, even though the violence and backlash a U.S.-occupied Iraq is causing was well predicted.
The proponents of war just chose not to listen.
In fact, one of the main arguments against the "freeing the people" rationale for war was that the U.S. would achieve nothing by invading and occupying Iraq.
What would happen is U.S. troops would become magnets for anti-American terrorist groups who would use the opportunity to shoot, bomb and kill U.S. soldiers at every turn.
Anti-U.S. factions would sabotage any efforts to rebuild the country. There would be competing groups warring over who would control the country. And there would be no freedom -- just disorder, bombings, looting, crime, unemployment, poverty and death.
It would be a nightmare, many experts predicted.
And the predictions proved correct.
It's now so bad, some U.S. officials are musing about having the United Nations take over in Iraq because it's inconceivable that the U.S. can bring democracy to the war-torn country.
I used to get a lot of vitriolic e-mails from people who supported the war, carpet-bombing me with rhetoric about how anti-American and anti-freedom I was.
"What do we do, wait until Saddam bombs us with mustard gas?" was a favourite.
Turns out coalition forces couldn't even find a bottle of Dijon.
Many of these people vowed to come back to me a few months after the war to ensure I "ate crow" after a democratic government was set up in Iraq and all was well in the land.
But I don't hear from these folks anymore.
I guess they're too busy chowing down on a helping of crow themselves.
Tom Brodbeck is the Sun's city columnist. He can be reached by e-mail at tbrodbeck@wpgsun.com Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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