With all this evidence that there was really no
imminent threat from Iraq, and no reason to attack them in 2003 (while
Osama bin Laden was still on the loose, Al Qaeda was still operating, and
North Korea was waving the WMD it definately did have in our
face), you might be wondering why we invaded Iraq anyway.
Good question. Maybe Bush was trying to do what daddy
should have done in the Gulf War. I've heard Bush Jr. doesn't get along
so well with his dad, maybe he was trying to show him up by getting
Saddam when his dad didn't. It's just speculation, I don't know why Bush
personally liked the idea of invading Iraq.
I have more clues when it comes to the Bush
administration, however. In 1997, the Project for the New American
Century (PNAC)
was established by a group that included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
and Paul Wolfowitz. The PNAC wrote a policy document, "Rebuilding
America's Defenses," that calls for global domination through
military forces that could "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theator wars."
Members of the group (including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,
Richard Armitage, William Bennet, William Kristol, and Richard Perle)
sent a letter to President Clinton in 1998 asking him to attack Iraq and
remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power as the first step in
their plan for global dominace. (Making Iraq a base for operations
against other "rogue states.")
Clinton did not comply. But then in 2001, Bush took
over as President of the U.S. and put all of these men (and many others
from the PNAC) into high level positions in the White House, the
Pentagon, and the Defense Department.
In the PNAC's policy document they stated that thier
"process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change,
is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event
– like a new Pearl Harbor." In his book Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke (who worked in defense for Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush) describes the events that took place within the White House on September 11th, 2001. (Since you like West Wing, you'll find the movie -- I'm sure one will come out -- they make out of this chapter riviting.) After a harrowing day, Clarke went home to catch an hour's sleep before going back in the next morning. As he headed back to the White House, he "wondered again how many al Qaeda sleeper cells there were in the United States."
He said, "I expected to go back to a round of
meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our
vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them in the short term.
Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I
was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting
al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this
national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning
of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a
war with Iraq."
Clarke's account is corroborated by Paul O'Neill.
O'Neill was Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, until Bush fired him for
disagreeing with his tax cuts. O'Neill provided (to author Ron Suskind
for his book, The Price of Loyalty) 19,000 internal White House documents that reveal "From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go. "O'Neill, "adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11...It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying "Go find me a way to do this " (CBS, 60 Minutes, March 22, 2004).
And according to notes taken by White House aides, on
September 11th, 2001: "With the intelligence all pointing toward bin
Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans.
And at 2:40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best
info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." - meaning Saddam
Hussein - "at same time. Not only UBL" - the initials used to
identify Osama bin Laden." (CBS, September 5th, 2002)
So it seems that we have the neocons from the PNAC,
with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz leading the charge, to thank for the Iraq war
we're now mired in. And the question is, are we safer now? Have we
eliminated the man who orchestrated the 9/11 plot against America? Have
we eliminated al Qaeda at it's roots? Have we countered terrorist
ideology throughout the world, giving people a reason to like the U.S.
rather than turn to extremists because of grievances? Have we eliminated
our vulnerabilities to terrorism and strengthened homeland security?