http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323393304578358691247678454.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
MANY OF US WHO SUPPORTER THE WAR IN IRAQ WERE OUTRAGED WHEN A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN WON WITH A “SHOCKING AND AWING” VICTORY TURNED INTO A CIRCUS OF SENSITIVITY TO OUR ENEMIES KNOWN AS “THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT” AND A REFUSAL TO EVEN WHISPER THE WORD JIHAD….RSK
It was 1998, and Iraq and the U.S. were edging toward war.The Iraqi dictator, President Clinton warned that February, “threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region, and the security of all the rest of us. Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal.” In October, the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Iraq official U.S. policy, passed 360-38 in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate. In December, Mr. Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox, a four-day bombardment of Iraq with the declared purpose of degrading Saddam’s WMD capability.
“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, justifying the case for military action on the eve of Mr. Clinton’s impeachment.”
***Whatever else might be said about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began 10 years ago, its origins, motives and justifications did not lie in the Administration of George W. Bush. On the contrary, when Mr. Bush came to office in January 2001 he inherited an Iraq that amounted to a simmering and endless crisis for the U.S.—one that Saddam appeared to be winning.
American and British warplanes enforced a no-fly zone over northern and southern Iraq at a cost of $1 billion a year. The U.N.’s Oil for Food sanctions designed to “contain” Saddam were crumbling amid international opposition to its effects on the Iraqi people, even as the regime used the sanctions as a propaganda tool and as a vehicle to bribe foreign officials. Iraqi Kurds were in perpetual jeopardy, as Saddam demonstrated in 1996 when his Republican Guard took the city of Irbil and shot 700 Kurdish partisans.
Most seriously, after 1998 Iraq rid itself of weapons inspectors, meaning there wasn’t even a small check on Saddam’s ambitions to rebuild a WMD capability he had already proved willing to use. When the weapons inspectors finally returned to Iraq in the run-up to the invasion, they found Saddam playing the same cat-and-mouse games that had defeated them in the 1990s.
“No confidence can arise that proscribed programs or items have been eliminated,” chief U.N. weapons inspector (and avowed war opponent) Hans Blix reported to the Security Council in January 2003, adding that “the Iraqi regime had allegedly misplaced 1,000 tons of VX nerve agent—one of the most toxic ever developed.”
