An overview of the situation in Iraq
In 2003, while Osama Bin Laden was hiding in the mountains of the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with Rangers and Marines tracking his tail, President Bush and his cronies had a plan. He would nab Saddam Hussein this time, unlike his father in the first Gulf War in 1991.
But the U.S. can’t knock off a president of a sovereign nation, even if he is a dictator. Hence came about the idea of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). Everyone knew Sadaam had used chemical weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war and on his own Kurdish people in the northern part of the country in the early 1980s.
Why could there not be WMDs in Iraq in the 2003? The U.N. Commission destroyed a number of those weapons in the 1990s. At the end of the decade, when they were kicked out (1998), military intelligence went in and destroyed the rest. This joint stealth action by the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force was called Operation Desert Fox.
All of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were gone in less than a year. It would take him years to build factories to make the weapons of mass destruction. This is especially true noting the Iraqi economy was taking a hit because of sanctions against trading with the country.
Even if Saddam did have WMDs, a terrorist wouldn’t be able to get them from him. Rather it should be said, no terrorist wanted to deal with Saddam, noting that almost every nation around Iraq was afraid of Saddam. That’s right, not many nations bordering Iraq wanted to deal with Saddam. Iran is on the eastern side. History shows the Persians and Arabs are not too friendly with each other, and that’s when they weren’t fighting one-another. On the north is Turkey; again a different cultural group than the Arabs, plus the Kurdish situation was a sticky one for both countries. Neither wanted a Kurdish state.
Saudi Arabia is to the south of Iraq, which has a completely different brand of Islam (Wahabbi) than Iraq. Besides the fact that Saddam used religion as a puppet. He was a social secularist, as most military commanders are. Also to the south is Kuwait. Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990, sparking Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
Jordan, Iraq’s neighbor to the west, is a friend of the western powers, so there would be little chance of Saddam having influence there. Looks like Dubya’s theory is falling to pieces.
The only nation that would deal with Iraq is Syria, which is where many of the Baath Party elites fled if they didn’t get killed in the current war with Iraq. According to Middle Eastern and European news reports, the Syrian Baath party is now turning former Iraqi Baaths away, for reasons of conscience.
Here’s a rhetorical question: So was it that easy to fudge intelligence and make a case for Iraq? I didn’t believe it on the fact that Saddam couldn’t afford to buy any weapons from anyone, muchless, make them on his own.
We are five years into the Iraq war. It is our American duty to question the reasons for going into Iraq, while the Taliban have the opportunity to knock off the next Pakistani president. The former intelligence chief of Pakistan stated the other day it would not be easy, but it is possible for terrorists formerly of Afghanistan to overthrow the Pakistani government.
At this point, we’re stuck in the middle of a civil war between the Sunnis and Shias. We have been for a year and a half to two years. I called a civil war before the pundits on CNN called it a civil war. So what do we do now? The best possibility at this point is to claim victory and get a timetable for six to nine months for our soldiers to get out. Some people say that’s unreasonable because our mission hasn’t been accomplished.
Ladies and gentlemen, the mission has changed three times since the war began. The mission is as convoluted and ambiguous now as it ever was. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is looking at us like we’re imperialist goats hoarding the oil of the Middle East. How many more people must die so that we can save face in the international relations realm?
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Apr 18 2008. Filed under Opinion.
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