Audience Member : Negrodamus, why is President Bush convinced there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?<p>Negrodamus : Because he has the receipt.<p>- from Paul Moody's "Negrodamus" skit on Chappelle's Show<p>More seriously, Western countries sold Saddam plenty of chemical weapons which were used to kill lots of Iranians during the particularly brutal Iraq-Iran war during the 1980s.<p>The whole situation is complete madness from the average individual's perspective. Technically there were still WMDs in Iraq (because "we" sold them to them so of course we knew) but it was probably covered up or obfuscated.
Destroying Iraq was a part of the 'neocon revolution' which really got it's legs after 9/11.<p>This podcast helps give some insight:<p><a href="https://cafe.com/stay-tuned-the-paradox-of-dick-cheney-with-adam-mckay/" rel="nofollow">https://cafe.com/stay-tuned-the-paradox-of-dick-cheney-with-...</a>
It was obvious to anybody who cared, before the invasion, that there were no WMDs. Hans Blix inspected every place suspected, and reported not only nothing, but not even a trace of anything, in the daily newspapers.<p>I suspect Maddox was misled, like Powell, by relying only on classified material that amounted to summaries produced with deliberate bias.<p>It is a fundamental problem: there is a thousand times as much classified material as you can afford to read. Who can justify reading outside it, where the writer might not have access to the whole story? But because there is so much, you are obliged to rely on summaries, and the sound judgment and the scruples of those in charge of what goes into them.
Between the absence of WMDs (I'd never believed they were there) and the disinterest in stabilizing the country after the invasion, it became clear that the goal was to destroy a nation that had the recent history and continued potential to be a threat to our interests and allies in the region.
I don't understand why he went in the first place. It was clear to everyone it was BS. It should have been triply clear to someone in the DoE whose job includes knowing these things!?<p>Based on this, the guy is either an idiot (unlikely) or just wilfully ignorant.<p>Once he was in Iraq, and after he returned, he knew. That's be his own admission. So he spent his time running around and interrogating old men until they cried, blocking streets, disrupting commerce etc.<p>Then when he came back, instead of telling the truth, he covered for the whole enterprise.<p>This guy is telling a sob story and acting like he is the victim. But he's not. He's part of the problem. Without people like him, wars like Iraq 2 wouldn't happen.