My real problem with any attempt to defend the fact that Bush came into office determined to get rid of Saddam by saying the reason was to bring about regime change, save the people from Iraq, and be nicey was, during the 2000 campaign, Bush repeatedly derided the very idea of "nation-building" and intervention anywhere except for cold calculated national interest. Now, all of a sudden, he's in office and he's suddenly interested in nation building? Come on.
He wanted to get rid of Saddam because he wanted to do something his father couldn't, and he wanted to project US power. But he needed a pretext because he knew he never could get American support for a naked, causeless invasion. Saddam Hussein is a monster, and I'm glad he's gone, but there are monsters in China and Syria and North Korea and Cuba and Libya - why don't we go after them? North Korea is far more dangerous to us than Iraq, and Cuba is 90 miles off our coast and a chip-shot if we really really wanted to take Castro out. You cannot convince me that George W. Bush had any reason to go into Iraq other than that he simply wanted to. He came into office determined to get Saddam, and he was willing to say anything it would take to bring that about. He had to wait until he could find a pretext he could present as plausible, and he had to sex up the intelligence even to get WMD to work. But this was not a humanitarian invasion to save the people of Iraq - otherwise, why did he have to wait two years? Why did he completely dismiss the very value of nation building in 2000? Tom Beck www.mercerjewishsingles.org "I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed I'd see the last." - Dr Jerry Pournelle _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
