Why did the US and allies invade Iraq, 20 years ago? | BBC

Tinkerpeach said:
U.S. troops found nearly 5,000 abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq from 2004 to 2011: report



https://www.yahoo.com/news/chemical-weapons-found-in-iraq-nyt-report-135347507.html

And that's a liberal source.
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Idiot. Next time read your own links. These were weapons Reagan gave Hussein to be used against Iran.


[FONT=&quot]The discovery of pre-Gulf War chemical weapons — most of them "filthy, rusty or corroded" — did not fit the narrative.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“They needed something to say that after Sept. 11 Saddam used chemical rounds,” Lampier said. “And all of this was from the pre-1991 era.”[/FONT]
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Althea said:
The chemical weapons Saddam used on Iran were made in USA and sold to Iraq covertly.
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Cheney was the liaison who brokered the chem weapons. He and all the Bush's knew that they were expired. But they sure pretended they were ready so they could justify the war which was about oil and power.
 
LurchAddams said:
There were never any WMDs. Bush invaded Iraq for 3 reasons:

1. To control their oil distribution - their oil was power and;
2. To show terrorists that after 911 that the USA was not to be fucked with, i.e., to beat up a bully to scare anyone else that might think of attacking us.
3. Even though Iraq had no WMD's it was feared they might someday and so attack them before they became a threat.

#3 is the "Bush doctrine".

Bush and the other neocons didn't want us to wait until it was discovered there were no WMD's so they made up stories that Iraq already had them in order to fool everyone into thinking it was ok to attack. The crime of it was - our armed forces weren't ready - we didn't have enough protective gear or equipment to go in - but the neocon fuck heads didn't care about all the American dead and wounded. For those trumptards attacking Biden for the way we withdrew from Afghanistan - just remind them of the fucked up way we went into Iraq.
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We never controlled their oil production and never received a cent from it.

Liberal lies.
 
Nordberg said:
Cheney was the liaison who brokered the chem weapons. He and all the Bush's knew that they were expired. But they sure pretended they were ready so they could justify the war which was about oil and power.
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Quit spreading lies.

This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi...llowed Iraq to,equipment was of German origin.
 
Lightbringer said:
Disagree. Iraq and Syria...whether you agreed with their systems of government or not...were the big dogs. Now they aren't.
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You could make that argument although Syria is a bit iffy.

It would depend on what you consider stable and also what you consider the middle east.

It's a very convoluted question.

I was referring to the region as a whole, not singular nations.
 
Tinkerpeach said:
You could make that argument although Syria is a bit iffy.

It would depend on what you consider stable and also what you consider the middle east.

It's a very convoluted question.

I was referring to the region as a whole, not singular nations.
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Strong nations rule regions.
 
Tinkerpeach said:
Because the US and it's allies believed they had weapons of mass destruction, which they did and were found by the UN.
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I think it's possible that some, like Colin Powell, did believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but it seems they were misled by the 2 iraqi defectors I mentioned, who later confessed to lying about it so that the U.S. would invade. Here's another BBC article that gets into the details:

How the search for Iraq's secret weapons fell apart | BBC

Tinkerpeach said:
Always better to err on the side of caution.
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If the U.S. and allies had done that, they wouldn't have invaded. Instead, they went with the stories from 2 unreliable defectors.

Tinkerpeach said:
Plus Saddam was known for using WMD's against his own people, he ran torture chambers, he was robbing the nation, he invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia with war, he had waged a war against Iran, he had threatened Israel with complete destruction, he threatened the US with complete destruction.

You need more reasons?
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The invasion of Kuwait happened 13 years prior to the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq. As to torture, the U.S. has a long history of doing that themselves:

20 Years of US Torture – and Counting | Human Rights Watch

As to harming the Iraqi people by robbing them, that may well be, but let's not forget the harm imposed on Iraq from western powers, via sanctions and via invasion. In terms of the sanctions imposed on Iraq from 1990 to 2003:

**
The economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations Security Council, from 1990 to 2003, may well lay claim to be the worst humanitarian catastrophe ever imposed in the name of global governance. The unconscionable human damage done by those sanctions is routinely dismissed as the unintended consequence of a well-intentioned policy from the past, which has since given way to more nuanced and humane measures. But in fact, the Iraq sanctions program is the template for the systemic, devastating sanctions we see in place today, albeit in a subtler and more circuitous form.
**

Full article:
The Enduring Lessons of the Iraq Sanctions | Middle East Research and Information Project


In terms of the invasion of Iraq:

**
Since the invasion, Iraq Body Count has recorded between 185,000 and 209,000 civilian deaths as a result of violence. The number grows to 288,000 when combatants are included.

The coalition alone has killed over 24,000 Iraqi civilians, and that number grows to 33,000 when we include those killed by Iraqi state forces.

During the 2003-2017 period, Iraq Body Count recorded the killings of over 7,000 Iraqi children, among them 932 are attributed to the Islamic State, while twice as many were killed by the US-UK coalition. Estimates suggest that over 7,400 Iraqi children have been killed up to 2021, with over 1,000 deaths attributed to the Islamic State, and twice as many killed by the US-UK coalition.
**

Full article:
The deadly legacy of 20 years of US 'War on Terror' in Iraq | opendemocracy.net
 
Nordberg said:
it was about oil. The Brits and Americans had Iraq's oil divided up by contract before we went in. Wars are always about money.
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Robert Gates denied it, but I suspect he and others in Bush Jr.'s administration may have just been fooling themselves. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once said that it was largely about oil. He later clarified what he meant:

**
Greenspan, who wrote in his memoir that “the Iraq War is largely about oil,” said in a Washington Post interview that while securing global oil supplies was “not the administration’s motive,” he had presented the White House before the 2003 invasion with the case for why removing the then-Iraqi leader was important for the global economy.

“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan said in the interview conducted on Saturday. “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”

In his new book “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Greenspan wrote: “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”

U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday rejected the comment, which echoed long-held complaints of many critics that a key motivating force in the war was to maintain U.S. access to the rich oil supplies in Iraq.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Gates said, “I have a lot of respect for Mr. Greenspan.” But he disagreed with his comment about oil being a leading motivating factor in the war.

“I know the same allegation was made about the Gulf War in 1991, and I just don’t believe it’s true,” Gates said.

“I think that it’s really about stability in the Gulf. It’s about rogue regimes trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. It’s about aggressive dictators,” Gates said.
**

Source:
Greenspan clarifies Iraq war and oil link | Reuters
 
It was a totally brain-dead decision on Dubya's part.
Iraq was a rare secular government in towelhead land and we fucked that up.
 
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