Quote:
Originally Posted by The Batlord
I live in Virginia, and while we're not Alabama or Texas (  ), there wasn't much thought other than getting those mother****ers, at least in the first year or so. And considering Bush had a 90% approval rating at the time, I think that's probably pretty representative of where the country was as a whole.
Honestly, the government may very well have lied about WMDs in order to get us into Iraq, but we really didn't need all that much convincing at that point. They just had to imply a terrorist connection and we were perfectly happy to not think too hard about it. |
iirc saddam basically admitted in court that he was purposely giving the impression that he still has WMD's because he didn't want to show any weakness to his iranian neighbors... so he was basically giving UN inspectors the runaround and acting shifty so he could maintain the process of getting out from under his sanctions while projecting the image to his enemies that he really did still have wmd's. wmd's were always central to saddam's geopolitical strategy, he saw them as his main source of geopolitical leverage. so even if he didn't have stockpiles lying around, he maintained the technological capability to rearm whenever necessary as soon as he was out from under his sanctions he most likely would have pursued some effort to reassert his strength, out of fear of iran. and iran would similarly be even more inclined to pursue their own nuclear ambitions out of fear of saddam. so it's pretty likely that with him still in power and (eventually) out from under UN sanctions, we would be looking at a nuclear arms race in the mid east. and with the ISIS situation, we still might... who knows?