Since , Saddam had ignored 17 different U. This position was reinforced when American intelligence concluded he had developed WMDs and had harbored and supported terrorists. War—always a last resort—was the only avenue left. Both houses of Congress passed the Iraq Resolution on October 16, , authorizing military action against Iraq by comfortable margins, with the Republicans overwhelmingly voting to use force and the Democrats evenly divided.
Security Council unanimously passed Resolution , which required Iraqi disarmament but did not authorize force. In the ensuing months, weapons inspectors concluded that Iraq was not in compliance with U.
On March 20, , the United States led the invasion that swiftly toppled Saddam and his brutal regime. However, no WMDs were ever found. Critics suggested the WMD argument was a ruse propagated by an American government determined to gain control of an important Middle Eastern, oil-producing state. The United States struggled to establish and maintain order and oversee a peaceful transition to a democratic government. As the years progressed, American casualties mounted, and the new Iraqi government was seen by many as ineffective.
The Iraq War became increasingly unpopular in the United States, and most Americans would ultimately view it as a mistake. Still, despite the criticism, the fact remains that the invasion was the right thing to do from a moral standpoint.
Saddam had to be stopped from continuing to terrorize 22 million Iraqis, including his political prisoners and torture victims, adding to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis he killed since he took power in The question of whether U. Viewed in moral terms, however, there can be no debate. If the United States does not stand up abroad for the values it cherishes at home, including freedom and equality, it will be complicit in the brutal actions of authoritarian regimes around the world.
Whatever the shortcomings of post-Saddam Iraq, removing him from power saved lives and made safer the lives of those who would have been terrorized and tortured under his cruel regime. No, the preemptive invasion of Iraq was not justified at the time by the intelligence related to the War on Terror or by the suspicion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The George W. Fear played a central role in that campaign. General Assembly.
On October 7, the president delivered a speech in Cincinnati that described the threat posed by Iraq in the most dire and alarmist terms yet. That campaign culminated on February 5, , with the highly publicized report to the U. Bush gave one last press conference before he announced, on March 19, the inauguration of hostilities against Iraq. Story highlights Blix: Lead-up to war shows we must rely on international inspectors' reports War aimed to eliminate non-existent WMD, but ended up replacing tyranny with anarchy Blix: Invading a country is easy for great power, but achieving political aims is more difficult Blix: It is likely my U.
On March 19, , Iraq was invaded by an "alliance of willing states" headed by the U. While we were sad to be ushered out in the midst of a job entrusted to us by the U.
Security Council -- one that we were doing well -- there was a certain relief in knowing we had all made it out safely. We had worried that our inspectors might be taken hostage, but as it turned out the Iraqis had been very helpful during our time there.
So it was that a few hundred unarmed U. Hans Blix. I headed the U. Today, I look again at the reasons why this terrible mistake -- and violation of the U.
Here are my thoughts. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, , George W. Bush's administration felt a need to let the weight and wrath of the world's only superpower fall on more evil actors than just Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
No target could have seemed more worthy of being crushed than Iraq's brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein. Sadly, however, the elimination of this tyrant was perhaps the only positive result of the war. The war aimed to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but there weren't any. The war aimed to eliminate al Qaeda in Iraq, but the terrorist group didn't exist in the country until after the invasion. The war aimed to make Iraq a model democracy based on law, but it replaced tyranny with anarchy and led America to practices that violated the laws of war.
More Videos The lingering effect of war on Iraqis Teens see no hope for future in Iraq Iconic moments from Iraq War The war aimed to transform Iraq to a friendly base for U.
The Bush administration certainly wanted to go to war, and it advanced eradication of weapons of mass destruction as the main reason. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has since explained, it was the only rationale that was acceptable to all parts of the U. The WMDs argument also carried weight with the public and with the U. Indeed, in the autumn of the threat seemed credible.
While I never believed Saddam could have concealed a continued nuclear program, I too thought there could still be some biological and chemical weapons left from Iraq's war with Iran. If not, why had Iraq stopped U. However, suspicions are one thing and reality is quite another. As we found no weapons and no evidence supporting the suspicions, we reported this. But U. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield dismissed our reports with one of his wittier retorts: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Rumsfeld's logic was correct, I believe, but it was no excuse for the American and British governments to mislead themselves and the world, as they did, by giving credit to fake evidence or assuming that if weapons items were "unaccounted for" that they must exist.
They did not exist. We inspected many hundred of sites, including dozens that had been suggested to us by various governments' national intelligence organizations. In a few cases we found conventional weapons -- but no weapons of mass destruction. I am not suggesting that governments should ignore information coming from their billion dollar intelligence programs. Such information is indispensable and collected with many means that are not available to U.
However, I think one lesson from the Iraq war is that we should pay equal attention to the results of multimillion dollar international reports that are based on extensive professional inspections on the ground.
In , the alliance of willing states did not do that. After the war it was reported that I and several others in New York had had our offices bugged during this period. If I was bugged, as I find very likely, I regret that those listening in did not pay more attention to what I had to say. Fortunately, enough states did listen, and the U. Security Council was saved from green-lighting a war that was justified by false evidence. The political leaders who have been criticized as responsible for launching the war on false premises have asserted that they acted in good faith, and that interrogation of leading Iraqis showed that the regime planned to revive its weapons program as soon as sanctions disappeared.
I am not questioning the good faith of the political leaders, but rather their poor judgment in bringing war and death to a country on flimsy grounds. War in Iraq: Ten years later How will history judge the Iraq War? On February 11 -- less than five weeks before the invasion -- I told U. Her response was that it was Iraq, and not the intelligence, that was on trial.
And during a telephone chat with Tony Blair on February 20, I told the British prime minister that it would be paradoxical and absurd if a quarter of a million troops were to invade Iraq and find very little in the way of weapons.
Edward Chin of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines Regiment, covers the face of a statue of Saddam Hussein with an American flag before toppling it in downtown in Baghdad on Wednesday, April 9, Both cases represented an abysmal failure of Australian political leadership, driven by an unnecessary capitulation to strategically foolhardy decisions by the US administrations of the time. Both decisions were taken without independent Australian analysis of the legitimacy of American war aims, the credibility of American military strategy to both win the war and secure the peace, as well as the long-term consequences for Australian national interests.
And both turned out to be strategic disasters against virtually every measure. In the case of Iraq, despite the heroic efforts of US, British and Australian troops, we have witnessed: the outbreak of sectarian violence between the Shia majority and the Sunni minority; the effective expulsion of Christians from a region where they had managed to cohabit with Muslims for more than 1, years; the "gifting" of Iraq to Iran within the wider strategic balance in the Middle East; and a decade after the US-led invasion, the implosion of Iraq into another full-scale civil war, coupled with the emergence of brand new terrorist organisations for whom Iraq would become the principal base of operations against Syria, the wider Middle East and Europe.
His case rested on five core arguments. First, that Iraq possessed an "arsenal" of chemical and biological weapons. Second, that Iraq was in pursuit of a nuclear capability. Fifth, that allowing Iraq to retain its WMD capabilities would make it possible for terrorist groups like al-Qaeda to obtain WMDs, threatening the security of other states including Australia. The problem for Howard was not just that each of his justifications for going to war would prove to be false.
It was that the intelligence received by his government before the war did not justify any of these claims. Put simply, Howard lied to the Australian public. In reports sent to Howard personally between September and March , he was warned there was "no evidence" that Iraq had restarted chemical weapons production, and "that there was no known…production".
He was also advised in late that Iraq obtaining fissile material was an unlikely event and, even more starkly, "that Iraq does not have nuclear weapons". Howard also argued repeatedly that "if the world cannot disarm Iraq it has no hope of disciplining North Korea".
Overall, congressmen and 77 senators made the decision that sealed the fates of 4, fallen American service members. And although Trump continues to deny any proclamations of support for the war, scores of sources have debunked his claims.
Rather, he offered lukewarm support.
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