[Suetonius]

TL;DR, The Iraq war has enabled Iraqis - the average Iraqi - to take his/her future into their own hands

From the outset, I categorically reject the claim that the recent Iraq conflict (2003-2011) was (i) illegal, and (ii) a 'war of aggression'. The flawed argument that the Iraq war was one of 'aggression' - and not a continuation of hostility that began with a UN-mandated defensive repelling of Saddam's forces from Kuwait; the ceasefire (UNSC Resolution 687) for which he repeatedly violated, and was deemed uncompliant with right up until the invasion - has enabled critics to cite the Nuremberg tribunal's position that the invasion "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". This, in turn, has compelled some to argue that the sectarian conflict - that spiralled out of the Coalition's control - was a responsibility that lies only with the alleged 'aggressor'. Such arguments have helped to alleviate the responsibility from that insurgency which fanatically attempted to sabotage any chance of Iraq's redevelopment after the Ba'athist regime had been removed. I hereby state that while I claim to support the Iraq war, I only support one of them: I support the process of externally-conditioned regime change, and nothing more. It is in fact obvious that there was only one group which supported the idea that the Iraq war should extend beyond 2003, and it wasn't the U.S. government, it wasn't the Iraqi population, and it certainly wasn't myself. Those who wanted a prolongation of the conflict were those who our forces were fighting against: those whose attempts to once again subjugate Iraq's population we repelled. Once the Jordanian embassy had been attacked on August 7, 2003, a completely separate war had been started - one declared by the insurgency. The struggle subsequently metamorphosed into a front in the War on Terror.

With that preamble out of the way, there are still other issues that need clearing up about this conflict. Critics often maintain that the war was an attempt by the United States to "impose" democratic ideals onto an unreceptive and subaltern population. It has often been said that their intention was to give the region some "shock therapy" to encourage democracy. I personally would agree that such an idea is unrealistic and non-pragmatic. I certainly disagree with Tom Friedman's crazy belief that we needed to "take out a very big stick" in the heart of the Muslim world. Therefore, it should be realized that - even though "imposition" may have somewhat guided America's policy and that there were ulterior motives involved - the Iraq war should be seen as a war of enablement. So much was needed to remove unsustainable and hopeless conditions in the country, and let Iraqis take matters into their own hands. This is self-evidently true, and is demonstrated by the fact that the predominantly Shia forces (friendly with Iran, e.g. the Dawa) which came to power are by no means "favourites" of the invader. Despite the miscalculation the U.S. made to occupy the country until 2005, and its intervention in the elected government's attempts to formulate a constitution, etc. its writ has scarcely run any further than that guaranteed by force of arms. In the long-term, no doubt, the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime has enabled Iraq to develop according to its own devices, for better or for worse. Any alternative would have been undesirable for all parties.

The blueprint for this enablement was present before the invasion. I will be the first person to say that, for the whole of Iraq, the enablement process should have begun in 1991. The intifada against the regime, which George H.W. Bush had encouraged, could - with even the slightest military and/or economic support from the U.S. - have succeeded in bringing it down. Norman Schwarzkopf gave Saddam Hussein permission to retain helicopter gunships which were used to suppress the uprising (at the expense of at least 200,000 Shia lives). However, the enablement process did begin in the northern Kurdish provinces which had, in the years previously, been subjected to the al-Anfal genocide - mass deportations, the use of poison gas, and so on. The placing of a no-fly zone over the newly-autonomous Kurdish regions helped emancipate the Kurdish population from Ba'ath rule, and begin the enablement process. In the interim, the Iraqi Kurds have developed into a progressive and technologically-astute, economically prosperous population, and have set the perfect example for the rest of the country to follow.

The abovementioned Thomas Friedman also posited something called the 'Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention', which, while not entirely accurate, makes the rough claim that countries with McDonalds' don't go to war with each other. Well, since enablement began in Iraqi Kurdistan, we've seen the emulation of capitalist economies in full force, with the opening in Sulaymaniyah of MaDonal. A locally-conceived McDonalds spinoff (which should be reassuring for those who oppose the Iraq war on the flippant grounds that corporations might benefit from it).



I personally think that it's a tremendous achievement for the Iraqi Kurds to have shaken off tribalistic squabbles and tyrannical repression in favour of increased prosperity, pluralism and secularism. A lot rests on hoping that the rest of Iraq's enablement leads to similar success stories. Here is a separate example of a "McDonalds imposter" in Dohuk. These are small successes, but they are the seeds for a flourishing and prosperous Iraqi nation, which could only have been brought about through a regime change policy in 2003. The MaDonal/other McDonalds spinoffs are microcosmic examples of what can result from enablement. They were not "imposed" on the country by the U.S., but were indigenous advancements made after the population had been enabled to create them. I repeat, the only forces that want to sabotage the project for a new Iraq are the insurgent forces, which have demonstrably shown themselves to be something of a toxic mixture of the murderous Algerian Islamist guerillas of the 1990s, the right-wing Nicaraguan contra movement, and an Islamic 'Spanish Inquisition'.

What are the other potential benefits of enablement? Well, first of all, Iraq is one of Citigroup's 3G economies, with an estimated annual growth of 6.1% for the next forty years. This is a self-evident benefit that has accompanied growing foreign investment, the removal of economic sanctions, and the opening of Iraq's oil reserves to the global market. Paul Wolfowitz - the man so often derided as the "architect" of the war - has made an interesting comparison to South Korea:

Although South Korea has assumed the principal responsibility for its own defense, there are still 28,500 American troops on the peninsula. Our continued commitment prevented another war and today South Korea is a remarkable economic success story. A series of democratic elections, starting in 1987, have made it a political success story as well.

Some similar considerations apply to Iraq today. First, Iraq occupies a key position in the Persian Gulf, a strategically important region of the world — a position that is all the more important because of the dangerous ambitions of Iran’s rulers.

Second, whatever the failings of Iraq’s democracy, it bears no comparison to the regime that other hostile elements would impose. With all its imperfections, Iraq today is more democratic than South Korea was at the end of the Korean War, and more democratic than any other country in the Arab Middle East (with the possible exception of Lebanon).

This illuminates a key point, which is that oil is vital to the Iraq conflict. The critics who charge that the war was about oil are correct - needless to say, virtually everything about Iraq is "about oil" considering it constitutes 95% of the country's exports. The oil question and the population's enablement work in tandem. The U.S.' securing of Iraq's oil - thus removing the vile status quo of Saddam's kleptocracy and a corrupt Oil-for-Food system - is liberation in itself. After all, one must never forget the callous attitude Saddam had towards oil: flooding the Gulf with millions of barrels, setting alight the Kuwaiti oil fields, etc. With the nuclear weapon that Saddam was incessantly pursuing throughout his rule, he could've plunged the world into a new Great Depression simply by dropping it on Saudi Arabia's oil fields (and, given his past record, I wouldn't put it past him). Saddam was holding the world hostage by privatizing his country's oil transits and production in his own hands, just as he was holding his own people hostage in his prison state (a ‘concentration camp above ground and a mass grave underneath it'). The breaking of this unsustainable economic situation and the emancipation of the Iraqi people were intertwined.

Other enablement examples. First, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani - men who fought against the Saddam Hussein regime for decades - now occupy senior positions in Iraq's hierarchy: a microcosmic example of Kurdish progress since the invasion. Good. Second, Saddam is no longer a threat to his neighbours, which was still the case during the sanctions period. Despite what people may say about him being "contained", he threatened to invade Kuwait again in 1994 and seized the Kurdish city of Arbil in 1996. He was an irrational actor who could not be trusted when it came to his expansionist ambitions. Third, the omnipresent fear that Iraqis felt under the Ba'ath security apparatus has been lifted, and has been one of the most significant motivations towards enablement. Fourth, the infant mortality rate has declined significantly (the war has allowed enablement for young lives). Fifth, no more torture chambers. Abu Ghraib was far worse under Saddam than it was during the high-profile scandal post-invasion. Sixth, mass graves have been uncovered enabling families to have closure about their murdered loved ones. Seventh, Iraq is now being heavily-invested in, and is making great strides towards huge infrastructure projects, including redevelopment of Baghdad international airport, the building of a high-speed rail line between Baghdad and Basra in the south (which will certainly help to 'blur' sectarian lines), the construction of the Baghdad metro, and, most symbolically significant in my view, the Sadr City 10x10 project which will see the complete redevelopment of the most poor and run-down part of Baghdad:

These economic advances will be hugely beneficial for modernizing and stabilizing Iraq after over forty years of torment. The selling by the U.S. of F-16s, and other military equipment, will allow the Iraqi military to protect these efforts.

As it happens, even the things most strongly condemned about the post-invasion scene are nothing compared to the totalitarian system under Saddam Hussein. The main concern today is about the status of (i) Christians, and (ii) women, in an Iraq where male patriarchy and religious intolerance have been allowed to come to the fore. These are also great concerns of mine, and hopefully the country's development will see the population discard such backward practices. Nevertheless, an Iraqi woman today may be subjugated by their husband or father, but they are not subjugated by a male-dominated Iraqi state. Kanan Makiya, in his book The Republic of Fear, puts it best:

Ba’thist ideals…provide the ultimate source of authority and the final test for what is justified. Even the power of the Leader is derivative from [Islamic] ideals, and all sources of authority outside them threaten the Ba’th. It rankles to have fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins, all lined up to exert varying degrees of real power and control over half of the Iraqi population. Thus, if a new loyalty to the Leader, the party, and the state is to form, women must be ‘freed’ from the loyalties that traditionally bound them to their husbands and male kin. This was the essential purpose of the 1978 legislation on Personal Status, which diminished the power of the patriarchal family. Therefore, women…gain somewhat in status in relation to these particular groups of men, only what they must lose in freedom to the Ba’th. Politically, the appropriate imagery is…that provided by Saddam Husain of the child informer. Even in the traditional male-dominated Arab family group, the woman has a degree of personal freedom that is taken away under Ba’thism (in relation to her children, for example). Male domination has not been done away with; it has found a substitute in the all-male RCC, the higher army command, and the ever-so-male person of Saddam Husain who is surely more awesome than most fathers. The locus of legitimacy and allegiance was being changed in Iraq; and the motivation for making the change on the part of the individual woman is a mixture of traditional obedience to the dictates of men, and the much newer drive of fear. (pp. 92-3)

Ultimately, Iraqi prospects are infinite. There's no reason to believe that, given a few decades, the country could not become a new UAE or Qatar. It has the second-largest oil reserves on earth, and the world has already begun flooding in to make use of them. Under the decade of sanctions, Iraqis were dying every week in thousands. The country was in "suspended animation", and attempts to "contain" the Saddam regime were falling apart. Smuggling was rampant, and the Oil-for-Food programme saw billions of dollars of kickbacks diverted to the regime rather than to the Iraqi people (Saddam using the money to build palaces for himself, and the two sons who would likely have succeeded him). The regime's callousness and withholding of necessary provisions is what was primarily responsible for the sanctions' murderous effects. There's also every reason to believe that, as occurred after the fall of Mobutu in the Congo and of Tito in Yugoslavia, Iraq would have eventually collapsed into a vacuum, and unrecoverable chaos would've engulfed the country. All of those fears are gone thanks to regime change and the sparking of Iraqi enablement.

[Suetonius]

Don't forget what happened when Saddam Hussein first became President:

Compare this visual monstrosity to the images of thousands of Iraqis voting for their government in 2005.

[OSharp]

So we are to be world police now?

I don't dispute that what he did was despicable but is it our job to fix it? Surely invading his country and hanging him just turned him into a martyr.

One way or another, I would have liked a vote on it. It was a all things considered a very unpopular war, necessarily or not.

[Suetonius]

(Original post by OSharp)
So we are to be world police now?

I don't dispute that what he did was despicable but is it our job to fix it? Surely invading his country and hanging him just turned him into a martyr.

One way or another, I would have liked a vote on it. It was a all things considered a very unpopular war, necessarily or not.

It was very important for us too. The case made about WMD and terrorism still stands imo.

WMD
German intelligence (Germany being a country that opposed the invasion) falsely claimed in 2001 that Iraq was but three years or so from developing a nuclear weapon! While certainly untrue, such estimates were coming from many countries' intelligence services, and it would be irresponsible for any government to just ignore them, especially given Saddam's known record of WMD use: the murder of thousands of Kurdish and Iranian civilians with chemical weapons in the 1980s! The Osirak nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel in 1981! The nuclear crash programme before the Gulf War!

Also, Saddam definitely had the capacity and will to build a new arsenal if he wanted to, and the infrastructure was in place for it, but he was temporarily - and I stress the word temporarily - prevented from doing so by an inspections and sanctions regime which was, of course, both corrupt and unsustainable. His WMD programme was simply on hold, provisionally suspended, with the end-goal of recovery after the containment of Iraq fell apart. People who said "give inspectors more time" were really saying "give Saddam more time, and let him reconsitute his arsenal after we've seen the inspectors fail in what is clearly an impossible task" (the task of proving the negative that Saddam did not have WMD, rather than placing the onus on him to prove that he'd disarmed).

All of this is backed up by evidence, it's not just speculation on my part. These are the findings of the Duelfer Report: the same document which confirmed that there were no existing stockpiles of WMD in Iraq in 2003, and the one which everyone refers to when they squeal "but he had no WMD!". The report confirms that "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability...after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities". In addition, it confirms that Saddam was running a terrorist training camp at Salman Pak. Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who was involved in Saddam's nuclear programme before the Gulf War, was ordered by Hussein Kemal to bury the elements of, and plans for, a nuclear centrifuge in his garden, in order to preserve the knowledge and capacity to restart the programme when inspections ended. Interestingly, the Duelfer Report also doesn't rule out the possibility proposed that some WMD - or the means to produce them - were exported to Syria in 2002, with the help of Russia, before UNMOVIC inspectors began work in Iraq. (Given the fanatical attempts by Putin to preserve Assad in power over the past year, it certainly wouldn't shock me if this were true). This theory is given credence by the testimony of General Georges Sada, one of Saddam's military chiefs.

It's funny that critics would seemingly prefer that he did have WMD when we invaded (and that he'd thus have the ability to kill even more people by using them) rather than that we depose him before he had the chance to redevelop them. Should we have waited for him to have massive stockpiles of chemical weapons at his disposal before we took any action? Given his many links to terrorist groups, how reckless would that be? The only way to certify Iraqi disarmament was to invade.

Don't forget also that other disarmament successes have resulted from the Iraq invasion. If, as some people claim, Iran suspended its nuclear programme in 2003 (which I believe to be doubtful) then that was clearly an unintended consequence of the war. Similarly, Muammar Qaddafi surrendered his WMD stockpiles, which led to the discovery of the A.Q. Khan network. Just imagine what last year's civil war in Libya would have looked like if Qaddafi still had access to chemical and biological weapons!

Terrorism
In 2002, Saddam was paying $25,000 to the families of every Hamas suicide bomber, was sheltering Abdul Rahman Yasin who mixed the chemicals for the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, was sheltering Abu Abbas who attacked the Achille Lauro, was sheltering Abu Nidal (who had committed a string of terrorist offences, including the bombings of Rome and Vienna airports), had lobbied on behalf of an Iraqi embassy official - Ahmad Hikmat Shakir - who attended a top-level al-Qaeda summit, meeting two 9/11 hijackers, in Kuala Lumpur (2000), and, most importantly, had welcomed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - a Jordanian jihadi - into Iraq, and let him recuperate in a Baghdad hospital. Charles Duelfer has identified that the installation at Salman Pak was a terrorist training camp, and that it was primarily used to train foreign non-Iraqi mercenaries: "a branch of the Iraqi Intelligence Service known as M14, the directorate for special operations, oversaw a highly secretive enterprise known as the Challenge Project, involving explosives ... [that] trained Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Yemeni, Lebanese, Egyptian and Sudanese operatives in counterterrorism, explosives, marksmanship and foreign operations at its facilities at Salman Pak, near Baghdad." Tell me, why would they need to train Sudanese (Sudan then being the world's leading exporter of terror) operatives in "counterterrorism"?

It's also known that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda, visited Baghdad and met with senior Ba'ath Party officials on at least one documented occasion in 1992. Detailed in Lawrence Wright's 'The Looming Tower' - perhaps the most important, and verifiably accurate, book on al-Qaeda's development - in Sudan that year an "Iraqi delegation met with Bin Laden, even flattered him, claiming that he was the prophesied Mahdi the savior of Islam. They wanted him to stop backing anti-Saddam insurgents, Bin Laden agreed. But in return he asked for weapons and training camps inside Iraq. That same year, Ayman al-Zawahiri traveled to Bagdad where he met Saddam Hussein in person. But there is no evidence that Iraq ever supplied al-Qaeda with weapons or camps..." (pp. 295-6). The admission that evidence has not been uncovered is not an admission that these things definitely didn't happen. The 9/11 Commission report simply stated that there was no evidence of a collaborative operational relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda, which is not the same thing as ruling one out.

Of course, it was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who went on to conduct thousands of terror attacks against Iraq's Shi'a population, and Coalition forces, in the years after the invasion. He was allowed into Iraq in 2002, a state where the pervasive security and police apparatus would have known of his presence and location - at the same time, post-9/11, that the likes of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were expelling such people. He officially committed his group to al-Qaeda in 2004, but always bore the same ideology. Zarqawi's organization appeared to have had a profound knowledge of Iraq's infrastructure, its geography, the locations of its weapons depots, the homes of journalists and officials, etc. - in fact, it's most conceivable that this information was attained from the Ba'ath party, which needed such intrusive knowledge in order to rule Iraq with an iron fist for over thirty years. The insurgency was planned long before the invasion, and jihadi forces were integral to it. Evidence suggests that, pre-invasion, Zarqawi was allowed to freely operate and sow the seeds for the future insurgency in the Sunni-majority al-Anbar province, which would later become an al-Qaeda stronghold. The Jordanian government repeatedly tried to get him extradited, without compliance from Baghdad. There is further evidence that Ba’athist weapons were moved to farm houses and other withdrawn locations in preparation for the insurgency. The explosives used for Zarqawi’s bombing of the Canal Hotel in late 2003, which forced the UN out of Iraq, were verifiably attained from pre-war Ba'athist weapons stocks. And let me also remind you that Zarqawi had been attacking the Kurdish authorities before the invasion, Saddam's enemies, in tandem with the al-Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al-Islam, whose third-in-command - Abu Wael - happened to be a Ba'athist intelligence officer. The 9/11 Commission report has affirmed that "There are indications that by then (2001) the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al-Islam against the common Kurdish enemy."

Of course, it's also important to note here that Saddam Hussein was responsible for almost all the trouble that has engulfed post-invasion Iraq. Don't forget that his rule was predicated upon divide-and-rule tactics which saw over 300,000 Shia and a similar number of Kurds killed during his thirty years in power. All in order to preserve hegemony for a Sunni minority (20% of the population), which subsequently provided basal support for the insurgency. None of this was helped by the twelve years of sanctions either. It would be foolish to believe that a country can go through all that and not experience sectarian tensions once the regime fell. People correctly identify that the U.S. has not dealt with the divides in Iraqi society with enough care, but it's fundamentally wrong to attribute said divides to U.S. policy. They were pre-existent. The crucial question is whether it would have been prudent to let these pre-existent tensions be inflamed and incubated even further by letting the regime stay in power.

[Annoying-Mouse]

I think the US were far too hasty in their decision to remove Saddam. It's all good saying that the US would be foolish to merely ignore the concerns of intelligence agencies and I agree but Bush ignored doubts about the reliability of the evidence and he was intent on invading. There's also Khidir Hamza who was unreliable.

Hindsight is a powerful tool but with what we knew pre-invasion, did Bush have reasonable grounds to invade Iraq? The WMD claims were established unreliable pre-invasion and the terrorist link isn't strong as also established pre-invasion by the 9/11 commission report.

I agree with you though that Iraq is a better place now that Saddam is gone and it will continue to get better. And I think the war was somewhat preferable to sanctions which resulted in far too many lives killed and the solution to that problem i.e. oil for food program although did help reduce the number of Iraqis dying was corrupt and wouldn't be a long-term solution to the effects of sanctions thus more Iraqis would die. And if I knew what we now know, I would choose the war. But, with what we knew before the invasion, I don't think the war was justifiable.

[Suetonius]

(Original post by Annoying-Mouse)
I think the US were far too hasty in their decision to remove Saddam. It's all good saying that the US would be foolish to merely ignore the concerns of intelligence agencies and I agree but Bush ignored doubts about the reliability of the evidence and he was intent on invading. There's also Khidir Hamza who was unreliable.

I don't think it matters too much that the likes of Khidhir Hamza and Ahmed Chalabi relayed unreliable information to the administration. They were but miniscule players when looking at the overall picture. Pretty much every academic paper I've read prior to 2003 takes for granted that Iraq at least had remaining chemical weapons stockpiles. People seem to forget that during the 1990s - even after Hussein Kemal had told the U.S. that Saddam had (again, temporarily) disarmed in 1991 - it was a conventional wisdom that Iraq had WMD. It was the rhetoric Clinton, Gore and Albright repeatedly used to justify the crippling sanctions programme, and was a line supported by most countries' intelligence services. Nobody, including critics of the invasion, believed that Saddam was bluffing. It was only afterwards, when stockpiles were not found, that the mainstream media jumped at the opportunity to incriminate the Bush administration for a war that it initially supported. I'd love a critic to find for me any news source or commentator which seriously doubted that Iraq had WMD before the invasion - the deception, bribery, etc. of the regime could have logically meant but one thing. And, as we now know, the knowledge and material for restarting the programme once sanctions were lifted had been retained. This could never have been discovered if we'd have simply continued playing into Saddam's hands by sticking with limited UNMOVIC inspections.

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by Suetonius)
I don't think it matters too much that the likes of Khidhir Hamza and Ahmed Chalabi relayed unreliable information to the administration. They were but miniscule players when looking at the overall picture. Pretty much every academic paper I've read prior to 2003 takes for granted that Iraq at least had remaining chemical weapons stockpiles. People seem to forget that during the 1990s - even after Hussein Kemal had told the U.S. that Saddam had (again, temporarily) disarmed in 1991 - it was a conventional wisdom that Iraq had WMD. It was the rhetoric Clinton, Gore and Albright repeatedly used to justify the crippling sanctions programme, and was a line supported by most countries' intelligence services. Nobody, including critics of the invasion, believed that Saddam was bluffing. It was only afterwards, when stockpiles were not found, that the mainstream media jumped at the opportunity to incriminate the Bush administration for a war that it initially supported. I'd love a critic to find for me any news source or commentator which seriously doubted that Iraq had WMD before the invasion - the deception, bribery, etc. of the regime could have logically meant but one thing. And, as we now know, the knowledge and material for restarting the programme once sanctions were lifted had been retained. This could never have been discovered if we'd have simply continued playing into Saddam's hands by sticking with limited UNMOVIC inspections.

Common knowledge doesn't justify much. There's a reason why we have procedural and standards of evidences. It's common knowledge that every criminal gang currently engages in criminal activity. Yet unless the police can find evidence of this, there's no grounds for them to break into their private property under the guise of finding whatever criminal **** they're suspected of holding. The academic papers clearly don't have much evidence behind them otherwise they would've been used or they're referring to the same remaining chemical weapons that the Iraq Survey Group found i.e. ones which did not pose much threat.

One outspoken commentator that comes to mind is Scott Ritter, former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. Yes, I agree that the war has brought us extra knowledge that has saved us from a lot of troubles but again this DOES NOT justify the war. If the police raided the houses of a group who they believe are a part of the slave-trade without sufficient evidence or warrant and it's discovered that the group did in fact have slaves and were transferring them, does this justify the original raid? No.

[Rhadamanthus]

(Original post by Annoying-Mouse)
Common knowledge doesn't justify much. There's a reason why we have procedural and standards of evidences. It's common knowledge that every criminal gang currently engages in criminal activity. Yet unless the police can find evidence of this, there's no grounds for them to break into their private property under the guise of finding whatever criminal **** they're suspected of holding. The academic papers clearly don't have much evidence behind them otherwise they would've been used or they're referring to the same remaining chemical weapons that the Iraq Survey Group found i.e. ones which did not pose much threat.

In 1998, UN inspectors were expelled from Iraq and the country went for three years without any subsequent inspections. Saddam only accepted the return of the inspectors when he knew that provoking the UN and the coalition states would result in harsh consequences. He would have expelled them again when the time was right. There is no doubt in my mind that any acquisition of WMDs by Saddam's regime would have plunged the region into the state of insecurity and conflict that caused the coalition nations to intervene in the First Gulf War. A small group of inspectors could not patrol a state as large and secretive as Saddam's Iraq, and even if it came across incriminating evidence, the overwhelming pool of wealth available to the Hussein crime family, thanks to the illicit sale of oil during the sanctions regime, could mean that any weapons that Saddam was forced to destroy could be replaced.

It is not absurd to claim that Saddam had a fetish for biological and chemical weapons, considering his previous use of them, having used a chemical nerve agent to massacre tens of thousands of Kurdish Iraqis in the northern areas of the country, as well as Shi'ite Iraqis. His invasion of Iran in 1980 prompted him to use chemical weapons, bringing the death toll of that conflict to over one million. He and his regime, upon their invasion of Kuwait in 1991, fired biological WMDs (Scud, Seersucker, and Silkworm missiles) at the country. He also ordered Scuds to be fired at Israel.

We can see that the continuation of inspections into an unknown point in the future was unlikely to work. An invasion was justified and the UK did not contravene international law in doing so. Indeed, it was reinforcing UN resolutions on the matter, specifically 678 and 1441. Say what you like about British and American engagements abroad, on the whole the raison d'etre of our actions are to ensure that international law is upheld. That was the case in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and, more recently, Libya.

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by Rhadamanthus)
In 1998, UN inspectors were expelled from Iraq and the country went for three years without any subsequent inspections. Saddam only accepted the return of the inspectors when he knew that provoking the UN and the coalition states would result in harsh consequences. He would have expelled them again when the time was right. There is no doubt in my mind that any acquisition of WMDs by Saddam's regime would have plunged the region into the state of insecurity and conflict that caused the coalition nations to intervene in the First Gulf War. A small group of inspectors could not patrol a state as large and secretive as Saddam's Iraq, and even if it came across incriminating evidence, the overwhelming pool of wealth available to the Hussein crime family, thanks to the illicit sale of oil during the sanctions regime, could mean that any weapons that Saddam was forced to destroy could be replaced.

It is not absurd to claim that Saddam had a fetish for biological and chemical weapons, considering his previous use of them, having used a chemical nerve agent to massacre tens of thousands of Kurdish Iraqis in the northern areas of the country, as well as Shi'ite Iraqis. His invasion of Iran in 1980 prompted him to use chemical weapons, bringing the death toll of that conflict to over one million. He and his regime, upon their invasion of Kuwait in 1991, fired biological WMDs (Scud, Seersucker, and Silkworm missiles) at the country. He also ordered Scuds to be fired at Israel.

I agree with this but this still doesn't justify the conflict. You're merely explaining the reasons for the absence of evidence not sufficing the standards of evidence.

We can see that the continuation of inspections into an unknown point in the future was unlikely to work. An invasion was justified and the UK did not contravene international law in doing so. Indeed, it was reinforcing UN resolutions on the matter, specifically 678 and 1441. Say what you like about British and American engagements abroad, on the whole the raison d'etre of our actions are to ensure that international law is upheld. That was the case in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and, more recently, Libya.

I think you're simplifying the issue here. Here's a good unbiased (there's constant counter-criticism) article that was written prior to the invasion, that goes a long way to show the complexity of legality of a war.

I think the US should of continued to wait for proper authorization from the security council. Iraq was going to get invaded, it was just a matter of when. And the US went the wrong time. The only reason I can see them going on the wrong time i.e. German intelligence that stated Iraq was close to developing nuclear weapons was ****ty evidence and very weak. There's no reason as far as I can for the US invading that specific time.

[Suetonius]

(Original post by Annoying-Mouse)
One outspoken commentator that comes to mind is Scott Ritter, former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq.

Scott Ritter is a loud-mouthed opportunist with a political agenda. None of his post-1998 commentary on Iraqi disarmament can be taken seriously. Right up until 2000, he was still saying that Saddam had WMD, and - correctly - identified that the infrastructure was still in place to develop them in the near future. His book Endgame is pretty much a case for invasion in itself, and includes an appendix detailing 'Iraq's Arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction' (p. 233). Suddenly, in the early 2000s, he jumped on the anti-Bush bandwagon and shifted 180 degrees to claim that Iraq had categorically disarmed - and hadn't reconstituted any WMD - even though he could never have known this as, for one, he was part of the UNSCOM team expelled in 1998, and, second, no inspectors had set foot in Iraq since. How can such a dramatic unsubstantiated turnaround be attributed to anything but political opportunism? He chose to preach to the anti-Bush choir, using his history as an UNSCOM inspector to deride the administration and make a profit.

"Iraq still has prescribed weapons capability...part of their efforts to conceal their capabilities, I believe, have been to disassemble weapons into various components and to hide these components throughout Iraq...I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their developing of nuclear weapons program"
~ Scott Ritter, August 1998

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by Suetonius)
Scott Ritter is a loud-mouthed opportunist with a political agenda. None of his post-1998 commentary on Iraqi disarmament can be taken seriously. Right up until 2000, he was still saying that Saddam had WMD, and - correctly - identified that the infrastructure was still in place to develop them in the near future. His book Endgame is pretty much a case for invasion in itself, and includes an appendix detailing 'Iraq's Arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction' (p. 233). Suddenly, in the early 2000s, he jumped on the anti-Bush bandwagon and shifted 180 degrees to claim that Iraq had categorically disarmed - and hadn't reconstituted any WMD - even though he could never have known this as, for one, he was part of the UNSCOM team expelled in 1998, and, second, no inspectors had set foot in Iraq since. How can such a dramatic unsubstantiated turnaround be attributed to anything but political opportunism? He chose to preach to the anti-Bush choir, using his history as an UNSCOM inspector to deride the administration and make a profit.

"Iraq still has prescribed weapons capability...part of their efforts to conceal their capabilities, I believe, have been to disassemble weapons into various components and to hide these components throughout Iraq...I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their developing of nuclear weapons program"
~ Scott Ritter, August 1998

I think it's intellectually dishonest to use Scott when his suggesting Saddam did have weapons yet ignore his latter claims about Saddam not having weapons. I think the best position to take on him, is what his boss Richard Butler said, "When he was the ‘Alpha Dog’ inspector, then by God, there were more weapons there, and we had to go find them — a contention for which he had inadequate evidence. When he became a peacenik, then it was all complete B.S., start to finish, and there were no weapons of mass destruction. And that also was a contention for which he had inadequate evidence".

Richard Butler also made claims of Iraq's WMD program but there's reasons to also doubt his reliability. "A number of media reports in the United States suggested that there was some substance to the spying allegations and to the charge that he was tailoring UNSCOM's findings to suit the United States. Eric Fournier, a French diplomat who served as Butler's deputy at UNSCOM in 1998, told an Australian journalist, Christopher Kremmer, that the US bombing of Iraq in 1998—which made the UNSCOM mission untenable—occurred "because Richard Butler reported that the Iraqis had not cooperated with inspections, even though more than three hundred had taken place in a few weeks and only a handful had been a problem. Three out of three hundred did not go perfectly smoothly...the report, drafted like that, was a good excuse for some members of the Security Council to take action".[2] Fournier also told Kremmer that Butler at one point sounded positive about closing the disarmament issue. But then he received a call from the state department who weren’t happy with a positive outcome in Iraq."

[Suetonius]

(Original post by Annoying-Mouse)
I think it's intellectually dishonest to use Scott when his suggesting Saddam did have weapons yet ignore his latter claims about Saddam not having weapons. I think the best position to take on him, is what his boss Richard Butler said, "When he was the ‘Alpha Dog’ inspector, then by God, there were more weapons there, and we had to go find them — a contention for which he had inadequate evidence. When he became a peacenik, then it was all complete B.S., start to finish, and there were no weapons of mass destruction. And that also was a contention for which he had inadequate evidence".

I didn't use Ritter to "suggest [that] Saddam did have weapons", and I quite clearly didn't "ignore his latter claims". I said that none of his commentary can be taken seriously after 1998, and that his "latter claims" were completely unsubstantiated by evidence. Once again, he believed that Iraq had weapons in 1998 when he was expelled. How could he have known that "there were no weapons of mass destruction" after this date when neither he nor any other inspector had set foot in Iraq? His shift was politically motivated.

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by Suetonius)
I didn't use Ritter to "suggest [that] Saddam did have weapons", and I quite clearly didn't "ignore his latter claims". I said that none of his commentary can be taken seriously after 1998, and that his "latter claims" were completely unsubstantiated by evidence. Once again, he believed that Iraq had weapons in 1998 when he was expelled. How could he have known that "there were no weapons of mass destruction" after this date when neither he nor any other inspector had set foot in Iraq? His shift was politically motivated.

I agree but Richard Butler who was his boss statement regarding Ritter does bring into question the validity of his claims whilst inspecting.

[King Kebab]

The OP is pretty balanced I think. I think the war was definitely fought with noble intentions.

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by King Kebab)
The OP is pretty balanced I think. I think the war was definitely fought with noble intentions.

What noble intentions? If humanitarianism, why didn't they invade back in late 80s when there could have been an actual argument for humanitarianism? The WMD (German's intelligence was found to be false before war, scientist that previously stated they had WMD retracted their statements and there wasn't much evidence for that view) and terrorist argument (discredited by 9/11 commissions report) is very weak and doesn't have much of a backing.

[King Kebab]

(Original post by Annoying-Mouse)
What noble intentions? If humanitarianism, why didn't they invade back in late 80s when there could have been an actual argument for humanitarianism? The WMD and terrorist argument is very weak and doesn't have much of a backing.

The fact Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator killing his own people.

I think the war was about 17 years too late.

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by King Kebab)
The fact Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator killing his own people.

I think the war was about 17 years too late.

How does that prove noble intentions? It's ridiculous to believe Bush would invade Iraq because his a humanitarian and wants to save lives. If he invaded at a time where Iraq was doing mass-killings then sure, you could argue that but no it wasn't and Iraq hadn't done mass-killings since early 90s. Your also forgetting the fact that the economic sanctions the US imposed on Iraq killed similar if not more Iraqis than Saadam did.

[King Kebab]

I believe Bush and Blair believed (wrongly) that Western intervention would emancipate the people of Iraq.

No, I don't think it is ridiculous to believe Bush wanted to emancipate people living under terror.

How could Bush have invaded Iraq at the time of the mass killings if he wasn't President until 2001?

Saddam was torturing and brutalizing his own people at the time of the war albeit not on a mass scale like he was in the early 1990's.

I am not forgetting about the sanctions. I don't agree at all with sanctions. They almost never work and only hurt the civilians in the country rather than the leaders of the country.

I opposed the war. I don't however believe the outcry about oil has any credibility though.

[Annoying-Mouse]

(Original post by King Kebab)
I believe Bush and Blair believed (wrongly) that Western intervention would emancipate the people of Iraq.

No, I don't think it is ridiculous to believe Bush wanted to emancipate people living under terror.

How could Bush have invaded Iraq at the time of the mass killings if he wasn't President until 2001?

I opposed the war. I don't however believe the outcry about oil has any credibility though.

Where is your basis for your view? I think Blair is kinda of a humanitarian and he even stated that it would be right to remove Saadam regardless of whether he had WMDs. Fair enough, you're right I shouldn't have stated that.

It does have credibility, even the OP stated oil was a factor and there's evidence to suggest that the US benefited economically from war. You're forgetting it's socialized losses and privatized gains.

[King Kebab]

(Original post by Annoying-Mouse)
Where is your basis for your view? I think Blair is kinda of a humanitarian and he even stated that it would be right to remove Saadam regardless of whether he had WMDs. Fair enough, you're right I shouldn't have stated that.

It does have credibility, even the OP stated oil was a factor and there's evidence to suggest that the US benefited economically from war. You're forgetting it's socialized losses and privatized gains.

Intuition. I can not really provide evidence other that that is what my gut feeling is. The only person who knows what George W Bush really thought is himself.

Can you show me this evidence?

I have not seen any as of yet.

I think they could have made an oil deal with Saddam without costing the lives of thousands of people. That is what President Chirac of France did. Both politicians certainly did not do it for popularity. The war was unpopular in both countries.