Even under sanctions, Saddam remained a threat to Kuwaiti independence and Kurdish survival.
He supported terrorism in general, and his security apparatus had reached out to al Qaeda.
He pursued WMD and though our economic pressure and military strikes had more success than we thought in curbing those programs by the late 1990s, our political alliance of nations to keep that pressure on was dissolving and would have by now allowed Saddam to rapidly reconstitute a chemical arsenal and restart his nuclear drive.
In light of 9/11 and Saddam's loud celebration of that attack, it would have been reckless dereliction of duty to risk the continuation of Saddam's regime.
This assessment was once a bipartisan matter, as the vote for war in 2002 by a Republican House and Democratic Senate demonstrate:
Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself[.]
Before this, in the 1990s, President Clinton had acted on the belief that Saddam was a threat. Congress had made regime change in Iraq our formal policy in regard to Saddam Hussein.
The declaration of war on Saddam's Iraq had wide bipartisan support--even among those who loudly screech that Bush lied. The latest drivel that the Senate Intelligence Committee has put out is just an in-kind contribution to the presidential campaign (from the Weekly Standard link):
"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even non-existent," Rockefeller said at a news conference. "As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."
Like when Jay Rockefeller called it an "imminent threat" on October 10, 2002? The Bush administration made the case that the Iraqi threat must be addressed before it was imminent. Rockefeller disagreed.
"There has been some debate over how 'imminent' a threat Iraq poses. I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated."
It's also worth pointing out that the Jay Rockefeller who today accuses the Bush administration of inventing the threat posed by Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration once saw "a substantial connection" between the two and warned about the consequences of leaving Iraq to pass its WMD to Osama bin Laden. On February 5, 2003, Rockefeller said: "The fact that Zarqawi certainly is related to the death of the U.S. aid officer and that he is very close to bin Laden puts at rest, in fairly dramatic terms, that there is at least a substantial connection between Saddam and al Qaeda."
And here's what he said one week earlier, in an interview with the Charleston Gazette: "If you go pre-emptive, do you cause Hussein to strike where he might not have? He is not a martyr, not a Wahabbi, not a Muslim radical. He does not seek martyrdom. But he is getting older," Rockefeller told the paper. "Maybe he is seeking a legacy by attacking Israel or using al-Qaeda cells around the world."
Rockefeller and his colleagues also accuse the Bush administration of exaggerating WMD claims. It's worth recalling that Rockefeller called Iraq an "imminent threat" in his floor speech supporting the resolution which would authorize the war.
And it's worth noting that he told his colleagues that "there is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years." And: "Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now." And: "We cannot know for certain that Saddam will use the weapons of mass destruction he currently possesses, or that he will use them against us. But we do know Saddam has the capability."
I am disgusted by the refusal of these war opponents to honestly accept the history of events and even admit to their own positions on the issue that they held only six short years ago. The dissents from the majority report are far more valuable than the misleading dreck that the majority pretends is an investigation.
Excuse me if I don't blog a response to this crud. I already did it once--back in January when George Soros funded a study making the same charge.
It should not be necessary to constantly refute the propaganda that the anti-war side throws out with regularity. But the anti-war side has been so consistently dishonest that many people don't even realize how much these people have twisted the historical record to suit their political needs.
UPDATE: More fun with rebuttal:
"Our evidence suggests that Baghdad is strengthening a relationship with al-Qaeda that dates back to the mid-1990s, when senior Iraqi intelligence officers established contact with the network in several countries."
"We have some evidence that Iraqi Intelligence has been in contact with elements in the northeastern area. And the al-Qaeda operatives there are in regular contact with other operatives located in Baghdad. The Iraqi government has also received information from other sources alerting it to the presence of al-Qaeda operatives in Baghdad."
"We have hard evidence that al-Qaeda is operating in several locations in Iraq with the knowledge and acquiescence of Saddam's regime."
Guess who wrote that? If you have been following the Democratic Party's narrative on Iraq, you might guess Ahmad Chalabi, Douglas Feith, Vice President Cheney or some neoconservatives hell bent on twisting intelligence to overstate the connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But those words are from Carl Ford, assistant state secretary for intelligence and research, whose bureau was singled out for praise after the war for its dissenting assessment of Iraq's nuclear program.
The quotes are taken from Mr. Ford's memo to Secretary Powell before Mr. Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. They were reprinted in last week's declassified report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on pre-Iraq war intelligence. That report was widely offered as a confirmation of the Democratic party's narrative that Mr. Bush played fast and loose with the intelligence in the run up to the Iraq war. Quoth Senator Rockefeller: "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses."
Well not exactly. On many key judgments before the war, the report itself found that statements on Iraq's biological weapons capacity, its nuclear and chemical weapons programs, the president and his cabinet secretaries generally followed the intelligence assessments of the spy services. On some issues there was disagreement. When Mr. Cheney said in September 2002 that he did not know if Al Qaeda and Iraq cooperated on the September 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA and FBI believed at that point there was no connection.
Also, most intelligence agencies did not think the Iraqi dictator would share unconventional weapons with terrorists. President Bush believed the nation could not take the risk that they could. But on the question of meaningful links between Al Qaeda and Iraq, something the anti-war movement believes never existed, the evidence suggests a more nuanced picture than Mr. Rockefeller has portrayed. This is where Mr. Ford's January 31, 2003, memo comes into play.
It is serioiusly shameful that a body that styles itself the world's greatest deliberative body can fool itself into believing it has done anything even approaching that standard. The committee executed a partisan hit piece and should be ashamed of what it has done.
