The 2003 invasion of Iraq was not a spontaneous thing, at least not when it came to planning for it. Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Defense studied their options about how to deal with Iraq. President Bill Clinton ordered up these plans, as well as a series of bombing attacks in December, 1998 (Operation Desert Fox). This was done to try and force Iraq to abide by the agreement it had signed at the end of the 1991 war. Clinton pointed out, at the time, that Iraq was still a threat to its neighbors, and the world, because UN inspectors were blocked from many sites suspected of supporting the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Two years earlier, two of Saddam’s senior generals (and both sons-in-law of his) had defected, and revealed continuing research on weapons of mass destruction. However, nothing much happened after 1998, until 2003.
Clinton, noting the failure of the 1998 air attacks, ordered up plans for more vigorous operations against Saddam. These, however, were never acted on because Kosovo emerged as a critical situation in 1999 (because the Serbs were driving out the entire Albanian population of over a million people). Our NATO allies were unable to deal with this themselves, the UN refused to condone a military intervention, and the Europeans leaned on Clinton to send in American troops to take care of the situation.
Note that the 1998 aerial attacks ordered by President Clinton were assumed to have failed, requiring more forceful options. Failed at what you might reasonably ask. Why, to eliminate WMD in Iraq, that's what. To add insult, the Iraq plans weren't executed since we launched a non-UN-sanctioned war against a small country that didn't have WMD. Details like this should make you reconsder your whole world view, right?
But since the plans were first cooked up in a trailer park in Arkansas and not a ranch in Texas, don't expect the media to notice this. They haven't so far, so why start now?
