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Just read this from Yahoo news: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...q_wolfowitz_dc
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The U.S. decision to stress the threat posed by Iraq (news - web sites)'s supposed weapons of mass destruction above all others was taken for "bureaucratic" reasons to justify the war, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in remarks released on Wednesday.
Wolfowitz, seen as one of the most hawkish figures in the Bush administration's policy on Iraq, said President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s alleged cache of chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons was merely one of several reasons behind the decision to go to war.
"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in Vanity Fair magazine's July issue.
No chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq despite repeated assertions by President Bush (news - web sites) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) before the March 20 invasion that the threat posed by Saddam's vast stocks of banned weapons warranted a war to eliminate them.
The United Nations (news - web sites) and America's allies were not convinced by the argument that it was justification for a war, which was launched amid protests in many world capitals. Washington's ties were major allies France and Germany are still strained.
Wolfowitz said another reason for the invasion had been "almost unnoticed but huge" -- namely that the ousting of Saddam would allow the United States to remove its troops from Saudi Arabia, where their presence had long been a major al Qaeda grievance.
"Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door" to a more peaceful Middle East, Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.
The magazine said he made the remarks days before suicide bombings, attributed to al Qaeda, against Western targets in Riyadh and Casablanca two weeks ago that killed 75 people.
The United States announced last month that it was ending military operations in Saudi Arabia, where they have long generated Arab resentment because of their proximity to Islam's holiest sites.
Wolfowitz's remarks were released a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, seeking to explain why no weapons of mass destruction had been found, said Iraq may have destroyed them before the U.S.-led invasion.
So, now, all that about WMD was all pure BS, as I suspected from day one.
Now the excuse was to save $$ from deploying in Saudi Arabia. Sorry, that's still no reason to launch a war and topple a regime. Considering the Cold War cost more than all other wars in history combined, why didn't the US just obliterate Russia back in the day and save all those trillions??
All this just proves is that the US blatantly misled the world about WMD (of course, preferable phrasing is "bureacratic reasons") when there were other intentions behind it. Should I find reasons to believe the US any more in the future? Hell no!
Well, I never did anyway...
"All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time...I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."
-USA President Dwight Eisenhower, 1953, upon being presented with plans to wage preventive war to disarm Stalin's Soviet Union
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The U.S. decision to stress the threat posed by Iraq (news - web sites)'s supposed weapons of mass destruction above all others was taken for "bureaucratic" reasons to justify the war, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in remarks released on Wednesday.
Wolfowitz, seen as one of the most hawkish figures in the Bush administration's policy on Iraq, said President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s alleged cache of chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons was merely one of several reasons behind the decision to go to war.
"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in Vanity Fair magazine's July issue.
No chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq despite repeated assertions by President Bush (news - web sites) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) before the March 20 invasion that the threat posed by Saddam's vast stocks of banned weapons warranted a war to eliminate them.
The United Nations (news - web sites) and America's allies were not convinced by the argument that it was justification for a war, which was launched amid protests in many world capitals. Washington's ties were major allies France and Germany are still strained.
Wolfowitz said another reason for the invasion had been "almost unnoticed but huge" -- namely that the ousting of Saddam would allow the United States to remove its troops from Saudi Arabia, where their presence had long been a major al Qaeda grievance.
"Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door" to a more peaceful Middle East, Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.
The magazine said he made the remarks days before suicide bombings, attributed to al Qaeda, against Western targets in Riyadh and Casablanca two weeks ago that killed 75 people.
The United States announced last month that it was ending military operations in Saudi Arabia, where they have long generated Arab resentment because of their proximity to Islam's holiest sites.
Wolfowitz's remarks were released a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, seeking to explain why no weapons of mass destruction had been found, said Iraq may have destroyed them before the U.S.-led invasion.
So, now, all that about WMD was all pure BS, as I suspected from day one.
Now the excuse was to save $$ from deploying in Saudi Arabia. Sorry, that's still no reason to launch a war and topple a regime. Considering the Cold War cost more than all other wars in history combined, why didn't the US just obliterate Russia back in the day and save all those trillions??
All this just proves is that the US blatantly misled the world about WMD (of course, preferable phrasing is "bureacratic reasons") when there were other intentions behind it. Should I find reasons to believe the US any more in the future? Hell no!
Well, I never did anyway...
"All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time...I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."
-USA President Dwight Eisenhower, 1953, upon being presented with plans to wage preventive war to disarm Stalin's Soviet Union
ACK!
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